through a series of historical vicissitudes in which there was more of artificial forcing than of the insensible growth essential to the formation of a homogeneous people. Owing to its geographical position it was perhaps inevitable from the first that Byzantium should become a cosmopolitan town, whose population should develop little political stability or patriotic coherence. In addition, however, it happened that the Megareans, their chief progenitors, had gained an unenviable notoriety throughout Greece; they were generally esteemed to be gluttonous, slothful, ineffective, and curiously prolific in courtesans, who, for some reason which now escapes us, were peculiarly styled "Megarean sphinxes."[1] Once established on the Golden Horn the Byzantines seem to have found life very easy; their fisheries were inexhaustible and facile beyond belief;[2] whilst the merchants trading in those seas soon flocked thither so that port dues furnished an unearned and considerable income. As a consequence the bulk of the populace spent their time idling in the market-place or about the wharves, each one assured of meeting some visitor to whom for a valuable consideration he was willing to let his house and even his wife, whilst he himself took up his abode in the more congenial wine-shop. So firmly did this dissolute mode of life gain a footing, that when the town was besieged the citizens could not be rallied to defend the walls until the municipal authorities had set up drinking-booths on the ramparts.[3] Law was usually in*
- ↑ Suidas, sb. nom.; Tertullian, Apologia, 39; Athenaeus, xiii, 25. There was, however, a minor school of philosophy at Megara.
- ↑ Aristotle, Politica, iv, 4. As late as the sixteenth century the housewives residing next the water habitually took the fish by simple devices, which are described by Gyllius; De Top. CP. Praef.
- ↑ See the statements by Theopompus, Phylarchus, etc., in Müller,
