Quinquereme

The quinquereme is a large oared warship of classical antiquity, traditionally credited to Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, who developed it around 399 BC as part of a naval buildup against Carthage. Larger and more heavily built than the trireme it eventually superseded as the standard heavy warship of Mediterranean navies, a quinquereme measured roughly forty-five meters in length, displaced around one hundred tonnes and carried a crew of about four hundred men, including some three hundred rowers and up to one hundred twenty marines, giving it far greater durability in rough seas and more deck space for boarding parties than lighter ships. The design spread through the Hellenistic world and became the mainstay of the Carthaginian navy, and when Rome built its first serious battle fleet for the First Punic War it constructed one hundred quinqueremes, reportedly copied from a captured Carthaginian vessel; the type became so central to the Punic Wars that the historian Polybius used the word simply to mean warship in general.