15. Greece, physical character and products.—The mention of the Greeks at the close of the last chapter introduces us to a people who were, for a time, the leading merchants of the Mediterranean. The peninsular part of Greece has an area less than that of the State of Maine, little more than half that of the State of New York. It is, however, most richly diversified geographically, and no country in the world of an equal area, it is said, presents so many islands, bays, peninsulas, and harbors. The coast line of this little country is longer than that of Spain. No point is more than a few miles from the coast, and there are few points on the coast from which an observer does not see an island. In the Greek sea, moreover, every island is in plain sight either of the mainland or of another island, and in the good season the winds are very regular. Favoring conditions such as these are of vast importance in the early days of navigation, when sailors faced real perils due to their inexperience, and perils of the imagination which were even greater. At home the Greeks inhabited a country which was not rich enough to support them without exertion, but was, on the other hand, not so poor as to force them to use all their ingenuity in finding the means of subsistence. They could easily produce a surplus of oil and wine, but found a deficiency of other products, especially grain and, in the early period, manufactured wares.

16. Rise of Greek commerce. Colonies.—Though it would be hard to conceive a better nursery for the growth of commerce than existed under the conditions here described, the Greeks, when we first get knowledge of them, about 1000 B.C., were not yet ready to take advantage of their opportunities. There was some commerce, it is true, but it lay entirely in the hands of the Phœnicians, who brought utensils and cloth and took away timber and metals. Little by little the Greeks rose to commercial prominence, and gained the place formerly held by the Phœnicians. A striking feature of this revolution was the Greek colonial movement, which covered some five hundred years, and ended about 600 B.C. Greek emigrants settled throughout the Ægean Sea and established themselves as a fringe on the coast of Asia Minor and about the Black Sea; in the West they chose by preference the shores of southern Italy and Sicily, but founded colonies as far as Malaga in modern Spain, and created a great commercial center on the site of modern Marseilles. The colonies kept up an active intercourse with the mother country, and Greek sailors and merchants ousted the Phœnicians from their commanding position. The Greeks at home began to produce wares for export, seeking customers not only among the colonists but in other markets also; they emancipated themselves from their former dependence on Oriental manufactures, and developed the clay, bronze, and woolen industries to a point not dreamed of before.

17. Rapid development in the fifth century, B.C.—In this, which may be termed the preparatory period of Greek commerce, the leadership rested with the Greek colonies in Asia; Miletos was the first of the Greek cities in commercial importance. The advance of the Persian kings about 500 broke the power of the Greek colonies in the East; at the same time the western colonies, especially Syracuse, grew rapidly in importance, and forced Carthage to recognize their supremacy in the northern Mediterranean. The mother country itself was, however, that part of the Greek world which showed the most striking gains. The successful resistance to the Persians was followed by a remarkable development not only in politics but in industry and commerce as well, and Greece now took for two centuries the position which England occupies in the modern world. The little island of Ægina (near Athens), rocky and sterile, supporting to-day but 6,000 inhabitants, became for a time the most important market of the Greek world; it amassed fabulous riches by a commerce penetrating all seas, aided by an artificial harbor and a strong war navy. Another great commercial city, destined to a longer career, was Corinth; this city was the natural medium of trade with the western colonies, not only because it offered an opportunity to reach them without rounding the dreaded promontory of the southern tip of Greece, but also because some of the leading colonies of the West were Corinthian or closely allied to the Corinthians.

18. Rise of Athens to leadership. Exports.—The city of Athens, which had developed rapidly in the century preceding the Persian wars, rose to the first place among the Greek cities in the century in which they occurred (500-400 B.C.). The Athenians broke the power of Ægina in armed conflict, and appropriated its commerce; the Athenian sea-port, the Piræus, became the leading commercial port of the Greek world, and remained so until the Macedonian period (about 300). Readers must be referred to one of the narrative histories of Greece for an account of the way in which Athens built up its empire in the Ægean Sea, and for the story of the varied fortunes of its political power. Even in times of defeat, when its war-navy was scattered and its leagues and alliances broken up, it was still able to control a large part of the trade of the Ægean and Black seas, and maintained an important commerce with the South and West. The favorable situation of the city, and the ability and energy of its navigators and business men, enabled it to conduct a large carrying trade for other peoples, and many of the exports were foreign wares which were merely transshipped in the Piræus. Of native wares it exported silver and coin, from the mines near the city, some natural products (oil, figs, honey, wool, marble) of comparatively slight importance, and especially manufactured wares, of which pottery was the chief.

19. Athenian imports and policy.—The chief import was wheat, on which Athens was then as dependent as England is now; the city had grown so great by trade that the surrounding country was unable to support it. The great granary of Athens was the level country north of the Black Sea, and the Athenians made extraordinary efforts to control the narrow entrance to the Black Sea, that they might assure their food supply. They were not entirely dependent on this source, however, and imported wheat also from Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and the mainland to the North. Among the other imports were ship-building materials, salt fish, slaves, raw materials for the Athenian manufacturers, and articles of luxury. The breadth of the Athenian trade is pictured in the statement of a contemporary: “What delicacies there are in Sicily, or Lower Italy, or Cyprus, or Egypt, or Lydia, or on the Pontus, or in Peloponnesus, or anywhere else, they all are brought to Athens by her control of the sea.”

The commercial policy of the Athenians was framed with an eye especially to the interests of the consumer. What duties were levied were low, and had no leaning to “protection” in the modern sense. The export of articles especially desired (wheat, ship-building materials) was restricted in the hope of keeping up the home supply, and commercial advantages were granted or withheld with the idea of exercising political pressure on other states; but nothing like modern protectionism can be found in the commercial policy of this period.

