§ 1.
Tacitus doubts whether the gods, propitious or angry, denied silver and gold to our Germans. Certainly they now possess a very great quantity of gold, silver, and gems. Many also greatly censure the grievous labor—τὸν μετὰ πόνου, “that accompanied by toil”—of those who search for mines. They say that gold, had it not been discovered, would have been better placed, and they grieve when
Riches, the incitements of evils, are dug out.
Pliny, in Book Thirty, assails the same pursuit that they condemn: “Now mines themselves, and wealth itself, and the values of things, shall be spoken of, while anxious care searches the earth within in many ways. For in one place it is dug for riches, as life seeks gold, silver, electrum, and bronze; in another for luxuries, gems and pigments for walls and fingers; in another for rashness, iron, more welcome even than gold amid wars and slaughter. We pursue all its fibers and live above an excavated earth, marveling that at some time it yawns open or trembles, as though this too could not be expressed as the indignation of our sacred parent. We go into its entrails, and in the abode of the Manes we seek wealth, as though it were insufficiently kind and fertile wherever it is trodden. Amid these things we search for the sake of remedies least of all. For to how many is medicine the cause of digging? And yet it has given these too on its highest surface, being nowhere sparing and readily accessible in all things that are beneficial. The things that crush us, the things that drive us to the lower world, are those which it concealed and submerged, those which do not come into being: so that a mind suddenly soaring into emptiness may reflect what at length will be the end of exhausting it through all the ages, how far avarice will penetrate. How innocent, how blessed, indeed how luxurious life would be, if it desired nothing except what is above the earth and, to speak briefly, nothing except what is with it!
“Gold is dug out, and chrysocolla beside it, so that it may appear more precious by retaining a name from gold. For it was too little to have discovered one plague of life, unless even the corruption of gold were held at a price. Avarice was seeking silver; meanwhile it counted it a good thing to have found minium, and devised a use for red earth. Alas, monstrous talents! In how many ways have we increased the values of things? The art of painting was added, and by engraving gold and silver we made them dearer. Man learned to challenge nature. Incitements of vices also increased art. It pleased men to engrave lusts upon drinking-vessels, and to drink through obscenities. Thereafter these things were cast away and began to be regarded as sordid; and there was too much gold and silver. From the same earth we dig murrhine and crystal vessels, to which fragility itself was to give value. This was judged a proof of riches, this the true glory of luxury: to possess what could immediately perish altogether. Nor was this enough: we drink amid a host of gems and weave our cups with emeralds; for the sake of drunkenness it is pleasing to hold India, and gold is now merely an accessory.”
§ 2.
All these things are reproaches against avarice, not against resources, as I said at the beginning. For God gave these things also for the use of the human race, which he wished to abound and to shine. Nor are subterranean riches censured in any way different from those which the earth itself brings forth outside: wine and crops, the delights of animals, and the beauty of forms; for folly abuses all these things. Therefore a wise prince will seek out the wealth of mines, and with it will assist the state. To seek gold through wars is wickedness; through seas, danger; through falsehoods, disgrace; but in its own natural place it is justice, as Cassiodorus admonishes.
There is a threefold method of finding it. “Among us,” says Pliny in Book Thirty, chapter 4, “it is obtained in three ways: from the scrapings of rivers, as in the Tagus of Spain, the Padus of Italy, the Hebrus of Thrace, the Pactolus of Asia, and the Ganges of India; by another method it is dug out through shafts of pits, or by the collapse of mountains. Although that found in rivers is said to be the most excellent and most perfect, polished by the very current and friction, nevertheless it is now no longer found—or rather, it is not sought.”
Since, however, enormous advantages arise from mines, gems, marbles, every kind of mineral, and the exudation of metals, they must not be neglected, but must be employed with thanksgiving as benefits given to the state. But if veins appeared long ago, they must be investigated further; new ones too must be considered diligently. Nor must it be thought that God distributed matters in such a way that the ancients dug everything out. Immense riches lie hidden beneath the masses of mountains, some in deep places, others almost in the open. So great is their variety that they appear to contend with those things which grow. “In the uppermost earth, during Nero’s principate, gold was found in Dalmatia which yielded as much as fifty pounds on individual days, although it was found in the very topmost turf,” says Pliny.
