The Natural History, Ancient and Modern, of Precious Stones and Gems, and of Precious Metals

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1867 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: AEGENTUM : "A/uo? : Silver. In the ancient world Silver was to the game extent the peculiar production of Europe, that Gold was of Asia. Herodotus makes no mention of any mines of silver in the latter country, and even expressly notices that the Scythians and Massagetae, though abounding in gold, had no silver at all. On the other hand, he speaks of Mount Pangaeus in Thrace as containing most productive mines of both metals, and mentions a silver-mine adjacent to the Lake Prasias on the confines of Macedonia that used to bring in a talent of metal (60 Ibs.) in weight per day to Alexander I. (v. 17) : a proof this of the extraordinary richness of the ore, considering the little skill of the Greeks in reducing this metal, and the wasteful process employed. But the most extensive and richest mines of Silver known to the ancient world were in Mount Laurium, or rather the chain of hills occupying the southern extremity of the Attic peninsula. Xenophon (De Vectigal. iv.) describes these mines as having been worked from time immemorial, as was testified by the heaps of rubbish and slag, rivalling in height the natural hills. The earliest coinage known to the world was the produce of these mines, for the old Parian tradition is evidently (on the testimony of the coins themselves) well founded which makes Phidon King of Egina (b. c. 869) the first that struck coin, that is of silver, for some Lydian prince had precededhim in gold. Lucan (vi. 402) quotes a tradition pointing to a not very distant locality, which assigns this invention to Itoneus, a Thessalian king -- " Itoneus first, who in Thessalia reigned...