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CHAPTER VIII.

COMMERCE OF DORIC STATES.

ON the commerce of Greece, which would supply materials for an interesting work, it is not my design to enter into very numerous details, though a brief view of the subject belongs to this undertaking. The blessings of commerce are well understood in our times, and the grand scale upon which it is now conducted may perhaps induce some to look back with something like contempt on its feeble beginnings in the Mediterranean.1 There, however, lay the centre of that circle which has gone on increasing until it at length embraces the whole world, and almost renders the most distant races necessary to each other. It must be interesting, therefore, to look

"O'er the dark backward and abysm of time,"

at the first movements of men towards forging the links of this chain which binds together the whole

1 The reader will find in the work of Monsieur F. Thiersch, De l'Etat actuel de la Grèce, t. ii. p. 72, sqq., an interesting and instructive chapter on the trade carried on by the descendants of that people whose manners and customs I have undertaken to describe. He there enters at length into the advantageous position of the country, and the upright and honourable character of its inhabitants, of whose singular probity

he produces many proofs. Other writers have taken a different view of the modern Greek character. But I am disposed to place more reliance on the statement of M. Thiersch than on that of those prejudiced travellers who desire to obtain a reputation for exactness by an ill-natured interpretation of a free people whose hospitality they have enjoyed, and in too many cases abused.

human race in one society, disturbed sometimes by evil passions, but cohering nevertheless, and apparently becoming more interfused daily.

In this movement there were, doubtless, several nations that preceded the Greeks. The civilisation of the East existing anterior to that of Greece, it was the Orientals who made the first step towards opening up that intercourse which afterwards became so intimate between the inhabitants of Hellas and the Arabs of Phoenicia, the Egyptians, the Persians, and other nations of the East. At first, indeed, the camel,' that important instrument of human improvement, revealed to the rude tribes bordering on Arabia, the existence of wants within them, of which they before knew nothing. He came with sweets and luxuries on his back to the hamlet or the encampment, and by the sight of them created desires, to gratify which the aid of industry was to be called in. At a very early age strings of camels, laden with perfumes and spices, and gold, traversed the plains of western Asia, ascended and descended along the Nile, penetrated the northern coasts of Africa, and, by barter and traffic, diffused the productions of the East much further even than their own footsteps reached, as now the manufactures of England find their way into the countries never beheld by an Englishman.

Presently the blue and beautiful waters of the Mediterranean tempted the adventurous Arabs who had settled in Phoenicia, the country of the palmtree, to launch their barks on it, and push from isle to isle till they found themselves in Hellas,

1 See a picture of this beast and his baskets, Antich. di Ercol. t. v. p. 5. In the book of Genesis, chap. xxxvii. v. 25, we find a brief picture of the commerce carried on by means of this animal, and an enumeration of some of the principal commodities which he bore from country to country.

"And they (the sons of Jacob) sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes, and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt."

where the beauty of the women occasionally, perhaps, when they were not to be enticed away, may have tempted an adventurer1 to remain as other Arabs have done in every land whither they have wandered.2 This, I am persuaded, is all that can be conceded to those who see so many proofs of Oriental colonies in Greece. But though the Orientals did not colonize Greece, they no doubt aided very powerfully in civilizing it. For when the rude natives saw that there were many desirable things to be obtained from the strangers if they could give them any thing valuable in return, it must have set their wits at work to invent new means of obtaining the things they coveted. At the outset it was a rough system of barter. The Phoenicians took the produce of the country in exchange for their merchandise, and secured their own success by awakening an appetite for pleasures which they alone could furnish.

However, tradition has preserved evident traces of voyages of discovery and commercial adventure undertaken by the Greeks themselves, in imitation of the Phoenicians, for, into this the Argonautic ex

3

This is, moreover, the common opinion. Thus Dionysios (Perieg. v. 907, seq.)

πρῶτοι νήεσσιν επειρήσαντο

θαλάσσης,

doubt alluded to in the story of Cadmos.

Apollodoros, recounting the

exploits of the Argonauts, mentions incidentally a curious par

Πρῶτοι δ' ἐμπορίης ἁλιδινέος ἐμ- ticular respecting the women of

νήσαντο.

Lemnos, who, he says, were de

They first in ships the billowy serted by their husbands on ac

ocean tried,

And first sea-wandering com

merce gave to man.

