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.
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