Abstract

There is one nautical term which has been neglected by those who have written about the Greek ship—for the very good reason that it had ceased to be used literally by the time our records, literary and epigraphic, begin. This is a pity, since the silence of experts has resulted in an absurdity, or at least obscurity, appearing in the dictionaries. An unattested original meaning ‘under-rower’ has been universally assumed for the word ujnjpenjs . This assumption not merely requires proof but is in sore need of explanation. What is an ‘under-rower’? And why did the term pass out of use in that sense?