20. Contrast of the ancient and modern world; effect of Macedonian and Roman conquests.—In the course of our narrative we are now approaching a point when a great change came over the ancient world. The isolation of the earlier states of antiquity is their most striking feature. Each one lives only unto itself. It rises in civilization and then declines, without sharing its gains and losses with other states. It may conquer and hold them for a time, it is true, but it rules them as foreign territory, with alien interests; and the great empires crumble as readily as they are made. This characteristic of ancient history is one of its main difficulties to the student, for it deprives him of any bond of connection between the peoples, and forces him to pass from one to another of them, until he feels lost in the complexity of the narrative.

The modern world, with its common fund of culture and its community of interests uniting different peoples, could arise from these conditions only after long centuries of struggle. The unity of the Christian faith was needed to confirm the union of peoples in a common civilization. The process of union begins, however, at the point which we have reached; the great conquests of Alexander of Macedon, and those of Rome, did much to break down the barriers between peoples, and to prepare them for the acceptance of a common civilization and a common religion. It is to be hoped that the student knows already something of the narrative of those conquests. We shall have to confine ourselves to the results as they appear in the history of commerce. Here the reader can merely be reminded that Alexander united the eastern world into an empire extending from Greece to India, a little before 300 B.C., and that the Romans began about 200 B.C. to extend their authority outside the Italian peninsula, and before the birth of Christ had subjected to it practically all the peoples whose history we have been studying.

21. Effect of Alexander’s conquests on commerce; decline of Greece.—In appearance the empire of Alexander outlived its founder but a few years, and then dissolved. Alexander, however, was a civilizer as well as a conqueror; he endowed the East with a common fund of Greek culture; and however distinct or hostile the states might seem thereafter the peoples were united as they had never been before. Commerce took on a new aspect. Greece, which before had been at the center of the great commercial movements, was now left on the western edge. Greek merchants could for a time use their former commanding position to share in the great commercial development, but in the long run their struggle was hopeless. The most energetic Greeks left their home to settle in eastern countries which were richer, more populous, and closer to the great currents of trade. Corinth was the only city which managed to maintain and extend its trade. Athens declined rapidly in commercial importance; and grass grew and cows were pastured in the streets of other towns which had once been important markets.

22. Rise of great cities.—Some indication of the development of commerce, and of the rearrangement of its important centers, can be got from a study of the great cities of the ancient world. Before the time of Alexander there were only three cities of the Mediterranean with a population of over 100,000, Syracuse, Athens, Carthage; none of these had a population far above that figure. About 200 B.C., scarcely more than a century afterward, there were four cities with a population over 200,000, Alexandria, Seleukia, Antioch, Carthage; one city with a population far above 100,000, Syracuse; and of cities with a population about 100,000 there were Corinth, Rome, Rhodes, Ephesos, and possibly others. The names of some of these cities are already familiar to us. Carthage was enjoying its last century of commercial greatness, before Rome robbed it of its influence in the northern Mediterranean. Syracuse was the chief Greek colony of the West, destined also to fall under the Roman power just before 200. Other names, however, are entirely new to history, or first became of great importance at this time, and the best idea of the commerce of the period can be got by considering the reasons for their greatness.

23. Alexandria, Seleukia, Antioch.—Alexandria, as its name suggests, was founded by the Macedonian conqueror. It was situated on a tongue of land between a lagoon and the sea, near the most western of the mouths of the Nile. It had a double harbor, formed by the island Pharos, which has given the name for lighthouse in some of the modern languages (French, phare, Italian, fáro), as the most celebrated lighthouse of antiquity was erected there. Alexandria furnished the only good harbor for large vessels on the coast of Egypt; it had access to the Nile, tapping one of the great granaries of antiquity, and connected with the Red Sea through the canal that ran from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes. It was at the point where the sea-route from the far East reached the Mediterranean, and it became by right the greatest market and the largest city that the world had known.

Next to it in size and importance came two other cities, Seleukia and Antioch, which were founded even later than Alexandria. Seleukia, on the Tigris, took the place of the earlier Babylon and the later Bagdad; it was situated in a rich plain at the points where the routes from the Persian Gulf and the Persian highlands met on their way westward. Antioch was at the focus of the routes by which the trade with inner Asia was carried on. Situated at a point where the Euphrates approaches to within a few days’ march of the coast, and where the valley of the Orontes offers the best means of reaching the sea from the interior, it had the full benefit of the revival of eastern commerce which followed the conquests of Alexander and the enlightened rule of his successors.

24. Rhodes.—Only one other city, Rhodes, deserves especial attention, and this not because of its size alone but also because it was so specifically a commercial city. The little island could offer but scanty products to commerce, but it enjoyed an exceptionally favorable position, where navigators from Egypt and Syria, avoiding the dangers of the open sea, would put in for shelter and to trade. Rhodes followed a far-sighted foreign policy, guided by the idea of securing the greatest freedom of trade; it policed the seas and repressed piracy with vigor; and established a code of mercantile law which was celebrated as a model and which invited dealings in its market. The Rhodians were skilful navigators, and developed the principles of commercial association to a point of high efficiency. It is little cause for wonder, therefore, that commerce flowed hither from all parts of the eastern Mediterranean and even from the Black Sea; that foreign merchants sent their sons there to learn the conduct of commerce; and that great riches were accumulated, of which one evidence was furnished by the many colossi, gigantic statues, about the city.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

BIBLIOGRAPHY