The Athenian Merchant Took This Draft; But Not Till A
Banker In Athens Had Become Responsible For Its Due Payment.
The Athenian merchants were obliged, from the nature of trade in those
ancient times, to be constantly travelling from one spot to another; either
to visit celebrated fairs, or places where they hoped to carry on an
advantageous speculation.
We shall afterwards notice more particularly the
Macedonian merchant mentioned by Ptolemy the Geographer, who sent his
clerks to the very borders of China; and from other authorities we learn
that the Greek merchants were accurately informed respecting the interior
parts of Germany, and the course of most of the principal rivers in that
country. The trade in aromatics, paints, cosmetics, &c., was chiefly
possessed by the Athenians, who had large and numerous markets in Athens
for the sale of these articles. Even in the time of Hippocrates, some of
the spices of India were common in the Peloponnesus and Attica; and there
is every reason to believe that most of these articles were introduced into
Greece in consequence of the journeys of their merchants to some places of
depot, to which they were brought from the East.
We have already mentioned that the importation of corn into a country so
unfertile as Attica, was a subject of the greatest moment, and to which the
care and laws of the republic were most particularly directed. There were
magistrates, whose sole business and duty it was to lay in corn for the use
of the city; and other magistrates who regulated its price, and fixed also
the assize of bread. In the Piraeus there were officers, the chief part of
whose duty it was to take care that two parts at least of all the corn
brought into the port should be carried to the city. Lysias, in his oration
against the corn merchants, gives a curious account of the means employed,
by them to raise its price, very similar to the rumours by which the same
effect is often produced at present: an embargo, or prohibition of
exporting it, by foreigners, an approaching war, or the capture or loss of
the vessels laden with it, seem to have been the most prevalent rumours.
Sicily, Egypt, and the Crimea were the countries which principally supplied
Attica with this necessary article. As the voyage from Sicily was the
shortest, as well as exposed to the least danger, the arrival of vessels
with corn from this island always reduced the price; but there does not
appear to have been nearly such quantities brought either from it or Egypt,
as from the Crimea. The Athenians, therefore, encouraged by every possible
means their commerce with the Cimmerian Bosphorus. One of the kings of that
country, Leucon II., who reigned about the time of Demosthenes, favoured
them very much. As the harbours were unsafe and inconvenient, he formed a
new one, called Theodosia, or, in the language of the country, Ardauda: he
likewise exempted their vessels from paying the duty on corn, to which all
other vessels were subject on exporting it - this duty amounted to a
thirtieth part, - and allowed their merchants a free trade to all parts of
his kingdom.
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