instance, the prosperous silver mines in Spain which belonged to Carthage5 ;
sometimes they were the property of great and illustrious families, as were
the Athenian mines in Mount Laurion6.
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 metals, 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 mystery. 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 Ceirturies 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
vifeo was the decadence of Athens, and, but for fitful displays, the State was not able to maintain 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
damps. He says (ix., 1, 23) : " The silver mines in Attica were at first of importance, but
