Golden prows of
quinqueremes, two hundred and forty in number, filled the bottom layer, and on the cat-heads(4) there were two archers kneeling on one knee, each four cubits high; and there were armoured statues five cubits high.
If Pitassi rightly rejects Polybius' myth of the Roman navy's origins in the First Punic War, his solution to the problems of the corvus, here distinguished from a boarding bridge, and the first Roman
quinqueremes is not very satisfying (43, 45, 95).
So, on day one of the cruise--on ten-day cruises the first day is spent getting on the ship and the last day getting off--my wife and I arrived at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport, ready to follow the footsteps of the Roman legions that built the Roman Empire, and sail the seas that Roman
quinqueremes once sailed.
Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the Roman commander, began attacking Syracuse during the second Punic War with a fleet of over 50
quinqueremes, vessels that were propelled by five banks of oars and filled with soldiers armed with all kinds of devices to overcome the city walls.