being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defence against a
neighbour. But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of
piracy, were built away from the sea, whether on the islands or the
continent, and still remain in their old sites. For the pirates used
to plunder one another, and indeed all coast populations, whether
seafaring or not.
The islanders, too, were great pirates. These islanders were Carians
and Phoenicians, by whom most of the islands were colonized, as was
proved by the following fact. During the purification of Delos by
Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and
it was found that above half their inmates were Carians: they were
identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the
method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow.
But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea
became easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus
expelled the malefactors. The coast population now began to apply
themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life
became more settled; some even began to build themselves walls on
the strength of their newly acquired riches. For the love of gain
would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the
possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the
smaller towns to subjection. And it was at a somewhat later stage of
this development that they went on the expedition against Troy.
What enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my
opinion, his superiority in strength, than the oaths of Tyndareus,
which bound the suitors to follow him. Indeed, the account given by
those Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most credible
tradition is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy
population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that,
stranger though he was, the country was called after him; and this
power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his
descendants. Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids.
Atreus was his mother's brother; and to the hands of his relation, who
had left his father on account of the death of Chrysippus, Eurystheus,
when he set out on his expedition, had committed Mycenae and the
government. As time went on and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus
complied with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were influenced by
fear of the Heraclids- besides, his power seemed considerable, and he
had not neglected to court the favour of the populace- and assumed
the sceptre of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus.
And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater
than that of the descendants of Perseus. To all this Agamemnon
succeeded. He had also a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so
that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in
the formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his
navy is shown by the fact that his own was the largest contingent, and
that of the Arcadians was furnished by him; this at least is what
Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient. Besides, in his
account of the transmission of the sceptre, he calls him

Of many an isle, and of all Argos king.

Now Agamemnon's was a continental power; and he could not have been
master of any except the adjacent islands (and these would not be
many), but through the possession of a fleet.
And from this expedition we may infer the character of earlier
enterprises. Now Mycenae may have been a small place, and many of
the towns of that age may appear comparatively insignificant, but no
exact observer would therefore feel justified in rejecting the
estimate given by the poets and by tradition of the magnitude of the
armament. For I suppose if Lacedaemon were to become desolate, and the
temples and the foundations of the public buildings were left, that as
time went on there would be a strong disposition with posterity to
refuse to accept her fame as a true exponent of her power. And yet