Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/96

 those who have been appointed to this misery those who surpass in bodily strength cut with iron pickaxes the glittering rock, not by bringing skill to bear upon their tasks, but by mere brute force, and they hew out galleries, not in a straight line, but according to the vein of the glittering rock. They then living in darkness owing to the bends and twists in the pits carry about lamps fitted on their foreheads, and changing in many ways the posture of their bodies according to the peculiarity of the rock throw down on the floor the fragments that are being hewn, and this they do unceasingly under the severity and stripes of an overseer. But the boys who have not yet reached manhood going in through the shafts into the excavations in the rock, laboriously cast up the rock that is being thrown down bit by bit, and convey it to the place outside the mouth of the shaft into the light. But the men who are more than thirty years old take a fixed measure of the quarried stone, and pound it in stone mortars with iron pestles until they reduce it to the size of a vetch. From these the women and older men receive the stone now reduced to pieces the size of a vetch, and as there is a considerable number of mills there in a row, they cast the stone upon them, they stand beside them at the handle in threes or twos, they grind until they have reduced the measure given them to the fineness of wheaten flour. And since they are all regardless of their persons, and have not a garment to cover their nakedness, no one who saw them could refrain from pitying the hapless creatures owing to their excessive misery. For there is absolutely no consideration nor relaxation for sick, or maimed, for aged man, or weak woman, but all are forced to toil on at their tasks until, worn out by their miseries, they die amid their toils. Wherefore the unhappy beings regard the future as more to be dreaded than the present owing to the excess of punishment, and expect death as more to be longed for than life.

"But finally the craftsmen get the ground-up stone, and complete the process. For they rub the ground-up quartz on a broad board placed on a slight incline, pouring water on it. Then the earthy part of it, melting away by the action of the