History of the Peloponnesian War

These were the greatest navies extant. And yet even these, though many ages after the time of Troy, consisted, as it seems, but of a few galleys, and were made up with vessels of fifty oars and with long boats, as well as those of former times.

And it was but a little before the Medan war and death of Darius, successor of Cambyses in the kingdom of Persia, that the tyrants of Sicily and the Corcyraeans had of galleys any number. For these last were the only navies worth speaking of in all Greece before the invasion of the Medes.

And the people of Aegina and the Athenians had but small ones, and the most of them consisting but of fifty oars apiece; and that so lately as but from the time that the Athenians making war on Aegina, and withal expecting the coming of the barbarian, at the persuasion of Themistocles built those ships which they used in that war. And these also not all had decks.

Such were then the navies of the Greeks, both ancient and modern. Nevertheless, such as applied themselves to naval business gained by them no small power, both in revenue of money and in dominion over other people. For with their navies (especially those men that had not sufficient land, where they inhabited, to maintain themselves) they subdued the islands.

But as for war by land, such as any state might acquire power by, there was none at all; and such as were, were only between borderer and borderer. For the Grecians had never yet gone out with any army to conquer any nation far from home, because the lesser cities neither brought in their forces to the great ones as subjects nor concurred as equals in any common enterprise; but such as were neighbours warred against each other hand to hand.

For the war of old between the Chalcideans and the Eretrians was it wherein the rest of Greece was most divided and in league with either party.