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Argentum, Silver

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ARGENTUM.
of corresponding profits to the Thracian lessee, who had to feed these miners, pay a royalty to the state, and supply all the other expenses of the mining operations. Similarly Hipponicus had six hundred slaves let out at one mina (31. 5s.) per day, and Philemonides half that number. These wealthy Athenians were too cautious to embark in mining operations themselves : the actual fanners of the mines were usually foreigners, as in the case named—Thracians, who had studied the business in the ancient mines of their own country. The state encouraged these operations as much as possible by allowing foreigners to embark in them on an equal footing with the natives. These lessees under the state paid their royalties in the form of a poll-tax on every slave employed; an excellent plan for preventing their cheating the revenue. Xenophon could devise no better expedient for restoring the Athenian finances than that the state should purchase slaves as a national concern and let them out to the contractors, as the safest and most profitable of all invest­ments of the public money. There was no fear of the mines ever being exhausted: no miners had ever come to the end of the veins, however deep they had sunk their shafts, and the range was equally productive wherever opened. However, in Strabo's time', four hundred years later, the mines were com­pletely worked out. They had become a thing of tradition by the middle of the second century : Pausanias speaks of Laurion, " where the Athenians had silver-mines formerly."
Diodorus contrasts the poverty of the Attic mines with the certain wealth of the Spanish, saying that mining in the former was a complete lottery ("enigma"), where many were not merely disappointed, but lost all they had in the first outlay; whereas in the latter they make profits beyond their hopes. The woods clothing the mountains having been completely burnt off by an accidental fire (whence called Pyrenasa), the silver-ore near the surface was melted, and flowed out in streams. This the Phoenician traders obtained for a trifle from the igno­rant natives; and, their ships being overloaded therewith, they weighted the anchors with silver in place of the lead first put in them. At last the Iberians set to work the mines themselves. These were of copper, silver, and gold. From the copper-ore
Argentum, Silver Page of 453 Argentum, Silver
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