History of the Peloponnesian War

The cause was not so much lack of men as lack of money. For it was a want of supplies that caused them to take out a comparatively small force, only so large as could be expected to live on the country while at war. And when they arrived and had prevailed in battle—as evidently they did, for otherwise they could not have built the defence around their camp—even then they seem not to have used their whole force, but to have resorted to farming in the Chersonese and to pillaging, through lack of supplies. Wherefore, since they were scattered, the Trojans found it easier to hold the field against them during those ten years, being a match for those who from time to time were left in camp.

But if they had taken with them an abundant supply of food, and, in a body, without resorting to foraging and agriculture, had carried on the war continuously, they would easily have prevailed in battle and taken the city, since even with their forces not united, but with only such part as was from time to time on the spot, they yet held out; whereas, if they could have sat down and laid siege to Troy, they would have taken it in less time and with less trouble. But because of lack of money not only were the undertakings before the Trojan war insignificant, but even this expedition itself, though far more noteworthy than any before, is shown by the facts to have been inferior to its fame and to the tradition about it that now, through the influence of the poets, obtains.

Indeed, even after the Trojan war Hellas was still subject to migrations and in process of settlement, and hence did not get rest and wax stronger.

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.