CHAP. VI. 



PRICES IN GREECE. 159 



of more recent times does not seem surprising. 

 The quantity of money was not only increased, 

 but through a rising population and extended 

 intercourse its circulation was accelerated 1 ." 



From the time of Solon to that of Demo- 

 sthenes, a period of about two hundred and 

 twenty years, prices were continually rising ; 

 and though they fluctuated with the productive- 

 ness of seasons, they never were so low again as 

 in the time of Solon 2 . It was during this pe- 

 riod that the gold and silver of Persia had been 

 brought into Greece by the hostile invasions of 

 that power, and the subsidies of the Persians to 

 their Grecian allies, and soon after the extension 

 of the mines of Thrace by Philip had enabled 

 that prince to corrupt the orators of Athens 

 with it. 



From a passage in one of the plays of Ari- 

 stophanes it is inferred that the medimnus of 

 maize was sold for three drachmas, or near two 

 shillings, in the 97th Olympiad, 390 years before 

 Christ ; but in the time of Demosthenes, about 

 seventy or eighty years later, and especially after 

 the expedition of Alexander against Thebes, it 

 was commonly sold as high as five drachmas, or 

 about three shillings 3 . It is thus seen that the 

 corn, which at one period was at one drachma, 

 rose in two centuries to treble that price, and in 



1 Bceckh., vol. i. p. 84. 2 Idem, vol. i. p. 127. 



3 Idem, vol. i. p. 128. 



