This extended commerce, and the encouragement which strangers of all countries found to settle at Athens, rendered it the home of all languages and religions,[1581] and led to the adoption of many barbarous words. But she thus created a boundless market for her own exports, whether consisting of manufactures or the surplus produce of the soil; and as we now retail to the Continental nations many productions of Eastern Asia, so the Athenians disposed, in the uncommercial countries around, of the commodities they had elsewhere collected. For example, they found a vent among the nations on the Black Sea for the wines of the islands and shores of the Ægean, Peparethos, Cos, Thasos, Mendè, Skionè, Lemnos, and Crete.[1582] From a passage in Xenophon, it would appear either that Greek sailors amused themselves by reading on their voyages, or that books were exported to Pontos, for there seems to be no foundation for the suspicions that they were blank books.[1583] “Here,” says Xenophon, speaking of the coast of Thrace, “are found numerous beds, cabinets, books, and such other things as shipmasters are accustomed to transport in chests.”[1584] Theopompos represents the Persians as carrying books (χάρται βιβλίων) along with them in their invasion of Egypt, and the Greeks could have been scarcely less literary.[1585] Certain, at all events, it is, that there was a book-market at Athens, probably resembling the bazars of the East, where the dealers in manuscripts kept their shops;[1586] and thence, in all likelihood, the Greek cities on the Black Sea were supplied; and this is by no means inconsistent with the proverb respecting Hermodoros, Plato’s Sicilian publisher, who was said, contemptuously, to traffic in words; for, as he himself was one of Plato’s hearers, it may have been thought beneath him to turn trader.[1587] Somewhat later we read of Zeno, a stranger in the city, going into a bookseller’s shop to sit down, where he finds the owner reading Xenophon, and is recommended by him to follow Crates.[1588] ----- Footnote 1581: Strab. ix. 1. Xen. de Rep. Athen. ii. 7. Footnote 1582: Bœckh, i. 66. Demosth. in Laert. § 8. Footnote 1583: Bœckh, i. 67. Footnote 1584: Anab. vii. 5. 14. Larcher would read βυβλία, and translate “beaucoup de cordages;” but where he learned that sailors used to carry cables, or cordage either, in their sea-chests, does not appear. Footnote 1585: Ap. Longin. De Sublim. § 43. Footnote 1586: Pollux, ix. 47, with the commentary, t. vi. p. 934, seq. Footnote 1587: Cicero ad Att. xiii. 29. Suid. in v. λόγοισιν Ἑρμόδωρος ἐμπορεύεται. t. ii. p. 54. b. Footnote 1588: Diog. Laert. vii. p. 164. c. -----