Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/123

 In maritime pursuits, and by an extensive commercial intercourse with the neighbouring states, they amassed great wealth. Corinth also affords a striking instance that the cultivation of commerce can be successfully combined with a taste for the most refined arts, for the Corinthian column continues to this day the finest type of architectural beauty; while Corinth was famous in antiquity for her celebrated artists, and their works.

The writers, however, of ancient Greece have left but few particulars either of the merchant vessels or of the trade in which they were engaged. Of the character and habits of its seamen, or of the remuneration they received, the accounts are brief and fragmentary, though we know that after the time of Demosthenes their wages were provided for by a tax upon property. In cases of emergency, it would seem that men of substance in Greece, besides paying the whole of this special tax, fitted out at their own expense numerous vessels for the service of the state, and that a patriotic and generous rivalry prevailed among them, inducing them to do their utmost for the good of their country. From this laudable public spirit arose, in a great measure, that enlarged and enlightened system of commerce with foreign nations, for which the Greeks have been in all times conspicuous, and which still largely prevails among the leading Greek merchants resident in England.

(658. The Corinthians, too, were the founders of Syracuse and Corcyra (Corfu) and of many ports along the coast of Greece. The principal port of Corinth (represented on a coin of Antoninus Pius) was called Cenchreæ, and is noticed in Acts xviii. 18, and Romans xvi. 1.]
 * [Footnote: "Phœnician Athene" was also worshipped there (Tzetz. ap Lycophr.