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By AD 325 there were no more triremes, as the development of Greek fire (a chemical substance that caught fire when wetted) had changed the nature of battle at sea once again.
I'm not sure what to replace this sentence with, but something else must have happened to triremes - Greek fire wasn't invented until the 7th century. Adam Bishop 22:07, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
ROME was the major naval power at the beginning of the second Punic war. Carthage was not able to contact Hannibal nor send reinforcements for a long time, because Rome had a supreme fleet. Who is the one always correcting things the wrong way?
As far as I can tell, these are just two names for the same type of ship Nik42 03:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
they were developed by the greeks, improved by the carthagians and then stolen by the romans.
There were in use two types of quinqueremes:
1. 2-deck quinqueremes, with 3 and 2 rowers on each side.
Used by Phoenician, Carthage, Roman and early Byzantine navies.
2. 3-deck quinqueremes, with 2, 2 and 1 rowers on each side.
Used by all of the above plus Syracusians, Macedonians, Seleukids and Ptolemaic Egyptians.
-- Vchorozopoulos ( talk) 03:56, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I have read the above data. Of course they aren't my idea.
-- Vchorozopoulos ( talk) 00:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I've always understood the number to be the number of banks of oars; thus, the bireme has one on each side; the trireme 2 on one and 1 on the other; the quadrireme, 2 on each side; the quinquereme, 3 on one and 2 on the others. That is the way the dictionaries present it and that is the way all ship reconstructions I've seen present it. I'm astounded to read of five banks on a side and to see references given for this. Moreover, the article itself is now self-contradictory. The man who supplied the refs says, no, he loaned his books to a friend and does not have them. Oh yeah? I question the whole thing. I'm not ready to work on this article but I thought I would bring this little matter up as did one of the commentators above. All the Roman ship articles were evidently done with the same understanding. I believe they are all wrong. Needs a multi-source lookup. Later. Dave ( talk) 10:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
You need to have the same number of rowers on each side, otherwise the ship wouldn't go in a straight line... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:B990:300:887:FA9E:F299:ABCB ( talk) 19:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Hi there. Someone else got my machine this morning so I could not finish this intro. Liddell & Scott says Herodotus but the big edition does not substantiate it so it appears that Polybius is the first Greek. I had planned to put some etymology in there - I will do that now - it does not mean what you have there in greek - Latin is "5-oar" but no one knows what that means. The Greek is "5-row" or "5-sweep" based in the action not the oars. I will however try to keep what you have just added if that is possible -I need a little time to get the refs in there Dave ( talk)
I still express my doubts that Carthage's and Rome's navies can be handled in an article about Hellenistic warships. Yes, the Hellenistic powers built big ships, but the great fleets were not by Hellenistic powers, but Rome and Carthage(over 300 each during the I.PW), giving them more weight. As long as you don't proof that Carthage copied the Hellenistic designs it's OR to group them together with the Hellenistic warships. I'll do some research in Scientific American, they have the reconstruction of a Carthaginian warship with intermediate oardecks. I don't know of this feature in Hellenistic ships. For this reason I object to the current article title because Rome and Carthage are different animals(also mentioned in another source I'll retrieve) and together with the Hellenistic warships they could be covered under the better title "polyremes". However, the idea to cover the Hellenistic navies isn't a bad one and I would opt that you spare your intended material for such an article about the different fleet philosophies of the great and small Hellenistic powers. Wandalstouring ( talk) 16:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
We do have actual ship finds of Punic warships at Marsala and they are very much different from the Greek design. Please correct your statements. Wandalstouring ( talk) 13:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
This is the E N G L I S H wikipedia. You can't assume that everybody visiting this site speaks or reads ancient Greek fluently. Please render all terms in Latin letters. You can additionally provide Greek letters, but only as an add on. Wandalstouring ( talk) 13:24, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
The article is too heavily structured around minor differences and lacks important innovations like katamaran ships. I advice to totally restructure it around groups of light, medium, heavy and superheavy ships and not so much into hardly relevant subsections. Wandalstouring ( talk) 14:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm using Casson, Ancient seamanship, pages 97-140. Light is anything up to the trireme, excluding that ship that was still in use in Hellenistic times and is excluded from your list. Futhermore there were also improvements to this shiptype that was one of the main types of these times. Superheavy is anything above the 16 according to Casson(this means according to my source a katamaran construction and shifts the emphasize from ramming to the use of marines). The remaining problem is that you can hardly group together triremes and 16-polyremes. According to Polybius in the Battle of the Aegates Islands the triremes were in the middle of the Punic formation between the heavy ships and the light ships and they carried out a special maneuver sinking 30 Roman ships in pursuit. We could use that to establish them as a class of their own that is in between heavy and light, but what to include or exclude? I'm open to suggestions that aren't OR. Greetings Wandalstouring ( talk) 14:34, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
The following sentence makes me a bit weary: "This system [several men per oar, a scaloccio] was also in use in Renaissance galleys, but jars with the evidence of ancient crews continuing to be thoroughly trained by their commanders."
