of money. It was in the shrines of their gods that men were accustomed to store their treasures for safe-keeping; the gods themselves possessed costly dedications; and thus the science of weighing the precious metals was naturally studied by the priesthoods. Every coin which a Greek state issued bore upon it a reference to some deity. In early times this reference always took the shape of a symbol; in later times the head of the god was often represented. The Lydian coins of Sardis, the coins of Miletus and other Ionian cities, bore a lion; those of Eretria showed a cow with a sucking calf; Aegina displayed a tortoise, and Cyzicus a tunny-fish; and all these tokens were symbols of the goddess who, whether under the name of Aphrodite or Hera or Artemis, was identified by the Greeks with Astarte of Phoenicia.
SECT. 6. THE OPENING OF EGYPT
Thus the merchants of Miletus and her fellows grew rich. They were the intermediaries between Lydia and the Mediterranean; while the Lydians carried their wares to the interior parts of Asia Minor and the far east. Their argosies sailed to the far west, as well as to the coasts of the Euxine. But a new field for winning wealth was opened to them, much about the same time as the invention of coinage revealed a new prospect to the world of commerce. The jealously guarded gates of Egypt were unbarred to Greek trade.
The greatest exploit of the Assyrian monarch Assarhaddon was the conquest of Egypt. The land had been split up into an endless number of small kingdoms, and the kings continued to govern as vassals of Assyria. But the foreign domination did not last for much more than a quarter of a century. One of the kings, Psammetichus of Sais, in Lower Egypt, probably of Libyan stock, revolted against Assurbanipal, who, in the last year of his reign, was occupied in subduing an insurrection of the Elamites of Susiana. We have seen how mail-clad soldiers of Ionia and Caria were sent by the lord of Lydia to assist Psammetichus. With the help of these “bronze-men who came up from the sea”, he reduced the other kings and brought the whole of Egypt under his sway. This Libyan dynasty kept Sais as their capital, and their power was supported by foreign mercenaries, Greeks and Carians, Syrians and Phoenicians. Psammetichus built the fortress of Daphnae—for so Greek speech graciously altered into Greek shape the Egyptian name Defenneh—and entrusted it to his Greek soldiers. Relics of this foreign garrison have been dug up among the ruins of Daphnae. Psammetichus and his successors completely departed from the narrow Egyptian policy of the Pharaohs, and were the forerunners in some respects of the Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies, who three centuries hence were to rule the land. They opened Egypt to the trade of the world and allowed Greeks to settle permanently in the country. Necho, the son of Psammetichus, connected the Red Sea with the Nile by a canal, and began a work, which it was reserved for our own time to achieve, the cutting of a channel through the isthmus which parts the Red Sea from the Mediterranean. His war-fleets sailed both in the Cypriot and in the Arabian seas; and a party of Phoenician explorers sent out by him accomplished the circumnavigation of Africa—a feat which two thousand years later was regarded as a wild dream.
The Milesians founded a factory on the western or Canobic channel of the Nile, not very far from Sais; and around it a Greek of city grew up, which received the name of Naucratis, “sea-queen.” This colony became the haven of all Greek traders; for though at first they seem to have moved freely, restrictions were afterwards placed upon them and they were not permitted to enter Egypt except by the Canobic mouth. At Naucratis, the Milesians, the Samians, and the Aeginetans had each their own separate quarter and their own sanctuaries; all the other Greek settlers had one common enclosure called the Hellenion, girt by a thick brick wall and capable of holding 50,000 men. Here were their market-place and their temples. All the colonists of Naucratis were Greeks of the Asiatic coast, whether Ionians, Dorians, or Aeolians, excepting alone the Aeginetans.
Egypt, as we see, offered a field not only for traders but for adventurous soldiers, and thus helped to relieve the pressure of over-population in Ionia. At Abusimbel in Upper Egypt we have a relic of the Greek mercenaries, who accompanied King Psammetichus II, Necho’s successor, in an expedition against Ethiopia. Some them scratched their names on the colossal statues of the temple; and the very triviality of this relic, at such a distance of time, perhaps makes it the more interesting.
