14.
These were the most powerful navies,
and even these, which came into existence many generations1 after the Trojan War, appear to have consisted chiefly of fifty-oared vessels
and galleys of war, as in the days of Troy; as yet triremes were not common.
[2]
But a little before the Persian War and the death of Darius,2 who succeeded Cambyses, the Sicilian tyrants and the
Corcyraeans had them in considerable numbers.
No other maritime powers of any consequence arose in Hellas before the expedition of'
Xerxes.
[3]
The Aeginetans, Athenians, and a few more had small fleets, and these mostly consisted
of fifty-oared vessels.3
Even the ships which the Athenians built quite recently at the instigation of
Themistocles, when they were at war with the Aeginetans and in expectation
of the Barbarian,
even these ships with which they fought at Salamis were not completely decked.
1 Scarcity of triremes. Smallness of the Athenian and Aeginetan fleets.
2 B.C. 485.
3 Or, 'It was quite at a recent period, when the Athenians were at war with the Aeginetans and in expectation of the Barbarian, that Themistocles persuaded them to build the ships with which they fought at Salamis; and even these were not completely decked.'
Thucydides translated into English; with introduction, marginal analysis, notes, and indices. Volume 1. Thucydides. Benjamin Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
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