CHAP. II. 



GREECE. 79 



We learn from Diodorus 1 9 that Philip having 

 conquered Crenides on the confines of Thrace 

 (about 358 years before Christ), enlarged it, 

 and called it after his name Philippi ; a place 

 afterwards remarkable for the battle of Brutus 

 and Cassius. The gold mines in that neigh- 

 bourhood had been so ill explored, that they 

 produced but little, till at length by his im- 

 provements they yielded yearly one thousand 

 talents. 



With the treasure thus obtained from his 

 Thracian mines Philip was enabled to bribe 

 Demades, and the other orators of his party, to 

 obtain the preponderance in Athens, and finally 

 to subdue the other Grecian states ; and thus 

 lay the foundation of that force by which his 

 son and successor Alexander was at length suf- 

 ficiently powerful to become the master of the 

 eastern world. 



We have no accounts of these Grecian mines 

 during the succeeding two centuries, at the end 

 of which they, with most of the other mines of 

 the known world, were transferred to the power 

 of the Roman republic. 



The Greeks, at least in the latter period of 

 their mining, must have made a progress beyond 

 the practices of the Egyptians. The ores seem 

 to have been sifted after they had been pounded 



1 Diodorus, book xvi. cap. 8. 



