THE conquest of the East widened the field of expansion hitherto open to Greek trade. It had never strayed away from the Mediterranean. Now it annexed vast continental tracts; it penetrated to the Ister, the Indus, and the Cataracts of the Nile; it assumed a universal character. Over the political frontiers unity of civilization and of economic life was created and firmly established. Already Hellenism radiated over the whole of Italy and over Carthage, over the Celts of La Tène and over the kingdom of Sandracotta, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
All conditions combined to give this market intensity as well as breadth. The circulation of money increased the power to purchase in every land. The specialization of agricultural production gave rise to countless exchanges between corn countries and oil or wine countries. Industry clamoured for raw materials and drove men to create new outlets. The progress of comfort and luxury developed the use of perfumes, spices, rare fabrics, and precious woods, which must be obtained from the most distant regions. The Governments systematically pursued a commercial policy. Not only did they build cities, dig harbours and canals, maintain roads, and send explorers in every direction; they placed their diplomats and armies at the service of commercial interests. Philadelphos opened relations with Rome and with the kings of India; the Seleucids and the Lagids disputed the great roads which ran from Syria; kings paid court to the merchants of Rhodes.
Everywhere local trade displayed increasing activity. Between the importer and the retailer, the emporos and the kapelos, the number and the importance of the middlemen became greater. Let us visit Delos. The streets are lined with shops, most of them quite small; on their fronts are the signs and symbols which advertise their wares; inside, the walls are full of niches. From the objects found on the spot we identify pottery-merchants, ironmongers, sellers of household articles, the ivory-turner, and the sculptor. Near the harbour the shops are grouped according to their special line, and their double-bayed fronts call to the public. Let us go on to Priene. The nearer we come to the markets, the more shops and little windowless workshops there are. Here is a meeting-place of streets—the Small Market. On all sides we see the bakers’ shops. The marble tables with the water-channels along them are the butchers’ and fishmongers’ stalls. Further on is the square of the Great Market; there is a large altar in the middle, and the four sides are lined with spacious arcades, with rows of shops inside.
It is in such settings that we must place all the small folk whom Alexandrian literature and art made into the glorious figures of their favourite inventions—the sheepskin-clad shepherd lost in the town, the old peasant woman with a lamp under her arm, fishermen stinking of fish, persuasive shopmen and hawkers bawling their lungs out, slaves and slave-dealers, rowdy porters and affected middle-class females. Who could ever puff his goods better than the shoemaker of Herondas, when he enumerates to his pretty customer all the shoes on his shelves? Not for nothing is his name Cerdon, Moneymaker. The retail trade was, moreover, accustomed to large profits. At Delos tiles cost 4 ob. the pair on the wharf, and 5 from the retailer; the importer delivered lime at 3 dr. the medimnus, the retailer at 4 dr.; if you bought 2,000 bricks they cost 4s dr. the hundred, if you bought 1,450 they cost 5 dr., if 290, dr., if 100, 7 dr., and if 60, nearly 8 dr. Advertisement was done shamelessly by some and skilfully by others. Pharmaceutical specialities were sold in pots of clay or lead which bore the name of the chemist with the arms of the city or with the name of the doctor who recommended them. By his stamp the potter advertised his make wherever the exporters of oil and wine took his goods.
The commercial association was very frequent. At Delos contractors combined to undertake public orders, and merchants to do business which required a big outlay. A Delian document mentions, for example, the banks of Nymphodoros and Heracleides, of Philon and Selenos, of Hellen and Mantineus, of Philophon and Pactyes. In Egypt we know of Archidamos and Metrophanes, Ship-Owners, and the bank of Prcetos, Conon and Co.; these were companies which generally farmed public works and taxes. There were even companies which ran small concerns; at Magdola three wine-retailers in partnership had suppliers who were also in partnership. The State did not allow any civil personality to the association, but dealt with a single individual, who represented all the others, and could be a woman. When the partners submitted a complaint to the legal authorities, the Strategos replied to “So-and-so and Associates.”
