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Argentum, Silver

Argentum, Silver Page of 453 Argentum, Silver Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
ARGENTUM.
69
they got one-fourth, pure metal. " Some of the silver-miners get in three days as much as an Euboeic talent (65 lbs.) per man. For the whole ground is full of shining silver-dust. At first the natives worked the mines; but after the Roman conquest a multitude of Italians occupied them. These buy vast numbers of slaves whom they employ in the works, open­ing new shafts, sinking down, and driving levels after the course of the veins, many stadia in extent. The further they go, the more splendid veins do they find, full of silver and of gold. The water flooding their workings they raise to the surface by the screw of Archimedes; having a succession of these on different levels, until they bring it up to the mouth of the shaft. The slaves are kept at work both day and night, are cruelly treated, and die off very fast. One singular thing is, that none of the mines are of recent origin, having all been opened by the Carthaginians when masters of the country. By the revenues derived from these mines they were enabled to carry on their long wars against the Libyans, Sicilians, and Romans, entirely by the aid of mercenaries. For of old times the Phoenicians were famous for finding out gain, and the Italians for leaving nothing to anybody else."
Strabo, his contemporary, has a curious note, that, although the Laurian mines were actually worked out, yet the improved state of metallurgy allowed a certain profit to be extracted from remelting the old slag, which had been very imperfectly freed from the metal: a sure proof of the great facility with which it had been raised in former times. This Attic Silver was con­tained in a lead-ore: the latter metal the smelters could but imperfectly separate, hence the leady appearance of the old Greek coinage.
Of Silver-mining amongst the Romans a lucid account is given by Pliny (xxxiii. 31). Silver was found more or less in every part of the empire ; but the Spanish mines bore by far the first rank. These had been opened by the Carthaginians, and were still as productive as ever. That called Baebalo had yielded to Hannibal, who opened it, 300 lbs. in weight per day. By Pliny's date the galleries had been carried a mile and a half into the hill; the Aquitanian labourers, working in spells (the time regulated
Argentum, Silver Page of 453 Argentum, Silver
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