A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels - Volume 18 / Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and / Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth / Century, By William Stevenson

by Robert Kerr; William Stevenson

In the time of Demosthenes, the trade of Athens seems to have been carried on with considerable spirit and activity; the greater part of the money of the Athenians having been employed in it. From one of his orations we learn, that in the contract executed when money was lent for this purpose, the period when the vessel was to sail, the nature and value of the goods with which she was loaded, the port to which she was to carry them, the manner in which they were to be sold there, and the goods with which she was to return to Athens, were all specifically and formally noticed. In other particulars the contracts varied: the money, lent was either not to be repaid till the return of the vessel, or it was to be repaid as soon as the outward goods were sold at the place to which she was bound, either to the agent of the lender, or to himself, he going there for that express purpose. The interest of money so lent varied: sometimes it rose as high as 30 per cent: it seems to have depended principally on the risks of the voyage.

In another oration of Demosthenes we discover glimpses of what by many has been deemed maritime insurance, or rather of the fraud at present called barratry, which is practised to defraud the insurer: but, as Park in his learned Treatise on Marine Insurance has satisfactorily proved, the ancients were certainly ignorant of maritime insurance; though there can be no doubt frauds similar to those practised at present were practised. According to Demosthenes, masters of vessels were in the habit of borrowing considerable sums, which they professed to invest in a cargo of value, but instead of such a cargo, they took on board sand and stones, and when out at sea, sunk the vessel. As the money was lent on the security either of the cargo or ship, or both, of course the creditors were defrauded: but it does not appear how they could, without detection, substitute sand or stones for the cargo.

The Athenians passed a number of laws respecting commerce, mostly of a prohibitory nature. Money could not be advanced or lent on any vessel, or the cargo of any vessel, that did not return to Athens, and discharge its cargo there. The exportation of various articles, which were deemed of the first necessity, was expressly forbidden: such as timber for building, fir, cypress, plane, and other trees, which grew in the neighbourhood of the city; the rosin collected on Mount Parnes, the wax of Mount Hymettus--which two articles, incorporated together, or perhaps singly, were used for daubing over, or caulking their ships. The exportation of corn, of which Attica produced very little, was also forbidden; and what was brought from abroad was not permitted to be sold any where except in Athens. By the laws of Solon, they were allowed to exchange oil for foreign commodities. There were besides a great number of laws respecting captains of ships, merchants, duties, interest of money, and different kinds of contracts. One law was specially favourable to merchants and all engaged in trade; by it a heavy fine, or, in some cases, imprisonment, was inflicted on whoever accused a merchant or trader of any crime he could not substantiate. In order still farther to protect commerce, and to prevent it from suffering by litigation, all causes which respected it could be heard only during the period when vessels were in port. This period extended generally to six months--from April to September inclusive--no ships being at sea during the other portion of the year.

The taxes of the Athenians, so far as they affected commerce, consisted of a fifth, levied on the corn and other merchandize imported, and also on several articles which were exported from Athens. These duties were generally farmed. In an oration of Andocides, we learn that he had farmed the duty on foreign goods imported for a term of three years, at twelve talents annually. In consequence of these duties, smuggling was not uncommon. The inhabitants of the district called Corydale were celebrated for illicit traffic: there was a small bay in this district, a little to the north of Piræus, called. Thieves' Harbour, in which an extensive and lucrative and contraband trade was carried on; ships of different nations were engaged in it. Demosthenes informs us, that though this place was within the boundaries of Attica, yet the Athenians had not the legal power to put a stop to traffic by which they were greatly injured, as the inhabitants of Corydale, as well as the inhabitants of every other state, however small, were sovereigns within their own territory.

In an oration of Isocrates an operation is described which bears some resemblance to that performed by modern bills of exchange. A stranger who brought grain to Athens, and who, we may suppose, wished to purchase goods to a greater amount than the sale of his grain would produce, drew on a person living in some town on the Euxine, to which the Athenians were in the habit of trading. 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 depôt, 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 Piræus 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. In return, the Athenians made him and his children citizens of Athens, and granted to such of his subjects as traded in Attica the same privileges and exemptions which their citizens enjoyed in Bosphorus. It was one of the charges against Demosthenes, by his rival, the orator Dinarchus, that the sons and successors of Leucon sent yearly to him a thousand bushels of wheat. Besides the new port of Theodosia, the Athenians traded also to Panticapæum for corn: the quantity they exported is stated by Demosthenes to have amounted to 400,000 mediniri, or bushels, yearly, as appeared from the custom books; and this was by far the greatest quantity of corn they received from foreign countries. 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. The number of slaves in Attica, during the most flourishing period of the republic, was estimated at 400,000: of these the greater part had been imported; the rest were natives of Greece, whom the fate of arms had thrown into the hands of a conqueror irritated by too obstinate a resistance. The slaves most esteemed, and which brought the highest price, were imported from Syria and Thrace, the male slaves of the former country, and the females of the latter: the slaves from Macedonia were the least valued. The price of a slave seems to have been extremely low, as Xenophon mentions that some were sold at Athens for half an Attic mina, or rather more than thirty shillings: those, however, who had acquired a trade, or were otherwise particularly useful, were valued at five minæ, or about fifteen pounds.