superior in skill, experience, and valour to the Greek sailors. At
Salamis Greece was saved not only from the ambition and vengeance
of Xerxes, but also and for many centuries from oppression by an
Oriental conqueror. Persia did not succeed against the Greeks,
not because she had no sea-power, but because her sea-power,
artificially built up, was inferior to that which was a natural
element of the vitality of her foes. Ionia was lost and Greece
in the end enslaved, because the quarrels of Greeks with Greeks
led to the ruin of their naval states.

The Peloponnesian was largely a naval war. The confidence of
the Athenians in their sea-power had a great deal to do with its
outbreak. The immediate occasion of the hostilities, which in
time involved so many states, was the opportunity offered by the
conflict between Corinth and Corcyra of increasing the sea-power of
Athens. Hitherto the Athenian naval predominance had been virtually
confined to the Ægean Sea. The Corcyræan envoy, who pleaded for
help at Athens, dwelt upon the advantage to be derived by the
Athenians from alliance with a naval state occupying an important
situation 'with respect to the western regions towards which the
views of the Athenians had for some time been directed.'[15]
It was the 'weapon of her sea-power,' to adopt Mahan's phrase,
that enabled Athens to maintain the great conflict in which she
was engaged. Repeated invasions of her territory, the ravages
of disease amongst her people, and the rising disaffection of
her allies had been more than made up for by her predominance
on the water. The scale of the subsequent Syracusan expedition
showed how vigorous Athens still was down to the interruption
of the war by the peace of Nicias. The great expedition just
mentioned over-taxed her strength. Its failure brought about