History of the Peloponnesian War

And the reason was not so much scarcity of men as want of money. For owing to difficulty of subsistence, they took their army the smaller, and such only as they hoped would live on the country itself while carrying on the war; and when on their arrival they were superior in battle, (and that they were so is evident, for they would not else have built the fortification for their camp,) they appear not even then to have employed all their force, but to have turned to the cultivation of the Chersonese, and to piracy, for want of food. And in this way the Trojans, owing to their being scattered, the more easily held out [*]( i. e. keeping the field, and not merely fighting from their walls.) by open force those ten years;

being a match for those who successively were left behind. But if they had gone with abundance of food, and in a body had continuously carried through the war, without foraging and agriculture, they would easily have conquered them in battle, and taken the place; since even though not united, but only with the part that was successively present, they held out against them. Now by pressing the siege, [I say,] they would have taken Troy both in less time and with less trouble; but through want of money both the undertakings before this [*]( The plural pronoun in the Greek, is used with reference to τὰ τρωϊκά, the common term to signify the Trojan war.) were weak, and this itself, though more famous than the former, is shown by facts [*]( Or, inferior in the facts. ) to have been inferior to its fame, and to the present report of it, which has prevailed by means of the poets.

For even after the Trojan war Greece was still moving about, and settling itself; [*]( i. e. it was not yet settled.—Arnold. The old reading, μετωκίζετο would mean, was changing its place of abode. ) so that it could not increase its power by remaining at rest.