Description
There is a good deal of debate as to how large ancient warships worked; the principles are understood, but the details are not always so clear. A Roman 'quadreme' or Greek 'tetreres' would seem to have four rows of oars if the name is translated literally. However, it is unclear how four sets of oars each with one rower apiece could be used without them getting in a terrible tangle even with a magnificently trained crew, or how the top set of rowers would be able to handle the extremely long oars pitched at a steep angle and still produce any power. The chances are that the term 'oar' had become synonymous with 'rower' and that the lowest bank had more than one man per oar. The other option was to go back to a double row of oars, with two men apiece. Two banks of oars would also have made for a cheaper construction task for each ship. Either way, the result was a ship that could rival the lighter trireme in speed, yet had more deck space for a large fighting contingent or artillery pieces.
The Bactrian plain is to the west of the Hindu Kush in what is now Afghanistan. It first enters records of antiquity through Ctesias, a Greek historian (circa 400BC), who falsely claimed that the Assyrian King Ninus defeated the Bactrians in 2140BC. A fertile and developed land, Bactria was prosperous and so, during the expansion of the Achaemenid Empire, it inevitably drew the interest of the newly crowned Cyrus the Great. Under the Achaemenids, Bactria enjoyed the special privilege of being ruled by the crown prince, or heir-apparent to the royal line. It has been suggested that before the Persians, however, Bactria was ruled by the Median Kingdom before they, too, fell to the expansionist Achaemenids. Like many other Persian satrapies, Bactria attempted to rebel against its overlords in the wake of Darius III's defeat by Alexander the Great, only to be subdued by the victorious general.
