Laurion
The Laurion (in Greek old Λαύριον / Laúrion and Λαύρειον / Laúreion ) is a Greek mountain located at the south of the Attique, slightly in the north of the course Sounion.
Mines of Laurion
Laurion was famous in the Antiquité for its mines of money. After the discovery of a new seam in 483 av. J. - C. close to the borough of Maronée, they constituted one of the independent sources of income of the city of Athens. Little before the second war medic, the seams provided hundred Talent S per annum. Thémistocle made distribute the incomes of the mine to richest of the Athenians, with load for them to make build Trière S. In 480 av. J. - C., Athens had 200 trières thus, which made the most powerful Greek fleet of it. This enabled him to gain the Bataille of Salamine, then to constitute the Ligue of Délos. The seams became exhausted little by little, becoming much less important at fourth century BC It knew a resumption in 355 av. J. - C., but in the time of the Roman occupation , the drawn incomes were negligible.
The mines were worked by slaves pertaining to private individuals, rented a Obole by man and per day (Xénophon, Of the incomes ), that is to say 60 Drachme S per annum. This hiring of slaves represented a placement very snuffed in Athens. Very many mine shafts have to be dug in the marble by these slaves. They extracted more than thousand tons of siver-bearing lead. These mine shafts go down sometimes up to hundred meters. With these depths oxygen is rarefied. However to extract rubble and siver-bearing lead, it was advisable to prevent all oscillatory movements with the bucket. It was fringed flexible plants and was suspended with a cord in the conduit of extraction. The conduit of access was a free column with baffles. With each increase of the bucket a hundred m3 of fresh air was animated. Maybe for the digging of a well of one hundred meters a cumulated volume about the million m3 of fresh air for a thousand of tons of rubble. The minor slaves knew living conditions particularly testing: they were often connected, in narrow and unhealthy galleries. The revolts or the escapes were frequent. The slaves took refuge, most of the time, in the sanctuary of the Cape Sounion. Athénée even states that a group of slaves was barricaded in the temple of Poséidon.
See too
Related articles
- the site of Thorikos, in the vicinity immediate of the mines of Laurion, still shows the archaeological traces of a richness drawn from the linked activities with siver-bearing lead.
- economy of ancient Greece
- Slavery in ancient Greece
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