It is also related by Diodoros that there were ships of six and seven banks in the fleet of Demetrios Poliorcetes at a battle off Cyprus in 306 B.C., and that Antigonos, the father of Poliorcetes, had ships of eleven and twelve banks. We have seen, however, that Diodoros died about two and a half centuries after this period. Pliny, who lived from 61 to 115 A.D., increases the number of banks in the ships of the opposing fleets at this battle to twelve and fifteen banks respectively. It is impossible to place any confidence in such statements. Theophrastus, a botanist who died about 288 B.C., and who was therefore a contemporary of Demetrios, mentions in his history of plants that the king built an eleven-banked ship in Cyprus. This is one of the very few contemporary records we possess of the construction of such ships. The question, however, arises, Can a botanist be accepted as an accurate witness in matters relating to shipbuilding? The further question presents itself, What meaning is intended to be conveyed by the terms which we translate as ships of many banks? This question will be reverted to hereafter. In one other instance a writer cites a document in which one of these many-banked ships is mentioned as having been in existence during his lifetime. The author in question was Polybios, one of the most painstaking and accurate of the ancient historians, who was born between 214 and 204 B.C., and who quotes a treaty between Rome and Macedon concluded in 197 B.C., in which a Macedonian ship of sixteen banks is once mentioned. This ship was brought to the Tiber thirty years later, according to Plutarch and Pliny, who are supposed to have copied a lost account by Polybios. Both Plutarch and Pliny were born more than two centuries after this event. If the alleged account by Polybios had been preserved, it would have been unimpeachable authority on the subject of this vessel, as this writer, who was, about the period in question, an exile in Italy, was tutor in the family of AEmilius Paulus, the Roman general who brought the ship to the Tiber. The Romans first became a naval power in their wars with the Carthaginians, when the command of the sea became a necessity of their existence. This was about 256 B.C. At that time they knew nothing whatever of shipbuilding, and their early war-vessels were merely copies of those used by the Carthaginians, and these latter were no doubt of the same general type as the Greek galleys. The first Roman fleet appears to have consisted of quinqueremes.