History of the Peloponnesian War

The weakness of the olden times is further proved to me chiefly by this circumstance, that before the Trojan war, Hellas, as it appears, engaged in no enterprise in common.

Indeed, it seems to me that as a whole it did not yet have this name, either, but that before the time of Hellen, son of Deucalion, this title did not even exist, and that the several tribes, the Pelasgian most extensively, gave their own names to the several districts; but when Hellen and his sons became strong in Phthiotis and were called in to the aid of the other cities, the clans thenceforth came more and more, by reason of this intercourse, to be called Hellenes, though it was a long time before the name could prevail among them all. The best evidence of this is given by Homer;

for, though his time was much later even than the Trojan war, he nowhere uses this name of all, or indeed of any of them except the followers of Achilles of Phthiotis, who were in fact the first Hellenes, but designates them in his poems as Danaans and Argives and Achaeans. And he has not used the term Barbarians, either, for the reason, as it seems to me, that the Hellenes on their part had not yet been separated off so as to acquire one common name by way of contrast.

However this may be, those who then received the name of Hellenes, whether severally and in succession, city by city, according as they understood one another's speech, or in a body at a later time, engaged together in no enterprise before the Trojan war, on account of weakness and lack of intercourse with one another. And they united even for this expedition only when they were now making considerable use of the sea.

Minos is the earliest of all those known to us by tradition who acquired a navy. He made himself master of a very great part of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and became lord of the Cyclades islands and first colonizer of most of them, driving out the Carians and establishing his own sons in them as governors. Piracy, too, he naturally tried to clear from the sea, as far as he could, desiring that his revenues should come to him more readily.

It should be explained that in early times both the Hellenes and the Barbarians who dwell on the mainland near the sea,[*](e.g. Phoenicians, Carians, and probably Epirots.) as well as those on the islands, when once they began more frequently to cross over in ships to one another, turned to piracy, under the lead of their most powerful men, whose motive was their own private gain and the support of their weaker followers, and falling upon cities that were unprovided with walls and consisted of groups of villages, they pillaged them and got most of their living from that source. For this occupation did not as yet involve disgrace, but rather conferred something even of glory.