Silver from Laureion: Mining, Smelting and Minting

In the first part of this article, Thür investigates how Athens encouraged private people to engage in prospecting silver ore and in leasing and exploiting the mines. The focus is on the legal framework, public and private, of ‘producing’ silver. Thür holds with Palme against Lambert that IG 2(3) 433 concerns prospecting silver ore and not exploiting agricultural land. For leasing the mines by auction, some insights come from the recently published Hyperides speech Against Timandros. In the second part, Faraguna focuses on the ‘distribution’ of the extracted silver. Since metallurgical analyses have shown that Athenian coinage was mostly struck from Attic silver, the question arises of what strategies the Athenian mint employed to acquire the metal necessary for its massive output. An examination of different possible explanations leads to the conclusion that Athens profited from the mines through a variety of taxes, including a significant share in the silver produced by the lessees.