New combinations of interests arose on all sides. In 324 the Rhodian Antimenes invented the first system of insurance mentioned in history. He guaranteed owners against the flight of their slaves for an annual premium of 8%. Understandings were formed, cartels were created. The boatmen of Smyrna combined to abolish the disadvantages of competition and to raise prices, until the city came down on them with a crushing decree. Speculators had the inspiration of limiting production in order to impose their own prices. There was even talk of an attempt to restrict corn-growing by artificial means. But of all the manoeuvres of which we hear in the Hellenistic age the most characteristic was that which so brilliantly inaugurated it, the wheat corner planned and brought off about 330 by Cleomenes, the governor of Memphis. There was general famine in Greece; the harvest in Egypt had been good. Cleomenes stopped exportation. Sudden fall in Egypt, a further rise abroad; while the fellah had his barns full, the Athenian was paying 32 dr. the medimnus (17s. 6d. the bushel). Then Cleomenes bought up the whole Egyptian harvest, but he took good care not to be tempted by the slump into offering too little; he gave a very remunerative price, so as to secure an absolute monopoly of purchase. Then, too, he organized exportation on a large scale. In every port he had his agents for information and sales, who corresponded with him and among themselves by a private mail. Being kept informed of all demands and all fluctuations, he was able to send the goods without hesitation to the markets where prices were best. The results were glorious.
In times when the activity of industry, and above all of trade, was intense, and the amount of money increased less than that of commodities, credit, which had made a brilliant appearance in Athens, naturally made progress on the entire market. The bank became the essential organ of economic life. Productive circulation increased, and borrowing was easier. The mortgage, once dreaded as a first step to dispossession, was regarded as a convenient means of procuring money at a comparatively moderate rate. The working classes had no longer so much difficulty in obtaining capital. No doubt commerce still made only rare use of long-term credit, and the bottomry loan continued to be the favourite transaction. It is not certain that the Hellenistic age was ever acquainted with the true bill of exchange, the paper draft requiring some one abroad to pay a sum to a third party and conferring the right to sue the issuer. But the use of the cheque expanded in an astonishing way. The system of transfers offered business facilities which Greek ingenuity multiplied and elaborated. Through the diffusion of credit the total amount of profits increased to enormous dimensions; but interest went down as risks diminished. The normal rate fell from 12% to 10% even in the IIIrd century, and to 7% about the middle of the Ilnd; and it did not rise until the Roman conquest turned the provinces into a happy hunting-ground for the usurer.
The concentration of capital in the banks henceforward offered the State great advantages. Before that, public credit had not existed. It had been impossible for citizens to have any confidence, in the presence of a sovereign power which legalized forced loans, and foreign creditors had had no recourse against their all-powerful debtor but risky reprisals. So borrowing by the State had never been more than a political deal. Now, however, the credit establishments were able to render purely economic services to embarrassed treasuries. Every State gave letters of credit on foreign bankers to its ambassadors and the agents whom it sent to buy corn. Certain Rhodians at Delos facilitated the victualling of Histisea and Ios in this way. But State borrowing was very different according as the money came from home or from abroad. In the former case the State appealed to the generosity of wealthy patriots, who gave subscriptions, free loans. In the latter case it had to accept very severe terms; as a rule it agreed to the interest being doubled in case of protest; Olbia pledged the sacred vases, a Naxian obtained from Arcesine a right of execution on all properties, public and private, on the island and outside, and a creditor distrained on the porticoes of Cyme when payment fell due. We can understand what an attraction good interest, on such securities as these, must have had for the Roman negotiatores.
Private banks might be able to risk every kind of enterprise, but the administrations of the sacred treasures had to be cautious, and therefore to demand more substantial guarantees. Accordingly, they did not address themselves direct to the public. At Ilion the temples entrusted the greater part of their funds to the commonwealth, which undertook to make use of them and paid 10%. The hieropoioi of Delos lent to bankers and to cities. For State loans they required endorsement by the city, as collectively responsible, that is, first by the Council, secretary, and treasurers, and in the next line by the sureties, considered personally as debtors, and underneath by the sureties of the sureties. It needed only one step further to turn this kind of establishment into a State bank; and the step was taken.
The public bank was an institution which expanded over a great part of the Hellenistic world, especially around Byzantion. An establishment was not granted an absolute monopoly, but it was allowed certain privileges in the interest of the State. It generally obtained the sole right of exchanging money, and sometimes that of minting. At Ilion and Delos the public bank had at its disposal funds borrowed by the city from the temples, and it was managed for the Government by officials. As a rule these banks were farmed out to the man who offered the highest rent.
