Fiscal and administrative aspects of the Laurion’s mining leases during the 4th century BC

This study is devoted to the main fiscal and administrative aspects of the mining leases in Laurion. It begins by considering the operating system of the Athenian mines, including discussions about their legal status, drawing mainly on the text of the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens. The next step is to give an order of magnitude of the state incomes from the mines, turning to the question of the distribution of the metal extracted from the mines between lessees and the city. This means investigating the prices of the leases and estimating the yearly output of the mines by developing a model based on the mining’s sector profitability. At this point, the key issue is to determine what lessees did with their metal so that they could be able to pay the costs associated with mining activities. It is advocated in this paper that a lot – if not nearly all – of the silver produced in Laurion was actually converted into coins, the renowned Athenian “owls”. Several important consequences for the Athenian monetary history follow from this conclusion, regarding the role of state authorities in the monetary process, the parameters determining the rhythm and scale of the monetary production, as well as the dissemination of the Athenian coinage.