Greek Lands and LettersAllinson, Anne C. E. (Anne Crosby Emery)
History
Greek Lands and Letters
Allinson, Anne C. E. (Anne Crosby Emery)
Greece -- Description and travel; Greek literature -- History and criticism
Of the many private and public buildings, temples and colonnades
mentioned by classic authors, but few can be positively located. In the
Colonnade of the Exchange—the Deigma—Theophrastus, Menander’s friend and
the successor of Aristotle, represents his “Boastful Man,” a
shipping-merchant, as bragging about his great ventures and cargoes at
sea. Meanwhile his balance at the banker’s actually amounts to about
twenty cents. That this Deigma, where gossip was coined and bargains
struck around the money-changers’ tables, must have been close to the
edge of the Great Harbour is evident from Xenophon, who says that one
day twelve Lacedæmonian ships swept into the harbour suddenly, landed a
party and carried off from the Exchange a group of sea-captains and
merchants.
The site of the Asklepieion, partly church, partly sanatorium, has been
identified in the remains west of Zea. Aphrodite, born of the foam, is a
popular goddess with sailor-folk. To her were dedicated, it would seem,
no less than three sanctuaries at Piræus.
Lastly, there was the famous _Hieron_ or Sanctuary of Zeus and Athena.
Even its site cannot now be identified, but it must have been one of the
most frequented centres of Piræus life in the fifth century. An
inscription records that into the treasury of this sanctuary went the
tax of a drachma on every vessel that put into the port. Incidentally
many a further contribution was levied on the newly landed sailor, who
was as much a fish out of water among the land-sharks as is the modern
Jack Tar on ship’s leave. The comic poet Diphilus tells how one of these
harbour caterers used to select his victims: “For example there’s the
skipper who grudgingly pays off a vow made under stress of weather when
the mast went by the board or when he had snapped the rudder-sweeps of
the ship or else was forced by water rising in the hold to hurl his
cargo overboard. A wide berth I give to a fellow like him. Such a man
will not be free-handed; my best chance is with the captain who has made
a quick, safe voyage from Byzantium, who, all excitement over his gain
of ten or twelve per cent for three days’ risk, is loud in his chatter
about freights and usuries.” He’s the man for the purposes of this
shark, and no sooner is he landed than our keeper of the Sailors’ Snug
Retreat goes up to him, takes his hand, and reminds him that a sacrifice
at the temple of Zeus Preserver would be in order. He thoughtfully
relieves the skipper of any care, making the purchases, superintending
the offering, and sharing the commission with the priests of the Hieron.
And human nature was much the same five hundred years later, when we
again meet a skipper whose performance, once he is safe at Piræus, falls
far short of the vows made in storm and peril. Lucian, in his “Zeus the
Tragedian,” gives details. The Olympian Father, alarmed at the signs of
increasing irreligiousness and the consequent stringency in the
sacrificial market, calls an assembly of the gods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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