What a quinquereme's five probably counted

Did a quinquereme have five banks of oars, or five rowers arranged across fewer banks?

They favor five rowers distributed across two or perhaps three banks, while acknowledging that the surviving evidence cannot settle the arrangement completely.

The numerical names of polyremes remain uncertain because direct evidence is limited. A practical interpretation counts the rowers assigned on each side and distributes them among two or three levels of oars. For a quinquereme, possible arrangements place three people on one oar and two on another, or spread smaller groups across three oars. This avoids the mechanical and spatial problems that would come with imagining ever taller stacks of oar banks.