Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

---

Emporium

（τὸ ἐμπόριον). A place for wholesale trade in commodities carried by sea. The name is sometimes applied to a seaport town, but it properly signifies only a particular place in such a town. The word is derived from ἔμπορος, which signifies in Homer a person who sails as a passenger in a ship belonging to another person ( Od. ii. 319 Od., xxiv. 300); but in later writers it denotes the merchant who carries on commerce with foreign countries, and differs from κάπηλος, the retail dealer, who purchases his goods from the ἔμπορος and retails them in the market-place (Protag. 313 C). The emporium at Athens was under the inspection of certain officers, who were elected annually (ἐπιμεληταὶ τοῦ ἐμπορίου). See Epimeletae.