Nowhere was the organization of credit brought to a higher pitch of perfection than in Egypt, although natural economy still survived there in the midst of money economy. Nothing shows better how careful one should be with theories which treat natural economy, money economy, and credit economy as three successive stages in the history of communities. Under the Ptolemies every little town in the poor nomes, and every village in the fertile nomes, had its public granary (thesauros), managed by a sitologos. The smallest village had its public bank (trapeza), which the State farmed out to the highest bidder. With the help of these two types of establishment it was possible to effect transfer operations of every form in goods, in money, or in paper.
The public granaries received, over and above the taxes and rents of the domain which were levied in kind, all the produce deposited by the cultivators. They were genuine banks, with a capital consisting of natural wealth. Each kind of corn had its fixed price each year. The current accounts of deposits made it possible to effect payments without displacing the goods, by a mere transfer in the books. The system lent itself to the most complex transactions. With the receipts of the sitologos the tax-payer or debtor could pay an amount anywhere, and it was eventually carried to the debit of his account in his village. Each depositor could issue cheques in proportion to his balance. In the capitals, where the accounts of the sitologoi were audited, there were regular clearing-houses.
The public banks played the same part as the granaries, with money for their means of action. They were, first and foremost, tax-offices under the central administration, but they took the metal deposits of individuals, opened current accounts for them, and placed money-orders and cheques at their disposal.
Finally, a way was found for making every certificate of title negotiable, even without a deposit. Notarial instruments were kept in the temples, after the Egyptian fashion, or in the archives of the Syngraphophylax, in the Greek way; they were put into circulation by means of transfer-notes. A special establishment, the bibliotheke enkteseon, or Titles Registry, guaranteed to all comers a credit value represented either by movable or by real property. It may be said that never, in any country in the world, was credit more universally practised than in Ptolemaic Egypt.
To complete the organization of commerce, means of communication became comparatively quick and convenient.
Navigation by sea enjoyed facilities hitherto unknown. When the lighthouse of Alexandria was provided with a fire which could be seen thirty-eight miles off, this useful invention spread rapidly. There were good Sailing Directions for the ship’s captains; the Egyptian admiral Timosthenes of Rhodes wrote a work on harbours, giving distances. The absolute speed of ships had not changed much, but their commercial speed had increased greatly, since they crossed the open sea and sailed at night. Instead of doing 65 to 80 nautical miles in the twenty-four hours, they did 80 to 135, maintaining a rate between 4 and 6 knots on end. From Alexandria to Rhodes the crossing took four days; with a good wind it took six or seven days to go from Alexandria to Sicily. Ship-building made such progress that the tonnage exceeded requirements. In the war navy the triremes were superseded by quinqueremes, and the Lioness of Heracleia had perhaps eight banks of a hundred rowers. The Syracuse, which Hieron II ordered from the yards of Archias the Corinthian, held 3,900 tons of cargo and offered passengers every comfort imaginable, numerous cabins and luxurious saloons. She was manned by 600 seamen and 300 marines. For protection against pirates she carried turrets and armouries. This mammoth must therefore have had a burden of 5,000 tons. She was intended to run from Syracuse to Alexandria and to Greece; but when she was tried her dimensions appeared to be too great, and Hieron, to get rid of her, gave her to Ptolemy as a present.
That anyone should have thought of launching a merchant vessel of this size shows that sea-borne trade was concentrated in big ports with a highly developed equipment. The pattern of these ports was Alexandria, where the marine docks were provided with warehouses for imported cargoes and the huge stores on Lake Mareotis received goods for export. Everywhere services of transport by sea were organized. Sometimes they were private enterprises, but these had difficulty in holding their own. The boatmen of Smyrna made a vain attempt to limit competition; the city made short work of their schemes. As a rule the State made transport a monopoly, which it farmed out. Delos included the proceeds of the porthmeia among her revenues, and at Myra the concessionnaire had to add 25% to the fare, for the benefit of the treasury. But Hieron evidently meant the gigantic Syracuse to be managed by the Government itself.
Thanks to these various organizations, navigation by sea formed into big currents. The Euxine remained rather outside; under stress of Scythian inroads and the Galatian invasion it could not resist the competition of Egyptian corn, and kept its old importance only for salted goods. The greatest volume of exchanges was carried on by Alexandria and Rhodes with Corinth, Taras, Syracuse, and Carthage, and later by Alexandria and Delos with Puteoli. Transactions were sufficiently numerous to bring the distinction between emporoi (merchants), naukleroi (ship-owners), and ekdocheis (forwarding agents) into general application. But they all combined in associations which extended their activities to several ports. The marine code of Rhodes was gradually adopted by all mariners in the Mediterranean; many of the rules which it laid down were even to be handed down to modern times by Roman and Byzantine law.
