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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
For the historian of the ancient world there is nothing more necessary and nothing more difficult than the task of discriminating between fact and fiction, between accuracy and exaggeration, in his sources. The Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus presents this problem in an acute form, and while certain passages, such as Iambulus's discovery of the Islands of the Sun, are quite evidently dominated by an uncritical acceptance of romantic tales, other sections of this extensive miscellany are less easily categorised. It is the purpose of this note to examine two short passages only, viz. iii. 12. 1–14. 5 and v. 36. 1–38. 4, which contain Diodorus's description of the mines in Egypt and Spain, in order to determine how far they may be accepted as a reliable record.
1 ii. 55–60.
2 For an example of the slighting of Diodorus's evidence see Gomme, A. W., ‘The Slave Population of Athens’, JHS LXVI (1946), PP. 127–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 iii. 12. 4.
4 v. 37. 3.
5 iii. 13. 2.
6 iii. 14. 1.
7 See especially Davies, O., Roman Mines in Europe, 1935, pp. 16–62.Google Scholar
8 E.g. by Ardaillon, E., Les Mines du Laurion dans l'Antiquité, 1897, p. 94.Google Scholar
9 The distinction should be noted between the condemned criminals working in State mines, to whom Diodorus refers, and the slaves working in privately owned concessions; in the latter case, where the supply of labour was more costly and less easily obtained, care would be taken not to overwork the men.
10 iii. 12. 3.
11 ibid., cf. v. 38. 1.
12 ibid.
13 iii. 13. 3; cf. iii. 12. 6; v. 38. 1.
14 iii. 13. 2.
15 Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technik und der Industrie, VIII, 1918, p. 155.
16 Davies, op. cit. p. 16.
17 Ep., 76.
18 About twenty-five miles south-east of Cirta in Numidia.
19 Epp., 77, 78, 79.
20 Ep., 76. 2; cf. 77. 3.
21 76. 3. Cyprian is a little involved here. He is comforting his correspondents for their inability to celebrate the divine sacrifice, i.e. the eucharist, by saying that the true sacrifice is a broken spirit; it is this sacrifice, he states, that they celebrate without intermission. The implication is not that while asleep they continue to make their offering but that they have little or no respite from their labours.
22 76.2; cf. 77.3.
23 76.2.
24 ibid.
25 77.3; cf. 76.2.
26 77. 3.
27 This correspondence in detail between the descriptions of Cyprian and Diodorus sheds some light upon another question which is raised by these passages in the Bibliotheca, viz. how far Diodorus was describing contemporary conditions in the mines. It is probable that he was drawing upon the account of Agatharchides of Cnidos, who, in his 
described the conditions of the late second century under the Ptolemies. The fact that Cyprian agrees with Diodorus, or with the latter's source, indicates that the conditions in the mines scarcely changed throughout the centuries, and therefore one may legitimately suppose that what obtained in the later second century B.C. was also the practice a hundred years later at the time of Diodorus, and indeed still persisted, unreformed, nearly three hundred years after that, during the life-time of Cyprian.
