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In the 4th century BC, after the Peloponnesian War, there was a shortage of oarsmen of sufficient skill to man large navies of triremes. The search for designs of galley that would allow oarsmen to use muscle power instead of skill led Dionysius of Syracuse to build tetreres (quadriremes) and penteres (quinqueremes). For a long time, modern scholars were confused by the word penteres. If they were analogous to trieres (triremes) they would have had five rows of oars, but such a galley would surely have been impossible to construct and impossibly unstable. Moreover, later accounts talk about hexeres, hepteres and even larger galleys than those; clearly a different classification scheme was in operation.
There are no explicit descriptions or archeological remains of quinqueremes, so the construction is unclear. According to modern historians, the numbers used to describe galleys counted the number of rows of men on each side, and not the numbers of oars. There were thus three possible designs of quadrireme: one row of oars with four men on each oar, two rows of oars with two men on each oar or three rows of oars with two men pulling the top oars on each side (probably galleys of all three designs were built). Quinqueremes are thouht to have had three rows of oars, with two men pulling each of the top two oars.
It had become apparent at the Battle of Syracuse in 413 BC that the topmost tier of rowers, the thramites, were vulnerable to attack by arrows and catapults, so the newer vessels completely enclosed all the rowers below the deck. According to Polybius, a quinquereme had a complement of 300 oarsmen, 120 marines, and 50 crew. Historian Fik Meijer suggests that on each side of a quinquereme there would have been 58 thramites pulling 29 oars, 58 zygites (the middle row of oarsmen) pulling 29 oars and 34 thalamites (the bottom row) with an oar each.
Quinqueremes were even more difficult to make stable than triremes, and the increase in speed was not so great as to give the larger galleys much of an advantage. Perhaps the Greeks were conservative in their innovation, or perhaps they simply had enough trained oarsmen to row their triremes; certainly quinqueremes were not produced in large numbers, and triremes remained the mainstay of the Mediterranean navies.
The wars of the Diadochi, the successors to the empire of Alexander the Great, caused another arms race. This time the trend was to build bigger and bigger galleys. MacedonAlternate meanings: Macedon (village), New York; Macedon (town), New York Macedon (aka. Macedonia) was the ancient Greek state of Macedonia in the central-northern part of ancient Greece bordering with the ancient Greek state of Epirus on the west and the was building sexiremes (probably with two men on each of three oars) in 340 BCCenturies: 5th century BC 4th century BC 3rd century BC Decades: 390s BC 380s BC 370s BC 360s BC 350s BC 340s BC 330s BC 320s BC 310s BC 300s BC 290s BC Years: 345 BC 344 BC 343 BC 342 BC 341 BC 340 BC 339 BC 338 BC 337 BC 336 BC 335 BC Events Battle of t; by 315 BCCenturies: 5th century BC 4th century BC 3rd century BC Decades: 360s BC 350s BC 340s BC 330s BC 320s BC 310s BC 300s BC 290s BC 280s BC 270s BC 260s BC 320 BC 319 BC 318 BC 317 BC 316 BC 315 BC 314 BC 313 BC 312 BC 311 BC 310 BC Events Macedonia's port c Antigonus382 BC 301 BC). Antigonus I Monophthalmos ("the One-eyed") ( 382 BC 301 BC) was a Macedonian nobleman, general, and governor under Alexander the Great. He was a major figure in the Wars of the Diadochi, the factional conflicts that followed Alexander's de, the successor to Alexander the Great in Macedon, was building septiremes, which saw action at the Battle of Salamis in Cyprus (306 BC)The Battle of Salamis of 306 BC was a naval battle fought near Salamis, Cyprus between the fleets of Ptolemy I of Egypt and Demetrius, two of the diadochi, the successors to Alexander the Great. The battle was a complete victory for Demetrius, and resulte; his son DemetriusDemetrius I ( 337- 283 BC), surnamed Poliorcetes ("Besieger"), son of Antigonus I of Macedon and Stratonice was a king of Macedon ( 294 288 BC). He belonged to the Antigonid dynasty. Demetrius I of Macedon At the age of twenty-two he was left by his fathe, involved in a naval war with Ptolemy of EgyptPtolemy I of Egypt, British Museum, London Ptolemy I ( 367 283 BC; reigned 305 283), founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty, son of Lagus, a Macedonian nobleman of Eordaea, was one of Alexander the Great's most trusted generals, and among the seven "body-guards, built eights (octeres), nines, tens, twelves and finally sixteens!
A change in the technology of conflict had taken place to allow these juggernauts of the seas to be created, as the development of catapults had neutralised the power of the ram, and speed and manoeuvrability were no longer as important as they had been. It was easy to mount catapults on galleys; Alexander the Great had used them to considerable effect when he besieged Tyre from the sea in 332 BC. The catapults did not aim to sink the enemy galleys, but rather to injure or kill the rowers (remember that one rower out of place would ruin the performance of the entire ship and prevent its ram from being effective). Now combat at sea returned to the boarding and fighting that it had been before the development of the ram, and larger galleys could carry more soldiers.
Some of the later galleys were monstrous in size, with oars as long as 17 metres pulled by as many as eight rowers. With so many rowers, if one of them was killed by a catapult shot, the rest could continue and not interrupt the stroke. The innermost oarsman on such a galley had to step forward and back a few paces with each stroke.
The very largest galleys were probably catamarans, according to J. S. Morrison. An account by Memnon describes how Demetrius' rival Lysimachus of Asia Minor built a galley, the Leontophorus, so large it required 1600 rowers and could support 1200 marines. Plutarch described a quadragintareme (forty) built for Ptolemy IV of Egypt in about 200 BC that was 128 m long, required 4,000 rowers and 400 other crew, and could support a force of 3,000 marines on its decks. He wrote, "This ship was only for show. It scarcely differed from buildings which are rooted in the ground and had great difficulty in being put to sea."
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