Hellenistic Sea Power

Hellenistic sea power was the naval competition among the successor kingdoms of Alexander the Great, chiefly the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Antigonids and Seleucids, from the late fourth to the first century BC. It drove an arms race in polyremes: warships rated by oar files such as the quinquereme (five) and larger sixes, sevens, and beyond, culminating in Ptolemy IV’s reported forty (tessarakonteres) described by Athenaeus. Demetrius Poliorcetes won the naval battle of Salamis off Cyprus in 306 BC. The Ptolemaic fleet based at Alexandria contested the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean.