History of the Peloponnesian War

As for their acquiring the art of seamanship, that is an advantage they will not easily secure;

for even you, who began practising it immediately after the Persian war, have not yet brought it to perfection. How then could men do anything worth mention who are tillers of the soil and not seamen, especially since they will not even be permitted to practise, because we shall always be lying in wait for them with a large fleet?

For if they had to cope with only a small fleet lying in wait, they might perhaps risk an engagement, in their ignorance getting courage from their mere numbers; but if their way is blocked by a large fleet, they will remain inactive, their skill will deteriorate through lack of practice, and that in itself will make them more timid.

Seamanship, like any other skill, is a matter of art, and practice in it may not be left to odd times, as a by-work; on the contrary, no other pursuit may be carried on as a by-work to it.

"Then again, if they should lay hands upon the money at Olympia or Delphi and try to entice away the mercenaries among our sailors by the inducement of higher pay, that indeed might be a dangerous matter if we were not a match for them, assuming that both citizens and our resident aliens have manned our ships. But as a matter of fact we are a match for them, and, what is of the highest importance, we have citizens for pilots, and our crews in general are more numerous and better than those of all the rest of Hellas.

And no one of our mercenaries,[*](The mercenaries drawn from the states of the Athenian confederacy; no one of those who had taken part with the Peloponnesians would be allowed to return to his native city.) when it came to facing the risk, would elect to be exiled from his own land and, with a lesser hope of victory at the same time, fight on their side because of the offer of a few days' high pay.

"Such, as it seems to me at least, or approximately such, is the situation as far as the Peloponnesians are concerned; as regards our own, I believe we are free from the defects I have remarked upon in them, and that we have in other respects advantages which more than counterbalance theirs.

If they march against our territory, we shall sail against theirs; and the devastation of a part of the Peloponnesus will be quite a different thing from that of tle whole of Attica. For they will be unable to get other territory in its place without fighting, while we leave an abundance of territory both in the islands and on the mainland.