432 



MONEY OF ATTICA. 



which may be traced to the southward of Thorico for some miles ; 

 immense quantities of scoriae occurring there. The mines were situ- 

 ated much higher along the central ridge of hills * ; the smelting 

 operations were probably carried on near the sea-coast for the conve- 

 nience of fuel, which it soon became necessary to import. 



We have little information handed down to us respecting the mines 

 of Attica, from the time when the Romans became masters of 

 Greece. An insurrection, in the year 135 B. C, of the slaves who were 

 employed in them, shews us that they were then worked (Diod. S. 

 Exc. lib. xxiv. t. 2. 528.); but the revenue they gave must have been 

 an object of small consideration to the Romans at this period, as 

 their different conquests supplied them with abundance of wealth. 

 In the year of the city 662, sixty millions of our money were counted 

 in their treasury. (Ferguson, ii. 121.) Large contributions were 

 received from Macedonia, when that country became subject to their 

 arms ; the conquest of it, says Polybius, brought wealth and corrup- 

 tion to Rome ; and the fixed and regular tribute, which the Asiatic 

 provinces offered to pay in the time of Julius Caesar, was 4,100,000/. 

 (Gibbon, 427. Des poids, et des monnoies des anciens.) 



In the reign of Augustus the mines of Laurium were neglected 

 (Strabo, lib. ix.), nor does it appear that any silver was collected there 

 at the time when Pausanias and Plutarch wrote. (Attica, i. De Orac. 

 Defectu.) 



Respecting the interior management of them in the early period of 

 the Athenian republic, we are able to collect only a few materials 

 from their writers. If the treatise of Theophrastus or Aristotle had 

 been extant (Pollux, x. 149.), as well as the comedy of Pherecrates, 

 entitled MtraXXstg, we might have received many curious details. 

 The use of our common bellows ((pv<rcu) was known to the Greeks ; 



* According to a scholiast on iEschylus, (see Casaubon in Strabo, 380. Ox. ed.) there 

 was silver near Thoricus. Phavorinus incorrectly states that there were gold mines at 

 Laurium. "Wheler passed over a tract where cinders in abundance lay scattered up and 

 down ; some silver, he heard, had been secretly extracted from the ore found there. — 

 See also Hobhouse's Travels, 4 1 7. 420. 



