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Aurum, Gold

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AURUM.                                          95
hint as to these is obtained from Sophocles, who talks of pur­chasing the electrum of Sardis and the Indian gold ('Antig.' 1038), thus indicating the regions whence the supply was chiefly drawn. But Herodotus soon afterwards furnishes copious details concerning the gold-mines known in his times, some fabulous enough, others, resting upon his own knowledge, of the highest value for authenticity.
To begin with the latter.
The gold-mines in Thasos opened by the Phoenicians, who first colonised that island, made " a whole hill turned upside down in the search," between iEnyra and Cinyra, opposite to Samothrace. The Thasians were then working also mines in Scapte-Hyle, on the mainland of Thrace : these produced 80 talents yearly,1 those in the island itself rather less (Her. vi. 46). A friend who visited the former locality not long ago was greatly struck at the enormous extent to which these ancient workings had been carried, still manifested by the vast heaps of earth and stones thrown up out of the "diggings." "Whenever it was possible the ancients extracted all metals by open cuttings.
But infinitely more productive (as is always the case) than these Thasian Mines were the gold-washings (in modern phrase Placers) in the bed of the Pactolus, whose torrent carried down, it was believed, the gold-dust from Mount Tmolus. Some notion may be formed of the immense weight of gold collected by the Lydian washers (who appear speedily to have exhausted the deposit, as the productiveness of the sand is not afterwards alluded to by geographers), from the list of the Donaria made by Alyattes and Croesus to various temples in Asia and Greece, all of which Herodotus had himself examined. This gold is pro­perly termed by Sophocles Electrum, being very pale (similar to the Californian) from the native alloy of silver it contains. As it is a very difficult operation in metallurgy to separate this silver, the earliest coinage, ascribed with justice to the Lydians, and the oldest jewelry, as the Egyptian and Etruscan, is made
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