Greece-Iran: A trireme or rowed warship used by Phoenecians, Greeks, Persians and Romans, especially c. 7th-4th centuries BCE. Matthias Kabel (CC BY-SA 3.0 License)

Greece-Iran: A trireme or rowed warship used by Phoenecians, Greeks, Persians and Romans, especially c. 7th-4th centuries BCE. Matthias Kabel (CC BY-SA 3.0 License)

A trireme (from Latin triremis, literally 'three-oarer') was a type of galley, a Hellenistic-era warship that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks, Persians and Romans. The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar. The early trireme was a development of the penteconter, an ancient warship with a single row of 25 oars on each side, and of the bireme, a warship with two banks of oars, probably of Phoenician origin. As a ship it was fast and agile, and became the dominant warship in the Mediterranean from the 7th to the 4th centuries BC, when they were largely superseded by the larger quadriremes and quinqueremes. Triremes played a vital role in the Persian Wars, the creation of the Athenian maritime empire, and its downfall in the Peloponnesian War.

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