Who says there's a contradiction here? Is it de Souza or whoever wrote the sentence? I don't even see that there should be any apparent contradiction. Even if rowing a scaloccio (the Italian term for more than one per oar), we're still talking about a quite complicated process of synchronization with various maneuvers that need to be mastered. I've recently read about French 17th century galleys, which employed huge numbers of penal convicts, and their captains also stressed the need for constant exercise and training.
Peter Isotalo 17:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
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Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so.
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It seems from previous comments there is a consensus to split this page. For what it's worth, I just turned up looking for information on quadriremes (currently redirects here) in the context of the Venetian 16th century naval architect Vettor Fausto. Absolutely nothing in here really applied, and he also built quinqueremes. I am therefore proposing a split. Feel free to discuss and adjust the suggested destination articles. I believe we can run with:
I will go ahead and do this myself in a while if there's no substantive discussion, since it's clear there's consensus for change. prat ( talk) 01:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
It seems to me the above discussion of prat and Constantine actually does propose a solution. You just have to consider it. On the one hand this is a really super article. It explains the matter of the banks of oars totally lucidly. I would hate to see that go anywhere else. On the other hand expansion is needed for the special types of vessel. More could be put in: the inventor, some main battle, changes over the ages, what not. The two approaches can be combined simply by the use of the "main" template. So, each type would have a brief introduction here and a full article somewhere else linked by "main". That article would have a "see also" leading to here. I believe that is the way it is done. I therefore vote for that solution. I think I will put in a few "main"s to try it out. I'm not really working on ships right now. If we go for this solution then the proposal tag should be removed. Botteville ( talk) 15:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
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deceres seems to be a typo but it is not obvious what it should be - can anyone figure out what it should be? (from Wikipedia:Correct typos in one click)
The current explanation of the term “hemiolia” (ἡμιολία) has a weak point: The notion of “one and a half files of oarsmen” doesn't make immediate sense. A different explanation can be found in Benselers Griechisch-Deutsches Schulwörterbuch, Leipzig and Berlin 1931: „Es war nur zur Hälfte mit Ruderern besetzt (daher sein Name), um für die Kämpfer Raum zu behalten.“ (“It was only manned by half the number of oarsmen (hence its name) to make room for the fighters.”) A weak point of that is that the meaning “half” can't be directly derived from that of the adjective, although its female form “ἡμιόλια” looks suggestively similar. So I won't change it, but I'm submitting it for the consideration of the editors of this article. ◅ Sebastian 13:57, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Hellenistic-era warships article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
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By AD 325 there were no more triremes, as the development of Greek fire (a chemical substance that caught fire when wetted) had changed the nature of battle at sea once again.
I'm not sure what to replace this sentence with, but something else must have happened to triremes - Greek fire wasn't invented until the 7th century. Adam Bishop 22:07, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
ROME was the major naval power at the beginning of the second Punic war. Carthage was not able to contact Hannibal nor send reinforcements for a long time, because Rome had a supreme fleet. Who is the one always correcting things the wrong way?
As far as I can tell, these are just two names for the same type of ship Nik42 03:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
they were developed by the greeks, improved by the carthagians and then stolen by the romans.
There were in use two types of quinqueremes:
1. 2-deck quinqueremes, with 3 and 2 rowers on each side.
Used by Phoenician, Carthage, Roman and early Byzantine navies.
2. 3-deck quinqueremes, with 2, 2 and 1 rowers on each side.
Used by all of the above plus Syracusians, Macedonians, Seleukids and Ptolemaic Egyptians.
-- Vchorozopoulos ( talk) 03:56, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I have read the above data. Of course they aren't my idea.
-- Vchorozopoulos ( talk) 00:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I've always understood the number to be the number of banks of oars; thus, the bireme has one on each side; the trireme 2 on one and 1 on the other; the quadrireme, 2 on each side; the quinquereme, 3 on one and 2 on the others. That is the way the dictionaries present it and that is the way all ship reconstructions I've seen present it. I'm astounded to read of five banks on a side and to see references given for this. Moreover, the article itself is now self-contradictory. The man who supplied the refs says, no, he loaned his books to a friend and does not have them. Oh yeah? I question the whole thing. I'm not ready to work on this article but I thought I would bring this little matter up as did one of the commentators above. All the Roman ship articles were evidently done with the same understanding. I believe they are all wrong. Needs a multi-source lookup. Later. Dave ( talk) 10:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
You need to have the same number of rowers on each side, otherwise the ship wouldn't go in a straight line... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:B990:300:887:FA9E:F299:ABCB ( talk) 19:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
Hi there. Someone else got my machine this morning so I could not finish this intro. Liddell & Scott says Herodotus but the big edition does not substantiate it so it appears that Polybius is the first Greek. I had planned to put some etymology in there - I will do that now - it does not mean what you have there in greek - Latin is "5-oar" but no one knows what that means. The Greek is "5-row" or "5-sweep" based in the action not the oars. I will however try to keep what you have just added if that is possible -I need a little time to get the refs in there Dave ( talk)
