On the other hand, history clearly demonstrates that each Greek power, as it became famous, turned its attention to the sea as a source of wealth and greatness; and that, during the struggles between the Lacedæmonians and Athenians, Philip of Macedon, with a powerful fleet under his command, swept the seas of the pirates and marauders, enriching himself by the spoils. The Greeks, moreover, paid a marked attention to the mode of conducting their local commerce, forbidding their vessels to sail with more than a specified number of men on board. Plutarch, quoting from a more ancient author,[178] names a limit of five persons only to each vessel; while others, referring to later periods, speak of a general law applicable to all Greece, which fixed the maximum crew of its merchant ships at one hundred men. These restrictive navigation laws were passed professedly for the suppression of piracy; but in those days, the strong were generally held to be right and the weak to be wrong, for even Philip resorted to the practice he had denounced, to recruit his finances at the siege of Byzantium. Nor, indeed, are such principles wholly forgotten at the present day; for, even now, while Great Britain captures and destroys at sea the private property of the people with whom she may happen to be at war (which is simply the right of the strong confirmed by ancient usage and unhappily still sanctioned by international maritime law), she does not allow depredations similar in their character to be perpetrated by nations that sell their prisoners as captives of war. We, like Philip of Macedon, denounce in others what we ourselves practise, because it is sanctioned by usage and by law. Who will say that the destruction at sea of the goods of private individuals is not as barbarous as the practice which still prevails among illiterate African chiefs? England, in this matter, simply overlooks the beam in her own eye, though sacrificing much to extract the mote in that of other and less civilized nations. [Sidenote: Corinth.]