The country which is now called Hellas was not regularly
settled in ancient times. The people were migratory, and readily left their
homes whenever they were overpowered by numbers. There was no commerce, and
they could not safely hold intercourse with one another either by land or sea.
The several tribes cultivated their own soil just enough to obtain a
maintenance from it. But they had no accumulation of wealth, and did not plant
the ground; for, being without walls, they were never sure that an invaded
might not come and despoil them. Living in this manner and knowing that they
could anywhere obtain a bare subsistence, they were always ready to migrate;
so that they had neither great cities nor any considerable resources. The
richest districts were most constantly changing their inhabitants; for
example, the countries which are now called Thessaly and Boeotia, the greater
part of the Peloponnesus with the exception of Arcadia, and all the best parts
of Hellas. For the productiveness of the land increased the power of
individuals; this in turn was a source of quarrels by which communities were
ruined, while at the same time they were more exposed to attacks from without.
Certainly Attica, of which the soil was poor and thin, enjoyed a long freedom
from civil strife, and therefore retained its original inhabitants [the
Pelasgians].
The feebleness of antiquity is further proved to me by the
circumstance that there appears to have been no common action in Hellas before
the Trojan War. And I am inclined to think that the very name was not as yet
given to the whole country, and in fact did not exist at all before the time
of Hellen, the son of Deucalion; the different tribes, of which the Pelasgian
was the most widely spread, gave their own names to different districts. But
when Hellen and his sons became powerful in Phthiotis, their aid was invoked
by other cities, and those who associated with them gradually began to be
called Hellenes, though a long time elapsed before the name was
prevalent over the whole country. Of this, Homer affords the best evidence;
for he, although he lived long after the Trojan War, nowhere uses this name
collectively, but confines it to the followers of Achilles from Phthiotis, who
were the original Hellenes; when speaking of the entire host, he calls them
Danäans, or Argives, or Achaeans.
And the first person known to us by tradition as having
established a navy is Minos. He made himself master of what is now called the
Aegean sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent the first
colonies, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors; and
thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters, a necessary step to
secure the revenues for his own use. For in early times the Hellenes and the
barbarians of the coast and islands, as communication by sea became more
common, were tempted to turn pirates, under the conduct of their most powerful
men; the motives being to serve their own cupidity and to support the needy.
They would fall upon the unwalled and straggling towns, or rather villages,
which they plundered, and maintained themselves by the plunder of them; for,
as yet, such an occupation was held to be honoralbe and not disgraceful. . .
.The land, too, was infested by robbers; and there are parts of Hellas in
which the old practices continue, as for example among the Ozolian Locrians,
Aetolians, Acarnanians, and the adjacent regions of the continent. The fashion
of wearing arms among these continental tribes is a relic of their old
predatory habits.
For in ancient times all Hellenes carried weapons because
their homes were undefended and intercourse was unsafe; like the barbarians
they went armed in their everyday life. . . The Athenians were the first who
laid aside arms and adopted an easier and more luxurious way of life. Quite
recently the old-fashioned refinement of dress still lingered among the elder
men of their richer class, who wore undergarments of linen, and bound back
their hair in a knot with golden clasps in the form of grasshoppers; and the
same customs long survived among the elders of Ionia, having been derived from
their Athenian ancestors. On the other hand, the simple dress which is now
common was first worn at Sparta; and there, more than anywhere else, the life
of the rich was assimilated to that of the people.
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 defense against a neighbor. 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. 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. 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 favor of the
populace---and assumed the scepter 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. 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. Homer 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. 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. . .
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....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
neighbors....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 of Lydia and overrun everything between the
Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had reduced the cities of the coast;
the islands being only left to be subdued by Darius and the Phoenician navy.