Athens may not have been the first power to gain wealth and dominion from overseas trade, but she was probably one of the first to found both on the ability to wage war at sea. There are examples in earlier history of nations such as the Minoan empire in Crete, growing rich by trade, but Athens is surely the first for which we have unequivocal evidence of a nation whose very existence, towards the end of her supremacy, depended on the power of her navy.