A musician with voice and instrument cheered and inspired the oarsmen at their task. He commanded the soldiers, and under him were the pilot who directed the steersman a mate who commanded the sailors, and a boatswain the rowers. The commander directed operations from an elevated station. There were machines for hurling stones, masses of iron, and flaming missiles. The galley was decked over for the fighting men who were shielded by a hide curtain, from behind which they launched arrows and javelins. It was surmounted by the national emblem, an owl for the Athenians, a cock for the Phœnicians and Carthaginians, and an eagle for the Romans. Was about 100 feet long and propelled by rowers, having an iron-sheathed prow like a beak, to pierce enemy vessels. off the Lipari Islands when Duilius defeated a superior Carthaginian fleet under Hannibal. The first great naval battle of the Romans was fought 260 B. C. A Carthaginian vessel wrecked on the coast of Italy supplied the Romans with the model for their navy. One of the earliest recorded sea-fights was the battle of Salamis, 480 B. C., when the Greeks under Themistocles defeated the fleet of Xerxes, which marked the turning point in the last Persian invasion.
to 870 B. C., the Phœnicians commanded the sea, but their power waned between 870 and 650 B. C., and Carthage, a Phœnician colony, gradually surpassed the parent state in sea-power. After casting off the yoke of Egyptian rule, from 1200 B. C. The Phœnicians, among the greatest sea-faring people of antiquity, occupied a narrow strip of sea-coast in Asia Minor.
The earliest recorded sea-fights were waged by the Egyptians against the Phoenicians, Phocæans, and Mysians, about 3000 B. C. NAVY, THE, a term used for a country's armed force operating on water or in defense of coasts and harbors.
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