Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/90

 Phoenician mines lie in the part of Thasos between the district of Aenyra and Coenyra; a great mountain has been upturned in the search ." But the most famous mines on the mainland of Thrace were those of Mount Pangaeum, Crenides, and Datum. Strabo gives a succinct account of this wealthy district: "There are other cities round the gulf of the Strymon, as for instance Myrcinus, Argilus, Drabescus, Datum. The last-named has very excellent and fruitful land and shipbuilding-*yards, and mines of gold, from which comes the proverb a Datum of riches, just like loads of wealth." And in another passage he says that, "there are very numerous gold-mines at Crenides. The city of Philippi is now seated close to the Pangaeum Mount. And the Pangaeum Mount too has mines of gold and silver, and so has the region both on the other side of and on this side the Strymon as far as Paeonia. And they say likewise that those who plough the Paeonian land find some morsels of gold."

It was in a struggle with a Thracian tribe, the Edonians, for the possession of the mines at Datum that Sophanes, the son of Eutychides of Decelea, who had distinguished himself above all other Athenians at the battle of Plataea, was killed. The possession of Thasos and the coast of Thrace was not the least important means by which Athens held her supremacy in Greece, and when Philip (360-336 ) finally got supreme control over all this region, and built his new capital of Philippi, his path of conquest was henceforward made easy by the golden Philippi, the regale nomisma of Horace,

Diffidit urbium Portas uir Macedo, et subruit aemulos Reges muneribus.

(Carm. 16. 13.)

Passing on now to Southern Asia we find that there gold was found in Carmania (the modern Kerman) on the Persian Gulf. Strabo states on the authority of Onesicritus that in Carmania a river carries down gold-dust, and that there is likewise a mine of dug gold and of silver and of copper.