Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/196

 152 Outlines of Europemi History merchant ships demanded more effective warships, and the dis- tinction arose between a " man-o'-war," or battleship, and a " merchantman." Corinth (Fig. 76), an older commercial center than Athens, boasted the production of the first decked warships, a great improvement, giving the warriors above more room and better footing, and protecting the oarsmen below. The latter were arranged in three rows, three micn on the same bench, each man wielding an oar, and thus the power of an old "fifty-oar" could be multiplied by three without essentially increasing the size of the craft. These innovations were all in common use by 500 B.C. With their superior equipment on the sea, the Hellenes were soon beating the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean markets, and at the same time the Greek craftsmen had not only broken away from the leading strings of the Orient, but were already showing superiority^ in many lines of industry and art. The Ionian cities, which enjoyed important commerce with the peoples of inner Asia Minor, besides receiving the Babylonian system of weights and measures,^ began to use the precious metals in making business payments. The metals were first used in bars and rods of a given weight, as had been the custom in the Orient for thousands of years before (pp. 38, 67). When the kings of Lydia early in the seventh century B.C. began to cut up these bars into small pieces of a fixed weight, and to stamp these pieces with some symbol of the king or state, we have the earliest coined money (Fig. 77, i). The Ionian cities were soon using this new convenience, and it quickly passed thence to the islands and the European Greeks (Fig. 77, 2-4). It rapidly became a powerful influence in Greek society. Wealth had formerly consisted of land and flocks, but now men began to accumulate capital in money ; loans were made, and the use of interest came in from the Orient. The developing industries and the commercial ventures on the seas rapidly created 1 This system has 60 as a basis and underlies also the division of the circle (360°) which we have inherited. The smaller subdivisions of Greek weights were on a decimal system derived from Egypt.