The wealth of Northern Greece, then, by the earliest tradition is connected with the rich gold regions of Thrace, which, if we accept the same tradition, must have been worked from the remotest age. The connection of the Cadmus legend with this region points clearly to very early Phoenician trade in the days when as yet the Phoenicians had undisputed mastery over the Aegean Sea and the Hellenes had not begun to develop maritime enterprize.
As a matter of fact the name of the island of Thasos, which lay off the Thracian shore, was directly ascribed to a Phoenician settler. In the time of Herodotus the Thasians had a large revenue both from the mines on the mainland and from those in their own island. For he tells us that “from the gold-mines of Scapte Hyle they had a revenue on the average of eighty talents, and from those in Thasos itself a lesser one, but yet so good that the Thasians enjoyed exemption from taxation on produce and had a yearly revenue from the mainland and the mines together of two hundred talents on the average, but when the revenue was at its maximum, it was three hundred talents. And I myself likewise saw these mines, and by far the most wonderful were those which the Phoenicians who had colonized the island along with Thasos had opened up, it was this Phoenician leader Thasos who gave his name to the island. These Phoenician mines lie in the part of Thasos between the district of Aenyra and Coenyra; a great mountain has been upturned in the search28.” But the most famous mines on the mainland of Thrace were those of Mount Pangaeum, Crenides, and Datum. Strabo gives a succinct account of this wealthy district: “There are other cities round the gulf of the Strymon, as for instance Myrcinus, Argilus, Drabescus, Datum. The last-named has very excellent and fruitful land and shipbuilding-yards, and mines of gold, from which comes the proverb a Datum of riches, just like loads of wealth.” And in another passage he says that, “there are very numerous gold-mines at