So extensive a trade as Athens carried on could not be conducted without protecting regulations, and the co-operation of a commercial police. Accordingly the government exhibited much wisdom and liberality in whatever related to commerce, by all means seeking to encourage enterprise and industry. Numerous officers were appointed to watch over the commercial dealings of the citizens; such as the superintendents of the harbour, ten persons appointed annually by lot; the overseers of the market, likewise ten, of whom five superintended the markets in the city, the other five, those in the Peiræeus; fifteen inspectors of weights and measures, ten of whom attended in the city, the other five those in the port; and subordinate, probably, to these were the public meters, who seem to have been Scythians, and therefore slaves of the state: their duty was to measure whatever grain was sold in the market,[1589] for which was paid a small sum, applied, it may be supposed, to the augmentation of the revenue. Great care, in fact, was bestowed on the subject of weights and measures, and to the market regulations generally; and yet we find from the comic poets[1590] that much fraud was occasionally committed.[1591] ----- Footnote 1589: Harpocrat. in v. προμετρητὴς; and see the note of Gronovius, p. 111, seq. Bekker omits more than half the article, p. 158. Footnote 1590: Aristoph. Eq. 1005. Footnote 1591: But see Bœckh, Corp. Inscript. i. 164. ----- It is, by some writers, supposed that credit was at a low ebb in Greece; but this notion seems to have been formed hastily, without allowing for circumstances, as the condition of the times sufficiently accounts for the facts which suggested it; for all large and established houses are known to have possessed almost unlimited credit, since they were able, on the mere security of their name, to raise whatever money they needed; so that none, probably, but persons little known, or not known advantageously, were required to give security.[1592] The inhabitants of certain cities, as, for example, of Phaselis, enjoyed, as we say, a bad reputation,[1593] and were, no doubt, among those whom people refused to trust. ----- Footnote 1592: Vid. Bern. adv. Polycl. § 15. Compare Thiersch, Etat Actuel de la Grèce, ii. 78, seq. 85. Footnote 1593: See the opening of the speech against Lacritos (§ 1), where the orator heaps his compliments unsparingly upon those “honest dealers,” whom he describes as “the most unjust and villanous of mankind:” πονηρότατοι ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἀδικώτατοι. -----