reduced the cities of the coast; the islands being only left to be
subdued by Darius and the Phoenician navy.

Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing
simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and
family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy,
and prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would
each have their affairs with their immediate neighbours. All this is
only true of the mother country, for in Sicily they attained to very
great power. Thus for a long time everywhere in Hellas do we find
causes which make the states alike incapable of combination for
great and national ends, or of any vigorous action of their own.

But at last a time came when the tyrants of Athens and the far older
tyrannies of the rest of Hellas were, with the exception of those in
Sicily, once and for all put down by Lacedaemon; for this city, though
after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants, it
suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, still at
a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a freedom from
tyrants which was unbroken; it has possessed the same form of
government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of
the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs
of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the
tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the
Athenians. Ten years afterwards, the barbarian returned with the
armada for the subjugation of Hellas. In the face of this great
danger, the command of the confederate Hellenes was assumed by the
Lacedaemonians in virtue of their superior power; and the Athenians,
having made up their minds to abandon their city, broke up their
homes, threw themselves into their ships, and became a naval people.