Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/165

 LAURIUM. Sunium to Thorlcus, on the eastern coast. Its pre- sent condition is thus described by Mr. Dodwell : — " One hour from Thorikos brought us to one of the ancient shafts of the silver mines ; and a few hun- dred yards further we came to several others, which are of a square form, and cut in the rock. We ob- served only one round shaft, which was larger than the others, and of considerable depth, as we conjec- tured, from the time that the stones, which were thrown in, took to reach the bottom. Near this are the foundations of a large round tower, and several remains of ancient walls, of regular construction. The traces are so extensive, that they seem to indi- cate, not only the buildings attached to the mines, but the town of Laurium itself, which was probably strongly fortified, and inhabited principally by the people belonging to the mines." Some modem writers doubt whether there was a town of the name of Laurium ; but the grammarians (Suidas and Photius) who call Laurium a place (t^ttos) in Attica appear to have meant something more than a mountain ; and Dodwell is probably coirect in regarding the ruins which he describes as those of the town of Lamium. Near these ruins Dodwell observed several large heaps of scoria scattered about. Dr. Wordsworth, in passing along the shore from Sunium to Thoricus, observes: — " The ground which we tread is strewed with rusty heaps of scoria from the silver ore which once enriched the soil. On our left is a hill, called Scorey so named from these heaps of scoria, with which it is covered. Here the shafts which have been sunk for working the ore are visible." The ores of this district have been ascertained to contain lead as well as silver (Walpole's Turkey, p. 426). This confirms the emendations of a passage in the Aristotelian Oeconomics proposed by Bbckh and Wordsworth, where, instead of Tvpioiv in XIvQokXtjs ^Adrvato$ 'Ad-qvaiois avyeSovAfvcre rhy f/.6v§5ov rhv eK rSiv Tvplaiv irapaKaixSaveiV, Bockh sug- gests Aavpiuv, and Wordsworth apyvpiaiv, which ought rather to be apyvpsiaiv, as Jlr. Lewis observes. The name of Laurium is preserved in the corrupt form of Legrana or Alegrand, which is the name of a metokhi of the monastery of Mend^li. The mines of Laurium, according to Xenophon (de Vectig. iv. 2), were worked in remote antiquity; and there can be no doubt that the possession of a large supply of silver was one of the main causes of the early prosperity of Athens. They are alluded to by Aeschylus {Fers. 235) in the line — apyvpov Trrjyr] rts avTo7s eVri, Ojicravphs x^ovos. They were the property of the state, which sold or let for a long term of years, to individuals or com- panies, particular districts, partly in consideration of a sum or fine paid down, partly of a reserved rent equal to one twenty- fourth of the gross produce. Shortly before the Persian wars there was a large sum in the Athenian treasury, arising out of the Laurian mines, from which a distribution of ten drachmae a head was going to be made among the Athenian citizens, when Themistccles persuaded them to apply the money to the increase of their fleet. (Herod, vii. 144; Yxt.Them. 4.) Bockh supposes that the distribution of ten drachmae a head, which Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to forego, was made annually, from which he pro- ceeds to calculate the total produce of the mines. But it has been justly observed by IVIr. Grote, that we are not authorised to conclude from the passage in Herodotus that all the money received from the LAUS. 140 mines was about to be distributed ; nor moreover is there any proof that there was a regular annual dis- tribution. In addition to which the large sum lying in the treasury was probably derived from the ori- ginal purchase money paid down, and not from the reseiwed annual rent. Even in the time of Xenophon (il/em. iii. 6. § 12) the mines yielded much less than at an early period ; and in the age of Philip, there were loud complaints of unsuccessful speculations in mining. In the first century of the Christian era the mines were exhausted, and the old scoriae were smelted a se- cond time. (Strab. ix. p. 399.) In the following century Laurium is mentioned by Pausanias (i. 1 ), who adds that it had once been the seat of the Athenian silver mines. (Dodwtll, Tour through Greece, vol. i. p. 537, seq.; Wordsworth, Athens and Attica, p. 208, seq. ; Walpole's Turkey, p. 425, seq.; Fiedler, -Keise diirch Grk'ckenland, vol. i. p. 36, seq. ; Leake, Demi of Attka, p. 65; Bockh, Dissertation on the Silver Mines of Laurion, appended to the English translation of his Public Economy of Athens; Grote's Greece, vol. v. p. 71, seq.) LAU'RIUM, a village in Etrmia, more correctly written Lorium. [LoRiusi.] LAURON (Aavpajc: prob. Laury, W. of Xucar, in Valencia), a town of Hispania Tarraconensis, near Sucro, and not far from the sea. Though apparently an insignificant place, it is invested with great in- terest in history, both for the siege it endured in the Sertorian War, and as the scene of the death of Cn. Pompeius the Younger, after his flight from the de- feat of Munda. (Liv. xxxiv. 17 ; Appian, B. C. i. 109 ; Plut. Sert. 18, Pomp. 18 ; Flor. iii. 22, iv. 2, comp. Bell. Hisp. 37 ; Oros. v. 23 ; Ukert, vol. ii. pt. 1. i)._404.) [P. S.] LAUS(Aooy: Eth.Aalvos: near 5ca/ea), a city on the W. coast of Lucania, at the mouth of the river of the same name, which formed the boundary between Lucania and Bruttium. (Strab. vi. pp. 253, 254.) It was a Greek city, and a colony of Sybaris; but the date of its foundation is unknown, and we have very little information as to its history. He- rodotus tells us that, after the destruction of Sybaris in B.C. 510, the inhabitants who survived the catas- trophe took refuge in Laiis and Scidrus (Herod, vi. 20) ; but he does not say, as has been supposed, that these cities were then founded by the Sybarites : it is far more probable that they had been settled long before, during the greatness of Sybaris, when Posi- donia also was planted by that city on the coast of the Tyrrhenian sea. The only other mention of Laiis in history is on occasion of a great defeat sus- tained there by the allied forces of the Greek cities in southern Italy, who had apparently united their arms in order to check the progress of the Lucanians, who were at this period rapidly extending their power towards the south. The Greeks were defeated with great slaughter, and it is probable that Laiis itself fell into the hands of the barbarians. (Strab. vi. p. 253.) From this time we hear no more of the city : and though Strabo speaks of it as still in ex- istence in his time, it seems to have disappeared be- fore the days of Pliny. The latter author, however (as well as Ptolemy), notices the river Laiis, which Pliny concurs with Strabo in fixing as the boundary between Lucania and Bruttium. (Strab. I.e.; Phn. iii. 5. s. 10; Ptol. iii. 1. § 9 ; Steph. B. s.v.) The river Laiis still retains its ancient name as, the Lao, or Laino : it is a considerable stream, falling into the Gulf of Policastro. Near its sources l3