not many years after, he attained wealth from the mines of Fiirst, which is a city in Lorraine, and took his name from " Luck."[1] Nor would King Vladislaus have restored to the Assembly of Barons, Tursius, a citizen of Cracow, who became rich through the mines in that part of the kingdom of Hungary which was formerly called Dacia.[2] Nay, not even the common worker in the mines is vile and abject. For, trained to vigilance and work by night and day, he has great powers of endurance when occasion demands, and easily sustains the fatigues and duties of a soldier, for he is accustomed to keep long vigils at night, to wield iron tools, to dig trenches, to drive tunnels, to make machines, and to carry burdens. Therefore, experts in military affairs prefer the miner, not only to a commoner from the town, but even to the rustic.
But to bring this discussion to an end, inasmuch as the chief callings are those of the moneylender, the soldier, the merchant, the farmer, and the miner, I say, inasmuch as usury is odious, while the spoil cruelly captured from the possessions of the people innocent of wrong is wicked in the sight of God and man, and inasmuch as the calling of the miner excels in honour and dignity that of the merchant trading for lucre, while it is not less noble though far more profitable than agriculture, who can fail to realize that mining is a calling of peculiar dignity? Certainly, though it is but one of ten important and excellent methods of acquiring wealth in an honourable way, a careful and diligent man can attain this result in no easier way than by mining.
END OF BOOK I.
- ↑ Agricola, De Veteribus et Novis Metallis, Book I., p. 392, says: " Conrad, whose " nickname in former years was ’ pauper," suddenly became rich from the silver mines of " Mount Jura, known as the Firstum." He was ennobled with the title of Graf Cuntz von Gliick by the Emperor Maximilian (who was Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, 1493-1519)- Conrad was originally a working miner at Schneeberg where he was known as Armer Cuntz (poor Cuntz or Conrad) and grew wealthy from the mines of Fiirst in Leberthal. This district is located in the Vosges Mountains on the borders of Lorraine and Upper Alsace. The story of Cuntz or Conrad von Gliick is mentioned by Albinus (Meissnische Land und Berg Chronica, Dresden, 1589, p. 116), Mathesius (Sarepta, Nuremberg, 1578, fol. xvi.), and by others.
- ↑ Vladislaus III. was King of Poland, 1434-44, and also became King of Hungary in 1440. Tursius seems to be a Latinized name and cannot be identified.
These Phoenician workings are in Thasos itself, between Coenyra and a place called Aenyra over against Samothrace; a high mountain has been turned upside down in the search for ores." (Rawlinson’s Trans.). The occasion of this statement of Herodotus was the relations of the Thasians with Darius (521-486 B.C.). The date of the Phoenician colonization of Thasos is highly nebular anywhere from 1200 to 900 B.C.
