The country which is now called Hellas was not regularly settled in ancient times. The
people were migratory, and readily left their homes whenever they were overpowered by
numbers. There was no commerce, and they could not safely hold intercourse with one
another either by land or sea. The several tribes cultivated their own soil just enough to
obtain a maintenance from it. But they had no accumulation of wealth, and did not plant
the ground; for, being without walls, they were never sure that an invaded might not come
and despoil them. Living in this manner and knowing that they could anywhere obtain a bare
subsistence, they were always ready to migrate; so that they had neither great cities nor
any considerable resources. The richest districts were most constantly changing their
inhabitants; for example, the countries which are now called Thessaly and Boeotia, the
greater part of the Peloponnesus with the exception of Arcadia, and all the best parts of
Hellas. For the productiveness of the land increased the power of individuals; this in
turn was a source of quarrels by which communities were ruined, while at the same time
they were more exposed to attacks from without. Certainly Attica, of which the soil was
poor and thin, enjoyed a long freedom from civil strife, and therefore retained its
original inhabitants [the Pelasgians].
The feebleness of antiquity is further proved to me by the circumstance that there
appears to have been no common action in Hellas before the Trojan War. And I am inclined
to think that the very name was not as yet given to the whole country, and in fact did not
exist at all before the time of Hellen, the son of Deucalion; the different tribes, of
which the Pelasgian was the most widely spread, gave their own names to different
districts. But when Hellen and his sons became powerful in Phthiotis, their aid was
invoked by other cities, and those who associated with them gradually began to be called Hellenes,
though a long time elapsed before the name was prevalent over the whole country. Of this,
Homer affords the best evidence; for he, although he lived long after the Trojan War,
nowhere uses this name collectively, but confines it to the followers of Achilles from
Phthiotis, who were the original Hellenes; when speaking of the entire host, he calls them
Danäans, or Argives, or Achaeans.
And the first person known to us by tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He
made himself master of what is now called the Aegean sea, and ruled over the Cyclades,
into most of which he sent the first colonies, expelling the Carians and appointing his
own sons governors; and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters, a necessary
step to secure the revenues for his own use. For in early times the Hellenes and the
barbarians of the coast and islands, as communication by sea became more common, were
tempted to turn pirates, under the conduct of their most powerful men; the motives being
to serve their own cupidity and to support the needy. They would fall upon the unwalled
and straggling towns, or rather villages, which they plundered, and maintained themselves
by the plunder of them; for, as yet, such an occupation was held to be honoralbe and not
disgraceful. . . .The land, too, was infested by robbers; and there are parts of Hellas in
which the old practices continue, as for example among the Ozolian Locrians, Aetolians,
Acarnanians, and the adjacent regions of the continent. The fashion of wearing arms among
these continental tribes is a relic of their old predatory habits.
For in ancient times all Hellenes carried weapons because their homes were undefended
and intercourse was unsafe; like the barbarians they went armed in their everyday life. .
. The Athenians were the first who laid aside arms and adopted an easier and more
luxurious way of life. Quite recently the old-fashioned refinement of dress still lingered
among the elder men of their richer class, who wore undergarments of linen, and bound back
their hair in a knot with golden clasps in the form of grasshoppers; and the same customs
long survived among the elders of Ionia, having been derived from their Athenian
ancestors. On the other hand, the simple dress which is now common was first worn at
Sparta; and there, more than anywhere else, the life of the rich was assimilated to that
of the people.
With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased facilities of navigation
and a greater supply of capital, we find the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and
the isthmuses being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defense against a neighbor.
But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of piracy, were built away from the
sea, whether on the islands or the continent, and still remain in their old sites. But as
soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea became easier, as he colonized
most of the islands, and thus expelled the malefactors. The coast population now began to
apply themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life became more
settled; some even began to build themselves walls on the strength of their newly acquired
riches. And it was at a somewhat later stage of this development that they went on the
expedition against Troy.
What enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my opinion, his superiority
in strength, than the oaths of Tyndareus, which bound the suitors to follow him. Indeed,
the account given by those Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most
credible tradition is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy population from
Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that, stranger though he was, the country was
called after him; and this power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of
his descendants. Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids. Atreus was his
mother's brother; and to the hands of his relation, who had left his father on account of
the death of Chrysippus, Eurystheus, when he set out on his expedition, had committed
Mycenae and the government. As time went on and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus complied
with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were influenced by fear of the Heraclids---besides,
his power seemed considerable, and he had not neglected to court the favor of the
populace---and assumed the scepter of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus.
And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater than that of the
descendants of Perseus.
To all this Agamemnon succeeded. He had also a navy far stronger than his
contemporaries, so that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in the
formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his navy is shown by the fact
that his own was the largest contingent, and that of the Arcadians was furnished by him;
this at least is what Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient. Now Agamemnon's
was a continental power; and he could not have been master of any except the adjacent
islands (and these would not be many), but through the possession of a fleet. And from
this expedition we may infer the character of earlier enterprises. Homer has represented
it as consisting of twelve hundred vessels; the Boeotian complement of each ship being a
hundred and twenty men, that of the ships of Philoctetes fifty. That they were all rowers
as well as warriors we see from his account of the ships of Philoctetes, in which all the
men at the oar are bowmen. . .
Even after the Trojan War, Hellas was still engaged in removing and settling, and thus
could not attain to the quiet which must precede growth. The late return of the Hellenes
from Ilium caused many revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the
citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty years after the capture of
Ilium, the modern Boeotians were driven out of Arne by the Thessalians, and settled in the
present Boeotia, the former Cadmeis; though there was a division of them there before,
some of whom joined the expedition to Ilium. Twenty years later, the Dorians and the
Heraclids became masters of Peloponnese; so that much had to be done and many years had to
elapse before Hellas could attain to a durable tranquillity undisturbed by removals, and
could begin to send out colonies, as Athens did to Ionia and most of the islands, and the
Peloponnesians to most of Italy and Sicily and some places in the rest of Hellas. All
these places were founded subsequently to the war with Troy.
But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth became more an object,
the revenues of the states increasing, tyrannies were by their means established almost
everywhere---the old form of government being hereditary monarchy with definite
prerogatives---and Hellas began to fit out fleets and apply herself more closely to the
sea. It is said that the Corinthians were the first to approach the modern style of naval
architecture, and that Corinth was the first place in Hellas where galleys were
built....They were the means by which the islands were reached and reduced, those of the
smallest area falling the easiest prey. Wars by land there were none, none at least by
which power was acquired; we have the usual border contests, but of distant expeditions
with conquest for object we hear nothing among the Hellenes. There was no union of subject
cities round a great state, no spontaneous combination of equals for confederate
expeditions; what fighting there was consisted merely of local warfare between rival
neighbors....Various, too, were the obstacles which the national growth encountered in
various localities. The power of the Ionians was advancing with rapid strides, when it
came into collision with Persia, under King Cyrus, who, after having dethroned Croesus of
Lydia and overrun everything between the Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had
reduced the cities of the coast; the islands being only left to be subdued by Darius and
the Phoenician navy.
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