Dulmúnus

gen. pl. dulmúna; m. The war-ship of the Greeks, which king Alfred assures us would hold a thousand men; longa nāvis. These ships were the 956;ακρά πλoiα or νηεs μακραί, generally called in Greek ò δρόμων, ωνos, m. the light war-vessel of the Greeks. They were the longæ nāves the long war-ships of the Romans, which had often more than fifty rowers. The Romans called their vessel drŏmo, ōnis, defining it as a fast rowing vessel, evidently deriving their word from the Greek δρόμων, Cod. Just. 1, 27, 1, § 8; Cassiod. Var. 5, 17, init. where it is described as 'trĭrēme vehĭcŭlum rēmōrum tantum nŭmĕrum prōdens, sed hŏmĭnum făcies dīlĭgenter abscondens.' Some suppose that Alfred derived his word dulmúnus from the Icel. drómundr, m. which Egilsson, in his Lexĭcon Poëtĭcum, Hafniæ, 8vo. 1860, explains 'nāves grandior, cūjus gĕnĕris tantum extra regiōnes septemtrionāles, ut in mări mediterrāneo, mentio fit,' S.E. i. 582, 3, Orkn. 82, 1, 3. Vigfusson, in his Icelandic-English Dictionary, 4to. Oxford, 1869-1874, in drómundr gives only the Latin and Greek, and O. H. Ger. drahemond as cognates. What Orosius, calls longas nāves, Alfred translates dulmúnus in Anglo-Saxon. As we read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of A.D. 897; Th. i. 174, 4, Hét Ælfréd cyng timþrian lang-scipu ongén ða æscas king Alfred commanded to build long-ships against-, those ships, before he [Hercules] began with Grecian ships, which are called dulmunus, of which it is said that one ship can hold a thousand men, Ors. 1, 10; Bos. 33, 31-33. He [Xersis] hæfde scipa ðæra mycclena dulmúna in M and ii hund he [Xerxes] had one thousand two hundred of the large ships, dulmunus, Ors. 2, 5; Bos. 46, 32, 33.