History of the Peloponnesian War

For the war of old between the Chalcideans and the Eretrians was it wherein the rest of Greece was most divided and in league with either party.

As others by other means were kept back from growing great, so also the Ionians by this: that the Persian affairs prospering, Cyrus and the Persian kingdom after the defeat of Croesus made war upon all that lieth from the river Halys to the seaside and so subdued all the cities which they possessed in the continent; and Darius afterward, when he had overcome the Phoenician fleet, did the like unto them in the islands.

And as for the tyrants that were in the Grecian cities, who forecasted only for themselves how with as much safety as was possible to look to their own persons and their own families, they resided for the most part in the cities and did no action worthy of memory, unless it were against their neighbours. For as for the tyrants of Sicily, they were already arrived at greater power. Thus was Greece for a long time hindered, that neither jointly it could do anything remarkable nor the cities singly be adventurous.