Editing Trireme (section)

===Origins===
[[File:AssyrianWarship.jpg|thumb|[[Phoenicia]]n warship<ref>[[Lionel Casson|Casson, Lionel]] (1995): "Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World", Johns Hopkins University Press, {{ISBN|978-0-8018-5130-8}}, fig. 76</ref> with two rows of oars, relief from Nineveh, {{circa|700&nbsp;BC}}]]
Depictions of two-banked ships ([[bireme]]s), with or without the ''parexeiresia'' (the [[outriggers]], see below), are common in 8th century BC and later vases and pottery fragments, and it is at the end of that century that the first references to three-banked ships are found. Fragments from an 8th-century relief at the [[Assyria]]n capital of [[Nineveh]] depicting the fleets of [[Tyre, Lebanon|Tyre]] and [[Sidon]] show ships with [[ramming|rams]], and fitted with oars pivoted at two levels. They have been interpreted as two-decked warships, and also{{clarify|date=July 2014}} as triremes.<ref>Morrison 1995: 146</ref>

Modern scholarship is divided on the provenance of the trireme, [[Ancient Greece|Greece]] or [[Phoenicia]], and the exact time it developed into the foremost ancient fighting ship.<ref>Anthony J. Papalas (1997): "The Development of the Trireme", ''[[The Mariner's Mirror]]'', Vol. 83, No. 3, pp. 259–271 (259f.)</ref> According to [[Thucydides]], the trireme was introduced to Greece by the [[Ancient Corinth|Corinthians]] in the late 8th century BC, and the Corinthian Ameinocles built four such ships for the [[Samos|Samians]].<ref>''[[Stromata|Thucydides I.13.2–5]]''</ref> This was interpreted by later writers, [[Pliny the Elder|Pliny]] and [[Diodorus]], to mean that triremes were ''invented'' in Corinth.<ref>Diodorus, ''Bibliotheca historica'', XIV.42.3</ref> [[Clement of Alexandria]] in the 2nd century, drawing on earlier works, explicitly attributes the invention of the trireme (''trikrotos naus'', "three-banked ship") to the [[Sidon]]ians<ref>Stromata, I 16.36</ref> the possibility remains that the earliest three-banked warships originated in [[Phoenicia]].{{Citation needed|date=May 2024}}