CHAP. VI.
PRICES IN GREECE.
159
of more recent times does not seem surprising.The quantity of money was not only increased,but through a rising population and extendedintercourse its circulation was accelerated 1 .”
From the time of Solon to that of Demo-sthenes , a period of about two hundred andtwenty years, prices were continually rising;and though they fluctuated with the productive-ness of seasons, they never were so low again asin the time of Solon 2 . It was during this pe-riod that the gold and silver of Persia had beenbrought into Greece by the hostile invasions ofthat power, and the subsidies of the Persians totheir Grecian allies, and soon after the extensionof the mines of Thrace by Philip had enabledthat prince to corrupt the orators of Athenswith it.
From a passage in one of the plays of Ari-stophanes it is inferred that the medimnus ofmaize was sold for three drachmas, or near twoshillings, in the 97th Olympiad, 390 years beforeChrist; but in the time of Demosthenes , aboutseventy or eighty years later, and especially afterthe expedition of Alexander against Thebes , it'vas commonly sold as high as five drachmas, orabout three shillings 3 . It is thus seen that thecorn, which at one period was at one drachma,rose in two centuries to treble that price, and in