Note 431 — Chapter VIII · —Coast Peoples

In this early Hellenic world, when Greek sea-power was in its infancy, owing to the fear of piracy, cities were placed a few miles back from the coast; but with the partial cessation of this evil, sites on shore and peninsula were preferred as being more accessible to commerce,431 and such of the older towns as were in comparatively easy reach of the seaboard established there each its own port. Thus we find the ancient urban pairs of Argos and Nauplia, Troezene and Pogon, Mycenæ and Eiones, Corinth commanding its Aegean port of Cenchreæ 8 miles away on the Saronic Gulf to catch the Asiatic trade, and connected by a walled thoroughfare a mile and a half long with Lechaeum, a second harbor on the Corinthian Gulf which served the Italian commerce.432 In the same group belonged Athens and its Piræus, Megara and Pegæ, Pergamus and Elaæ in western Asia Minor.433 These ancient twin cities may be taken to mark the two borders of the coast zone. Like the modern ones which we have considered above, their historical development has shown an advance from the inner toward the outer edge, though owing to different causes. However, the retired location of the Baltic and North Sea towns of Germany served as a partial protection against the pirates who, in the Middle Ages, scoured these coasts.434 Lubeck, originally located nearer the sea than at present, and frequently demolished by them, was finally rebuilt farther inland up the Trave River.435 Later the port of Travemünde grew up at the mouth of the little estuary.