places in the rest of Hellas. All these places were founded
subsequently to the war with Troy.
But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth
became more an object, the revenues of the states increasing,
tyrannies were by their means established almost everywhere- the old
form of government being hereditary monarchy with definite
prerogatives- and Hellas began to fit out fleets and apply herself
more closely to the sea. It is said that the Corinthians were the
first to approach the modern style of naval architecture, and that
Corinth was the first place in Hellas where galleys were built; and
we have Ameinocles, a Corinthian shipwright, making four ships for
the Samians. Dating from the end of this war, it is nearly three
hundred years ago that Ameinocles went to Samos. Again, the earliest
sea-fight in history was between the Corinthians and Corcyraeans; this
was about two hundred and sixty years ago, dating from the same time.
Planted on an isthmus, Corinth had from time out of mind been a
commercial emporium; as formerly almost all communication between the
Hellenes within and without Peloponnese was carried on overland, and
the Corinthian territory was the highway through which it travelled.
She had consequently great money resources, as is shown by the epithet
"wealthy" bestowed by the old poets on the place, and this enabled
her, when traffic by sea became more common, to procure her navy and
put down piracy; and as she could offer a mart for both branches of
the trade, she acquired for herself all the power which a large
revenue affords. Subsequently the Ionians attained to great naval
strength in the reign of Cyrus, the first king of the Persians, and of
his son Cambyses, and while they were at war with the former commanded
for a while the Ionian sea. Polycrates also, the tyrant of Samos,
had a powerful navy in the reign of Cambyses, with which he reduced
many of the islands, and among them Rhenea, which he consecrated to
the Delian Apollo. About this time also the Phocaeans, while they were
founding Marseilles, defeated the Carthaginians in a sea-fight.
These were the most powerful navies. And even these, although so
many generations had elapsed since the Trojan war, seem to have been
principally composed of the old fifty-oars and long-boats, and to have
counted few galleys among their ranks. Indeed it was only shortly
the Persian war, and the death of Darius the successor of Cambyses,
that the Sicilian tyrants and the Corcyraeans acquired any large
number of galleys. For after these there were no navies of any account
in Hellas till the expedition of Xerxes; Aegina, Athens, and others
may have possessed a few vessels, but they were principally
fifty-oars. It was quite at the end of this period that the war with
Aegina and the prospect of the barbarian invasion enabled Themistocles
to persuade the Athenians to build the fleet with which they fought at
Salamis; and even these vessels had not complete decks.
The navies, then, of the Hellenes during the period we have
traversed were what I have described. All their insignificance did not
prevent their being an element of the greatest power to those who
cultivated them, alike in revenue and in dominion. They were the means
by which the islands were reached and reduced, those of the smallest
area falling the easiest prey. Wars by land there were none, none at
least by which power was acquired; we have the usual border
contests, but of distant expeditions with conquest for object we
hear nothing among the Hellenes. There was no union of subject
cities round a great state, no spontaneous combination of equals for
confederate expeditions; what fighting there was consisted merely of
local warfare between rival neighbours. The nearest approach to a
coalition took place in the old war between Chalcis and Eretria;
this was a quarrel in which the rest of the Hellenic name did to
some extent take sides.
Various, too, were the obstacles which the national growth
encountered in various localities. The power of the Ionians was
advancing with rapid strides, when it came into collision with Persia,
under King Cyrus, who, after having dethroned Croesus and overrun