History of the Peloponnesian War

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.

As others by other means were kept back from growing great, so also the Ionians by this: that the Persian affairs prospering, Cyrus and the Persian kingdom after the defeat of Croesus made war upon all that lieth from the river Halys to the seaside and so subdued all the cities which they possessed in the continent; and Darius afterward, when he had overcome the Phoenician fleet, did the like unto them in the islands.

And as for the tyrants that were in the Grecian cities, who forecasted only for themselves how with as much safety as was possible to look to their own persons and their own families, they resided for the most part in the cities and did no action worthy of memory, unless it were against their neighbours. For as for the tyrants of Sicily, they were already arrived at greater power. Thus was Greece for a long time hindered, that neither jointly it could do anything remarkable nor the cities singly be adventurous.

But after that the tyrants, both of Athens and of the rest of Greece where tyrannies were, were the most and last of them, excepting those of Sicily, put down by the Lacedaemonians (for Lacedaemon, after that it was built by the Dorians that inhabited the same, though it hath been longer troubled with seditions than any other city we know, yet hath it had for the longest time good laws, and been also always free from tyrants; for it is unto the end of this war four hundred years and something more that the Lacedaemonians have used one and the same government, and thereby being of power themselves, they also ordered the affairs in the other cities); I say, after the dissolution of tyrannies in Greece, it was not long before the battle was fought by the Medes against the Athenians in the fields of Marathon. And in the tenth year again after that came the barbarian with the great fleet into Greece to subdue it.