Athenian coup of 411 BC state of Athens remained an anomaly, however, as the rest of the Greek city states were run either as tyrannies or, most often, by oligarchies. Both Thucydides and Aristotle wrote that "the revolution was provoked by defeat in Sicily." Despite the democracy in Athens, Greek tradition remained aristocratic, and the works of Homer celebrated an aristocratic world view, where the nobles made decisions and the commoners obeyed. The poems of Theognis of Megara (from the sixth century BC) and the Theban poet Pindar (of the fifth century BC) were popular among the Athenian nobles at this time, casting democracy as
Siege of Segesta (397 BC) and Phoenician cities the ravages of war until 368 BC. The Elymians claimed to be refugees from Troy and they inhabited parts of north-western Sicily by 1100 BC, Segesta, Eryx and Entella being their main cities. The Elymian territory had several navigable rivers and was generally hilly, they were not seafarers and on the whole friendly with the Phoenician colonies of Motya, Panormus and Solus which bordered their domain. In some ways the Second Sicilian war stemmed from the refusal of the Elymians to accept Greek incursions and colonization attempts the same way the Sikans and Sicels had in Sicily.