CHAP. ii. GREECE* 77 



bourers under such circumstances. The opera- 

 tors in mining, whether proprietors or renters, 

 were thus compelled to keep vast bodies of 

 slaves, whose united numbers amounted to many 

 thousands, or, according to Athenaeus, to my- 

 riads. These great numbers of people, excited 

 by the oppression under which they lived, fre- 

 quently broke out into such insurrections as 

 were found highly dangerous to the republic. 

 History relates some of these insurrections, and 

 especially one, when the slaves in Attica took 

 possession of Cape Sunium, and from thence 

 carried on for a long time most desolating ex- 

 cursions through the territory of the Athe- 

 nians l . 



We are ignorant of what laws or measures 

 were established to suppress these insurrections, 

 nor is it clear that any regulations were framed 

 to restrict the numbers of slaves in the several 

 mines ; but we know that the government ex- 

 ercised some superintendnece over them, and 

 that certain laws prescribed the places where the 

 workings were to begin, the directions they 

 should take, and the extent to which they should 

 be carried; for all of which purposes a chief 

 director was appointed by the state 2 . 



1 Athenaeus, vi. p. 272. edit. Reiske. 



2 It would have been easy to have translated from the 

 learned work of Professor Boeckh, or easier to have transcribed 

 from the admirable translation of it under the title of the 



