Note 12 — Chapter XXV · ILLYRIANS, MACEDONIANS, PÆONIANS.

About the cattle in Illyria, Aristotle, De Mirab. Ausc. c. 128. There is a remarkable passage in Polybius, wherein he treats the importation of slaves as a matter of necessity to Greece (iv, 37). The purchasing of the Thracian slaves in exchange for salt is noticed by Menander.—Θρᾶξ εὐγενὴς εῖ, πρὸς ἄλας ἠγορασμένος: see Proverb. Zenob. ii, 12, and Diogenian, i, 100.

The same trade was carried on in antiquity with the nations on and near Caucasus, from the seaport of Dioskurias at the eastern extremity of the Euxine (Strabo, xi, p. 506). So little have those tribes changed, that the Circassians now carry on much the same trade. Dr. Clarke’s statement carries us back to the ancient world: “The Circassians frequently sell their children to strangers, particularly to the Persians and Turks, and their princes supply the Turkish seraglios with the most beautiful of the prisoners of both sexes whom they take in war. In their commerce with the Tchernomorski Cossacks (north of the river Kuban), the Circassians bring considerable quantities of wood, and the delicious honey of the mountains, sewed up in goats’ hides, with the hair on the outside. These articles they exchange for salt, a commodity found in the neighboring lakes, of a very excellent quality. Salt is more precious than any other kind of wealth to the Circassians, and it constitutes the most acceptable present which can be offered to them. They weave mats of very great beauty, which find a ready market both in Turkey and Russia. They are also ingenious in the art of working silver and other metals, and in the fabrication of guns, pistols, and sabres. Some, which they offered us for sale, we suspected had been procured in Turkey in exchange for slaves. Their bows and arrows are made with inimitable skill, and the arrows being tipped with iron, and otherwise exquisitely wrought, are considered by the Cossacks and Russians as inflicting incurable wounds.” (Clarke’s Travels, vol. i, ch. xvi, p. 378.)