Note 4 — BOOK II.

This statement is either based upon Apollodorus, whom Agricola does not mention among his authorities, or on Strabo, whom he does so include. The former in his work on Mythology makes such a statement, for which Strabo (XIV., 5, 28) takes him to task as follows: "With this vain intention they collected the stories related by the Scepsian [Pg 27](Demetrius), and taken from Callisthenes and other writers, who did not clear them from false notions respecting the Halizones; for example, that the wealth of Tantalus and of the Pelopidae was derived, it is said, from the mines about Phrygia and Sipylus; that of Cadmus from the mines of Thrace and Mount Pangaeum; that of Priam from the gold mines of Astyra, near Abydos (of which at present there are small remains, yet there is a large quantity of matter ejected, and the excavations are proofs of former workings); that of Midas from the mines about Mount Bermium; that of Gyges, Alyattes, and Croesus, from the mines in Lydia and the small deserted city between Atarneus and Pergamum, where are the sites of exhausted mines." (Hamilton's Trans., Vol. III., p. 66).

In adopting this view, Agricola apparently applied a wonderful realism to some Greek mythology—for instance, in the legend of Midas, which tells of that king being rewarded by the god Dionysus, who granted his request that all he touched might turn to gold; but the inconvenience of the gift drove him to pray for relief, which he obtained by bathing in the Pactolus, the sands of which thereupon became highly auriferous. Priam was, of course, King of Troy, but Homer does not exhibit him as a mine-owner. Gyges, Alyattes, and Croesus were successively Kings of Lydia, from 687 to 546 B.C., and were no doubt possessed of great treasure in gold. Some few years ago we had occasion to inquire into extensive old workings locally reputed to be Croesus' mines, at a place some distance north of Smyrna, which would correspond very closely to the locality here mentioned.