SECT. 7. CYRENE
Not long after Egypt was thrown open to Greek trade, there arose to the west of Egypt a new Greek city. Civil dissension in the island of Thera between the older population, who called themselves by the obscure name of Minyae, and the later Dorian settlers led to an emigration of the Minyae—some Dorians among them; and the exiles, having increased their band by Cretan adventurers, sailed for the shores of Barca. They made their first settlement on the little island of Platea off the coast; their second on the opposite coast of the mainland; and when this too proved a failure, they founded their abiding settlement about eight miles from the sea near an abundant spring of water, on two white hills, which commanded the encompassing plain. The city was named Cyrene, and it was the only Greek colony on the coast of Africa which attained to eminence and wealth. The man who led the island folk to their new home became their king; his name seems to have been Aristoteles, but he took the strange name of Battus, which is said to mean “king” in the Libyan language, while its resemblance to the Greek word for “stammer” gave rise to the legend that Battus I stammered in his speech. His son was Arcesilas; and in the line of the Cyrenaean kings Battus and Arcesilas succeeded each other in alternation. Under Battus II the new city was reinforced by a large incoming of new settlers whom he invited, chiefly from the Peloponnese and Crete; and this influx the changed character of the place, since the original “Minyan” element was outnumbered. The lands which the Greeks took from the Libyan inhabitants were made fruitful by the winter rains; Pindar describes them as plains over which dark clouds hover. There was excellent pasturage, and the men of Cyrene became famous for rearing horses and for skill as riders and charioteers. They were naturally the intermediaries between Greek merchants and the Libyan natives; but the chief source of the wealth of the Cyrenaean kings was the export of silphion, a plant which acquired a high repute for medicinal virtues. In those days it grew luxuriantly in the regions of Barca; now it is extinct. The sale of silphion was a monopoly of the king; and on a fine Cyrenaean cup we can see Arcesilas II. himself watching the herb being weighed and packed. It was in the reign of this king that Barca was founded, farther west. He quarrelled with his brothers, and they left Cyrene and founded a town for themselves.
Cyrene held her head high in the Greek world though she was somewhat apart from it. A Cyrenaean poet arose, and continued the Odyssey and described the last adventures of Odysseus. His poem was accepted by Greece as winding up the Epic Cycle which was associated with the name of Homer. His work was distinguished by local pride and local colouring. He gave Odysseus a son Arcesilaus, and connected the royal line of Cyrene with the great wanderer. And he introduced a flavour of those Libyan influences which modified Cyrenaean civilisation, just as the remote cities of the Euxine received influences from Scythia.
SECT. 8. POPULAR DISCONTENT IN GREECE
The advance of the Greeks in trade and industry produced many consequences of moment for their political and social development. The manufactures required labour, and a sufficient number of free labourers was not to be had. Slaves were therefore indispensable, and they were imported in large numbers from Asia Minor and Thrace and the coasts of the Euxine. The slave-trade became a profitable enterprise, and the men of Chios made it their chief pursuit. The existence of household slaves, generally war-captives, such as we meet in Homer, was an innocent institution which would never have had serious results; but the new organised slave-system which began in the seventh century was destined to prove one of the most fatal causes of disease and decay to the states of Greece.
At first the privileged classes of the aristocratic republics benefited by the increase of commerce; for the nobles were themselves the chief speculators. But the wealth which they acquired by trade undermined their political position. For, in the first place, their position depended largely on their domains of land; and when arose to compete with agriculture, the importance of land necessarily declined. In the second place, wealth introduced a new political standard; and aristocracies resting on birth tended to transform themselves into aristocracies resting on wealth. The proverb “money makes the man” now came into vogue. As nobility