Before we quit the war-harbours we should note the Choma, as it was called, a quay near the mouth of the harbour on which, when an armament was fitting out for sea, the Council of the Five Hundred held their sittings daily till the squadron sailed. When all was ready, every captain was bound by law to lay his vessel alongside the quay to be inspected by the Council. The inspection over, the fleet weighed anchor and proceeded on its voyage. It must have been a heart-stirring sight to witness the departure of a fleet for the seat of war, as gallant ship after ship passed in long procession through the mouth of the harbour and stood out to sea, followed by the gazing eyes and by the hopes and fears and prayers of thousands assembled on the shore. When the last ship had glided from the smooth water of the harbour, and begun to breast the waves and shake out its sails to the freshening breeze, multitudes would rush from the shore to the heights, there to watch the galleys slowly lessening in the distance, till they could discern no longer the flash and sparkle of the oars as they rose and fell at the ships’ sides, and till even the white sails melted away like snow in the blaze of the sun on the far southern horizon. A long line of colonnades extending along the eastern shore of the great harbour appears to have formed the public mart or emporium. One of the most important buildings in this commercial part of the harbour was a bazaar or exchange, where foreign merchants exhibited samples of their wares, and where bankers sat at the receipt of custom. It must have been close to the quays and the shipping, as we learn from the account of a successful raid which Alexander of Pherae once made on the bankers’ counters. One day a squadron was seen standing into the harbour. The loungers on the quays watched it with indolent curiosity till the ships drew up alongside the wharfs, when a crowd of armed men leaped from the ships’ sides, drew their swords, and with a flourish of trumpets made a rush for the bazaar, where they swept the counters clean and then returned with the booty to their vessels, without stopping to notice the panic-stricken crowds who were fleeing in all directions. In another ‘cutting-out’ expedition which the Lacedaemonians made with twelve ships into the harbour of Piraeus, a handful of daring men jumped ashore, laid hold of some merchants and skippers in the bazaar, and hurried them on board. It was in the bazaar that the Boastful Man in Theophrastus used to stand talking with foreigners about the great sums he had at sea, while he sent his page to the bank where he kept the sum of ten-pence.