On this account Cicero observes : "Eos primos mercatores "mercibus suis avaritiam, magni"ficentiam et inexplebiles cupidi"tates primum in Græciam in"tulisse." De Rep. fr. 1. 111. ap. Feith, Antiq. Hom. ii. 10. 1.

2 Some such event as this is no

count of the ill odour they exhaled. Their places were supplied by female slaves from Thrace; upon which, in revenge, they murdered all the men in the island, with the exception of Thoas, who was saved by his daughter, Hypsipyle. Biblioth. i. 9. 17. Cf. Pind. Pyth. iv. 159, sqq. ed. Dissen. whose commentary may be consulted, t. ii. p. 235.

pedition, in what direction soever it proceeded, resolves itself, in fact. The Greeks possessed manufactures, ships, commerce, and, as a consequence, considerable wealth, long before the birth of history, a circumstance which goes far to overthrow the wild theories of certain modern scholars respecting the Iliad and Odyssey; for, if the Greeks had constant dealings with nations who were indisputably in possession of the art of writing, with abundant materials, they must have been the slowest and most stupid of mankind if they neglected to imitate those nations. Besides, the Phoenicians would be as ready to supply them with paper, parchment, and whatever else they wrote on, as with any other articles of commerce, and must have desired to awaken in them the wish to consume what they were deeply interested in supplying. Thus, if the Phoenicians and Egyptians understood the art of writing, as from the sacred Scriptures we know they did, it is all but impossible that the Greeks should have remained ignorant of it.

Homer, of course, supplies the best account we can possess of Grecian commerce in remote antiquity, though it had been carried on ages before his time. Mariners, in the Odyssey, obtain the name of ægTngs, or "merchants," and are elsewhere said to τῆρες, plough the seas, ἐπὶ πρῆξιν καὶ χρήματα, — “ for traffic and gain." "1 The most celebrated mariners known to Homer were the Phoenicians, whom he therefore terms,

Ναυσίκλυτοι άνδρες

66

Τρῶκται, μυρί ̓ ἄγοντες ἀθύρματα νηῒ μελαίνη.

Famous mariners,

Roguish, numerous trinkets bringing in black ships.

That from the beginning, moreover, they obtained celebrity for their piratical arts, the story of Eunæos,

1 Odys. 0. 162. Hymn. in Apoll. 397.

2 Odyss. o. 414, seq.

in the Odyssey, and the rape of Io, as related by Herodotus, clearly show. Nay, Thucydides himself, in a recapitulation of the ancient history of Greece, observes that the islanders, chiefly Carians and Phonicians, were no less renowned than their neighbours for piracy. The Phoenicians, however, would appear to have led the way, and, probably, by their successes excited the emulation of the Carians, who drove them from the island, and adopted the business of piracy in their stead.3

Though the value of the precious metals was already well understood, they had not been adopted as the sole instruments of exchange; for, from the often-cited passage of the Iliad, it is clear that the practice of barter still prevailed. The poet describes certain ships arriving at the Grecian camp with a cargo of wine from Lemnos, on which the chiefs and soldiers flock to the shore, and provide themselves with what they needed, some giving in exchange for it a quantity of brass, iron, skins; and others, oxen or slaves. Among the rustic population of Greece, if the poets may be relied on, the system of barter prevailed down to a very late period, since we find the goatherd, in Theocritus, giving a she-goat and a cheesecake for a pastoral cup. The Spartans, too, after the death of Polydoros, purchased his palace

1 L. i. c. 2. See, also, Philost. Vit. Apollon. iii. 24. p. 114.

Thucyd. i. 8. Tournefort, Voyage, i. 154. The Phocians, also, about the time when they founded Marseilles, distinguish ed themselves at once by their mercantile and piratical habits. Namque Phocenses exiguitate ac macie terræ coacti studiosius mare quam terras exercuêre: piscando, mercando plerumque etiam latrocinio maris quod illi temporibus gloriæ habebatur, vitam tolerabant. Justin. 43. 3.

5

3 Conon. Dieg. 47. ap. Phot. Cod. 141. a. 20. Hudson, ad Thucyd. t. i. p. 302. See in Scheffer, De Re Militia Navali, Addenda, Lib. Prim. p. 313, a list of the nations who anciently exercised the piratical art.

4 Il. n. 472, sqq. Cf. Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxiii. 1.

5 Eidyll. i. 57, seq. where, for Tupóɛvra, both Porson and Kiessling propose τυρῶντα. "Αρτον τυ povra occurs in a fragment of Sophron. ap. Athen. iii. 75.

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