§ 3.
It must be established without qualification that very many veins of metals, which are neglected, lie scattered throughout Europe and Asia. A sign of this is the golden sand of rivers, which indicates that the neighboring banks abound in gold. Nor do I think there is any prince who does not possess those riches, but diligence in searching for them is lacking. I do not affirm that gold is everywhere, but that there is some kind of metallic or fossil substance: gold, silver, electrum, bronze, iron, tin, lead, quicksilver, sandarach, minium, cadmia, alum, sulfur, bitumen, Samian, Eretrian, Elian, Selinusian, Pignitis, Ampelitis, Cimolian, Sardian, and Umbrian earth, and so many kinds of stones. For new things of this sort are found every day, which is a sign that they exist. In ancient times none of these was present in this northern Europe of ours; now very many exist in several places, because the cares of mortals were formerly directed elsewhere, whereas now these things are sought. Tacitus denies that silver exists in Germany, but now both it and gold are found.
There is no part of Germany in which some such things are not dug out. Those endowments are present in the County of Tyrol, Bohemia, Saxony, Pannonia, Transylvania, Poland, Hesse, and the Eifel. Indeed, in Norway itself, beneath the arctic cold, there are veins of silver near Ringarike and an abundance of copper in Sunnhordland. In Sweden also mountains of gold, silver, copper, and lead are counted beneath the sixty-second degree. Britain itself produces tin that is almost the rival of silver. Prussia sends electrum, and the Hercynian Forest gems. The cause why less effort is expended in this class of things is either a change of masters and governors, wars, or certainly the magnitude of the expenses. Hence it is scarcely a work for private persons; formerly public contractors leased them, several together, and wealthy men.
There is now rarely a digger for gold in Spain, because New Spain and Peru are more fertile. We nevertheless cannot deny that there are metallic mountains in Spain, since Scripture and experience have shown it. Near New Carthage no fewer than forty thousand men were continually occupied in the work, as Polybius is the authority. Who would believe that the neighboring mountains contain no gold, or that the Carthaginians exhausted them altogether?
Nevertheless, I think that no prince possesses more mines of metals than the emperor of the Turks. Although he is most thirsty for gold, he does not use that advantage, both because of a scarcity of skilled men and by the providence of God, lest he be furnished with such great resources against the remnants of the Christians.
In Deuteronomy 8:9 God promises “a land whose stones are iron,” אבניה ברזל (abaneha barzel), “and from whose mountains metals are dug,” ומהרריה תחצב נחשת (umeharareha taḥṣob neḥosheth). He indicates a great abundance when he says that its stones are iron, as though its abundance of iron were equal to that of stones; and although this is remarkable, the same reasoning applies to silver, as I said above. He also signifies a multitude of bronze when he says “you shall hew out,” as though bronze were hewn from the mountains in the manner of rocks.
That there was an abundance of gold is shown by Deuteronomy 1:1: “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan, in the level wilderness, opposite the Red Sea, between Paran and Tophel and Laban and Hazeroth, where there is very much gold.” Here our translator and the Chaldaic translate ודי זהב (wedi zahab) as “an abundance,” or “a sufficiency, of gold”; the Septuagint has καὶ καταχρύσεα, or, as others read, καὶ κατὰ χρύσεα, “toward the gold mines.” Whether one truly understands it as a sufficiency of gold or rather as the name of a place makes little difference against what I have said. For if it is the name of a place, the name was imposed from its abundance of gold; or if Scripture says that gold is very plentiful, we prove that there is a multitude of mines.
In that tract is the city concerning which Genesis 36:39 says מי זהב (me zahab), “waters of gold,” although it can be the name of a woman. And in Deuteronomy 33:25 iron and bronze are called its “footwear,” or ὑπόδημα, which they interpret as mines of bronze and iron—as though it said, “iron and bronze are your treading-place”; that is, mines of iron and bronze are everywhere beneath your feet. Hence Zarephath of the Sidonians is named from צרפת (tsaraph), “to smelt.”
