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
everything between the Halys and the sea, stopped not till he had