A mineral resource in a small state
Athens was never a large territory, but it sat on a valuable resource. In the south-east of Attica, the region around Athens, lies the hill country of Laurion (now Lavrion), where lead-bearing ores contain silver. The Laurion silver mines produced much of the silver used for Athenian coinage in the sixth to fourth centuries BCE and are among the best-known mining centres of the ancient Greek world.
There is evidence of earlier exploitation, and mining continued, with interruptions, into the Roman period. But the most famous phase belongs to the Classical age, when mining and Athenian power developed together.
How the silver was obtained
The silver occurs mixed with lead, so miners dug for lead ore and then had the silver separated. Underground, workers cut shafts, sometimes very deep by ancient standards, and then narrow galleries following the ore-bearing layers. The passages were often cramped, so that miners had to work in confined, dark and poorly ventilated spaces, lit by small clay lamps. Ore was hauled up in baskets, and in some places ladders and winches were used.
On the surface the ore was crushed and washed at special workshops, called ore-washing installations, many of whose remains are still visible. The concentrate was then smelted to produce lead containing silver. A further process, called cupellation, heated this lead in a furnace with a strong draught of air. The lead oxidised and was absorbed or skimmed away, leaving silver behind. The silver was then cast into ingots or struck into coins, a process explained in coin minting.
The strike of 483 BCE and the fleet
The best-known episode comes from Herodotus. He says that around 483 or 482 BCE the Athenians struck a very rich vein, and that there was a proposal to share the proceeds among citizens. Themistocles persuaded them instead to use the money to build ships, and Herodotus says they built two hundred. Other ancient writers give somewhat different figures and details, so the exact numbers are uncertain. Many historians accept that a major find, along with Themistocles’ political arguments, led to a large expansion of the navy shortly before Xerxes’ invasion.
That fleet, built around the Greek trireme, proved crucial at Salamis in 480 BCE. The strategy is described in Themistocles naval strategy, and the wider conflict in Greco-Persian conflict. Later, naval power also supported the Delian League tribute system, and in this way silver, ships and imperial income were linked.
Who owned and who worked the mines
The land was not private in the usual sense. The Athenian state owned the mineral rights and leased concessions to private contractors for a fee, with the leases recorded by officials. Contractors could be wealthy citizens and invested in labour and equipment. This arrangement brought the city revenue without it having to run the mines directly, and it fits the democratic system that is outlined under Athenian democracy.
The labour force was largely enslaved. Ancient writers, including Xenophon, describe wealthy Athenians who hired out many enslaved men to the mines. Xenophon’s work on revenues mentions the owner Nicias hiring out a thousand, though the exact number is a literary report. The people at Laurion included many non-Greeks, with origins in Thrace, Anatolia and elsewhere, purchased through the slave market. Conditions were harsh, and life expectancy was probably short. The legal status of such workers is discussed in Roman slavery, a related but separate system.
During the Peloponnesian War, after Sparta occupied Decelea in Attica in 413 BCE, Thucydides reports that more than twenty thousand enslaved people, many of them skilled workers, escaped, which hurt Athens. It is not clear how many of them came from the mines, but the figure shows how large the enslaved workforce was. A later slave revolt at Laurion, around the end of the second century BCE, is reported by other writers.
From ore to owls
Silver from Laurion was minted into the famous Athenian tetradrachm, which showed the goddess Athena on one side and an owl on the other. The “owls” were widely accepted around the Mediterranean and beyond, partly because of their reliable weight and purity. This allowed Athens to pay for imports, soldiers, rowers and public building, and it helped make Athenian coinage an international standard in the fifth century BCE.
Decline
Production fell in the fourth century BCE and again later, as the richest ores were worked out and as Athens’s political power faded. By the time of the geographer Strabo, in the early Roman period, he says miners were reprocessing old waste heaps to extract the silver that earlier methods had missed. In modern times the area was mined again for lead and other metals.
The story of Laurion is a reminder that Athenian cultural achievement depended on a material base, including the labour of people who had no say in the city’s affairs. It is also a useful case of how a state’s wealth could rest on a single, finite resource.