The new conditions of navigation did not cause freights for short voyages to fall. From Paros or Naxos to Delos the carriage of marble costs 11-15 ob. the cubic foot (11d.-1s. 3d. per cwt., for a distance of twenty nautical miles); from Syros to Delos tiles pay 1⅙ or 1¼ ob. the pair (l¾d. or 2d.), and bricks 3 dr. 4½ ob. the hundred (2s. 10½d.). But for long voyages the greater speed, higher tonnage, and better organization must have worked for a reduction of expenses in general and therefore of the freightage. In any case, the diminution of risks affected marine loans; where the interest was once 30%, lenders now accept 24%.
Now that the Greeks had established themselves in countries with big rivers, they turned their attention to river craft for the first time. Alexander organized navigation on the lower Tigris. By the Thracian waterways Greek goods were sent towards the Carpathians. Alexandria served as port to an innumerable fleet which went up the Nile as far as the Cataracts, carrying passengers, but chiefly intended for bringing down agricultural and manufactured products. Feluccas bearing a few dozen sacks passed imposing dahabiahs with a burden, sometimes, of 10,000 artabai (over 300 tons). Some of these boats belonged to the king or the queen, others to private individuals. We know of one Papiris who owned a total tonnage of 80,000 artabai (at least 2,500 tons) on the river. The owner (called in Egypt the misthotes) did not concern himself with the cargo; he hired his boat to the naukleros, who in Egypt was the transport agent. The chief customer was the State, and the chief business was the handling of grain. All the surplus of the country had to be sent to the royal granary in Alexandria. The naukleros went to the port of embarkation indicated to him. He took delivery of the cargo brought to the wharf by order of the sitologoi, and presented his mandate in exchange for a detailed bill of lading. For the carriage of bulky articles, for example obelisks destined for the adornment of Alexandria, the device invented by the engineer Satyros was used; the object was laid across a canal from one bank to the other, and a boat full of stones was slipped underneath; then the boat was emptied, and as it rose it lifted the object which it was to carry.
Land transport also developed in Macedonia and the East on a scale which it had never attained in Greece. From Pydna to the Adriatic, separate stretches of road ran along the line of the future Via Egnatia. In Egypt grain from distant granaries was carried to the port of embarkation on donkey-back. The owners brought their beasts to be requisitioned, and obtained compensation in corn. They formed a corporation under the auspices of the State, not in order to protect their interests against it, but to organize the procedure of requisitions. Stones were conveyed along slide-ways which were kept wet; at Syene the granite went by a great causeway from the quarry to the wharf; the porphyry of Gebel Dukhan went down by a network of ways which grew broader as they descended and were set with posts at regular intervals and paved on the steep gradients. Caravan routes multiplied; some served the Libyan oases and took the profits of this intercourse away from Cyrene, now in her decline, while others, marked in places, even to this day, by huge watering tanks, connected Csenepolis and Coptos with the topaz and emerald mines and the new ports on the Red Sea. The Seleucids gave their attention to land routes far more than the Ptolemies. The missions of Megasthenes in India, the exploration of the Caspian Sea by Patrocles of Rhodes, and of the Sea of Aral by Demodamas of Miletos, the military expeditions into Arachosia, and the pursuit of the Arab pirates could only give practical results if the royal roads were properly maintained. The great north road ended at Trapezus and in Asia Minor. The roads to the Far East converged on the Tigris, at Seleuceia; from there they went on either to Damascus and the port of Berytos or to Antioch and the port of Seleuceia. At Damascus the caravans from Egypt to Arabia arrived; from Antioch the great road started which ran to Ephesos and Pergamon. In forty days one went from the Indus to the Tigris, in fifteen days from the Tigris to the Mediterranean. The immediate object of this magnificent scheme was to provide for the requirements of the royal mail and of military transport, but trade could not but benefit by it. The Government drew up a list of the stathmoi or stages, which was the model of the Roman itineraries. Movement became active, and the taste for travel spread. On the roads soldiers and traders met tourists on their way to visit the Seven Wonders of the World. Hotels of every kind were set up in the big towns, and there was no village so small but the stranger would find an inn.
