Book 1
For not only did the return of the Hellenes from Ilium, occurring as it did after a long time, cause many changes; but factions also began to spring up very generally in the cities, and, in consequence of these, men were driven into exile and founded new cities.
The present Boeotians, for example, were driven from Arne by the Thessalians in the sixtieth year after the capture of Ilium and settled in the district now called Boeotia, but formerly CadmeYs; only a portion of these had been in that land before, and it was some of these who took part in the expedition against Ilium. The Dorians, too, in the eightieth year after the war, together with the Heracleidae occupied the Peloponnesus.
And so when painfully and after a long course of time Hellas became permanently tranquil and its population was no longer subject to expulsion from their homes, it began to send out colonies. The Athenians colonized lonia and most of the islands; the Peloponnesians, the greater part of Italy and Sicily and some portions of the rest of Hellas. And all these colonies were planted after the Trojan war.
As Hellas grew more powerful and continued to acquire still more wealth than before, along with the increase of their revenue tyrannies began to be established in most of the cities, whereas before that there had been hereditary kingships based on fixed prerogatives. The Hellenes began to fit out navies, too, and to apply themselves more to the sea.
And the Corinthians are said to have been the first of all to adopt what was very nearly the modern plan as regards ships and shipping,The reference seems to be to the construction of harbours and (locks as well as to the structure of the ships, e.g. providing them with decks (ch. 10. 4). and Corinth was the first place in all Hellas, we are told, where triremes were built.
And it appears that Ameinocles, a Corinthian shipwright, built four ships for the Samians, also; and it was about three hundred years before the end of the Peloponnesian war that Ameinocles came to the Samians.704 B.C.
The earliest sea-fight, too, of which we know, was fought by the Corinthians against the Corcyraeans;664 B.C. and this was two hundred and sixty years before the same date.
For as the Corinthians had their city on the Isthmus, from the very earliest times they maintained there a market for the exchange of goods, because the Hellenes within and without the Peloponnesus, in olden times communicating with one another more by land than by sea, had to pass through their territory; and so they were powerful and rich, as has been shown even by the early poets, who called the place “Wealthy Corinth”.Hom. Il. 2.570; Pind. O. 13.4. And when navigation grew more prevalent among the Hellenes, the Corinthians acquired ships and swept the sea of piracy, and offering a market by sea as well as by land, raised their city to great power by means of their revenues.
The Ionians, too, acquired a powerful navy later, in the time of Cyrus,559-529 B.C. the first king of the Persians, and of Cambyses his son; and waging war with Cyrus they maintained control of the sea about their own coasts for some time. Polycrates, also, who was tyrant of Samos in the time of Cambyses,532-522 B.C. was strong in sea-power and subdued a number of the islands, Rhenea among them, which he captured and consecrated to the Delian Apollo.3.104 Finally the Phocaeans, when they were colonizing Massalia,Marseilles, founded 600 B.C. conquered the Carthaginians in a sea-fight.
These were the most powerful of the fleets; and even these, we learn, though they were formed many generations later than the Trojan war, were provided with only a few triremes, but were still fitted out with fifty-oared galleys and the ordinary long boats,πλοῖα, usually contrasted with war-ships (τριήρεις), but here marked as ships of war by the epithet μακρά, though probably differing little except in size from trading-vessels. like the navies of that earlier time.
Indeed, it was only a little before the Persian war and the death of Darius,485 B.C. who became king of the Persians after Cambyses, that triremes were acquired in large numbers, namely by the tyrants in various parts of Sicily and by the Corcyraeans; and these were the last navies worthy of note that were established in Hellas before the expedition of Xerxes.
As for the Athenians and Aeginetans and any other maritime powers, the fleets they had acquired were inconsiderable, consisting mostly of fifty-oared galleys; and it was only quite recently that the Athenians, when they were at war with the Aeginetans and were also expecting the Barbarians,Referring to Xerxes' invasion. The Aeginetan referred to in 91.2. built their fleet, at the instance of Themistocles—the very ships with which they fought at Salamis. And these vessels were still without decks throughout their length.
Such were the navies of the Hellenes, both those of early and those of later times; nevertheless those who gave attention to such matters acquired not a little strength by reason both of revenue of money and of sway over others. For they—and especially the peoples whose own territory was insufficient—made expeditions against the islands and subjugated them.
But by land no wars arose from which any considerable accession of power resulted; on the contrary, all that did occur were border wars with their several neighbours, and foreign expeditions far from their own country for the subjugation of others were not undertaken by the Hellenes. For they had not yet been brought into union as subjects of the most powerful states, nor, on the other hand, did they of their own accord make expeditions in common as equal allies; it was rather against one another that the neighbouring peoples severally made war.
