Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/121

 in the time of Xerxes, and says they were so ignorant of the position and distance of places, that they could with difficulty be prevailed upon to advance as far as Delos, and that all the countries beyond that island and in the vicinity of Ionia were avoided by them. "They believed," he adds, "that it was as far from Ægina to Samos as from Ægina to Gibraltar."

On the other hand, history clearly demonstrates that each Greek power, as it became famous, turned its attention to the sea as a source of wealth and greatness; and that, during the struggles between the Lacedæmonians and Athenians, Philip of Macedon, with a powerful fleet under his command, swept the seas of the pirates and marauders, enriching himself by the spoils. The Greeks, moreover, paid a marked attention to the mode of conducting their local commerce, forbidding their vessels to sail with more than a specified number of men on board. Plutarch, quoting from a more ancient author, names a limit of five persons only to each vessel; while others, referring to later periods, speak of a general law applicable to all Greece, which fixed the maximum crew of its merchant ships at one hundred men. These restrictive navigation laws were passed professedly for the suppression of piracy; but in those days, the strong were generally held to be right and the weak to be wrong, for even Philip resorted to the practice he had denounced, to recruit his finances at