The post, which had been an indispensable instrument of government in the empire of the Achaemenids, the direct bond between the satrapies and the king, continued to be a State service under the Seleucids, and was organized by the Ptolemies in Egypt. Since it was reserved for official correspondence, we should not need to speak of it, were it not that the king was the biggest merchant, the biggest manufacturer, and the biggest banker, so that it was used in the interest of commerce as in that of the treasury. The Egyptian post took the name of angareia from Persia and handed it down to Rome. For express mails, reserved for the correspondence of the king and the central power, mounted messengers were employed. At Hibeh, the name of which perhaps recalls a stage (hipponon), a register has been found, on which the postmaster entered, day by day and hour by hour, the rolls which he received, with the addresses, and the names of the postmen who brought them and took them away. The ordinary slow mail carried the correspondence of local officials within the borders of each nome, and the postmen went on foot.
To estimate the volume of foreign trade it would be enough to look at Alexandria, Rhodes, and Delos, among so many cities which became great. But we have a figure which enables us to appreciate the amount of business done in the big ports. At Rhodes, about 170, the customs yielded 166 talents, five times more than at the Peirseeus towards the beginning of the IVth century. It is true that in two centuries the value of money had diminished; it is none the less true that in foreign trade Rhodes outdid Athens by far. What, then, must we think of Alexandria?
It was in the Mediterranean that the great movements of business took place, namely those which carried the products of Greek and Grsecized countries to the depths of the European continent. But we should dwell upon relations with the more distant countries of the earth, for, though their importance is historical rather than economic, they are the great novelty of the Hellenistic period, and did much to turn the great highways of world trade towards Egypt and Syria.
Following the example of the great Pharaohs, the Lagids did much to encourage Egyptian trade with Ethiopia and the countries of the Indian Ocean. Ptolemy Philadelphos sent explorers in every direction, Dalion to the other side of Meroe, Ariston to the shores of Arabia, and Dionysios to India. Although Alexander had already revealed to his master Aristotle the sources of the Nile, the Sudan was rarely entered by the upper river; the Red Sea route was preferred. Originally drawn to this region by the hunting of war-elephants, the Ptolemies attached themselves to it for commercial reasons. They found there many harbours, periodic winds, and markets frequented by civilized populations. They could obtain there ivory and gold from the interior of Africa, myrrh and frankincense from Arabia, cinnamon, spices, drugs, and cotton from India, and even silk from China. In exchange, they could offer the articles which the Egyptian workshops manufactured for export, in particular “clothing for savage wear.” From Berenice, Leucos Limen, and Myos Hormos the precious consignments from the Far East were borne by caravans to the banks of the Nile, or else they took the sea-to-sea canal right to the wharves of Alexandria. High officials supervised the unloading of these exotic goods and convoyed them to Coptos. A series of forts and watering-stations ensured the dominion of the Graeco-Egyptians over the Troglodyte Coast and the Spice Coast. With the Nabataeans, the Meinæans, the Sabaeans, and the Homeritae there was regular intercourse. From Guardafui, the South Horn, mariners ventured forth into the Ocean, even before Hippalos had familiarized them with the monsoon. From time to time an emissary of the king made his way as far as India; the Indians, too, reached Egypt, and left a trace of their visit in their dedications.
Hitherto the Persian Empire had been an insurmountable obstacle to relations between the Mediterranean and the Indus. The Macedonian conquest brought the Indians face to face with those whom, in Persian fashion, they called the Yavanas or Yonas. Alexander’s expedition against King Poros was not a mere thunderbolt, alarming but unproductive. At once a vast campaign of exploration began. Literary men took picturesque notes on countries and inhabitants, the king’s secretary, Eumenes of Cardia, collected detailed observations for the official Ephemerides, the Bematistai, officers of the Topographical Section of the General Staff, drew up a systematic report on the Gandhara and the Punjab, the admiral Nearchos, cruising in the Indian Ocean, kept his log, a first-class document for the seas and coasts, and specialists were sent on missions to study scientific and economic questions, like the man who wrote an account of the mines of salt, gold, and silver in the kingdom of Sopeythes. After the evacuation of India, Seleucos Nicator carried on a policy of peaceful penetration in that country; Megasthenes visited it and brought back from his travels a narrative which had a great success. About the same time Dionysios, sent out by Ptolemy Philadelphos, was collecting information about the people. Thus was amassed a store of knowledge which scholars disseminated among the general public. By the overland road which the Seleucids guarded, by the Red Sea route held by the Ptolemies, the Yavanas secured a new field of expansion for their civilization and their trade.
