348 ATHENS. 
abundantly upon the mountain, together with 
Salvia pomifera, and Salvia verbascum; and to 
this circumstance may be owing the very 
heating quality of the honey of Hymettus. The 
powerful aromatic exhalation of these plants 
fills the air with a spicy odour: indeed, this 
scented atmosphere is a very striking charac- 
teristic of Greece and of its islands, but it 
peculiarly distinguishes the mountains of Attica. 
The Oy/fcoj of Theophrastus and Dioscorides was 
used as incense in the temples. We heard 
nothing of the silver mines l mentioned by Strabo, 
(l) " The Athenians, we are informed, obtained copper from 
Colone, close to Athens ; where Sophocles has laid the scene of one 
of his most beautiful plays. Silver was procured from Laurium, 
and was the metal in general circulation : there were ten different 
coins of silver, from the tetradrachm to the quarter of an obelus. 
Lead was purchased from the Tyrians : Toy fttlvftio* rot IK rS Tu^iut, 
are the words of Aristides. II. De Cur.Rei Fam. 396. Gold was so 
scarce, at one time, in Greece, that the Lacedaemonians could find 
none to gild the face of the statue of Apollo at Amyclse. (l tvgif- 
Koivts i <r 'EXXS %pu<ria*, Athene, 232.) and therefore sent to Lydia for 
it. There was an abundance when the Temple of Apollo was plundered 
by the Phocian tyrants, and when Alexander had pillaged, says Athe- 
nffius, the treasures of Asia: lib. vi. 231. It is worth remarking, 
that we can tell pretty nearly the century in which the mines of silver 
of Laurium (which was about thirty miles S. E. from Athens) began 
to fail ; at least according to the opinion of the Antients. Thucydidet 
mentions them in two places of his History (Book ii. and vi.) : in the 
sixth book he talks of the revenue derived from the silver mines. It 
is the object of a treatise of Xenophon to recommend the Athenians 
to work the silver mines of Laurium (g< **). But what do Strabo 
and Pausanias say ? The latter asserts that they had failed. Strabo's 
words 
