Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/501

 NAVAL PREPARATIONS. 479 the existing vessels and docks into the best jtate of repair. Here too, as in the case of the catapulta, the ingenuity of his architects enabled him to stand forth as a maritime inventor. As yet, the largest ship of war which had ever moved on the Grecian or Mediterranean waters, was the trireme, which was rowed by three banks or tiers of oars. It was now three centuries since the first trireme had been constructed at Corinth and Samos by the inven- tive skill of the Corinthian Ameinokles : l it was not until the period succeeding the Persian invasion that even triremes had become extensively employed ; nor had any larger vessels ever been thought of. The Athenians, who during the interval be- tween the Persian invasion and their great disaster at Syracuse had stood preeminent and set the fashion in all nautical matters, were under no inducement to build above the size of the trireme. As their style of manoeuvring consisted of rapid evolutions and changes in the ship's direction, for the purpose of striking the weak parts of an enemy's ship with the beak of their own, so, if the size of their ship had been increased, her capacity for such nimble turns and movements would have been diminished. But the Syracusans had made no attempt to copy the rapid evolutions of the Athenian navy. On the contrary, when fighting against the latter in the confined harbor of Syracuse, 2 they had found every advantage in their massive build of ships, and straightfor- ward impact of bow driven against bow. For them, the larger ships were the more suitable and efficient ; so that Dionysius or his naval architects, full of ambitious aspirations, now struck out the plan of building ships of war with four or five banks of oars instead of three ; that is, quadriremes, or quinqueremes, instead of triremes. 3 Not only did the Syracusan despot thus equip a naval force equal in number of ships to Athens in her best days ; but he also exhibited ships larger than Athens had ever possessed, or than Greece had ever conceived. In all these offensive preparations against Carthage, as in tha previous defences on Epipolse, the spontaneous impulse of the Sy- racusana generally went hand in hand with Dionysius. 1 * Their 1 Thucyd. i, 13. 2 Thucyd. vii, 36-62. '> Diodor. xiv, 42. 4 Diodor. xiv, 41. Sv/j.Trpo'&vfj.ovfisvav <5e TUV 'Zvpa.Kovoiuv rfj TOV Aiow aiov Trpoaiptaei, no7-^v avveflaive -yevea&ai rf/v (j>t?iOTiiuav TTE/ I TJJV TUV