Piraeus

It was by his advice that they built the walls of that thickness which is still seen round the Piraeus;

and he considered the Piraeus more serviceable than the upper city, and often advised the Athenians, in case of their ever being hard pressed by land, to go down into it, and defy the world with their navy.

Themistocles also persuaded them to build the remaining walls of the Piraeus, (they had been begun by him before, at the time of his office as archon, which he had held for a year over the Athenians,) thinking that the site was a fine one, as it contained three natural harbours;

They were all sent off to Athens, and as they were disembarking at Piraeus, Coeratadas slipped away in the crowd and made his escape to Decelea.

When he sailed in, the common crowd of Piraeus and of the city gathered to his ships, filled with wonder and desiring to see the famous Alcibiades.

During the course of it the Syracusan prisoners, who were immured in stone quarries in Piraeus, dug through the rock and made their escape by night, most of them to Decelea and the rest to Megara.

Copies of all these decrees on stone were set up by you and by Leucon in the Bosporus, in the Piraeus, and at Hierum.

The Thirty Tyrants are said to have borrowed money from the Lacedaemonians for use against the patriots in the Piraeus.

For, as some of you who are his contemporaries can attest, it was just after the return of the exiled democrats from the Piraeus, when our city was so weak that she had not a single ship, and Conon, who was a general in the Persian service and received no prompting whatever from you, defeated the Lacedaemonians at sea and taught the former dictators of Greece to show you deference;

what I do wish you to know is that the ships on the point of putting in to the Peiraeus at this moment with a cargo of grain number no less than fourteen;

Ten market-controllers are also allotted, five for the Piraeus, five for the town.

Ten measure-controllers are also allotted, five for the town, five for the Piraeus.

two over the Piraeus, one for Munichia, one for the Acte, who take charge of the defence and of matters in the Piraeus;

Will you not rise up at once and march down to the Piraeus and drag them down the slips?

Or perhaps they mean that if Philip keeps his hands off Attica and the Piraeus, he is neither injuring our city nor provoking hostilities.

But the most insolent and overbearing exploit of the Macedonians was that performed quite recently, when they dared to sail into the Piraeus, contrary to our mutual agreement.

No, they thought that they would build their ships here and also furnish them with crews in our harbor, though it is expressly stipulated in the joint agreement that nothing of the kind should be permitted;

For the mere fact that the man who sailed the ship in, and whom you ought to have put out of existence at once, galley and all, asked permission to build small boats in our harbor—does it not make it perfectly plain that their scheme was not so much to enter the harbor as to be inside it from the first?

— "And fine is the Piraeus"—for you still behold it with its walls;

and now you engage in sea commerce and make bottomry loans, and having bought a house you do not live in the Piraeus but have your anchorage outside the city.

Diognides and Antidorus the metic are impeached on a charge of hiring out flute-girls at a higher price than that fixed by law, Agasicles of Piraeus because he was registered in Halimus, and Euxenippus because of the dreams which he claims to have had;

and of these few I alone brought back my ship to the Piraeus and did not resign my duties as trierarch;

For when the Lacedaemonians came and the democracy was shut up in the Piraeus, again he fled from there and resided among the Boeotians;

Now after your return to the city from Piraeus, you saw that some of the citizens were bent upon bringing malicious prosecutions and were attempting to violate the Amnesty;

what was he who after him liberated the Hellenes and led our forefathers forth to the leadership and power which they achieved, and who, besides, appreciating the natural advantage of the Piraeus, girded the city with walls in despite of the Lacedaemonians;

For when the Thirty took over the city, by vote of the Assembly, they put to death fifteen hundred Athenians without a trial and compelled more than five thousand to leave Athens and take refuge in the Piraeus, whereas when the exiles overcame them and returned to Athens under arms, these put to death only the chief perpetrators of their wrongs and dealt so generously and so justly by the rest tha …

But the best and strongest proof of the fairness of the people is that, although those who had remained in the city had borrowed a hundred talents from the Lacedaemonians with which to prosecute the siege of those who occupied the Piraeus, yet later when an assembly of the people was held to consider the payment of the debt, and when many insisted that it was only fair that the claims of the Laced …

Did you not seize the Piraeus and destroy the crops in the fields and harry the land and set fire to the suburbs and finally assault the walls?

And when the men of the Piraeus were restored, and all the rest recovered their possessions, I alone by the influence of my personal enemies was deprived of the of the land which the people gave us as compensation for the confiscated property.

for she established the Piraeus as a market in the center of Hellas—a market of such abundance that the articles which it is difficult to get, one here, one there, from the rest of the world, all these it is easy to procure from Athens.

It provided that the Council of Five Hundred should go down to the Piraeus armed, to consult for the protection of that harbor, and that it should hold itself ready to do whatever seemed to be in the people’s interest.

He landed and entered Rhodes, where, as if he were bringing good news of great successes for his country, he announced that the main city had been captured when he left it, that the Piraeus was blockaded and that he was the only one who had escaped, feeling no shame at speaking of his country’s ruin as the occasion of his own safety.

Since the revolution there has been an exodus to the Piraeus, and a crowd of my women-folk, being left behind, are come to me, — sisters, nieces and cousins, — so that we are fourteen in the house without counting the slaves.