ARGENTUM.                                121
	pated) and let them out to the contractors, as the safest and most profitable of all investments of the public money. There was no fear (as he assured them) of the mines being exhausted : no miners had ever come to the end of the veins, however deep they had sunk their shafts, and the entire mountain-range was equally productive wherever opened. Nevertheless, 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 Laurium, " where the Athe­nians had silver-mines formerly." Diodorus, Strabo's contemporary, contrasts the poverty of the Attic mines in his own times 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 Pyrencea), 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 overladen therewith, they weighted the anchors with silver in place of the lead originally put in them for that purpose. At last' the Iberians set to working the mines themselves. They were of copper, silver, and gold. From the copper-ore they obtained one-fourth pure metal. " Some of the silver-miners get in three days as much as an Rubaeic 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