hat the importation of corn into a country so
unfertile as Attica, was a subject of the greatest moment, and to which the
care and laws of the republic were most particularly directed. There were
magistrates, whose sole business and duty it was to lay in corn for the use
of the city; and other magistrates who regulated its price, and fixed also
the assize of bread. In the Piraeus there were officers, the chief part of
whose duty it was to take care that two parts at least of all the corn
brought into the port should be carried to the city. Lysias, in his oration
against the corn merchants, gives a curious account of the means employed,
by them to raise its price, very similar to the rumours by which the same
effect is often produced at present: an embargo, or prohibition of
exporting it, by foreigners, an approaching war, or the capture or loss of
the vessels laden with it, seem to have been the most prevalent rumours.
Sicily, Egypt, and the Crimea were the countries which principally supplied
Attica with this necessary article. As the voyage from Sicily was the
shortest, as well as exposed to the least danger, the arrival of vessels
with corn from this island always reduced the price; but there does not
appear to have been nearly such quantities brought either from it or Egypt,
as from the Crimea. The Athenians, therefore, encouraged by every possible
means their commerce with the Cimmerian Bosphorus. One of the kings of that
country, Leucon II., who reigned about the time of Demosthenes, favoured
them very much. As the harbours were unsafe and inconvenient, he formed a
new one, called Theodosia, or, in the language of the country, Ardauda: he
likewise exempted their vessels from paying the duty on corn, to which all
other vessels were subject on exporting it--this duty amounted to a
thirtieth part,--and allowed their merchants a free trade to all parts of
his kingdom. In return, the Athenians made him and his children citizens of
Athens, and granted to such of his subjects as traded in Attica the same
privileges and exemptions which their citizens enjoyed in Bosphorus. It was
one of the charges against Demosthenes, by his rival, the orator Dinarchus,
that the sons and successors of Leucon sent yearly to him a thousand
bushels of wheat. Besides the new port of Theodosia, the Athenians traded
also to Panticapaeum for corn: the quantity they exported is stated by
Demosthenes to have amounted to 400,000 mediniri, or bushels,