BOOK II. 27 



instance, the prosperous silver mines in Spain which belonged to Carthage' ; 

 sometimes thej' were the property of great and illustrious families, as were 

 the Athenian mines in Mount Laurion*. 



When a man owns mines but is ignorant of the art of mining, then 

 it is advisable that he should share in common with others the expenses, 

 not of one only, but of several mines. When one man alone meets the 

 expense for a long time of a whole mine, if good fortune bestows on him a 

 vein abundant in metals, or in other products, he becomes very wealthy ; if, 

 on the contrary, the mine is poor and barren, in time he will lose everything 

 which he has expended on it. But the man who, in common with others, 

 has laid out his money on several mines in a region renowned for its wealth 

 of metaJs, rarely spends it in vain, for fortune usually responds to his 

 hopes in part. For when out of twelve veins in which he has a joint interest 



■' (Demetrius), and taken from Callisthenes and other writers, who did not clear them from 

 " false notions respecting the Halizones; for example, that the wealth of Tantalus and of the 

 " Pelopidae was derived, it is said, from the mines about Phrygia and Sipylus ; that of Cadmus 

 " from the mines of Thrace and Mount Pangaeum ; that of Priam from the gold mines of 

 " Astyra, near Abydos (of which at present there are small remains, yet there is a large 

 " quantity of matter ejected, and the excavations are proofs of former workings) ; that of 

 " Midas from the mines about Mount Bermium ; that of Gyges, Alyattes, and Croesus, from 

 " the mines in Lydia and the small deserted city between Atarneus and Pergamum, where 

 " are the sites of exhausted mines." (Hamilton's Trans., Vol. in., p. 66). 



In adopting this view, Agricola apparently applied a wonderful realism to some Greek 

 mythology — for instance, in the legend of Midas, which tells of that king being rewarded by 

 the god Dionysus, who granted his request that all he touched might turn to gold ; but the 

 inconvenience of the gift drove him to pray for relief, which he obtained by bathing in the 

 Pactolus, the sands of which thereupon became highly auriferous. Priam was, of course, King 

 of Troy, but Homer does not exhibit him as a mine-owner. Gyges, Alyattes, and Croesus 

 were successively Kings of Lydia, from 687 to 546 B.C., and were no doubt possessed of great 

 treasure in gold. Some few years ago we had occasion to inquire into extensive old workings 

 locally reputed to be Croesus' mines, at a place some distance north of Smyrna, which would 

 correspond very closely to the locality here mentioned. 



'There can be no doubt that the Carthaginians worked the mines of Spain on an 

 extensive scale for a very long period anterior to their conquest by the Romans, but whether 

 the mines were worked by the Government or not we are unable to find any evidence. 



'The silver mines of Mt. Laurion formed the economic mainstay of Athens for the 

 three centuries during which the State had the ascendency in Greece, and there can be no 

 doubt that the dominance of Athens and its position as a sea-power were directly due to the 

 revenues from the mines. The first working of the mines is shrouded in mj'stery. The 

 scarcity of silver in the time of Solon (638-598 B.C.) would not indicate any very considerable 

 output at that time. According to Xenophon (Essay on Revenue of Athens, iv., 2), written 

 about 355 B.C., " they were wrought in very ancient times." The first definite discussion of 

 the mines in Greek record begins about 500 B.C., for about that time the royalties began to 

 figure in the Athenian Budget (Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 47). There can be no doubt 

 that the mines reached great prosperity prior to the Persian invasion. In the year 484 B.C. 

 the mines returned 100 Talents (about 83,700 oz. Troy) to the Treasury, and this, on the 

 advice of Themistocles, was devoted to the construction of the fleet which conquered the 

 Persians at Salamis (480 B.C.). The mines were much interfered with by the Spartan 

 invasions from 431 to 425 B.C., and again by their occupation in 413 B.C. ; and by 355 B.C., 

 when Xenophon wrote the " Revenues," exploitation had fallen to a low ebb, for which he 

 proposes the remedies noted by Agricola on p. 28. By the end of the 4th Century, 

 B.C., the mines had again reached considerable prosperity, as is evidenced by Demosthenes' 

 orations against Pantaenetus and against Phaenippus, and by Lycurgus' prosecution of 

 Diphilos for robbing the supporting pillars. The domination of the Macedonians under Philip 

 and Alexander at the end of the 4th and beginning of the 3rd Centuries B.C., however, so 

 flooded Greece with money from the mines of Thrace, that this probably interfered with 

 Laurion, at this time, in any event, began the decadence of these mines. Synchronous 

 also was the decadence of Athens, and, but foi fitful displays, the State was not able to main- 

 tain even its own independence, not to mention its position as a dominant State. Finally, 

 Strabo, writing about 30 B.C. gives the epitaph of every mining district — reworking the 

 dumps. He says (ix., i, 23) : " The silver mines in Attica were at first of importance, but 



