History of the Peloponnesian War

Now to others there arose in other ways obstacles to their increase; and in the case of the Ionians, when their power had advanced to a high pitch, Cyrus and the Persian kingdom, having subdued Croesus and all within the Halys to the sea, marched against them, and reduced to bondage their cities on the mainland, as Darius afterwards did even the islands, conquering them by means of the fleet of the Phoenicians.

As for the tyrants, such as there were in the Grecian cities, since they provided only for what concerned themselves, with a view to the safety of their own persons, and the aggrandizement of their own family, they governed their cities with caution, as far as they possibly could; and nothing memorable was achieved by them; [indeed nothing,] except it might be against their own several border states. [I speak of those in old Greece,] for those in Sicily advanced to a very great degree of power. Thus on all sides Greece for a long time was kept in check; so that it both performed nothing illustrious in common, and was less daring as regards individual states.

But after the tyrants of the Athenians and those in the rest of Greece, (which even at an earlier period [*]( i. e. than the Athenians.) was for a long time subject to tyrants,) the most and last, excepting those in Sicily, had been deposed by the Lacedaemonians; (for Lacedaemon, after the settlement of the Dorians who now inhabit it, though torn by factions for the longest time of any country that we are acquainted with, yet from the earliest period enjoyed good laws, and was always free from tyrants; for it is about four hundred years, or a little more, to the end of this war, that the Lacedaemonians have been in possession of the same form of government; and being for this reason powerful, they settled matters in the other states also;) after, [*]( A common force of δέ after a long parenthesis.) I say, the deposition of the tyrants in the rest of Greece, not many years subsequently the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and Athenians.