Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

Here, at last, we found ourselves again among men; three thousand operatives, many of them with families, make quite a busy town of Ergasteria. And I could not but contrast their bold and independent looks, rough and savage as they seemed, with what must have been the appearance of the droves of slaves who worked the mines in old days. We were rowed ashore from our steamer by two men called Aristides and Epaminondas, but I cannot say that their looks betokened either the justice of the one or the culture of the other.

We found ourselves when we landed in an awkward predicament. The last English engineer remaining in the Mining Company, at whose invitation we had ventured into this wild district, had suddenly left, that morning, for Athens. His house was shut up, and we were left friendless and alone, among [pg 168]three thousand of these Aristideses and Epaminondases, whose appearance was, as I have said, anything but reassuring. We did what was best to meet the difficulty, and what was not only the best thing to do, but the only thing, and it turned out very well indeed. We went to the temporary director of the mines, a very polished gentleman, with a charming wife, both of whom spoke French excellently. We stated our case, and requested hospitality for the night. Nothing could be more friendly than our reception. This benevolent man and his wife took us into their own house, prepared rooms for us, and promised to let us see all the curiosities of the country. Thus our misfortune became, in fact, a very good fortune. The night, however, it must be confessed, was spent in a very unequal conflict with mosquitoes—an inconvenience which our good hostess in vain endeavored to obviate by giving us a strong-smelling powder to burn in our room, and shutting all the windows. But had the remedy been even successful, it is very doubtful whether it was not worse than the disease.

We started in the morning by a special train—for the company have a private line from the coast up to the mines—to ascend the wooded and hilly country into the region so celebrated of old as one of the main sources of Athenian wealth. As the train wound its way round the somewhat steep ascent, our prospect over the sea and its islands [pg 169]became larger and more varied. The wild rocks and forests of southern Eubœa—one of the few districts in Greece which seem to have been as savage and deserted in old days as they are now—detached themselves from the intervening island of Helena. We were told that wild boars were still to be found in Eubœa. In the hills about Laurium, hares, which Xenophon so loved to hunt in his Elean retreat, and turtle doves, seemed the only game attainable. All the hills were covered with stunted underwood.

Laurium

The mines of Laurium appear very suddenly in Attic history, but from that time onward are a prominent part of the wealth of the Athenians. We know that in Solon’s day there was great scarcity of money, and that he was obliged to depreciate the value of the coinage—a very violent and unprecedented measure, never repeated; for, all through later history, Attic silver was so good that it circulated at a premium in foreign parts just as English money does now. Accordingly, in Solon’s time we hear no mention of this great and almost inexhaustible source of national wealth. All through the reign of the Peisistratids there is a like silence. Suddenly, after the liberation of Athens, we hear of Themistocles persuading the people to apply the very large revenue from these mines to the building of a fleet for the purpose of the war with Ægina.[67] [pg 170]The so-called Xenophon On the Attic Revenues—a tract which is almost altogether about these mines—asserts indeed that they had been worked from remote antiquity; and there can be little doubt that here, as elsewhere in Greece, the Phœnicians had been the forerunners of the natives in the art of mining. Here, as in Thasos, I believe the Phœnicians had their settlements; and possibly a closer survey of the great underground passages, which are still there, may give us some proof by inscriptions or otherwise.

But what happened after the Semitic traders had been expelled from Greek waters?—for expelled they were, though, perhaps, far later from some remote and unexplored points than we usually imagine. I suppose that when this took place Athens was by no means in a condition to think about prosecuting trade at Sunium. Salamis, which was far closer and a more obvious possession, was only conquered in Solon’s day, after a long and [pg 171]tedious struggle; and I am perfectly certain that the Athenians could have had no power to hold an outlying dependency, separated by thirty miles of the roughest mountain country, when they had not subdued an island scarcely a mile from the Thriasian plain and not ten miles from Athens. I take it, then, that the so-called συνοικισμός, or unifying of Athens, in prehistoric times, by Theseus, or whoever did it, was not a cementing of all Attica, including these remote corners, but only of the settlements about the plains of Attica, Marathon, and Eleusis; and that the southern end of the peninsula was not included in the Athens of early days. It was, in fact, only accessible by a carefully constructed artificial road, such as we hear of afterward, or by sea. The Athenians had not either of these means of access at so early a period. And it is not a little remarkable that the first mention of their ownership of the silver mines is associated with the building of a fleet to contend with Ægina. I have no doubt that Themistocles’s advice has been preserved without his reasons for it. He persuaded the Athenians to surrender their surplus revenue from Laurium, to build ships against the Æginetans, simply because they found that without ships the Æginetans would be practically sole possessors of the mines. They were far closer to Laurium by sea than Athens was by land—closer, indeed, in every way—and I am led to suspect that, in the days before Solon, the [pg 172]mines may have been secretly worked by Ægina, and not by Athens. I cannot here enter into my full reasons, but I fancy that Peisistratus and his sons—not by conquest, but by some agreement—got practical possession of the mines, and were, perhaps, the first to make all Attica really subject to the power of Athens.[68] But no sooner are they expelled than the Æginetans renew their attacks or claims on Laurium; and it is only the Athenian fleet which secures to Athens its possession. We hear of proceedings of Hippias about coinage,[69] which are adduced by Aristotle as specimens of injustice, or sharp practice, and which may have something to do with the acquisition of the silver mines by his dynasty. But I must cut short this serious dissertation.

Our special train brought us up slowly round wooded heights, and through rich green brakes, into a lonely country, from which glimpses of the sea could, however, still be seen, and glimpses of blue islands, between the hills. And so we came to the settlements of the modern miners. The great Company, whose guests we were, had been started some [pg 173]years ago, by French and Italian speculators, and Professor Anstead had been there as geologist for some years. But the jealousy of the Greeks, when they found out that profit was rewarding foreign enterprise, caused legislation against the Company; various complications followed, so that at last they gladly sold their interest to a native Company. In 1887 this Company was still thriving; and I saw in the harbor a large vessel from Glasgow, which had come to carry the lead to Scotland, when prepared in blocks—all the produce being still bought by a single English firm.

When the Greeks discuss these negotiations about the mines they put quite a different color on the affair. They say that the French and Italians desired to evade fair payment for the ground-rent of the mines, trusting to the strength of their respective governments, and the weakness of Greece. The Company’s policy is described in Greece as an over-reaching, unscrupulous attempt to make great profits by sharp bargains with the natives, who did not know the value of their property. A great number of obscure details are adduced in favor of their arguments, and it seemed to me that the Greeks were really convinced of their truth. In such a matter it would be unfair to decide without stating both sides; and I am quite prepared to change my present conviction that the Greeks were most to blame, if proper reasons can be assigned. But the legis[pg 174]lative Acts passed in their Parliament look very ugly indeed at first sight.

The principal Laurium Company[70] never enter the mines at all, but gather the great mass of scoriæ, which the old Athenians threw out after smelting with more imperfect furnaces and less heat than ours. These scoriæ, which look like stone cinders, have been so long there that some vegetation has at last grown over them, and the traveller does not suspect that all the soil around was raised and altered by the hand of man. Owing to the power of steam, and their railway, the present miners carry down the scoriæ on trucks to the sea-coast, to Ergasteria, and there smelt them. The old Athenians had their furnaces in the middle of the mountains, where many of them are still to be seen. They sought chiefly for silver, whereas the modern Company are chiefly in pursuit of lead, and obtain but little silver from the scoriæ.