Before Chrift 445. 67 



Greece, and, if we may trufl the uncontradided evidence of Greek 

 writers, of the whole world, without neglecting their warlike eflablifh- 

 ment, now turned their attention to commerce. Their merchant fliips 

 are faid to have covered the fea, and traded to every port, while their 

 fliips of war rode triumphant in the yEgjean and neighboiu'ing feas. 

 The voluntary contribution, which the allies had charged upon them- 

 felves for fupporting the Perfian war, was flill kept up, and even aug- 

 mented, though the original caufe no longer exifted, and was paid to 

 Athens, as a confideration for her prote6tion, by the ftates of Ionia, 

 and the iflands, which were now rather the fubjeds than the allies of 

 the Athenians. The tribute thus extorted, and the produce of their 

 filver mines, together with the fpoils of the unfortunate vafTals of Perfia, 

 may be fairly prefumed to have been the chief fources of the luxury, 

 which from this time prevailed among them. For, as their narrow ter- 

 ritory could not poffibly produce many articles for exportation, and we 

 have no authority to fay that they were manufadlurers, or that they 

 undeflood the bufinefs of carrying the redundant productions of one 

 country to fupply the defeats of another, they could not be much en- 

 riched by their commerce, which feems to have confifted of little more 

 than the importation of luxuries from the different ports of the Medi- 

 terranean. One article of Grecian exportation, and apparently the prin- 

 cipal one, was wine, of which they carried great quantities, put up in 

 earthen jars, twice a year to Egypt. [Herod. L. iii, c. 6.] 



445 — Herodotus, the father of Grecian hiftory, read his v/ork, or 

 fome part of it, to a public aflembly of the Athenians, who were fo 

 delighted with it, that they conferred on him a gift of ten talents 

 C;^i,937 : 10 fterling) out of the public treafury ; [Plut. de Herodoti nia- 

 lignitate, in 0pp. ed. Xylandri, 1599, p. 862] a prodigious fortune, when 

 about twopence of our money was fufficient for a perfon's dayly fup- 

 port, and fevenpence was an ample and honourable allowance for the 

 expenfes of thofe of fuperior rank. {Wallace on the numbers of mankind, 

 p. 125.] Herodotus is not only valuable as the oldeft Grecian hiftorian 

 extant, but alfo as a geographer, his work containing an account of all 

 the countries then known by any of the Greeks. In his geography he 

 is frequently more accurate than writers, who lived in times valtly more 

 enlightened, and wrote exprefsly upon geography *. He faw with his 



* Tha defcription of the Cafpian fea by He- munication with the Northern ocean : Ptolemy, 

 rodotus is a remarkable inftance of his geographi- though he mifplaces it, yet truely calls it a lake. 

 cal fuperiority. He fays, that it is an inland fea Herodotus had fome knowlege of the black na- 

 or lake, which has no communication with any tives in the fouth parts of Hindooftan, and of 

 other ; that its length would require fifteen days, their manufatlures from cotton which he truely 

 and its greateft breadth eight days for a vefTel with defcribes as growing upon trees. He alfo de- 

 oars to traverfe it ; each day's courfe being 700 fcribes, from information obtained from natives of 

 fladia, or about 70 geographical miles. [_Herodot. Africa, a great river in the heart of that continent, 

 L. i, c. 203, L. iv, c. 86.] Strabo, Mela, Diony- Jluiving from iveji to eajl, on the banks of which 

 fius, Pliny, and Arrian, all aflert, that it has a com- there was a city inhabited by black people. This 



I 2 



