History of the Peloponnesian War

But it was for the war carried on at an early period between the Chalcidians and Eretrians, that the rest of Greece also was most generally divided in alliance with one side or the other.

Now to others there arose in other ways obstacles to their increase; and in the case of the Ionians, when their power had advanced to a high pitch, Cyrus and the Persian kingdom, having subdued Croesus and all within the Halys to the sea, marched against them, and reduced to bondage their cities on the mainland, as Darius afterwards did even the islands, conquering them by means of the fleet of the Phoenicians.

As for the tyrants, such as there were in the Grecian cities, since they provided only for what concerned themselves, with a view to the safety of their own persons, and the aggrandizement of their own family, they governed their cities with caution, as far as they possibly could; and nothing memorable was achieved by them; [indeed nothing,] except it might be against their own several border states. [I speak of those in old Greece,] for those in Sicily advanced to a very great degree of power. Thus on all sides Greece for a long time was kept in check; so that it both performed nothing illustrious in common, and was less daring as regards individual states.