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Ancient History - The Trireme

The Naval Program of Themistokles The Second Persian War The Delian League The Peloponnesian War The Battle of Amorgos Sulla sacks the Piraeus

© Trireme Trust
The trireme was a wooden warship with oars on three levels, armed primarily with a bronze ram, which was used for ramming enemy ships. During sea voyages, the trireme could be rowed or sailed. In battle it relied on oar propulsion. At present, there are no definite answers as to where and when the trireme was invented. But the fact that the trireme served as a warship until the third century AD is a testament to its successful design.

The trireme won its undying reputation during the Second Persian War at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. A severely outnumbered Greek fleet defeated the Persians against all odds, under the clever direction of Themistocles.

Despite the numerous sea battles in antiquity, no wrecks of triremes - or any other ancient Greek warships - have been found to date. In the Piraeus the only probable parts of a trireme that have been discovered are the marble ship-eyes found in the eastern part of Zea Harbour in 1879. It is thought that eyes were used on ships to ward off evil and to guide the ship on its voyages.

Because of the lack of archaeological remains, the study of the trireme and other ancient warships is primarily based on iconography, literary and epigraphic sources, architectural rules of shipbuilding, and the dimensions of the ship-sheds.

The Trireme Trust, headed by the late John Morrison, John F. Coates and Boris Rankov, has carried out the most recent and important research on the trireme. This included building Olympias, a full-scale reconstruction of the Athenian trireme.

The overall dimensions of Olympias have been reconstructed at 37 m on the basis of the dimensions of the Zea ship-shed. A recent suggestion, based on the longer cubit, would lengthen the trireme to 39.6 m. Our research in Zea Harbour has proven that these dimensions must be re-evaluated again.

Further reading:
J.S. Morrison, J.F. Coates & N.B. Rankov, The Athenian Trireme, second edition, Cambridge 2000
J.S. Morrison, Greek and Roman Oared Warships, Oxford 1996
E. Spathari, Sailing through Time: The Ship in Greek Art, Athens 1994