摘要：S ILVER, discovered later than gold and copper, nevertheless has been known to man from prehistoric times. The ancient Greeks obtained their silver from the mines of Laurium which were regarded as the chief source of wealth in Athens; and the Athenian historian, Xenophon, tells of their riches and speaks of them as having been worked from antiquity. About a century later, however, at the time of Demosthenes, the profits from them had greatly decreased, and the Christian world found them completely exhausted. In the nineteenth century these same mines were re-opened, and the actual tools of the Greek miners of some two thousand years ago were discovered in the tunnels and under-ground passageways.
