mining, quarrying, and salt making: Rome 749 cessity for life that public access was guaranteed: A story was told about Lysimachus, a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great and later king of Thrace (306–281 c.e.), who decided to levy a tax on the freely available salt from a spring at Tragasae near coastal Hamaxitos in the southwestern Troad The salt springs immediately dried up, Lysimachus revoked his edict, and the salt miraculously reappeared ROME BY J OHN 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 documentary sources (the ancient scholars Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and the Elder Pliny) But the Romans, unlike their Greek predecessors, often attached to mining a moral interpretation: the violation of earth for unnecessary human desires, an attitude that pervades Pliny’s Natural History The 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 island of Elba (which is estimated to have yielded 11 million tons of iron ore in antiquity), and in the early empire at extraordinarily large workings in Noricum (central Austria) The 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 shafts 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 significant improvements to Greek practices In the search for gold, for example, they developed sophisticated sluicing techniques using aqueducts constructed specifically for bringing sufficient quantities of water to provide forced jets to separate the gold from the alluvium (lose material deposited by running water), best seen at the workings of Las Médulas in northwestern Spain They also lined the sluices with gorse branches, to trap the particles of gold Safety was somewhat improved, though not necessarily intentionally The 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 There seems to have been a greater understanding of the effects of poisonous Lead pig (ingot), Roman Britain (76 c.e.), from Hints Common, Staffordshire; lead was obtained as a by-product of silver mining (© The Trustees of the British Museum) 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 drowning; 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 shafts 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 The Romans throughout their history relied on plentiful native Italian rock like volcanic tufa and limestone travertine, which they quarried for the building blocks of their monumental structures Marble, which became desirable in the middle Republic as Greek cultural influences began to permeate Roman society, at first had to be imported from the established quarries of the eastern Mediterranean; this was true until late in the first century b.c.e., when extensive marble 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 water, expanded with sufficient force to fracture the stone The Romans introduced saws for cutting the blocks, and one lateimperial example of a river-powered waterwheel is known, which provided the necessary reciprocal motion to operate the saws These saws also gave the Romans a significant advantage in producing remarkably thin marble veneers, which