The cultivation of the vine and wine-making for domestic use were a part of the yearly routine on the farms of Greece and Italy, while the finer kinds of wine were a valuable article of commerce. The only object in the collection which illustrates wine-making is an Arretine bowl in Case G2 in the Eighth Room, decorated with figures of satyrs gathering and treading grapes. The process of getting rural produce to market is represented by two terracotta figures of donkeys with panniers whose counterparts can be seen in Greece at the present day (figs. 133-134). The conformation of Greece and Italy, and the numerous islands of the Mediterranean compelled the inhabitants to accustom themselves to seafaring from the earliest times. A vase painting and some clay boats from Cyprus are valuable illustrations of the type of ship in use in the sixth century. A black-figured krater of that date in Case 1 has three long boats or war vessels painted inside the mouth. These vessels were propelled by oars, as the method of fighting made speed essential to them, though a sail was used when the wind was favorable. Two of the ships have eleven oars on a side, and the third has nine. The steersman sits in the stern with one or two steering paddles. The forecastle is surmounted by a high stem-post, and between the stern and the forecastle runs a railing or bulwark. The bow projects in the form of an animal’s head, probably a fish or a boar, and a large eye is painted just above the water-line. The edge of the krater has been injured so that the sail has disappeared, but the single mast can be seen, as well as the sheets and halyards. A ship of this kind regularly has a square sail and halyards, brailing-ropes, braces, and sheets. Above the stern projects an ornament rather like the tail of a bird. It was this that was taken by the enemy as a trophy (fig. 138). The clay boats from Cyprus in the same case are of a type frequently found in sixth-century graves in Amathus. Two of them represent merchant vessels, as is shown by their breadth and deep hulls. The largest has strakes along the water-line which held the “under-girding” of ropes used to prevent the planks from springing in stormy weather, and large cat-heads at the bows to receive the anchor. The helmsman sits in the stern with his two steering-oars. Of the two other boats the smallest is a row-boat, and the other has a deck and a small deck-house (fig. 139). [Illustration: FIG. 132. TERRACOTTA MODEL OF A CART] [Illustration: FIG. 133. TERRACOTTA FROM CYPRUS. DONKEY WITH PANNIERS]