Victory
and a tripod of fine gold for an offering there, after vain search at
home sent agents into Greece, who came to Corinth, and discovered at
last that Architeles, a Corinthian, had accumulated a considerable
amount by purchasing gold coin little by little through a long space of
time. This person sold them the amount required, and then gave into the
bargain a handful of gold pieces. In return for this liberality Iliero
sent him back a shipload of com and many other presents.
It
is therefore to be concluded that at this time the Thasian mines were
still in the hands of the Phoenicians,* who transmitted all their
produce to Tyre. When, however, Philip had made himself master of the
mines in Thrace, at Crenides and Scapte-Hyle, places under Mount
Pan-gaeus, which had belonged to the Thasians when Herodotus visited
that island, he changed the name to Philippi, and prosecuted the works
with great vigour and proportionate success, as appears from the
extensive coinage of gold, which he was the first of the Greeks to put
into circulation. These mines brought him in 1000 talents, or 60,000
pounds' weight of gold every year. They continued to be worked down to
the end of the Macedonian kingdom. In the beginning of the reign of
Perseus, Polybius notices that Abrobatis, a Thracian king, had got
possession of them, but the Romans speedily expelled him. The first act
of the latter on their conquest of Macedonia was to stop the works,
only allowing the copper and the iron-mining to be prosecuted as before
(Liv. xlv. 29). Inasmuch as this act is classed amongst their other
benefactions to the vanquished, such as the grant of freedom, the
reduction of the taxes to one-half—it would seem that the
