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 Elizabeth’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 supplied 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 
“adscripti glebe,’’ the proper pride or narrow jealousy of 
each settlement was strongly averse from calling 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 delight 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 archeologists now-a-days hold that Homer’s ¢olmkes, ot 
“red men,’’ are really the ‘‘ Minoans,” and are to be distinguished from the 
%i5évi0n 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. 
? Cfi., however, Isaiah xxiii. 8, “‘ whose merchants are princes, whose 
traffickers are the honourable of the earth.” Inspiteof 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.’ ”’ 
3 Chap. iii. 4-6. 
* Od., XVII. 386. 
