Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/345

Rh was everywhere apparent. Exceptions were generally those places which were on the line of route from West to East, such as Dyrrachium, Apollonia, Corcyra, and Patrae. Above all, the destruction of Corinth and the assignment of Delos to Athens as a free port, gave the Athenians considerable wealth and importance for a time. A series of inscriptions discovered at Delos by French archaeologists has disclosed a curious history of the commercial importance and activity of Delos. It was especially known for its market of slaves and bronzes. It was peopled by Athenian cleruchs, and the "Commissioner of Delos" was the most important official at Athens, and had the best residence in the Piraeus. But the profits earned at Delos and the still existing mines at Laurium were the only source of revenue. The harbour of the Piraeus was empty, and though there was a war minister it was with difficulty that troops were collected to suppress a rising of slaves in Attica and Delos about B.C. 132, brought about probably, as the nearly contemporary rising in Sicily, by the poverty as much as by the harshness of masters.

Another hindrance to Hellenic prosperity was piracy. This had always existed in the Mediterranean even before the time of Homer. One of the professed purposes of the Confederacy of Delos of B.C. 476 had been to prevent its practice in the Ægean, and as long as the Athenian naval supremacy lasted it was kept in check. Its subsequent reappearance is testified by inscriptions recording thanks to those sovereigns or generals who had done