With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defence against a neighbour.
More facilities of navigation and more capital! More Navy. The shores begin to have towns, and the towns begin to have walls. The isthmuses begin to be occupied; they begin to have commerce, and they gain the capacity to defend themselves against the neighbors if need be. So, these facilities of navigation and the capital seem to be the result of the shores getting their walled towns, and their isthmuses becoming occupied, with their commerce and capacity for defense.
But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of piracy, were built away from the sea, whether on the islands or the continent, and still remain in their old sites. For the pirates used to plunder one another, and indeed all coast populations, whether seafaring or not.
The old towns were built away from the sea because of pirates. This is the case with islands and on the continent. The pirates would plunder both each other and the coast populations, regardless of whether they traveled by sea. It's amazing how prevalent piracy was. I wonder what kept the pirates from wondering inland? Maybe it wasn't an airtight strategy; but it worked on the whole.
The islanders, too, were great pirates. These islanders were Carians and Phoenicians, by whom most of the islands were colonized, as was proved by the following fact.
From Caria ('deep country'), the Carians are mentioned in 2 Kings 11:4 and possibly at 2 Samuel 8:18, 15:18, and 20:23. Herodotus says the Carians were the aborigines of Caria, before they became more civilized when moving inland, after they were islanders. The Phoenicians (who basically came up with the alphabet from which ours is derived) took up what today is Lebanon, Syria, and northern Israel. They evidently moved from this mainland to populate the islands.
During the purification of Delos by Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and it was found that above half their inmates were Carians: they were identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow.
When the Athenians dug up the graves after they purified Delos (the island in the middle of the Cyclades, a group of islands south-east of Greece), they found Carians, because of the kind of weapons they had on them, and the kind of burial they had. The Carians of 'today' have the same weapons and the same burial.
But as soon as Minos had formed his navy, communication by sea became easier, as he colonized most of the islands, and thus expelled the malefactors.
Three generations before the Trojan War, Minos (ruler of Crete, the biggest Greek island) ruled the seas, or the islands of the Aegean Sea to be exact. Because of this, he could now communicate by sea much more efficiently.
The coast population now began to apply themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life became more settled; some even began to build themselves walls on the strength of their newly acquired riches.
Because of Minos' rule, the people on the coast could more easily gain wealth, and the Greeks became more settled. Using their wealth, they could build walls to keep out the pirates.
For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller towns to subjection. And it was at a somewhat later stage of this development that they went on the expedition against Troy.
'The love of gain': an interesting factor. This seems like rudimentary Capitalism. The weaker are reconciled to the stronger's dominion, because the stronger have the wealth, and the weaker enter into contracts with the stronger to make a living. This is the sense in which smaller towns (weaker) are subjected to the stronger, the ones who amass wealth. This snowballed into their eventual capacity to engage Troy in battle.
What enabled Agamemnon to raise the armament was more, in my opinion, his superiority in strength, than the oaths of Tyndareus, which bound the suitors to follow him.
Tyndareus, the father of Helen (of Troy: whose abduction caused the Trojan War), was indecisive about choosing a suitor for his daughter. Odysseus, being one of the suitors, saw that he had no chance, because he didn't have any gifts. Odysseus proposed to Tyndareus a solution for his indecisiveness, if Tyndareus would set him up with Penelope, daughter of Icarius. Odysseus gathered together all the suitors to swear that whoever was chosen, they would defend him against anyone who challenged. The oath was sworn. Menelaus was chosen, the brother of Agamemnon king of Mycenae and leader of the Greek army during the War; he was a central figure in the Trojan War. These are the oaths of Tyndareus. Thucydides proposes Agamemnon raised the armament more because of his strength than these oaths. It is better to be feared than loved.
Indeed, the account given by those Peloponnesians who have been the recipients of the most credible tradition is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that, stranger though he was, the country was called after him; and this power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his descendants.
The Peloponnesus peninsula was named for Pelops. Pelops, father of Atreus and Thyestēs, was king of Pisa, an ancient town in the western Peloponnese, Greece. He arrived in a needy population from Asia; because of his wealth, he had lots of power, even though he was a stranger. Fortune decided to spread this power to his posterity.
Eurystheus had been killed in Attica by the Heraclids. Atreus was his mother's brother; and to the hands of his relation, who had left his father on account of the death of Chrysippus, Eurystheus, when he set out on his expedition, had committed Mycenae and the government.
Eurystheus was an interesting character, the king of Tiryns (ancient city of southern Greece in the eastern Peloponnesus) in Argos (city of ancient Greece in the northeast Peloponnesus near the head of the Gulf of Argolis), son of Sthenelus (Son of Perseus and Andromeda, and king of Mycenae) and Menippē, a descendant of Perseus.
We see here that he was killed in Attica (ancient region of east-central Greece around Athens) by the Heraclids, supposedly the descendants of Hercules himself.
Atreus was Eurystheus' mother's brother, which would make him Eurystheus' half-brother, and - remember - son of Pelops, and eventually father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. At one time though, Atreus is king of Mycenae, the Greek city in the northeast Peloponnesus.
Well, it looks like Atreus had killed Chrysippus (his half-brother), because he thought that Chrysippus would inherit the throne of Pelops. For clarification, Atreus was Eurystheus' brother, so that would mean that Eurystheus left for Attica, while leaving Atreus in charge of Mycenae. After Eurystheus was killed in Attica, Atreus was to inherit the throne.
As time went on and Eurystheus did not return, Atreus complied with the wishes of the Mycenaeans, who were influenced by fear of the Heraclids- besides, his power seemed considerable, and he had not neglected to court the favour of the populace- and assumed the sceptre of Mycenae and the rest of the dominions of Eurystheus.
Again, it is better to be feared than loved. Atreus used the fear the Mycenaeans had toward the Heraclids to become king! He already had much power, but the fear made it happen: in this case, it was power motivated by fear. In this way, Atreus gained the throne.
And so the power of the descendants of Pelops came to be greater than that of the descendants of Perseus. To all this Agamemnon succeeded.
It follows that "this power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his descendants." And because Agamemnon was the son of Atreus, it increased in the hands of him as well.
He had also a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in the formation of the confederate expedition. The strength of his navy is shown by the fact that his own was the largest contingent, and that of the Arcadians was furnished by him; this at least is what Homer says, if his testimony is deemed sufficient.
Here, however, fear and love work together, even though Thucydides would still hold that if you can't have them both together, better to work with fear, rather than love. The fear came from the strength he had, because he had the largest navy, given to the Arcadians, which is just another way of saying 'Greeks', or more specifically, southern Greece. Or, so says Homer.
Besides, in his account of the transmission of the sceptre, he calls him "Of many an isle, and of all Argos king." Now Agamemnon's was a continental power; and he could not have been master of any except the adjacent islands (and these would not be many), but through the possession of a fleet.
Remember, Argos was one of the most powerful cities of ancient Greece until the rise of Sparta. On the whole, Agamemnon had power on the mainland, and it extends to only a small amount of islands, which seems strange if he had a 'navy far stronger than his contemporaries'.
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