The hexareme or sexireme (Latin: hexaremis; Greek: ἑξήρης, hexērēs) is affirmed to have been invented in Syracuse by the ancient historians Pliny the Elder and Aelian. "Sixes" were certainly present in the fleet of Dionysius II of Syracuse (r. 367–357 and 346–344 BC), but they may well have been invented in the last years of his father, Dionysius I. "Sixes" were rarer than smaller vessels, and appear in the sources chiefly as flagships: at the Battle of Ecnomus, the two Roman consuls each had a hexareme, Ptolemy XII (80–58 and 55–51 BC) had one as his personal flagship, as did Sextus Pompeius. At the battle of Actium, hexaremes were present in both fleets, but with a notable difference: while in the fleet of Octavian they were the heaviest type of vessel, in the fleet of Mark Antony they were the second smallest, after the quinqueremes. A single hexareme, the Ops, is recorded as the heaviest ship serving in the praetorian Fleet of Misenum.
The exact arrangement of the hexareme's oars is unclear. If it evolved naturally from the earlier designs, it would be a trireme with two rowers per oar; the less likely alternative is that it had two levels with three oarsmen at each. Reports about "sixes" used during the 1st-century BC Roman civil wars indicate that they were of a similar height to the quinqueremes, and record the presence of towers on the deck of a "six" serving as flagship to Marcus Junius Brutus.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenisti ... s#Hexareme