I still express my doubts that Carthage's and Rome's navies can be handled in an article about Hellenistic warships. Yes, the Hellenistic powers built big ships, but the great fleets were not by Hellenistic powers, but Rome and Carthage(over 300 each during the I.PW), giving them more weight. As long as you don't proof that Carthage copied the Hellenistic designs it's OR to group them together with the Hellenistic warships. I'll do some research in Scientific American, they have the reconstruction of a Carthaginian warship with intermediate oardecks. I don't know of this feature in Hellenistic ships. For this reason I object to the current article title because Rome and Carthage are different animals(also mentioned in another source I'll retrieve) and together with the Hellenistic warships they could be covered under the better title "polyremes". However, the idea to cover the Hellenistic navies isn't a bad one and I would opt that you spare your intended material for such an article about the different fleet philosophies of the great and small Hellenistic powers. Wandalstouring ( talk) 16:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
We do have actual ship finds of Punic warships at Marsala and they are very much different from the Greek design. Please correct your statements. Wandalstouring ( talk) 13:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
This is the E N G L I S H wikipedia. You can't assume that everybody visiting this site speaks or reads ancient Greek fluently. Please render all terms in Latin letters. You can additionally provide Greek letters, but only as an add on. Wandalstouring ( talk) 13:24, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
The article is too heavily structured around minor differences and lacks important innovations like katamaran ships. I advice to totally restructure it around groups of light, medium, heavy and superheavy ships and not so much into hardly relevant subsections. Wandalstouring ( talk) 14:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm using Casson, Ancient seamanship, pages 97-140. Light is anything up to the trireme, excluding that ship that was still in use in Hellenistic times and is excluded from your list. Futhermore there were also improvements to this shiptype that was one of the main types of these times. Superheavy is anything above the 16 according to Casson(this means according to my source a katamaran construction and shifts the emphasize from ramming to the use of marines). The remaining problem is that you can hardly group together triremes and 16-polyremes. According to Polybius in the Battle of the Aegates Islands the triremes were in the middle of the Punic formation between the heavy ships and the light ships and they carried out a special maneuver sinking 30 Roman ships in pursuit. We could use that to establish them as a class of their own that is in between heavy and light, but what to include or exclude? I'm open to suggestions that aren't OR. Greetings Wandalstouring ( talk) 14:34, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
The following sentence makes me a bit weary: "This system [several men per oar, a scaloccio] was also in use in Renaissance galleys, but jars with the evidence of ancient crews continuing to be thoroughly trained by their commanders."
Who says there's a contradiction here? Is it de Souza or whoever wrote the sentence? I don't even see that there should be any apparent contradiction. Even if rowing a scaloccio (the Italian term for more than one per oar), we're still talking about a quite complicated process of synchronization with various maneuvers that need to be mastered. I've recently read about French 17th century galleys, which employed huge numbers of penal convicts, and their captains also stressed the need for constant exercise and training.
Peter Isotalo 17:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
![]() |
An image used in this article,
File:Quadriremis.Roman.BCE31.001.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at
Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests September 2011
Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so.
This notification is provided by a Bot -- CommonsNotificationBot ( talk) 21:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC) |
It seems from previous comments there is a consensus to split this page. For what it's worth, I just turned up looking for information on quadriremes (currently redirects here) in the context of the Venetian 16th century naval architect Vettor Fausto. Absolutely nothing in here really applied, and he also built quinqueremes. I am therefore proposing a split. Feel free to discuss and adjust the suggested destination articles. I believe we can run with:
I will go ahead and do this myself in a while if there's no substantive discussion, since it's clear there's consensus for change. prat ( talk) 01:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
It seems to me the above discussion of prat and Constantine actually does propose a solution. You just have to consider it. On the one hand this is a really super article. It explains the matter of the banks of oars totally lucidly. I would hate to see that go anywhere else. On the other hand expansion is needed for the special types of vessel. More could be put in: the inventor, some main battle, changes over the ages, what not. The two approaches can be combined simply by the use of the "main" template. So, each type would have a brief introduction here and a full article somewhere else linked by "main". That article would have a "see also" leading to here. I believe that is the way it is done. I therefore vote for that solution. I think I will put in a few "main"s to try it out. I'm not really working on ships right now. If we go for this solution then the proposal tag should be removed. Botteville ( talk) 15:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Hellenistic-era warships. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
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(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 18:51, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
deceres seems to be a typo but it is not obvious what it should be - can anyone figure out what it should be? (from Wikipedia:Correct typos in one click)
The current explanation of the term “hemiolia” (ἡμιολία) has a weak point: The notion of “one and a half files of oarsmen” doesn't make immediate sense. A different explanation can be found in Benselers Griechisch-Deutsches Schulwörterbuch, Leipzig and Berlin 1931: „Es war nur zur Hälfte mit Ruderern besetzt (daher sein Name), um für die Kämpfer Raum zu behalten.“ (“It was only manned by half the number of oarsmen (hence its name) to make room for the fighters.”) A weak point of that is that the meaning “half” can't be directly derived from that of the adjective, although its female form “ἡμιόλια” looks suggestively similar. So I won't change it, but I'm submitting it for the consideration of the editors of this article. ◅ Sebastian 13:57, 11 February 2022 (UTC)