CHAP. vii. NEW WORKING OF MINES. 177 



the collection of the revenue belonging to the 

 crown, various officers were established, of whose 

 peculiar powers and duties we have no very 

 accurate information. They were distinguished 

 by the names of comes metallorum, comes rerum 

 largitionum, and comes orientis ; besides which, 

 there were the vicarii and the rationales, who 

 were probably the receivers of that part of the 

 produce to which the emperors were entitled. 



In general, at the later periods, that indiffer- 

 ence which the Romans had displayed at former 

 times regarding the application of science to 

 mining is very apparent, and the operations 

 were left in the hands of men destitute of all 

 theoretic knowledge, and who had learned what 

 little they knew of the art more by following the 

 practices of their predecessors than by any deep 

 investigations or new experiments \ The few 

 improvements that were introduced were insuf- 

 ficient to support the mining establishments ; and 

 they had to contend with events and circum- 

 stances which in process of time completed 

 their extinction. The greater productiveness 

 of the transalpine and Spanish mines, even as 

 early as the time of Strabo, had diminished the 

 extent of workings in the mines of Upper Italy 2 . 

 But the greatest injury, at a later period, was 

 received from the disturbed state of the frontiers, 



1 Reitemeier Geschichte des Bergbaus der Alien, p. 103. 



2 Strabo, book 3. 



VOL. I. N 



