The "Question of the Straits" is one of the oldest and most persistent problems in European history. It dates from the dimmest antiquity of Greece: the myths of Jason and the Golden Fleece--which were not all myths. From the very first it showed its twofold aspect, commercial and strategic.
The political issue of the Trojan War, in the thirteenth century B.C., was the control of the Dardanelles. The frail craft from the Mediterranean, working their way slowly against persistent northeast winds and the strong current of the Hellespont (Dardanelles), were easy victims for those who held the stronghold on the southern shore into which they were apt to be forced to turn for supplies. The power of Troy was erected on this strategic-economic fact. Forcing the Greek sailors to halt there, it brought down to its own bazaars the raw materials and produce of the rich Black Sea trade. The remains of many cities before Troy, on the same hill commanding the mouth of the Dardanelles, show that beyond the dawn of history the control of the Straits enabled those pre-Trojan and Trojan predecessors of the Turks to reap rich harvest of market tolls and dues in about the same way the Turks have profited in modern times.
Agamemnon, leader of the Greek entente, finally cleared the waters for Aegean ships to reach the source of supplies instead of stopping at the Trojan entrepoôt.
This was a larger fact in the development of ancient Greece than the historians appreciated, for history in the antique world paid little attention to economics. But in the period of Greek expansion, when colonies were planted throughout the Mediterranean, an important part of the movement was toward the Black Sea. Of these settlements less is known than of those of the west, on which early Roman civilization was so largely based; but they were a more intimate part of the Greek economy, for apart from the products of the farms of Thrace they tapped the Oriental trade routes in their harbors along the dangerous southern coast of the Black Sea, and they brought grain and gold from the posts along the northern shore.
Yet, as Thucydides reminds us, the commerce of the Greeks did not amount to much before the ascendancy of Athens. Their ships were small and frail, merely enlarged row-boats, mostly unprovided with upper decks, and carrying their cargo in the open. Until the battle of Salamis, Greek sea-power was insignificant. The Persian army of Darius could cross the Straits and ravage European territory with impunity; and Xerxes could throw his bridge of boats across the Hellespont from Abydos, almost at the very spot where the British garrison in 1922 stood waiting the onset of the Turk from Asia. After Salamis, sea-power asserted itself.
The ships of Athens grew in size to be the Majestics and the Normandies of that date, and the mistress of the Aegean made it a cardinal point in her policy to hold the Black Sea route both by her fleet and by colonies and dependencies along the Hellespont. At the narrows of the strait she had two colonies, facing each other, Sestos on the Gallipoli peninsula and Abydos at Nagara Point on the Asiatic side. Thus she controlled the trade of the Euxine, which flowed uninterruptedly to Athens until the Athenian empire was destroyed by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. The story of that long struggle is the subject of the greatest work of antique history; but few readers of Thucydides are led to realize that the crowning blow which ended Athenian supremacy was that final sea-fight on the Hellespont itself, when the Spartan fleet won the day at Aegospotami. When the grain trade was cut off, there was nothing left for Athens but surrender.
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