History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (free ebooks for android .txt) 📕

And even at the present day many of Hellas still follow the old

fashion, the Ozolian Locrians for instance, the Aetolians, the

Acarnanians, and that region of the continent; and the custom of

carrying arms is still kept up among these continentals, from the

old piratical habits. The whole of Hellas used once to carry arms,

their habitations being unprotected and their communication with

each other unsafe; indeed, to wear arms was as much a part of everyday

life with them as with the barbarians. And the fact that the people in

these parts of Hellas are still living in the old way points to a time

when the same mode of life was once equally common to all. The

Athenians were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an

easier and more luxurious mode of life; indeed, it is only lately that

their rich old men left off the luxury of wearing undergarments of

linen, and fastening a knot of their hair with a tie of golden

grasshoppers, a fashion which spread to their Ionian kindred and

long prevailed among the old men there. On the contrary, a modest

style of dressing, more in conformity with modern ideas, was first

adopted by the Lacedaemonians, the rich doing their best to assimilate

their way of life to that of the common people. They also set the

example of contending naked, publicly stripping and anointing

themselves with oil in their gymnastic exercises. Formerly, even in

the Olympic contests, the athletes who contended wore belts across

their middles; and it is but a few years since that the practice

ceased. To this day among some of the barbarians, especially in

Asia, when prizes for boxing and wrestling are offered, belts are worn

by the combatants. And there are many other points in which a likeness

might be shown between the life of the Hellenic world of old and the

barbarian of to-day.

With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased

facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find

the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses

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

they occupy two-fifths of Peloponnese and lead the whole, not to speak

of their numerous allies without. Still, as the city is neither

built in a compact form nor adorned with magnificent temples and

public edifices, but composed of villages after the old fashion of

Hellas, there would be an impression of inadequacy. Whereas, if Athens

were to suffer the same misfortune, I suppose that any inference

from the appearance presented to the eye would make her power to

have been twice as great as it is. We have therefore no right to be

sceptical, nor to content ourselves with an inspection of a town to

the exclusion of a consideration of its power; but we may safely

conclude that the armament in question surpassed all before it, as

it fell short of modern efforts; if we can here also accept the

testimony of Homer’s poems, in which, without allowing for the

exaggeration which a poet would feel himself licensed to employ, we

can see that it was far from equalling ours. He has represented it

as consisting of twelve hundred vessels; the Boeotian complement of

each ship being a hundred and twenty men, that of the ships of

Philoctetes fifty. By this, I conceive, he meant to convey the maximum

and the minimum complement: at any rate, he does not specify the

amount of any others in his catalogue of the ships. That they were all

rowers as well as warriors we see from his account of the ships of

Philoctetes, in which all the men at the oar are bowmen. Now it is

improbable that many supernumeraries sailed, if we except the kings

and high officers; especially as they had to cross the open sea with

munitions of war, in ships, moreover, that had no decks, but were

equipped in the old piratical fashion. So that if we strike the

average of the largest and smallest ships, the number of those who

sailed will appear inconsiderable, representing, as they did, the

whole force of Hellas. And this was due not so much to scarcity of men

as of money. Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce the

numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the country

during the prosecution of the war. Even after the victory they

obtained on their arrival—and a victory there must have been, or the

fortifications of the naval camp could never have been built—there

is no indication of their whole force having been employed; on the

contrary, they seem to have turned to cultivation of the Chersonese

and to piracy from want of supplies. This was what really enabled

the Trojans to keep the field for ten years against them; the

dispersion of the enemy making them always a match for the

detachment left behind. If they had brought plenty of supplies with

them, and had persevered in the war without scattering for piracy

and agriculture, they would have easily defeated the Trojans in the

field, since they could hold their own against them with the

division on service. In short, if they had stuck to the siege, the

capture of Troy would have cost them less time and less trouble. But

as want of money proved the weakness of earlier expeditions, so from

the same cause even the one in question, more famous than its

predecessors, may be pronounced on the evidence of what it effected to

have been inferior to its renown and to the current opinion about it

formed under the tuition of the poets.

Even after the Trojan War, Hellas was still engaged in removing

and settling, and thus could not attain to the quiet which must

precede growth. The late return of the Hellenes from Ilium caused many

revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the

citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty years

after the capture of Ilium, the modern Boeotians were driven out of

Arne by the Thessalians, and settled in the present Boeotia, the

former Cadmeis; though there was a division of them there before, some

of whom joined the expedition to Ilium. Twenty years later, the

Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of Peloponnese; so that

much had to be done and many years had to elapse before Hellas could

attain to a durable tranquillity undisturbed by removals, and could

begin to send out colonies, as Athens did to Ionia and most of the

islands, and the Peloponnesians to most of Italy and Sicily and some

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