Fleet of triremes made up of photographs of the modern full-sized replica Olympias. Credit: EDSITEment / Public Domain

The trireme was the most common type of warship in the ancient Mediterranean for some time in early Greek history. The reason it was so important and useful is that it had three rows of oars on either side. Along with its lightweight design, this made it a particularly fast and agile warship. However, there is considerable debate as to whether the ancient Greeks actually invented the trireme or not. What do the facts show?

The testimony of Thucydides

The main piece of written evidence concerning whether or not the Greeks invented the trireme comes from Thucydides. He was a Greek historian from the late fifth century BCE. Regarding the trireme, Thucydides wrote:

“It is said that the Corinthians were the first to approach the modern style of naval architecture, and that Corinth was the first place in Hellas where galleys [triremes] were built; and we have Ameinocles, a Corinthian shipwright, making four ships for the Samians. Dating from the end of this war, it is nearly three hundred years ago that Ameinocles went to Samos.”

According to this, triremes first started to be built in Greece specifically at Corinth. The fact that Thucydides directly follows this assertion with a statement about Ameinocles, a Corinthian shipwright, making four ship implies that he was the person who invented them.

Regarding when this occurred, Thucydides appears to date it to “nearly three hundred years” before the end of “this war”, meaning the Peloponnesian War. Since that war ended in 404 BCE, this would place the first triremes in Greece in c. 700 BCE. However, Thucydides then refers to another event that occurred “at the same time” but is more specific about the date, placing it 260 years before he was writing.

Therefore, the information from Thucydides would seem to place the invention of the triremes by the Greeks in c. 660 BCE in Corinth.

Is this really what Thucydides meant?

Does this passage from Thucydides really support the viewpoint that the Greeks invented the trireme and that they did this in c. 660 BCE? Although this is how this passage has long been viewed, there are serious problems with this interpretation.

For one thing, it is clear that Thucydides does not explicitly state that the ancient Greeks of Corinth invented the trireme. His claim is that Corinth was where triremes were first built in Greece. That does not rule out the possibility that triremes already existed outside of Greece.

In fact, by qualifying his statement in this way, some scholars believe that Thucydides was tacitly acknowledging that another nation had already been using triremes by the time the Greeks adopted them.

Other scholars suppose that Thucydides was not sure about the matter, so he left the triremes’ ultimate origin open. In either case, the result is the same. Thucydides was only talking about where triremes first started to be made in Greece, not in general.

Another crucial issue is the fact that Thucydides does not specifically say that Ameinocles built triremes. He remarks about Corinth’s naval capacities, mentions that it was at Corinth that triremes were first built in Greece, and then mentions Ameinocles building ships for Samos.

Some scholars believe that the reference to triremes being built at Corinth was parenthetical – that is, it was not directly related to the statement that followed, regarding Ameinocles and his activities.

Did the ancient Greeks really invent the trireme?

As we can see, Thucydides’ statement is ambiguous. He does not make it clear who really invented the trireme, nor when it happened. Is there any other evidence that can help to clarify the matter?

In Herodotus‘ account of the history of the Greeks, he refers to several naval events from the sixth century BCE. In these events, he makes it clear that penteconters, not triremes, were used. It is only in the reign of Polycrates that he first mentions Greek triremes. Polycrates was a tyrant of Samos in the latter half of the sixth century BCE.

In the early part of his reign, in an event dated to 539 BCE, Herodotus mentions that Polycrates had a fleet of 100 penteconters. Later, in 525 BCE, he mentions that Polycrates sent 40 triremes to Cambyses, the Persian king, to help in his invasion of Egypt.

This makes it very unlikely that this warship of the ancient Greeks, the trireme, was invented as early as 660 or even 700 BCE.  It suggests that the trireme was invented decidedly more recently. The Greeks apparently only started using it in the second half of the sixth century.

Who really invented the trireme?

There was another ancient tradition which maintained that it was the Phoenicians who invented the trireme. We find this claim in the writings of Clement of Alexandria in the second century. He attributes the invention of the trireme specifically to the Phoenicians of Sidon. However, he might have used ‘Sidonians’ in a generic sense to mean the Phoenicians in general.

We find support for this origin of the trireme from Herodotus. It was this historian who first mentioned them. He referred to triremes in the time of Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt. Necho ordered the construction of a canal connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

In this context, Herodotus mentions that the canal had to be wide enough for two triremes to sail past each other. This strongly implies that triremes were in use in Egypt in Necho’s time, the end of the seventh century BCE. Since Necho worked closely with Phoenician sailors, this lends strong support to the theory that the Phoenicians invented the trireme.