History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Crawley, Richard, translator. London and Toronto: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd.; New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1914.

Meanwhile the Athenians in the hundred ships, upon seeing the Lacedaemonians go home, went home likewise.

If at the time that this fleet was at sea, Athens had almost the largest number of first-rate ships in commission that she ever possessed at any one moment, she had as many or even more when the war began.

At that time one hundred guarded Attica, Euboea, and Salamis; a hundred more were cruising round Peloponnese, besides those employed at Potidaea and in other places; making a grand total of two hundred and fifty vessels employed on active service in a single summer.

It was this, with Potidaea, that most exhausted her revenues—