Page 59 - Handbook of Gold Exploration and Evaluation

40 Handbook of gold exploration and evaluation

From 146 BC onwards Greece was dominated by Rome and, as elsewhere during
those times, scientific advancement was achieved only at the expense of
opposing religious dogmas that had distorted and inhibited philosophic and
scientific development since the most ancient times.

1.2.3 The Roman world
Rome became the dominant nation of the ancient Western world around 200 BC as
a result of conquests in Macedonia, Thrace, Spain, France and Egypt, and vast
resources of gold and silver came under Roman control. The upper classes became
accustomed to adorning themselves with golden jewellery produced from Au-Ag
alloys. Some of this work was done by Greek craftsmen in Alexandria and Antioch
and in Greek settlements dispersed throughout the Roman Empire.
Writings contributed by the Romans were more factual than those of the
Greeks but they also included much superstition and supposition. According to
Pliny (AD 23±79), `if the proportion of silver exceeds one fifth, the metal offers
no resistance on the anvil and has the quality of shining more brightly than silver
in lamplight. It also has the property of detecting poisons; for semi-circles
resembling rainbows run over the surface in poisoned goblets and emit a
crackling noise like fire'. Referring to writings by Homer, Pliny spoke of a
goblet made of electrum that lay in the Temple of Athena, at Lindus of the island
of Rhodes. Helen of Troy bequeathed the goblet to the Temple. History relates
that it had the same measurement as her breast.
Strabo (63 BC±AD 24), who travelled widely to collect information for his
treatise Geography, recognised that the rising and sinking of lands results partly
from volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. In the AD 60s, the Philosopher Lucius
Seneca wrote Quaestiones Naturales, which provided information on earth-
quakes, volcanoes, and surface and underground waters. The 37-volume
Historia Naturalis by Pliny the Elder (AD 23±79) included all Roman knowledge
about rocks, minerals and fossils.
The first of the Roman Emperors, Augustus (63 BC±AD 14) established the
gold standard known as the `Aureus' (Perez-Garcia and Sanchez-Palencia,
2000). Important amongst his reforms, the army was made a profession and
mining engineers were attached to Roman armies to search for new deposits and
upgrade existing operations. The engineers became expert surveyors and water
races were constructed over almost inaccessible terrain to service the mines.
Pliny (AD 23±79) describes examples of ditches constructed along mountain
heights, frequently along a distance of `a 100 miles or more, for the purpose of
washing away the debris; and of gorges and crevasses bridged by aqueducts
carried by masonry'. He noted that `when the barriers are struck away, the
torrents burst out with such violence as to sweep forward the broken rock. The
trenches are floored with gorse, which is rough and holds back the gold'. A
similar process, known as `booming' was used in early Californian gold fields.