History of the Peloponnesian War

The Ionians, too, acquired a powerful navy later, in the time of Cyrus,[*](559-529 B.C.) the first king of the Persians, and of Cambyses his son; and waging war with Cyrus they maintained control of the sea about their own coasts for some time. Polycrates, also, who was tyrant of Samos in the time of Cambyses,[*](532-522 B.C.) was strong in sea-power and subdued a number of the islands, Rhenea among them, which he captured and consecrated to the Delian Apollo.[*](3.104) Finally the Phocaeans, when they were colonizing Massalia,[*](Marseilles, founded 600 B.C.) conquered the Carthaginians in a sea-fight.

These were the most powerful of the fleets; and even these, we learn, though they were formed many generations later than the Trojan war, were provided with only a few triremes, but were still fitted out with fifty-oared galleys and the ordinary long boats,[*](πλοῖα, usually contrasted with war-ships (τριήρεις), but here marked as ships of war by the epithet μακρά, though probably differing little except in size from trading-vessels.) like the navies of that earlier time.

Indeed, it was only a little before the Persian war and the death of Darius,[*](485 B.C.) who became king of the Persians after Cambyses, that triremes were acquired in large numbers, namely by the tyrants in various parts of Sicily and by the Corcyraeans; and these were the last navies worthy of note that were established in Hellas before the expedition of Xerxes.