Triremes

And Antalcidas, when his scouts signalled to him that eight triremes were approaching, embarked the sailors on twelve of his fastest ships, gave orders that if anyone was lacking men, he should fill up his crew from the ships left behind, and lay in wait with the utmost possible concealment.

Then, a battle being fought by moonlight, Gorgopas captured four triremes, and taking them in tow, carried them off to Aegina;

and even if there were triremes at anchor there, he believed that it was safer to sail against twenty ships which were at Athens than against ten elsewhere.

Now the Corinthians are said first to have managed naval matters most nearly to the present fashion, and triremes to have been built at Corinth first in Greece.

But even these, though many generations after the Trojan war, appear to have used but few triremes, and to have been still fitted out with fifty-oared vessels, and long boats, as that fleet was.

as the Aeginetans and Athenians, and whoever else had any, possessed but small ones, and of those the greater part fifty-oared vessels;

meanwhile the Greeks were waiting for Cleander and the triremes and ships which were, presumably, coming, but every day they set forth with their baggage animals and slaves and fearlessly carried off wheat and barley, wine, beans, millet, and figs;

And many of the sailors from the triremes got frightened and began to flee toward the sea, and Cleander also fled.

Meanwhile Cleander arrived with two triremes, but not a single merchant ship.

then the existing fleet of old, unseaworthy triremes with which we had won Greece her independence by defeating the king of Persia and his barbarians—these existing vessels were replaced by a hundred new ones:

The fleet she confiscated, and the walls she demolished, to prevent our using them as the foundations of a fresh Athenian dominion.

As you are all aware, I imagine, this peace enabled us to deposit seven thousand talents of coined silver on the Acropolis and to acquire over three hundred ships:

Accordingly, if what you wish is to be all the time getting this kind of news, to be considering what you ought to do, and to be in such a plight as at present, you will vote the same measures as for years past—to launch triremes, to embark, to pay a special war-tax and all that sort of thing, forthwith.

What you ought to do, however, is to deliberate at leisure but put your decisions into effect with speed, and to make up your minds to this, that unless you shall provide an adequate food-supply and place some general of good sense in charge of the war, and be willing to abide by the decisions so taken, you will have to your credit just a lot of decrees, and while you will have squandered all that …

Since Philip has a fleet, we must have fast vessels if our force is to sail in safety.

Do you fancy that all is well, if you dispatch an unmanned fleet and the vague hope of some deliverer?

But you, Athenians, possessing unsurpassed resources—fleet, infantry, cavalry, revenues—have never to this very day employed them aright, and yet you carry on war with Philip exactly as a barbarian boxes.