Notwithstanding this result, however, at which they arrived but slowly, both manufactures and every other branch of industry were in Greece, and at Athens more particularly, carried to a very high pitch of perfection. Even in the very lowest trades the love of gain, or the necessity of somehow earning a subsistence, led men to persevere. For example, in the occupation of a common fisherman, from which little beyond penury could be hoped for, and which impressed upon the countenance that sordid aspect so successfully represented by Hellenic art,[417] there were always numbers ready to engage. And yet consider in Theocritus[418] their wretched life, sleeping in their weather-beaten hut on the bleak shore, amid heaps of nets, piscatory baskets, lines, &c., and there dreaming, as indigence often does, of discovered treasures and ingots of gold. The patient endurance of the hungry fishers, seated far above the water on steep rocks, watching the entrance of the huge prey into their nets, appears to have been proverbial.[419] ----- Footnote 417: See the statue of the fisherman, British Museum, Gallery of Antiquities, Room vi. No. 45, and an account of their operation in Pollux. i. 96, sqq. Lucian, with a few strokes, paints the misery of this wretched tribe casting their nets, toiling vigorously and then bringing up a large stone or an earthen pot full of sand, like the poor fisherman in the Arabian Nights. Hermot. § 65. The same author speaks of an old half-blind beggar of ninety, who partly earned his livelihood by the rod and line. Dial. Mort. xxvii. § 9. Persons of this caste were sometimes by poverty reduced to commit sacrilege. Jup. Trag. § 25. Footnote 418: Eidyll. xxi. 6, sqq. Footnote 419: Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 313, conf. ad 361. 862. The transporting of persons to and from Salamis afforded employment to a hardy and skilful race of ferrymen whose operations were judged of sufficient importance to be the subject of a Solonian law: Εάν τὶς τῶν πορθμέων τῶν εἰς Σαλαμῖνα πορθμευόντων ἄκων ἐν τῳ πόρῳ πλοῖον ἀνατρέψῃ, τούτῳ μὴ ἐξείναι πάλιν πορθμεῖ γενέσθαι. Petit, Leg. Att. v. 6. p. 427. Æschin. cont. Ctesiph. § 49. Montaigne speaking of the contradictory customs of different nations, observes àpropos of fares: “Les Romains payoient ce qui estoit deu aux bateliers, pour leur naulage (passage money) dès l’entrée du bateau, ce que nous faisons après estre rendu à port: Dum æs exigitur, dum mula ligatur, Tota abit hora.” (Horat. I. 5. 13, seq.) Essais. t. iii. p. 173. On this passage Coste has the following note: “En Hollande on paye dans le bateau, environ à mi-chemin du lieu où l’on va.” This last regulation, as most persons know, has been adopted by our coast steamers. -----