176

NEW WORKING OF MINES.

CHAP. Vlt.

appear to have been induced again to allow ofmines being worked by private individuals h Itwas in this way that, under Trajan , the goldmines of Dacia were worked, stimulated anddirected as they were by his collegium aura-riorum. Yalentinian the First proceeded stillfarther 1 2 ; and allowed to any person who wasdisposed to undertake such operations to digfor gold and silver, on condition of paying afixed proportion of the metal so obtained. Thus,Count Felix appears to have had some extensiveworks in the Pyrenees , the traces of which, aswill be hereafter noticed, display an almost royalexpenditure 3 . By the last edict the Romanswere enabled to open new mines, or to maintainthose already in operation with more facility andto a greater extent; and from that, combinedwith other institutions, some new gold mineswere opened in Dalmatia , Istria, and Dacia, inthe first centuries after the establishment of theemperors in their despotic power.

As the mines, both belonging to the emperorsand to private individuals, required appropriatelaws and regulations, as well for the protectionof the several persons interested in them, as for

1 It appears by Strabo , lib. xii., that some traces of theworking of mines by private persons were to be seen in theearly periods of the republic.

2 Gebhardi. Hungar. Geschichte, p. i. sec. 7-

3 Essai sur la Mineralogie des Monts Pyrenees, p. 243.