The most important economic duty of the Athenian hegemony was bound up with land. Perikles, so Thucydides (Histories 1.141) informs us, called the Peloponnesians autourgoi: that is to say, farmers working on their own land. He contrasted them strongly with the Athenians, who had plenty of land both on the islands and on the mainland (Thucydides, Histories 1.143). In the interval between the end of the Persian Wars and the start of the Peloponnesian War, Athens had planted an awesome number of communities outside Attica, mainly on Euboea: the so-called 'cleruchies'. The polis was handing out parcels of land to its citizens in one region after another. Some of the acreage was worked by Athenians, some was rented out to the locals.