The signification of the word Fair (French _foire_) is in the Latin _forum_ a market-place, or _feriæ_ holidays. But the German designation _Messen_ seems still more significant, as being a word employed to denote the most solemn part of the Church service—the mass (Latin _missa_). The association of ideas here implied strengthens with every step of investigation. In the time of Constantine the Great (fourth century of Christian era) Jews, Gentiles, and Christians assembled in great numbers to perform their several rites about a tree reputed to be the oak mambre under which Abraham received the angels. At the same place, adds Zosimus, there came together many traders, both for sale and purchase of their wares. St. Basil, towards the close of the sixth century, complained (_De Ascetisis_) that his own Church was profaned by the public fairs held at the martyr’s shrines. While Michaud (“History of Crusades,” i., II) records that under the Fatimite Caliphs, in the eleventh century, a fair was held on Mount Calvary on the 15th September every year, in which were exchanged the productions of Europe for those of the East. Gibbon implies an earlier date, in stating that it was promoted by the frequent pilgrimages between the seventh and the eleventh centuries. This Fair was of special importance in the commerce of the Italians with the East. _Vide_ Cunningham’s “Growth of English Industry and Commerce,” 1882, p. 120, n. These notes are but preliminary and introductory: the inquiry has now to take a wider range. _Greece._—The association of commerce with religious observances seems indeed not to have originated in or with the Christian Church. It is supposed for instance that at the celebrated Greek games, such as those at Olympia, &c., trade was no entirely subordinate object; and this idea gains confirmation from various passages in the ancient classic authors. Cicero expressly states that even so early as the age of Pythagoras, a great number of people attended the religious games for the special purpose of trading. At Delphi, Nemæa, Delos, or the Isthmus of Corinth, a fair was held almost every year. The Amphyctionic fairs were held twice a year. In the time of Chrysostom, these fairs were infamously distinguished for a traffic in slaves, destined for public incontinence.[1] The Amphyctionic spring fair was held at Delphi, and the autumn fair at Thermopylæ: in fact at the same times that the deputies from the States of Greece formed the Amphyctionic Council—another proof that wherever large assemblies of people took place in Greece, for religious or political purposes, advantage was taken to carry on traffic. At the fairs of Thermopylæ medicinal herbs and roots, especially hellebore, were sold in large quantities.