66 HOMER— POSITION OF FISHERMEN 



Homer makes reference more than once.^ Boldness of 

 navigation, plus guile and gainfulness, characterised the nation ; 

 their " tricky trading " (cf. the Levantines of our day) 2 

 found frequent comment. 



A comparison of them with the seamen of EUzabeth's time 

 shows common traits. Both were " the first that ever burst 

 into the silent seas," both committed acts of piracy, both 

 kidnapped and enslaved freely. Lest it be objected that the 

 evidence of Od., XIV. 297 and 340 occurs in a fictitious account 

 by Odysseus of himself and so is itself fictitious, let us call 

 as witness the Hebrew prophet Joel ^ : " What have ye to 

 do with Me, O Tyre and Zidon ? The children, also, of Judah, 

 and the children of Jerusalem, have ye sold unto the sons of 

 the Grecians." 



The second reason lies in the fact that each Homeric 

 house or each hamlet, although perhaps not each town, 

 apparently suppHed nearly all its own wants and was practically 

 self-supporting. 



The chief crafts existed, as Hesiod shows, but only in a 

 rudimentary stage ; workers there were in gold, silver, bronze, 

 wood, leather, pottery, carpentry. Although they were not 

 " adscript! glebse," the proper pride or narrow jealousy of 

 each settlement was strongly averse from calHng in craftsmen 

 from outside. Only apparently those " workers for the 

 people," such as " a prophet, or a healer of ills, or a ship- 

 wright, or a godlike minstrel who can dehght all by his song," 

 were free to come and go, as they willed, sure of a welcome- 

 " These are the men who are welcome over all the wide 

 earth. "4 



1 He never mentions Tyre, the later port. Evans [Scripta Minoa, pp. 56, 

 80) and other archaeologists now-a-days hold that Homer's ^oiviKes, or 

 " red men," are really the " Minoans," and are to be distinguished from the 

 'S.Mvioi or Phoenicians. At what date the latter appeared in the West 

 Mediterranean is still a matter of controversy, but the present trend of opinion 

 is that they only succeeded to the " Minoan " heritage. 



* Cf., however, Isaiah xxiii. 8, " whose merchants are princes, whose 

 traffickers are the honourable of the earth." In spite of this, Butcher, op cit., 

 p. 45, writes : " but in Bacon's words, the end and purpose of their life was 

 ' the Sabbathless pursuit of fortune.' " 



^ Chap. iii. 4-6. 



« Od., XVII. 386. 



