Description
It is thought that the Rhodians, a significant naval power in the eastern Mediterranean, developed the 'trihemiolia' or 'two-and-a-half' as a vessel for pirate hunting. Given that Rhodes is an island entirely reliant on the sea and shipping this is a believable theory. Pirates used the hemiola, a handy little vessel developed from the dieres or bireme, a ship with two rows of oars; it makes sense that pirate hunters would think of taking a trieres, or trireme, with three rows of oars and modifying it in a similar fashion. A trihemiolia still had three rows of oars on each side, but the top row was reduced to only half the number of oars, positioned midships. The result was a faster, handier vessel that provided a height advantage over a hemiola for any archers on board. There was also a strategic benefit to the Rhodians, who could only draw on the manpower of one island: they could have six trieres warships with full complements of rowers, or seven trihemiolias for the same number of men. The useful design was soon adopted by other maritime powers around the Mediterranean.
Native troops supported the Greek phalanxes of Ptolemaic Egypt. Brave and proud warriors, Egyptians fulfilled several roles, but were most commonly used as peltasts, skirmishers on the flanks of the phalanxes, or as non-phalanx infantry in difficult terrain. Although the Ptolemies adopted all the trappings of the Pharaohs and their religious infrastructure, there was still much unrest among the native population long after the succession. This was due mainly to the way the Greek overlords used the traditions of the Pharaohs to fill their coffers at the expensive of ordinary people. The core of Ptolemaic armies was always Greek until the Battle of Raphia in 217BC, when they faced such a large Seleucid force and Ptolemy IV was forced to muster some 30,000 native Egyptians for the first time. Need overcame the suspicion of the disenchanted natives; the performance of the Egyptians in battle eventually led to a greater proportion of native troops in the Egyptian army and, in time, more diverse roles for those men as they gained the trust of their Greek commanders.
