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[3] For the Attic triremes were built with weaker and high prows, and for this reason it followed that, when they rammed, they damaged only the parts of a ship that extended above the water, so that the enemy suffered no great damage; whereas the ships of the Syracusans, built as they were with the structure about the prow strong and low, would often, as they delivered their ramming blows, sink with one shock the triremes of the Athenians.1

1 Thuc. 7.36 describes in considerable detail this strengthening of the bow and its effect upon the tactics of the fighting in the harbour.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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