Athens' 200 triremes were built partly with timber from Cyprus, study says

Cyprus is one of two regions that supplied much of the timber for Athens' fifth-century BCE warships, according to a study led by Dr. Alaa Jabbar Jani of how Greek cities equipped their armies and fleets. Local forests fell short, Jani argues, so Athens imported wood from Thrace and Cyprus.

The study centres on the 200 triremes Themistocles proposed in 483 BCE, funded from a rich silver deposit found in the Laurion mines. Fir went into the light hulls and oak into the keel; planks were joined with shaped joints and pegs. Workshops supplied oars, masts, sails and rope, and contractors checked materials before delivery to the yards. Each ship carried about 170 rowers on three levels.

The Cypriot kingdoms, then subjects of Achaemenid Persia, fought against that fleet. Herodotus records 150 Cypriot ships in Xerxes' navy in 480 BCE, and at the battle of Salamis in Greece the Cypriots stood with the Phoenicians on the Persian right and shared its defeat. In 451/450 BCE, early in the Cypro-Classical period, Cimon brought 200 Athenian ships to the island, took Marion and besieged Kition, where he died of disease before the walls.