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 Piraeus, 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
depot, to which they were brought from the East.

We have already mentioned t