Trireme
TRY-reem
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe warship of the classical Greek world: three banks of oars, about a hundred and seventy rowers, and a bronze ram at the waterline.
It is a weapon rather than a transport. The tactic is to hole an enemy hull with the ram or to shear off its oars along one side and leave it turning in a circle.
Thucydides treats the shift to triremes as the beginning of real sea power, and dates Greek naval strength from it.
Sources
- Thuc. 1.13-14
- Hdt. 8.17
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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