388 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



copper, tin, mercury, iron, sulphur, and salt. During the republic, the State did 

 not occupy itself much with the management of mines, upon which it looked 

 with some dis-favor, but left them chiefly to the care of private enterprise. Very 

 little was known about the principles that at that time guided the policy of the 

 Romans in this matter. To one who read the thirty-third book of the Natural 

 History of Pliny, it might appear that indifference to wealth and compassion for 

 their fellow-creatures were at the bottom of this disfavor shown by the Romans 

 in their early history for the work of mines. Various proofs in support of this 

 theory were collected by Barba in his Metallurgie. Certain it was, that after the 

 conquest of foreign lands, it was altogether forbidden to work mines in Italy, the 

 mother country. Yet it was remarkable that Pliny should consider Italy the 

 richest country in the world for mineral wealth. However much frugality, so- 

 briety, simplicity of manners, and disregard for luxury might have been virtues 

 practiced by the Romans in the early days of the republic, they but too often 

 yielded in later days to sentiments of a different order. It had been submitted 

 that the restriction limiting the number of men to be employed in the mines of 

 Vercellae to five thousand, so that no more should be employed in the works at 

 one time by the pubHc contractors, was to prevent the latter from exhausting the 

 mines under the terms and by the force of one agreement. Similar restrictions 

 might have been suggested for similar reasons. Thus it was forbidden by a 

 decree of the Theodosian code to export silver from the rich mines of Sardinia 

 on to the mainland. In course of time, however, the greed of gold, so much 

 inveighed against by the Roman moralists, became universal throughout the 

 empire. Mines and public works of all sorts were seized upon, monopolized, 

 and administered by the State through the agency of public farmers, called \.tc\\- 

 mcaXlj publicam. in the days of the republic, however, only the more important 

 mineral products, whether in Italy or the provinces, were claimed as belonging 

 to the State. Among the works at that time in the hands of the government 

 were, said Marquardt, the gold mines near Vercellae, in Northern Italy, employ- 

 ing, as already stated, 5,000 hands; the silver mines near Nova Carthago, in 

 Spain, where 10,000 men were employed, and where the daily output was reck- 

 oned at a value of 25,000 denarii; the gold and silver mines in Macedonia; and 

 the tin and lead mines near Sisapon, in Baetica, the modern Almaden in Anda- 

 lusia. The same fate fell to the lot of a great many other mines, which, when 

 let out by the revenue officers to those who thus came to farm them, were deemed 

 capable of yielding a goodly income. The greater portion, however, of the 

 mines throughout the Roman dominion, were still left in the hands of private 

 speculators. In fact, the heavy rent paid by private works was more profitable 

 to the State than the smaller and more precarious sums paid by the publicani. 

 Livy made the express statement concerning the iron and copper mines in Mace- 

 donia, that they were to be left in the hands of the provincials : while of the gold 

 and silver mines, he said that, on the formation of that country into a Roman 

 province, they were altogether closed, though it was related that some ten years 

 afterward they were reopened and let out in the ordinary way, through the cen- 



