With respect to the law which is supposed to have restrained capitalists from lending money on any vessel not returning to Athens with corn or other commodities, it would be highly unreasonable, with Mr. Bœckh, to denominate it “excessively oppressive,” until we understand it.[[1633]] For my own part, until something better be proposed, I must adopt the interpretation of Salmasius, that it was not permitted to lend money for the purpose of buying corn in other countries except upon the condition, that that corn should be imported into Athens.[[1634]] There no doubt are difficulties attending this view of the matter; but this is equally the case in whichever way we understand it. It may have been that, in order to render Athens as far as possible the emporium of the world, the law required that money should not be lent to merchants or supercargoes, unless it was their intention to return thither with a lading, whether of corn or some other commodity. But even this seems very doubtful.
But, by whatever laws this branch of trade was regulated, no doubt can exist as to its extent and importance. For, as the population of Attica had, at a very early period, outgrown the means of subsistence supplied by the country itself, the republic found itself constrained to depend for the primary article of food upon the productions of foreign states, to the amount of nearly one-third of its whole consumption; that is to say, while there were grown at home two hundred and ninety-two thousand three hundred and ninety-two quarters, as may be proved by calculation,[[1635]] there were imported a hundred and eighteen thousand quarters in the age of Demosthenes. Earlier its importation of corn was still more considerable, when the greater part of the supply was obtained from Eubœa, by the way of Oropos and the pass of Deceleia.[[1636]]
Of the hundred and eighteen thousand quarters abovementioned, about sixty thousand were obtained from the countries on the Black Sea, chiefly from Theodosia, now Kaffa,[[1637]] in the Crimea, the remainder from Thrace, the islands of the Ægæan, Egypt, and Sicily.[[1638]]
Yet the people of Athens were subject to few scarcities; and those they experienced happened in later times, when their enemies had acquired the superiority at sea. For so long as this state attended to her own navy and maintained her maritime supremacy, there was never, I believe, a deficiency of the grain in Peiræeus,[[1639]] though attempts were frequently made by the corn-dealers to create a monopoly and extort famine prices from the public,[[1640]] for which they were sometimes punished with death. Numerous proofs of the ease with which Athens could provision herself, occurred during the latter years of the Peloponnesian war, and the age immediately succeeding. Thus, when the Spartans, with their king Agis, were in possession of the pass of Deceleia, and ravaged habitually the whole territory of Attica, they felt that even the occupation of that important post was scarcely of any avail to them so long as Athens remained mistress of the sea, since they daily saw numbers of corn ships from all parts of the Levant, sailing into the Peiræeus.[[1641]] Afterwards, when the Spartans had begun to apply themselves to naval affairs, one of their first endeavours was to distress Attica, by attacking her corn ships, as on the occasion when Pollis sought to capture the transports in the neighbourhood of Geræstos, which however were relieved by the fleet under Chabrias.[[1642]]
No inconvenience was ever experienced from the reluctance of the corn-growing states to export their produce. On the contrary, the petty kings of the countries on the Euxine were so anxious to secure to themselves the custom of Athens, that they conferred on that state numerous privileges and made her great presents, in order to tempt her corn ships into their harbours and prevent the application to rival states. It may indeed be said, that peace was scarcely ever interrupted between Athens and the exporting countries, and that not through the Athenians truckling to them to obtain their corn, but through their truckling to the Athenians to be allowed to supply them. Thus, as far as the experience of antiquity can be relied on, it must be concluded, that the country which purchases agricultural produce invariably exercises a paramount influence over the countries which supply it. It is in fact a rule all the world over, that it is the customer who coerces the dealer, not the dealer who influences the customer.
But, further, this immense importation of grain did not throw any of the lands of Attica, however poor and barren, out of cultivation.[[1643]] On the contrary, the powers of the soil were still taxed to the utmost, and the processes of agriculture carried to a much higher degree of perfection than in any other part of Greece.[[1644]] In fact, with its vineyards, the whole of Attica resembled a continued garden up to the very walls of the city.[[1645]] From which, as well as from positive testimony, it appears evident, that the Athenians always retained their partiality for rural labours,[[1646]] notwithstanding the extent to which the manufacturing system was carried among them. The cultivation of the soil has, indeed, so many charms for mankind, that they will never desert it so long as it is able to provide for their wants. Men become manufacturers only when they can no longer live by agriculture.
It should, perhaps, he added, that of the grain imported into the Peiræeus the surplus was frequently exported to other parts of Greece, when the wants of the commonwealth had been properly supplied, and that a slight fixed duty, for the sake of revenue, appears to have been always levied on imported grain.[[1647]]
But this necessary of life was not generally paid for in specie. On the contrary, it was with manufactures that Greece purchased the corn of the rude nations on the Euxine, whom, by her trade, she gradually reclaimed from barbarism, inoculated with a taste for harmless luxuries, and, at length, even for Hellenic literature.[[1648]]
In one case we find that the Nomadic Scythians applied themselves to the cultivation of the soil, and, of course, became stationary merely for the purpose of supplying Greece with corn.[[1649]] Again, in the later ages of the Roman republic, when a corn-field was a rarity in Italy, which had been almost entirely converted by the nobility into gardens and pleasure-grounds,[[1650]] Sicily, Egypt, and other agricultural countries of the Levant, furnished so ample a supply of grain, that scarcity was never experienced, except when the public officers were grossly negligent of their duty. In fact, the carrying trade devolved upon the Phœnicians, who, to a great extent subsisting by it alone, were necessarily most careful, for their own sake, to keep up the supply.[[1651]] Had the Romans been themselves a commercial people, like the English, their traffic might have been still better regulated.
To return, however: it is admitted, that liberal as, upon the whole, the principles of trade were in antiquity, those of the Athenians were the most so of any.[[1652]] The Argives and Æginetans, at one period, prohibited the importation of Athenian manufactures, particularly their pottery, or, at least, prohibited the use of them in religious ceremonies, though up to that period they had been allowed. The object, of course, was to bring their own earthenware into use, Argos,[[1653]] especially, possessing a manufacture which at length rivalled that of Attica itself. It is regarded as a mark of ancient simplicity, that neither gold nor silver, nor jewelled plate, but fictile vases merely, were originally employed in making libations to the gods.[[1654]]