To what extent if at all did maritime traders share a common policy or a sense of unity? And, if any cohesion did exist, of what sort was it – political, economic, religious, national, or a combination of some of these?

Any sort of political cohesion is very unlikely. Chapter 3 is devoted to showing that those trading at Athens were largely non-citizens and therefore without access to the political machinery.

Paul McKechnie therefore (1989: 197 n.62) misses the point when he emphasizes “the influence of traders and ship captains on getting decrees passed at Athens.” Not only were non-citizen traders unable to exert political influence as an outside “pressure group” – a notion implying institutional arrangements that did not exist; more significantly, they did not need to form a pressure group. In [Lys.] 22.21 an Athenian jury is urged to “court and render more zealous” the (obviously) foreign emporoi. This is not because the emporoi confront Athens as a unified group with a common political or economic policy; Athens' interest in traders can be explained instead by the single, all-sufficient reason Seager (1966: 184) offers: “if nobody brought corn to the Piraeus, Athens would starve.”