Mines

Greek myth places its smiths, metals and treasure under the earth. This page collects the mines and underground workshops named in Greek myth and history, with the ancient text behind each one.

The forge of Hephaestus

Hephaestus is the Greek god of fire, smiths and metalwork. In the Iliad his workshop is not under the ground. It is a house of bronze among the houses of the gods.

but silver-footed Thetis came unto the house of Hephaestus, imperishable, decked with stars, preeminent among the houses of immortals, wrought all of bronze, that the crook-foot god himself had built him. Him she found sweating with toil as he moved to and fro about his bellows in eager haste;

Homer, Iliad 18.369-373, trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb 1924, Perseus Digital Library

In Homer, Hephaestus works at his bellows in a bronze house on Olympus.

Later writers moved his forge into volcanoes. The volcanic activity of Mount Etna in Sicily was explained as his work. Aeschylus puts him on the summit of Etna, above the buried monster Typhon.

pressed down beneath the roots of Aetna ; while on the topmost summit Hephaestus sits and hammers the molten ore.

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 365-367, trans. H. W. Smyth, Loeb 1926, Perseus Digital Library

Aeschylus places Hephaestus at work on the top of Etna.

The encyclopedia entry on Theoi says the same shift happened in later accounts. There the Cyclopes are his workmen and his workshop is inside a volcanic island. Lemnos was his favourite place on earth, and Lipara, Hiera, Imbros and Sicily are also named as his workshops.

The Cyclopes

The Cyclopes were skilled smiths, and myth links them with underground workshops and volcanic places such as Lemnos and Etna. Hesiod names three of them and says what they made for Zeus.

And again, she bore the Cyclopes, overbearing in spirit, Brontes, and Steropes and stubborn-hearted Arges, who gave Zeus the thunder and made the thunderbolt:

Hesiod, Theogony 139-141, trans. H. G. Evelyn-White, Loeb 1914, Perseus Digital Library

Hesiod says the Cyclopes made the thunderbolt of Zeus.

The thunderbolt was not their only work. Apollodorus adds the helmet of Hades and the trident of Poseidon.

And the Cyclopes then gave Zeus thunder and lightning and a thunderbolt, and on Pluto they bestowed a helmet and on Poseidon a trident.

Apollodorus, Library 1.2.1, trans. J. G. Frazer, Loeb 1921, Perseus Digital Library

The Cyclopes armed Zeus, Hades and Poseidon for the war against the Titans.

The silver mines of Laurium

Laurium lies near Athens. Its silver mines are history rather than myth, but they decided the war with Persia. Herodotus tells how Themistocles turned the silver into ships.

The revenues from the mines at Laurium had brought great wealth into the Athenians' treasury, and when each man was to receive ten drachmae for his share, Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to make no such division but to use the money to build two hundred ships for the war, that is, for the war with Aegina.

Herodotus, Histories 7.144, trans. A. D. Godley, Loeb 1920, Perseus Digital Library

The silver of Laurium paid for the Athenian fleet.

The goddess comes in through the oracle. At Delphi the priestess said that Athena (Pallas) could not soften Zeus, but that a “wood-built wall” would be granted to her, the Trito-born (Herodotus 7.141). Themistocles read that wall as the ships (Herodotus 7.143).

The gold of King Midas

Midas was king of Phrygia, in modern Turkey. Phrygia was known in antiquity for its wealth. Ovid tells how Bacchus let Midas choose a reward.

And Midas made this ill-advised reply: “Cause whatsoever I shall touch to change at once to yellow gold.”

Ovid, Metamorphoses 11, Midas passage (Perseus section 11.85ff), trans. Brookes More, 1922, Perseus Digital Library

Midas asked that everything he touched would become gold.

Ovid says nothing about mines. The link between the golden touch and the rich mines of Phrygia is a later reading of the legend.

The gold mines of Mount Pangaeus

Mount Pangaeus is in northern Greece, in old Thrace. Its mines were famous in antiquity and their wealth helped the rise of Macedonia. Herodotus names the peoples who worked them.

keeping on his right the great and high Pangaean range, where the Pierians and Odomanti and especially the Satrae have gold and silver mines.

Herodotus, Histories 7.112, trans. A. D. Godley, Loeb 1920, Perseus Digital Library

Herodotus says Thracian peoples mined gold and silver in the Pangaean range.

Close by, near Lake Prasias, was the mine “from which Alexander later drew a daily revenue of a talent of silver” (Herodotus 5.17).

Tartarus

Tartarus is the deep pit below the underworld. Some retellings make it a place where the souls of the condemned mine metals for the gods. None of the ancient texts on this page says so. What Homer gives is its depth.

or I shall take and hurl him into murky Tartarus, far, far away, where is the deepest gulf beneath the earth, the gates whereof are of iron and the threshold of bronze, as far beneath Hades as heaven is above earth:

Homer, Iliad 8.13-16, trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb 1924, Perseus Digital Library

Homer puts Tartarus as far below Hades as heaven is above the earth.

Tartarus as a place of forced labour is a reading of the myth, not a statement in Homer. For mines in Hebrew scripture, see Mines in the Bible.