166 HISTORY OF GREECE. who contended that it had originally been pec pled from Marathon and the tetrapolis of Attica, partly from the demc called steirei's. The principal writers whom Strabo consulted seem to trace the population of Eubcca, by one means or other, to an Attic origin, though there were peculiarities in the Eretrian dialect which gave rise to the supposition that they had been joined by settlers from Elis, or from the Triphylian Makistus. Our earliest historical intimations represent Chalkis and Ere- tria as the wealthiest, most powerful, and most enterprising Ionic cities in European Greece, apparently surpassing Athens, and not inferior to Samos or Miletus. Besides the fertility of the plain Lelantum, Chalkis possessed the advantage of copper and iron ore, obtained in immediate proximity both to the city and to the sea, which her citizens smelted and converted into arms and other implements, with a very profitable result : the Chalki- dic sword acquired a distinctive renown. 1 In this mineral source of wealth several of the other islands shared: iron ore is found in Keos, Kythnus, and Seriphus, and traces are still evident in the latter island of extensive smelting formerly practised. 2 Moreover, in Siplrnus, there were in early times veins of silver and gold, by which the inhabitants were greatly enriched ; though their large acquisitions, attested by the magnitude of the tithe 3 which they offered at the Delphian temple, were only of tempo- rary duration, and belong particularly to the seventh and sixth centuries before the Christian era. The island of Naxos too, was at an early day wealthy and populous. Andros, Tenos, Keos, and several other islands, were at one time reduced to 1 Strabo, x, p. 446, Hup 6s Xa^KidiKal awu.'&ai (Alkseus, Fragm. 7, Schneidewin), XahKidtubv noTyptov (Aristophan. Equit. 237), certainly belongs to the Euboic Chalkis, not to the Thrakian Chalkidike. Boeckh, Staatshaushalt. der Athener, vol. ii, p. 284, App. xi, cites XafaidiKcl iroTripia in an inscription: compare Steph. Byz. Xa/l/aY NavaiK^elr^s Et'/3o?f tlomer, Hymn. Apoll. 219. 3 See the mineralogical account of the islands in Fiedler (Reisen, vol. ii, pp. 88, 118, 562). The copper and iron ore near Chalkis had ceased to be worked eren in the time of Strabo: Fiedler indicates the probable site (vol. i, p. 443). 3 Hcrodot. iii, 57. The Siphnians, however, in an evil hour, committed the wrong of withholding this tithe : the sea soon rushed in and rendered the mines ever afterwards unworkable (Pausan. x, 11, 2).