Soldiers, artists, philosophers, traders, the Westerners poured into these fairy countries. They knew that princes with fabulous wealth and a passion for luxury heaped gold on men who organized feasts and women who played the flute, on coin-engravers who presented the master’s features, haloed with his name, to the admiration of his subjects, on architects who built temples with columns rolling into volutes or blossoming into acanthus, and on sculptors who turned stone into gods with supple gestures and gentle smiles. Others would have feared to approach a people who pitilessly kept out every stranger from their rigid framework; but these devils of Greeks soon managed to insinuate themselves among the seven recognized castes and to have new castes formed for themselves. How should the wise men, the Brahmins, have been strict with them? They brought a new writing, they taught the laws of astronomy and astrology, they measured space and time. How should the warriors, the Kshatriyas, have remained untouched by the glory of the stout fellows who set up a throne in a day? The husbandmen and shepherds were delighted to see the labour of the Sudras developed by men who caused canals, wells, and tanks to be built at their own cost. But, more than any other caste, the craftsmen and traders were dumbfounded at the daring of the merchants who sprang up by land and by sea, full of heroism and wiles. The miraculous rice-harvests, the gifts of the cotton-plant and the sugar-cane, the enormous profit to be made on spices and rare woods, the mines of gold, silver, and precious stones, the abundance of ivory, the opportunity of getting elephants for the armies, all excited the appetite of the Yavanas. To make themselves welcome, they would dedicate a casket, a crypt, or a pediment in some hallowed sanctuary, or a refectory in a monastery; their generosity would be recorded in an inscription—an incomparable advertisement. After that they could go everywhere, offer their goods, and collect native produce. They brought the wheat of Alexandria (âlisandaga), flowered fabrics (yavanikâ), Arabian frankincense (yavâna), and liquid storax (yavanadesaja), and they presented the kings with slaves skilled in dancing and singing for their zenanas. In exchange, they asked especially for Chinese silk—“Serie stuff”—and for pepper, their “passion” (yavanapriya). When the precious loads, for which they paid in silver drammas, reached the Mediterranean, by the Oxus or the Indus, they were worth golden staters.
Later the Greeks obtained silk in more direct ways. The kingdom of Bactriana, an advanced post of Hellenism, was so situated as to communicate with the Chinese as soon as circumstances should be favourable. Until the end of the IIIrd century the Mongol incursions cut China off from the West. The silk reached even India only after passing through the hands of several intermediaries in the course of petty dealings. But once the Great Wall was complete, about 126, the Han Dynasty occupied the Tarim Basin and the passes of the Pamirs. From 114 contact was established with the Greeks. Exchanges developed with incredible rapidity. Every year a dozen caravans arrived at the Iaxartes and the Oxus. About 105 the Emperor Wu-ti authorized foreign merchants to travel freely in his dominions. When the Greeks succumbed beneath the blows of the Parthians they had knit relations which their fellow-countrymen in Syria inherited.
In all periods of history the advances or withdrawals of Hellenism in the East were accompanied by similar movements in the West. Alexander’s campaigns were followed by great voyages of discovery, in the course of which the Phocseans of Massalia broke down the barriers raised against them by the Phœnicians of Carthage; and for the periplus of the Persian Gulf there was a corresponding periplus of the Atlantic. Ever since she had existed, Massalia had found the Pillars of Heracles well guarded. In the end she went through. Euthymenes was the first to venture in the footsteps of Hanno and to visit the coast of Africa. Then, about 325-320, Pytheas set out on the trail of Himilco, northwards. He was a cross between a sea-wolf and a scholar, full of curiosity and daring; he resolved to penetrate the secrets of the Northern lands and to look for the tin and amber in the countries which produced them. The merchants and ship-owners of Massalia had to provide the funds of the expedition. From Cadiz he made the Isle of Ushant, sailed right round Britain, entered the mouth of the Elbe, explored Norway almost to the Arctic Circle, and only stopped when the fog and ice prevented him from going further. He brought back a plentiful harvest of new knowledge. In the narrative of this voyage he calculated distances and gave many details on the manners of the inhabitants, the products, and the markets. The practical results of this remarkable exploration were destined to be nil. The peninsula which produced the tin and the island on which the amber trade concentrated were too far away. But such attempts show, no less than the multitude of ships riding in the harbours or the long caravans strung over the roads, the spirit of enterprise which animated Greek trade and carried it to the confines of the world.