out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of
relation than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without
its grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every
department in the last state of perfection; and he could see the rest of
the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing
so at once having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the greatest
movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large
part of the barbarian world--I had almost said of mankind. For though
the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately
preceded the war, could not from lapse of time be clearly ascertained,
yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as far back as was
practicable leads me to trust, all point to the conclusion that there
was nothing on a great scale, either in war or in other matters.

For instance, it is evident that the country now called Hellas had in
ancient times no settled population; on the contrary, migrations were of
frequent occurrence, the several tribes readily abandoning their homes
under the pressure of superior numbers. Without commerce, without
freedom of communication either by land or sea, cultivating no more
of their territory than the exigencies of life required, destitute of
capital, never planting their land (for they could not tell when an
invader might not come and take it all away, and when he did come
they had no walls to stop him), thinking that the necessities of daily
sustenance could be supplied at one place as well as another, they cared
little for shifting their habitation, and consequently neither built
large cities nor attained to any other form of greatness. The richest
soils were always most subject to this change of masters; such as the
district now called Thessaly, Boeotia, most of the Peloponnese, Arcadia
excepted, and the most fertile parts of the rest of Hellas. The goodness
of the land favoured the aggrandizement of particular individuals, and
thus created faction which proved a fertile source of ruin. It also
invited invasion. Accordingly Attica, from the poverty of its soil
enjoying from a very remote period freedom from faction, never changed
its inhabitants. And here is no inconsiderable exemplification of
my assertion that the migrations were the cause of there being no
correspondent growth in other parts. The most powerful victims of war or
faction from the rest of Hellas took r