But it was chiefly in the war that arose a long time ago between the Chalcidians and the Eretrians,The war for the Lelantine Plain (cf. Hdt. 5.99; Strabo, x. i. 11); usually placed in the seventh century, but by Curtius in the eighth (see Hermes, x. pp. 220 if.). that all the rest of Hellas took sides in alliance with the one side or the other.
But different Hellenic peoples in different localities met with obstacles to their continuous growth; for example, after the Ionians had attained great prosperity, Cyrus and the Persian empire, after subduing Croesus546 B.C. and all the territory between the river Halys and the sea, made war against them and enslaved the cities on the mainland, and later on Darius, strong in the possession of the Phoenician fleet, enslaved the islands also.493 B.C.
The tyrants, moreover—whenever there were tyrants in the Hellenic cities—since they had regard for their own interests only,both as to the safety of their own persons and as to the aggrandizement of their own families, in the administration of their cities made security, so far as they possibly could, their chief aim, and so no achievement worthy ot mention was accomplished by them, except perchance by individuals in conflict with their own neighbours. So on all sides Hellas was for a long time kept from carrying out in common any notable undertaking, and also its several states from being more enterprising.
But finally the tyrants, not only of Athens but also of the rest of Hellas (which, for a long time before Athens, had been dominated by tyrants)-at least most of them and the last that ever ruled, if we except tlose in Sicily—were put down by the Lacedaemonians. For although Lacedaemon, after the settlement there of the Dorians who now inhabit it, was, for the longest period of all the places of which we know, in a state of sedition, still it obtained good laws at an earlier time than any other land, and has always been free from tyrants; for the period during which the Lacedaemonians have been enjoying the same constitutionThe legislation of Lycurgus, thus placed by Thucydides at four hundred years or more before 404 B.C., would be about 804 B. C. (Eratosthenes gives 884). covers about four hundred years or a little more down to the end of the Peloponnesian war. And it is for this reason that they became powerful and regulated the affairs of other states as well. Not many years after the overthrow of the tyrants in Hellas by the Lacedaemonians the battle of Marathon490 B.C. was fought between the Athenians and the Persians;
and ten years after that the Barbarian came again with his great host against Hellas to enslave it. In the face of the great danger that threatened, the Lacedaemonians, because they were the most powerful, assumed the leadership of the Hellenes that joined in the war; and the Athenians, when the Persians came on, resolved to abandon their city, and packing up their goods embarked on their ships, and so became sailors. By a common effort the Barbarian was repelled; but not long afterwards the other Hellenes, both those who had revolted from the King and those who had joined the first confederacy against him, parted company and aligned themselves with either the Athenians or the Lacedaemonians; for these states had shown themselves the most powerful, the one strong by land and the other on the sea.
The defensive alliance lasted only a little while; then the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians quarrelled and, with their respective allies, made war upon one another, and any of the rest of the Hellenes, if they chanced to be at variance, from now on resorted to one or the other. So that from the Persian invasion continually, to this present war, making peace at one time, at another time fighting with each other or with their own revolted allies, these two states prepared themselves well in matters of war, and became more experienced, taking their training amid actual dangers.
The Lacedaemonians maintained their hegemony without keeping their allies tributary to them, but took care that these should have an oligarchical form of government conformably to the sole interest of Sparta; the Athenians, on the other hand, maintained theirs by taking over in course of time the ships of the allied cities, with the exception of ChiosCf. 6.85.2, 7.57.4 and Lesbos,Lost its independence after the revolt of 427 B.C., cf. Thuc. 3.1. and by imposing on them all a tax of money. And so the individual resources of the Athenians available for this war became greater than those of themselves and their allies when that alliance was still unimpaired and strongest.
Now the state of affairs in early times I have found to have been such as I have described, although it is difficult in such matters to credit any and every piece of testimony. For men accept from one another hearsay reports of former events, neglecting to test them just the same,i.e., as if they took place in some distant land. even though these events belong to the history of their own country.
Take the Athenians, for example; most of them think that Hipparchus was tyrant when he was slain by Harmodius and Aristogeiton.514 B.C. On this digression, cf. Hdt. 5.55; 6.123; Aristot. Ath. Pol. 17. They do not know that it was Hippias, as the eldest of the sons of Peisistratus, who was ruler, and that Hipparchus and Thessalus were merely his brothers; further, that Harmodius and Aristogeiton, suspecting, on that very day and at the very moment of executing their plan, that information had been conveyed to Hippias by one of their fellow-conspirators, held off from him as forewarned, but wishing to do something before they were seized and then take their chances, fell in with Hipparchus, who was marshalling the Panathenaic procession near the sanctuary called Leocorium,In the inner Ceramicus near the temple of Apollo Patrous. and killed him.
