cessity for life that public access was guaranteed: A story was
told about Lysimachus, a Macedonian general under Alexan-
der the Great and later king of Th race (306–281 c.e.), who de-
cided to levy a tax on the freely available salt from a spring at
Tragasae near coastal Hamaxitos in the southwestern Troad.
Th e salt springs immediately dried up, Lysimachus revoked
his edict, and the salt miraculously reappeared.
ROME
BY JOHN W. HUMPHREY
As with Greek mining, understanding of Roman practices
depends on a combined study of excavated sites (in this case,
especially Rio Tinto and other Spanish mines) and documen-
tary sources (the ancient scholars Diodorus Siculus, Strabo,
and the Elder Pliny). But the Romans, unlike their Greek pre-
decessors, oft en attached to mining a moral interpretation:
the violation of earth for unnecessary human desires, an at-
titude that pervades Pliny’s Natural History.
Th e Romans depended for their mineral resources on
mines generally located in the western Mediterranean. Gold
was mined in Gaul and Spain; silver in Spanish sites like New
Carthage and Rio Tinto (though the Romans also reworked
and reprocessed, with some success, the old deposits and
dumps near Mount Laurium in Attica); lead in Britain; copper
in Spain and Britain (also the source for the tin used in bronze
making); and iron in Gaul (near Lyon) and Spain, though the
most abundant sources were found closer to hand on the is-
land of Elba (which is estimated to have yielded 11 million
tons of iron ore in antiquity), and in the early empire at ex-
traordinarily large workings in Noricum (central Austria).
Th e Romans made no important advances in the design
of tools—the typical iron hammers and picks and wooden
wedges for fracturing rock faces—or in the techniques of
prospecting, which remained surprisingly basic. A comment
by Pliny in his Natural History reveals that visible surface
sightings were the principal means of detection: “Silver is
found only in shaft s and, because it does not have a shining
sparkle like gold, gives no easy indication of its presence.”
In mining processes, however, the Romans made sig-
nifi cant improvements to Greek practices. In the search for
gold, for example, they developed sophisticated sluicing tech-
niques using aqueducts constructed specifi cally for bringing
suffi cient quantities of water to provide forced jets to sepa-
rate the gold from the alluvium (lose material deposited by
running water), best seen at the workings of Las Médulas in
northwestern Spain. Th ey also lined the sluices with gorse
branches, to trap the particles of gold. Safety was somewhat
improved, though not necessarily intentionally. Th e use of
open-pit iron mines on Elba must have reduced the mortality
rate of miners, though their environmental impact was huge.
Wooden timbering to support the roofs and walls of galleries
became more common (as, for example, at New Carthage),
though it was still not standard practice. Th ere seems to have
been a greater understanding of the eff ects of poisonous
fumes, but detection techniques were primitive. And, typical
of the Romans’ interest in hydraulic engineering, deep mines
were equipped with mechanical drainage devices to allow
mining below the water table and lessen the risk of drown-
ing; these included Archimedean screws and waterwheels
with compartmented rims, of which four pairs in Rio Tinto,
operated by treadmills, raised the water about 100 feet out of
the shaft s.
As in Greece, most miners were slaves and criminals, an
indication that safety practices had not improved enough to
attract free labor. Almost all mines were state property but
were leased to corporations of capitalists (the publicani) for
their administration, though with strict regulations known
from surviving contracts.
Th e Romans throughout their history relied on plenti-
ful native Italian rock like volcanic tufa and limestone trav-
ertine, which they quarried for the building blocks of their
monumental structures. Marble, which became desirable in
the middle Republic as Greek cultural infl uences began to
permeate Roman society, at fi rst had to be imported from the
established quarries of the eastern Mediterranean; this was
true until late in the fi rst century b.c.e., when extensive mar-
ble deposits were discovered in the Carrara Mountains near
Luna (modern-day Luni) in northwestern Italy; the quarries
begun there by the Roman stonemasons produced excellent
white and blue-gray marble and are still in use in the 21st
century.
Basic quarrying techniques mirrored those of the Greeks:
hammers and iron chisels were used for the initial cutting
of rectangular blocks, which were then split from the parent
rock by inserting wooden wedges that, when soaked with wa-
ter, expanded with suffi cient force to fracture the stone. Th e
Romans introduced saws for cutting the blocks, and one late-
imperial example of a river-powered waterwheel is known,
which provided the necessary reciprocal motion to operate
the saws. Th ese saws also gave the Romans a signifi cant ad-
vantage in producing remarkably thin marble veneers, whichLead pig (ingot), Roman Britain (76 c.e.), from Hints Common,
Staff ordshire; lead was obtained as a by-product of silver mining.
(© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)mining, quarrying, and salt making: Rome 749