But, further, this immense importation of grain did not throw any of the lands of Attica, however poor and barren, out of cultivation.[1643] On the contrary, the powers of the soil were still taxed to the utmost, and the processes of agriculture carried to a much higher degree of perfection than in any other part of Greece.[1644] In fact, with its vineyards, the whole of Attica resembled a continued garden up to the very walls of the city.[1645] From which, as well as from positive testimony, it appears evident, that the Athenians always retained their partiality for rural labours,[1646] notwithstanding the extent to which the manufacturing system was carried among them. The cultivation of the soil has, indeed, so many charms for mankind, that they will never desert it so long as it is able to provide for their wants. Men become manufacturers only when they can no longer live by agriculture. ----- Footnote 1643: Xenoph. de Vectigal. ch. i. Footnote 1644: Xenoph. Œconom. _passim_. Footnote 1645: Dicæarchos, p. 1. Footnote 1646: Aristoph. Acharn. 32, sqq. ----- It should, perhaps, he added, that of the grain imported into the Peiræeus the surplus was frequently exported to other parts of Greece, when the wants of the commonwealth had been properly supplied, and that a slight fixed duty, for the sake of revenue, appears to have been always levied on imported grain.[1647] ----- Footnote 1647: Dem. cont. Neær. § 9. ----- But this necessary of life was not generally paid for in specie. On the contrary, it was with manufactures that Greece purchased the corn of the rude nations on the Euxine, whom, by her trade, she gradually reclaimed from barbarism, inoculated with a taste for harmless luxuries, and, at length, even for Hellenic literature.[1648] ----- Footnote 1648: Xenoph. Anab. vii. 5. 14. ----- In one case we find that the Nomadic Scythians applied themselves to the cultivation of the soil, and, of course, became stationary merely for the purpose of supplying Greece with corn.[1649] Again, in the later ages of the Roman republic, when a corn-field was a rarity in Italy, which had been almost entirely converted by the nobility into gardens and pleasure-grounds,[1650] Sicily, Egypt, and other agricultural countries of the Levant, furnished so ample a supply of grain, that scarcity was never experienced, except when the public officers were grossly negligent of their duty. In fact, the carrying trade devolved upon the Phœnicians, who, to a great extent subsisting by it alone, were necessarily most careful, for their own sake, to keep up the supply.[1651] Had the Romans been themselves a commercial people, like the English, their traffic might have been still better regulated. ----- Footnote 1649: Herod. iv. 17. Footnote 1650: Varro de Re Rust. l. 1. Footnote 1651: Lucian. Navig. § 6. -----