History of the Peloponnesian War

It is said, furthermore, by those of the Peloponnesians who have received the clearest traditional accounts from men of former times, that it was by means of the great wealth which he brought with him from Asia into the midst of a poor people that Pelops first acquired power, and, consequently, stranger though he was, gave his name to the country, and that yet greater things fell to the lot of his descendants. For when Eurystheus set out on the expedition that resulted in his death in Attica at the hands of the Heracleidae, Atreus, his mother's brother, who chanced to have been banished by his father for the death of Chrysippus,[*](Chrysippus, his half-brother, son of Pelops and Axioche, was killed by Atreus and Thyestes at the instance of their mother Hippodameia.) was intrusted by Eurystheus with Mycenae and the sovereignty because he was a kinsman; and when Eurystheus did not return, Atreus, in accordance with the wish of the Mycenaeans, who feared the Heracleidae, and because he seemed to be a man of power and had won the favour of the multitude, received the sovereignty over the Mycenaeans and all who were under the sway of Eurystheus. And so the house of Pelops became greater than the house of Perseus.

And it was, I think, because Agamemnon had inherited all this, and at the same time had become strong in naval power beyond the rest, that he was able to collect his armament, not so much by favour as by fear, and so to make the expedition.

For it is clear that he himself brought the greatest number of ships, and that he had others with which to supply the Arcadians,[*](cf. Homer, Il. 2.576 and 612.) as Homer testifies, if he is sufficient witness for anyone. And he says, in the account of the delivery of the sceptre,[*](cf. Homer, Il. 2.101-109.) that Agamemnon "ruled over many islands and all Argos." Now, if he had not had something of a fleet, he could not, as he lived on the mainland, have been lord of any islands except those on the coast, and these would not be "many." And it is from this expedition that we must judge by conjecture what the situation was before that time.

And because Mycenae was only a small place, or if any particular town of that time seems now to be insignificant, it would not be right for me to treat this as an exact piece of evidence and refuse to believe that the expedition against Troy was as great as the poets have asserted and as tradition still maintains.

For if the city of the Lacedaemonians should be deserted, and nothing should be left of it but its temples and the foundations of its other buildings, posterity would, I think, after a long lapse of time, be very loath to believe that their power was as great as their renown. (And yet they occupy two-fifths of the Peloponnesus and have the hegemony of the whole, as well as of tleir many allies outside ; but still, as Sparta is not compactly built as a city and has not provided itself with costly temples and other edifices, but is inhabited village-fashion in the old Hellenic style, its power would appear less than it is.) Whereas, if Athens should suffer the same fate, its power would, I think, from what appeared of the city s ruins, be conjectured double what it is.

The reasonable course, therefore, is not to be incredulous or to regard the appearance of cities rather than their power, but to believe that expedition to have been greater than any that preceded it, though falling below those of the present time, if here again one may put any trust in the poetry of Homer; for though it is natural to suppose that he as a poet adorned and magnified the expedition, still even on his showing it was evidently comparatively small.