History of the Peloponnesian War

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.