Lucian, Indeed, Informs Us
That A Ship, Which, From His Description, Must Have Been About The Size Of
Our Third-Rates, Contained As Much Corn As Maintained All Attica For A
Twelvemonth; But, In The Time Of This Author, Athens Was Not Nearly So
Populous As It Had Been:
And besides, as is justly remarked by Hume, it is
not safe to trust to such loose rhetorical illustrations.
From a passage in Thucydides we may learn that the Athenians derived part
of their supply of corn from Euboea; this passage is also curious as
exhibiting a surprising instance of the imperfection of ancient navigation.
Among the inconveniences experienced by the Athenians, from the fortifying
of Dacelia by the Lacedemonians, this historian particularly mentions, as
one of the most considerable, that they could not bring over their corn
from Euboea by land, passing by Oropus, but were under the necessity of
embarking it, and sailing round Cape Sunium; and yet the water carriage
could not be more than double the land carriage.
The articles imported by the Athenians from the Euxine Sea, besides corn,
were timber for building, slaves, salt, honey, wax, wool, leather, and
goat-skins; from Byzantium and other ports of Thrace and Macedonia, salt
fish and timber; from Phrygia and Miletus, carpets, coverlets for beds, and
the fine wool, of which their cloths were made; from the islands of Egean
Sea, wine and different fruits; and from Thrace, Thessaly, Phrygia, &c., a
great number of slaves.
The traffic in slaves was, next to that in corn, of the greatest
consequence to the Athenians, for the citizens were not in sufficient
numbers, and, if they had been, were not by any means disposed, to
cultivate the land, work the mines, and carry on the various trades and
manufactures.
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