History of the Peloponnesian War

These were the greatest navies extant. And yet even these, though many ages after the time of Troy, consisted, as it seems, but of a few galleys, and were made up with vessels of fifty oars and with long boats, as well as those of former times.

And it was but a little before the Medan war and death of Darius, successor of Cambyses in the kingdom of Persia, that the tyrants of Sicily and the Corcyraeans had of galleys any number. For these last were the only navies worth speaking of in all Greece before the invasion of the Medes.

And the people of Aegina and the Athenians had but small ones, and the most of them consisting but of fifty oars apiece; and that so lately as but from the time that the Athenians making war on Aegina, and withal expecting the coming of the barbarian, at the persuasion of Themistocles built those ships which they used in that war. And these also not all had decks.