There are many other matters, too, belonging to the present and not forgotten through lapse of time, regarding which the other HellenesHerodotus is doubtless one of the Hellenes here criticized; cf. 6.57, referring to the two votes; 9.53, where he seems to have applied a term belonging to a deme (cf. 3.40) to a division of the army. as well hold mistaken opinions, for example, that at Lacedaemon the kings cast not one but two votes each, and that the Lacedaemonians have the " Pitana company" in their army, which never at any time existed. So averse to taking pains are most men in the search for the truth, and so prone are they to turn to what lies ready at hand.
Still, from the evidence that has been given, any one would not err who should hold the view that the state of affairs in antiquity was pretty nearly such as I have described it, not giving greater credence to the accounts, on the one hand, which the poets have put into song, adorning and amplifying their theme, and, on the other, which the chroniclers have composed with a view rather of pleasing the earPublic recitation was the ordinary mode of getting the works of the poets and early logographers before the people. than of telling the truth, since their stories cannot be tested and most of them have from lapse of time won their way into the region of the fabulous so as to be incredible. He should regard the facts as having been made out with sufficient accuracy, on the basis of the clearest indications, considering that they have to do with early times.
And so, even though men are always inclined, while they are engaged in a war, to judge the present one the greatest, but when it is over to regard ancient events with greater wonder, yet this war will prove, for men who judge from the actual facts, to have been more important than any that went before.
As to the speeches that were made by different men, either when they were about to begin the war or when they were already engaged therein, it has been difficult to recall with strict accuracy the words actually spoken, both for me as regards that which I myself heard, and for those who from various other sources have brought me reports. Therefore the speeches are given in the language in which, as it seemed to me, the several speakers would express, on the subjects under consideration, the sentiments most befitting the occasion, though at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said.
But as to the facts of the occurrences of the war, I have thought it my duty to give them, not as ascertained from any chance informant nor as seemed to me probable, but only after investigating with the greatest possible accuracy each detail, in the case both of the events in which I myself participated and of those regarding which I got my information from others.
And the endeavour to ascertain these facts was a laborious task, because those who were eye-witnesses of the several events did not give the same reports about the same things, but reports varying according to their championship of one side or the other, or according to their recollection.
And it may well be that the absence of the fabulous from my narrative will seem less pleasing to the ear; but whoever shall wish to have a clear view both of the events which have happened and of those which will some day, in all human probability, happen again in the same or a similar way—for these to adjudge my history profitable will be enough for me. And, indeed, it has been composed, not as a prize-essay to be heard for the moment, but as a possession for all time.
The greatest achievement of former times was the Persian war, and yet this was quickly decided in two sea-fightsArtemisium and Salamis. and two land-battles.Thermopylae and Plataea. But the Peloponnesian war was protracted to a great length, and in the course of it disasters befell Hellas the like of which had never occurred in any equal space of time.
Never had so many cities been taken and left desolate, some by the Barbarians,As Colophon (3.34), Mycalessus (7.29. and others by Hellenese.g. Plataea (68.3, Thyrea (4.57. themselves warring against one another; while several, after their capture, underwent a change of inhabitants.2.30, Potidea (2.70, Anactorium (4.49, Scione (5.32, Melos (5.116. Never had so many human beings been exiled, or so much human blood been shed, whether in the course of the war itself or as the result of civil dissensions.
And so the stories of former times, handed down by oral tradition, but very rarely confirmed by fact, ceased to be incredible: about earthquakes, for instance, for they prevailed over a very large part of the earth and were likewise of the greatest violence; eclipses of the sun, which occurred at more frequent intervals than we find recorded of all former times; great droughts also in some quarters with resultant famines; and lastly- the disaster which wrought most harm to Hellas and destroyed a considerable part of the people—the noisome pestilence. For all these disasters fell upon them simultaneously with this war.
And the war began when the Athenians and Peloponnesians broke the thirty years' truce,445 B.C.; cf. 115.1 concluded between them after the capture of Euboea.
The reasons why they broke it and the grounds of their quarrel I have first set forth, that no one may ever have to inquire for what cause the Hellenes became involved in so great a war.
The truest explanation, although it has been the least often advanced, I believe to have been the growth of the Athenians to greatness, which brought fear to the Lacedaemonians and forced them to war. But the reasons publicly alleged on either side which led them to break the truce and involved them in the war were as follows.
There is a city called Epidamnus on the right hand as one sails into the Ionian gulf, and its next-door neighbours are a barbarian tribe, the Taulantians, of Illyrian race.
The city was colonized by the Corcyraeans, and its founder was Phalius, son of Eratocleides, of Corinthian stock and a descendant of Heracles, who was invited from the mother-city according to the ancient custom;
but some Corinthians and other Dorians joined the Corcyraeans in establishing the colony. As time passed the city of the Epidamnians became great and populous;
but civil wars ensued, lasting, it is said, for many years, and in consequence of a war with the neighbouring barbarians they were crippled and stripped of most of their power.