In return, the Athenians made him and his children citizens of
Athens, and granted to such of his subjects as traded in Attica the same
privileges and exemptions which their citizens enjoyed in Bosphorus. It was
one of the charges against Demosthenes, by his rival, the orator Dinarchus,
that the sons and successors of Leucon sent yearly to him a thousand
bushels of wheat. Besides the new port of Theodosia, the Athenians traded
also to Panticapaeum for corn: the quantity they exported is stated by
Demosthenes to have amounted to 400,000 mediniri, or bushels, yearly, as
appeared from the custom books; and this was by far the greatest quantity
of corn they received from foreign countries. Lucian, indeed, informs us
that a ship, which, from his description, must have been about the size of
our third-rates, contained as much corn as maintained all Attica for a
twelvemonth; but, in the time of this author, Athens was not nearly so
populous as it had been: and besides, as is justly remarked by Hume, it is
not safe to trust to such loose rhetorical illustrations.
From a passage in Thucydides we may learn that the Athenians derived part
of their supply of corn from Euboea; this passage is also curious as
exhibiting a surprising instance of the imperfection of ancient navigation.
Among the inconveniences experienced by the Athenians, from the fortifying
of Dacelia by the Lacedemonians, this historian particularly mentions, as
one of the most considerable, that they could not bring over their corn
from Euboea by land, passing by Oropus, but were under the necessity of
embarking it, and sailing round Cape Sunium; and yet the water carriage
could not be more than double the land carriage.
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