efuge with the Athenians as a
safe retreat; and at an early period, becoming naturalized, swelled the
already large population of the city to such a height that Attica became
at last too small to hold them, and they had to send out colonies to
Ionia.

There is also another circumstance that contributes not a little to my
conviction of the weakness of ancient times. Before the Trojan war
there is no indication of any common action in Hellas, nor indeed of the
universal prevalence of the name; on the contrary, before the time of
Hellen, son of Deucalion, no such appellation existed, but the country
went by the names of the different tribes, in particular of the
Pelasgian. It was not till Hellen and his sons grew strong in Phthiotis,
and were invited as allies into the other cities, that one by one they
gradually acquired from the connection the name of Hellenes; though a
long time elapsed before that name could fasten itself upon all. The
best proof of this is furnished by Homer. Born long after the Trojan
War, he nowhere calls all of them by that name, nor indeed any of them
except the followers of Achilles from Phthiotis, who were the original
Hellenes: in his poems they are called Danaans, Argives, and Achaeans.
He does not even use the term barbarian, probably because the
Hellenes had not yet been marked off from the rest of the world by one
distinctive appellation. It appears therefore that the several Hellenic
communities, comprising not only those who first acquired the name,
city by city, as they came to understand each other, but also those who
assumed it afterwards as the name of the whole people, were before the
Trojan war prevented by their want of strength and the absence of mutual
intercourse from displaying any collective action.

Indeed, they could not unite for this expedition till they had gained
increased familiarity with the sea. And the first person known to us by
tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He made himself master
of what is now called the Hellenic sea, and ruled over the Cyclades,
into most of which he sent the first colonies, expelling the Carians
and appointing his own sons governors; and thus did his best to put down
piracy in those waters, a necessary step to secure the revenues for his
own use.

For in early times the Hellenes and the barbarians of the coast and
islands, as communication by sea became more common, were tempted to
turn pirates, under the conduct of their m