And what I have spoken of Corinth may be applied, for aught I know, without incorrectness to the whole of Greece.

For the Peloponnesus itself is almost wholly on the sea-coast; nor, besides the Phliasians, are there any whose lands do not touch the sea; and beyond the Peloponnesus, the AEnianes, the Dorians, and the Dolopes are the only inland people.

Why should I speak of the Grecian islands, which, girded by the waves, seem all afloat, as it were, together with the institutions and manners of their cities?
And these things, I have before noticed, do not respect ancient Greece only; for which of all those colonies which have been led from Greece into Asia, Thracia, Italy, Sicily, and Africa, with the single exception of Magnesia, is there that is not washed by the sea?
Thus it seems as if a sort of Grecian coast had been annexed to territories of the barbarians.

For among the barbarians themselves none were heretofore a maritime people, if we except the Carthaginians and Etruscans; one for the sake of commerce, the other of pillage.

And this is one evident reason of the calamities and revolutions of Greece, because she became infected with the vices which belong to maritime cities, which I just now briefly enumerated.