Trireme, Hagiography

Posted by Tom Joad on Oct 22, 2007 | 2 comments

OK, I’m back in the saddle. Here, for your delectation is a proper two-for-one deal, two words in the same post. Yes, I know it’s cheating, but as I am keen to mention – it’s my blog, so there!

The reason for these two unconnected yet interesting words is that I have recently finished reading Robert Harris’ rather excellent novel Imperium. Both today’s words come from the book and I can thoroughly recommend it, regardless of your usual reading choices. If I could write even half as well as he does, I’d consider myself extremely talented. I can but dream…

Trireme

A trireme (from the Greek trieres, and pronounced try-reem) was a warship, used in the Mediterranean in ancient times – particularly by the Greeks and the Romans. It had three decks of rowers, all covered from the elements and from enemy attack. It was also equipped with sails, so could be powered in two completely different ways. The lucky rowers would sit in single file on either side of the ship, and on all three decks. There were 62 on the top deck and 54 each on the others – making an impressive rowing crew of 170. The number may seem large, but it was 37 metres long and 5.5 high, so took a lot of manpower to move it. I know, manpower is sexist, but there just weren’t the vacancies for ladies in those days! When used an attack vessel, it would either break the oars of an enemy vessel, then attack – or just send a party of on-board marines onto the opposing vessel and disable it in that way. By far the most worrying form of attack was ramming. The triremes were fitted at the bows with rams, but to use them, the ship had to reach a minimum speed of 10 knots – something approaching 20 Kph. Anything above this speed would send the ship ploughing into the enemy and holing it badly. Anything less and the enemy ship would feel nothing more than a bad jolt – and the ramming trireme would be smashed!

Hagiography

Another in the season of “couldn’t guess if you didn’t know” words. Well, I didn’t know, so I looked it up. Hagiography is another word with Greek roots. Originally, it comes from άγιος (agios, “holy”) and our old friend γραφία (grafia, “writing”). As the root words suggest, it is a biography of a saint or saints, normally associated with the Catholic church. Hagiographer can also be used as a sarcastic reference to someone who portrays their subject in a good light without question or criticism, regardless of popular opinion about their subject. That is all I’m going to say on the word, but if you’re really having problems sleeping, or have absolutely nothing else to look at on the Internet, you could read what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about hagiography. It’s a very thorough account, but very long.