History of the Peloponnesian War

For those who are now called Boeotians, being driven out of Arne by the Thessalians in the sixtieth year after the taking of Troy, settled in what is now called Boeotia, but was before called the Cadmean country. (Though there was a division of them in this country before, some of whom also joined the expedition against Troy.) And the Dorians in the eightieth year took possession of the Peloponnese with the Heraclidae.

And Greece having with difficulty, after a long time, enjoyed settled peace, and being no longer subject to migrations, began to send out colonies; and the Athenians colonized Ionia, and most of the islands; and the Peloponnesians, the greater part of Italy and Sicily, and some places in the rest of Greece. [*]( The term Greece is here used in its widest sense, as including all countries that had a Greek population.) But all these places were founded after the Trojan war.

Now when Greece was becoming more powerful, and acquiring possession of money still more than before, tyrannies, generally speaking, were established in the cities, from the revenues becoming greater; whereas before there had been hereditary kingly governments with definite privileges; and Greece began to fit out navies, and they paid more attention to the sea.

Now the Corinthians are said first to have managed naval matters most nearly to the present fashion, and triremes to have been built at Corinth first in Greece.

And Aminocles, a Corinthian shipwright, appears to have built four ships for the Samians also. Now it is about three hundred years to the end of this war from the time that Aminocles went to the Samians;

and the most ancient sea-fight with which we are acquainted was fought between the Corinthians and the Corcyraeans. And from that too it is about two hundred and sixty years to the same period.

For the Corinthians, having their city situated on the isthmus, had always possessed an emporium; as the Greeks of old, both those within the Peloponnese and those without, had intercourse with each other by land more than by sea, through their country: and they were very rich, as is shown even by the old poets; for they gave the title of

wealthy