CHAP. II. GREECE. 69 



in times of great abundance three hundred, 

 talents. These mines I have myself seen ; the 

 most valuable are those discovered by the Phoe- 

 nicians, who, under the conduct of Thasus, first 

 made a settlement in this island, and named it 

 after their leader." 



Euboea produced the best of iron and copper, 

 but the mines of both metals had been exhausted 

 in the time of Strabo. The island of Cyprus 

 yielded gold, silver, and copper, and the mines 

 continued to be worked even till the times of 

 the Romans, though no traces of them were to 

 be found when that island was explored by later 

 travellers 1 . The copper was so fine that the 

 Romans used it for their coin, and for the higher 

 class of domestic utensils. Siphanto, the ancient 

 Siphnos, contained extensive mines of gold and 

 silver, whose antiquity may be inferred, because 

 a tenth of the produce was annually sent as a 

 present to the temple of Delphi. When at a 

 later period this tribute to the image of Appllo 

 at that place was withheld, the exhaustion of the 

 mines, which probably arose from their exces- 

 sive working, was attributed by superstition to 

 the anger of the offended deity 2 . Tournefort 

 examined these mines about the year 1690 or 

 1700, and found the entrances, but could not 



1 Mariti Viaggi, t. i. p. 22, and Meursius de Cypm, lib. ii. 

 c. 2. 



2 Pausanias., book x. cap. 11. 



