Three triologisms to describe the fine, fast, strong ships that brought the Greeks to Troy. I particularly like ‘sea-wandering’. May you be fast-running and strong-benched, wherever you wander. 

See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich quote-mosaics, of Adam Nicolson’s magnificent Why Homer Matters, and Christopher Logue’s War Music, a muscular rendition of several books of the Iliad. 

 

‘… on that day when we went in our fast-running vessels…’

 

‘Sixty was the number of their ships, and in each ship

went many men of Arkadia, well skilled in battle.

Agamemnon the lord of men himself had given

these for the crossing of the wine-blue sea their strong-benched vessels…’

 

 

‘Were you like this that time when in sea-wandering vessels

assembling oarsmen to help you you sailed over the water,

and mixed with the outlanders, and carried away fair women… ?’

 

Source: Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1961 (1951)), book 2, p. 85, p. 92; book 3, p. 101

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