Page 80 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

hillsides, in innumerable small villages and large isolated farms,
growing their grain and olives, cultivating their orchards, and
pasturing their cattle and pigs in the valleys and their goats on
the hills.

On the seacoasts lie the larger villages and towns, with fish­
ing boats pulled up on the narrow beaches, together with an oc­

casional larger cargo vessel. The craftsmen in gold and copper
and precious stones, sitting in their open-fronted shops of brick

and timber, can look down the steep streets to the bustle on the
beach and beyond to the blue sea curving up to the horizon.
And they talk, as shopkeepers and craftsmen will, of the difficul­

ties of trade, how raw materials cost more than they used to,
and labor is hard to come by, and the margin of profit infinitesi­
mal. They speculate on the destination of the ship now loading

on the beach, and tell the latest news and rumors of their sons
and brotliers overseas. For there is scarcely a family among them

which has not several members abroad. A coppersmith has a
brother up north at Troy; he has been there five years now, liv­
ing, as beseems an alien, outside the walls of the prosperous little

stronghold at the entrance to the Dardanelles. He is buying up
raw copper, and occasionally gold, from the hinterland of Asia

Minor and from the merchant sailors who run the coastal trade
of the Black Sea, and he sends it on, at a handsome profit, to his

brother and the other members of his guild back home in Crete.
It is always difficult to get raw materials at reasonable prices,
they complain, and dream dreams of the profit that will accrue

when the two ships which left a year and a half ago for the al­
most mythical lands of the west come sailing in, loaded with

Spanish copper, and with tin traded in from somewhere beyond
even Spain.
Travelers’ tales of the whole Mediterranean, of the Black

Sea and of the wastes of the Atlantic can be heard in this little
Cretan coastal town. Many of the craftsmen and merchants

sailed far in their youth, and never weary of saying so. Some
spent years in the service of the kings and nobles of Egypt;
others have traded their jewelry and bronze daggers and axes

among the coastal villages of Greece, to the islands of the