Trieres, Phoenician Marines

Description

Of all the warships found in the ancient world, it is the trireme, or trieres, that remains the most famous and recognisable. Nearly all Hollywood 'sword and sandal' movies will include a trireme somewhere. The vessel was entirely designed for war. Its name came from the three rows of oars carried on each side, stacked above each other in staggered columns to give the rowers some room to work. The top row of oars pivoted on a rowlock, or oarlock, mounted on an outrigger projecting from the hull. This allowed the top oars to pitch down at a sharper angle to reach the sea without getting tangled in the lower ones. The trireme was a greyhound of a ship, capable of high-speed dashes with a well-trained crew and, contrary to popular belief, not all rowers were slaves. Aboard Greek vessels they were citizens, and were given respect, not the lash. They were also largely fair-weather ships, and unsuited to rough seas such as the Atlantic; the lowest level of oars were, at most, less than half a metre above the waterline. That, however, did not stop the trireme being a superb weapon against other ships: a high-speed ramming attack could rip a hole in the side of almost any target. The type was also large enough to be used in other ways, which lead to it carrying archers and assorted light artillery pieces.

Along a thin stretch of the eastern Mediterranean coast lay Phoenicia, an ancient Semitic civilization along the Fertile Crescent - an area of rich, arable land surrounded by arid desert climes. Phoenician civilisation reached its height around 800BC, when it was one of the first global economies, managing to maintain a vast trade network whilst being surrounded by voracious military empires. In 593BC, Cyrus the Great, leader of the vastly expanding Achaemenid Empire, conquered Phoenicia and divided it into four vassal kingdoms, providing Persia with a Mediterranean port for the first time. The decline of the Achaemenids, in turn, diminished Phoenicia's influence in the region, although its colony, Carthage, maintained a burgeoning trade empire for a few hundred years after.