Note 29 — BOOK I.

[Pg 23][29] There is no doubt that Thucydides had some connection with gold mines; he himself is the authority for the statement that he worked mines in Thrace. Agricola seems to have obtained his idea that Thucydides held an appointment from the Athenians in charge of mines in Thasos, from Marcellinus (Vita, Thucydides, 30), who also says that Thucydides obtained possession of mines in Thrace through his marriage with a Thracian woman, and that it was while residing on the mines at Scapte-Hyle that he wrote his history. Later scholars, however, find little warrant for these assertions. The gold mines of Thasos—an island off the mainland of Thrace—are frequently mentioned by the ancient authors. Herodotus, VI., 46-47, says:—"Their (the Thasians') revenue was derived partly from their possessions upon the mainland, partly from the mines which they owned. They were masters of the gold mines of Scapte-Hyle, the yearly produce of which amounted to eighty talents. Their mines in Thasos yielded less, but still were so prolific that besides being entirely free from land-tax they had a surplus of income derived from the two sources of their territory on the mainland and their mines, in common years two hundred and in best years three hundred talents. I myself have seen the mines in question. By far the most curious of them are those which the Phoenicians discovered at the time when they went with Thasos and colonized the island, which took its name from him. [Pg 24]These Phoenician workings are in Thasos itself, between Coenyra and a place called Aenyra over against Samothrace; a high mountain has been turned upside down in the search for ores." (Rawlinson's Trans.). The occasion of this statement of Herodotus was the relations of the Thasians with Darius (521-486 B.C.). The date of the Phoenician colonization of Thasos is highly nebular—anywhere from 1200 to 900 B.C.