But let us return to the καταχρύσεα, concerning which the Christian Adrichomius writes as follows in his Theater of the Holy Land, under Pharan, number 16: “The gold mines, called Dizahab in Hebrew and catachrysea in Greek, are the place where there is very much gold. They are gold-bearing mountains in the desert, an eleven-day journey from Horeb, near which Moses is said to have written Deuteronomy. But they also think that the mine of bronze which collapsed in our own time, and mountains formerly full of veins of gold, were nearby.” Deuteronomy 1; Jerome on the Hebrew place and in his Letter to Fabiola, Station 42.
It is also agreed that Arabia is exceedingly rich in gold. “It so abounds,” says Adrichomius under Manasseh, number 12, “in veins and lumps of gold and silver that almost all the furnishings of this nation shine, some with gold, others with silver. They also sell gold to their neighbors at three times the price of bronze, and silver at twice the price; and once, as Ezekiel teaches us, they used to offer in the markets of Tyre wares of the most excellent spices, gold, and precious stones, which were carried from there into the whole world. For the soil of this fortunate Arabia is exceedingly fertile in the most precious and select gems, namely sardonyxes, diamonds, pearls, beads, and other stones of different color and shining brightly. Nor does the land alone, but also the sea adjacent to it, abound in stones of this sort. For here oysters or shells are caught in which pearls are born and mature. Because no two of them are found indistinguishable, they are also called uniones. Their nature is so noble that it cannot be equaled by any price. Hence it is read of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, that she purchased a pearl found here for two hundred and fifty thousand gold pieces.”
Yet now there is neither great concern nor power to procure those riches, for everything is full of brigandage, devastation, and fear of tyranny.
§ 4.
It is appropriate for every kind of mineral substance that it indeed be administered by suitable men, but that the greatest part of the labor be completed by persons condemned to the works. Thus it was done wisely in former times by the Romans and others, and there was no sin except in the unjust sentence of a judge, by which Christian bishops, priests, and faithful laymen were condemned to the mines for their piety. Those who through crimes have deserved such treatment by right and justice are to be subjected to this punishment; and it is often lawful for the penalty of death to be commuted to this one.
As the Egyptians accomplished the barbarous works of the pyramids and the channels of the Nile through condemned persons and captives, so also they assigned the wicked to dig for gold. Diodorus writes in Book One: “All their kings assigned to the digging of gold persons condemned for a crime, likewise those captured from enemies, or, if anyone had offended the king, sometimes both him and his whole kindred; at once exacting the penalty for their crimes and receiving a rich profit from their labor.”
I am not unaware that very many innocent persons, crushed by great tyranny, underwent every dreadful thing. But I admonish the prince to banish into those dark places persons truly guilty, not truly innocent, either for their whole life as slaves under punishment, or for a fixed time according to the measure of their offenses. For it is remarkable how greatly that exercise assists modest conduct, when complete exhaustion must be exacted from the body. Nor is guarding them difficult, both because they are confined in caverns and because this whole class is held in irons. What then? Let the punishments of those whose crimes harmed the state benefit it.
At present many are kept in prison for many years at public expense; they are mutilated in their ears, publicly scourged, and punished with exile. Meanwhile, since the opportunity to live a civil life is denied them, they again equip themselves for thefts and brigandage; for nowhere can they establish themselves because of their infamy. Other men must nevertheless be placed among them, both supervisors and persons hired for wages, so that there may be no opportunity to flee. Prisons today contain many hundreds of wretched persons who have not committed offenses so atrocious that they are to be punished with death.
§ 5.
To this industry I refer all the other workshops, such as those for crystal, glass, stone, and other things. For it is superfluous to name saltworks and other works, since even the use of acidulous springs has now begun to bring profit and water is drunk for a price. Ancus Marcius first established saltworks at Rome; he also gave six thousand modii to the people in a distribution. Pliny, Book Thirty, chapter 7. Once this was a rare and difficult thing; now it is readily available. Yet nowhere, so far as I remember, is there that abundance which exists in Italy, where the Tarentine lake is dried by the summer suns and is transformed wholly into salt.