That the economic circumstances of Greece were not favourable, scarce needs to be specially set forth in detail. The land, taken on the whole, was but of moderate fertility, the agricultural portions of limited extent, the culture of the vine on the mainland not of prominent importance, that of the olive more so. As the quarries of the famous marble--the shining white Attic and the green Carystian--belonged, like most others, to the domanial possessions, the working of them by imperial slaves tended little to benefit the population. The most assiduous of the Greek districts from an industrial point of view was that of the Achaeans, where the manufacture of woollen stuffs, that had long existed, maintained its ground, and in the well-peopled town of Patrae numerous looms worked up the fine flax of Elis into clothing and head-dresses. Art and art-handiwork still continued chiefly in the hands of the Greeks; and of the masses in particular of Pentelic marble, which the imperial period made use of, no small portion must have been worked up on the spot. But it was predominantly abroad that the Greeks practised both; of the export of Greek art-products formerly so important there is little mention at this period. The city of the two seas, Corinth--the metropolis common to all Hellenes, constantly swarming with foreigners, as a rhetorician describes it--had the most stirring traffic. In the two Roman colonies of Corinth and Patrae, and, moreover, in Athens constantly filled by strangers seeing and learning, was concentrated the larger banking-business of the province, which, in the imperial period, as in the republican, lay largely in the hands of Italians settled there. In places too of the second rank, as in Argos, Elis, Mantinea in the Peloponnesus, the Roman merchants who were settled formed societies of their own, standing alongside of the burgesses. In general trade and commerce were at a low ebb in Achaia, particularly since Rhodes and Delos had ceased to be emporia for the carrying traffic between Asia and Europe, and the latter had been drawn to Italy. Piracy was restrained, and even the land-routes were tolerably secure;[189] but withal the old happy times did not return. The desolation of the Piraeus has been already mentioned; it was an event when one of the great Egyptian corn ships once strayed thither. Nauplia, the port of Argos, the most considerable coast town of the Peloponnesus after Patrae, lay likewise desolate.[190] [Sidenote: Roads.]