24 BOOK I. 



not many years after, he attained wealth from the mines of Fiirst, which 



is a city in Lorraine, and took his name from " Luck."*" Nor would 



King Vladislaus have restored to the Assembly of Barons, Tursius, a 



citizen of Cracow, who became rich through the mines in that part of the 



kingdom of Hungary which was formerly called Dacia.^^ Nay, not even the 



common worker in the mines is vile and abject. For, trained to vigilance 



and work by night and day, he has great powers of endurance when occasion 



demands, and easily sustains the fatigues and duties of a soldier, for he is 



accustomed to keep long vigils at night, to wield iron tools, to dig trenches, 



to drive tunnels, to make machines, and to carry burdens. Therefore, experts 



in military affairs prefer the miner, not only to a commoner from the town, 



but even to the rustic. 



But to bring this discussion to an end, inasmuch as the chief callings 



are those of the moneylender, the soldier, the merchant, the farmer, and the 



miner, I say, inasmuch as usury is odious, while the spoil cruelly captured 



from the possessions of the people innocent of wrong is wicked in the sight 



of God and man, and inasmuch as the calling of the miner excels in honour 



and dignity that of the merchant trading for lucre, while it is not less noble 



though far more profitable than agriculture, who can fail to realize that 



mining is a calling of peculiar dignity ? Certainly, though it is but one of 



ten important and excellent methods of acquiring wealth in an honourable 



way, a careful and diligent man can attain this result in no easier way 



than by mining. 



" These Phoenician workings are in Thasos itself, between Coenyra and a place called 

 " Aenyra over against Samothrace ; a high mountain has been turned upside down in 

 " the search for ores." (Rawlinson's Trans.). The occasion of this statement of Herodotus 

 was the relations of the Thasians with Darius (521-486 B.C.). The date of the Phoenician 

 colonization of Thasos is highly nebular — anywhere from 1200 to goo B.C. 



^"Agricola, De Veterihus et Novis Meiallis, Book i., p. 392, says ; — " Conrad, whose 

 " nickname in former years was ' pauper,' suddenly became rich from the silver mines of 

 " Mount Jura, known as the Firstum." He was ennobled with the title of Graf Cuntz 

 von Gliick by the Emperor Maximilian (who was Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, 

 I493-I5I9)- "t^onrad was originally a working miner at Schneeberg where he was known 

 as Armer Cuntz (poor Cuntz or Conrad) and grew wealthy from the mines of Fiirst in 

 Leberthal. This district is located in the Vosges Mountains on the borders of Lorraine 

 and Upper Alsace. The story of Cunt? or Conrad von Gliick is mentioned by Albinus 

 (Meissnische Land und Berg Chronica, Dresden, 1589, p. 116), Mathesius {Sarepta, Nurem- 

 berg, 157S, fol. XVI.), and by others. 



^"^Vladislaus III. was King of Poland, 1434-44, S-^d also became King of Hungary in 

 1440. Tursius seems to be a Latinized name and cannot be identified. 



END OF BOOK I. 



