COMMERCE AND NAVIGATION. J01 advises his farmer, whose work is chiefly performed by slaves, to employ and maintain the Thete during summer-time, but to dis- miss him as soon as the harvest is completely got in, and then to take into his house for the winter a woman " without any child ;" who would of course be more useful than the Thete for the indoor occupations of that season. 1 In a state of soci My such as that which we have been describ- ing, Grecian commerce was necessarily trifling and restricted. The Homeric poems mark either total ignorance or great vague- ness of apprehension respecting all that lies beyond the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor, and the islands between or adjoining them. Libya and Egypt are supposed so distant as to be known only by name and hearsay : indeed, when the city of Kyrene was founded, a century and a half after the first Olympiad, it was difficult to find anywhere a Greek navigator who had ever visited the coast of Libya, or was fit to serve as guide to the colonists. 2 The mention of the Sikels in the Odyssey, 3 leads us to 1 Hesiod, Opp. Di. 459 k^OffUf&^vttl, 6/j.uf d/zuff re nal aiirof and 603: Avrup km/v 6rj Huvra fiiov Karudrjai infipnevov ev6o$i OIKOV, Qf/ru T' UOIKOV iroieiadai, nal U.TEKVOV spi&ov Ai&adai /ce/lo^at ^a^cTr^ d' vTroTroprif epti?of. The two words aotK ov IT o i e I a& a i seem hear to be taken together in the sense of " dismiss the Thete," or " make him houseless ;" for when put out of his employer's house, lie had no residence of his own. Gottling (ad loc.), Nitzsch (ad Odyss. iv. 643), and Lehrs (Quaest. Epic. p. 205) all construe UOIKOV with drira, and represent Hesiod as advising that the houseless Thete should be at that moment taken on, just at the time when the summer's work was finished. Lehrs (and seemingly Gottling also), sensible that this can never have been the real meaning of the poet, would throw out the two lines as spurious. I may remark farther that the translation of $#c given by Gottling villicw is inappropriate : it includes the idea of superintendence over other laborers, which does not seem to have belonged to the Thete in any case. There were a class of poor free women who made their living by taking in wool to spin and perhaps to weave : the exactness of their dealing, as well as the poor profit which they made, are attested by a touching Homeric simile (Iliad, xiii. 434). See Iliad, vi. 289 ; xxiii. 742. Odyss. xv. 414.
- Herodot. iv. 151. Compare Ukert, Geographic der Griechen und Eb'mcr,
parti, pp. 16-19. Odyss. xx. 383; x.dv. 210. The identity of the Homeric- Sihena with LIBRARY OF HA?
