Modern writers have been inclined to talk of the great “rush” of 484[246]. But against the silence of Herodotus they can set only the reference in the _Constitution of Athens_ to the “discovery” at Maronea, which has been discussed already. What made the great impression at this time was probably not so much the output as the employment of the output on the building of a fleet. That surely is the point of the contemporary allusion in the _Persae_ of Aeschylus. The chorus of Persian elders tells the Persian queen about the Athenians’
Fount of silver, treasure of the land[247]
just after mentioning the prowess of the Athenian troops, and just before explaining the weapons that they use.
The idea proposed in 484 by Themistocles was not original. Seven years earlier the Thasians had used the revenues from their mines to build a fleet against the Persians[248]. It was doubtless the success of the Athenian fleet in a supreme crisis that caused the Athenians to remember with such pride this triumph of the voluntary system.
There can therefore be no question that the mines were worked in the sixth century[249]. But if we are to understand the position of the leader of the mining interests at that period, we must learn something about the conditions and position of the miners.
[Sidenote: and the miners free men, good material for a political faction.]
The leaders of the Plain and Coast had a powerful body of citizens behind their backs. The mines on the other hand, at least from the time of Xenophon, were worked almost exclusively by slaves[250].
In the fourth century very occasionally poor citizens worked their own allotments[251]. Skilled work like smelting seems always to have been done by free men. The tombstone of “Atotes the miner,” carved in letters of the second half of the fourth century, declares that he was a Paphlagonian “of the root of Pylaimenes, who fell slain by the hand of Achilles,” and boasts of his unrivalled skill[252]. But there is no recorded instance of a citizen working in a mine for wages[253]. This however does not prove that they did not do so in the days of Peisistratus, when, as pointed out in the introductory chapter, the conditions of labour must have been very different from what they became in the fifth and fourth centuries, and industrial slavery had scarcely yet begun. A fragment of Solon suggests that it was quite usual in his days for citizens to work with their own hands, though whether for pay or on their own account is not stated and no particular occupations are specified[254].