Ameinocles was a Corinthian

Ancient Corinth

Corinth, or Korinth was a city-state on the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow stretch of land that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece, roughly halfway between Athens and Sparta. The modern town of Corinth is located approximately northeast of the ancient ruins...

 shipbuilder, who visited Samos

Samos Island

Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of Asia Minor, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional...

 about 704 BC, and built four ships for the Samians. Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

 says that Thucydides

Thucydides

Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...

 men­tioned Ameinocles as the inventor of the trireme; but this is a mistake, for Thucydides merely states that triremes were first built at Corinth in Greece, without ascribing their invention to Ameinocles. According to Syncellus

Syncellus

Syncellus may refer to:* an office in an Orthodox Church roughly equivalent to that of an episcopal vicar in the Roman Catholic Church.People named Syncellus:* George Syncellus...

, however, triremes were first built at Athens by Ameinocles.