The laborious operation of collecting and _hurrying_ the ore was performed by boys of tender age, who deposited it beyond the mouth of the shaft. Another class of workmen, consisting chiefly of the aged and the infirm, now bore the metalliferous stones to that part of the works where the founders were stationed. These were powerful and robust men in the flower of their age, who, with large stone mortars and iron pestles, reduced, under the eye of rigid Inspectors, the ore to small fragments not exceeding a vetch in size.[981] This done, it was transferred to the mills which were turned by women, the wives and daughters of the miners, who, with the exception of a slender covering about the waist, were entirely naked, misery in all times and places rendering people contemptuous of appearances and indifferent to morality.[982] These mills, heavy no doubt and difficult to work, were turned by six women, three on either side. They would appear, however, to have answered well the purpose for which they were designed, since the ore, we are told, was reduced by them to the fineness of flour; after which it was handed over to the Selangeus, the last link in that long chain of operators which connected the mine with the smelting furnace. The business of the Selangeus consisted in separating the metal from the matrix in which it had been produced. For this purpose, the auriferous dust was cast in a heap upon a broad polished board slightly inclined,[983] and there washed and triturated until the greater part of the terrene particles had been, by soft sponges and water, separated from the gold, which was next put into earthen vessels with small quantities of lead, tin, salt, and barley-bran, and placed in the smelting furnace, where it was subjected, for five days and nights, to the flames. This done, the virgin gold came forth glittering and pure as if it had not been wrung from human agony or sullied by human tears. ----- Footnote 981: Cf. Diod. Sicul. iii. 13. Footnote 982: Οὗτος δὲ ἐστιν ὁ πόνος τῶν γυναικῶν τῶν εἰς τὰς φυλακὰς συναπηγμένων ἀνδράσιν ἢ γονεῦσι. Μύλοι γὰρ ἑξῆς πλείους βεβήκασιν, ἐφ᾽ οὒς τὸν ἐπτισμένον ἐπιβάλλουσι λίθον· καὶ παραστᾶσαι τρεῖς ἑκατέρωθεν πρὸς τὴν μίαν κώπην, οὕτως ἐζωσμέναι δυσπροσόπτως ὥστε μόνον τὴν αἰσχύνην τοῦ σώματος κρύπτειν, ἀλήθουσιν. Phot. Bib. p. 448. a. Footnote 983: Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxiii. 21. ----- In the smelting furnaces of Greece, notwithstanding the doubts of Reitemeier, which Bœckh is contented to combat with mere inferences,[984] it is quite certain that charcoal was used,[985]—in the first smelting, that of the aria, the arbutus, and the oak, of which the last was least esteemed; and in the second, that of the pitch-pine. In the iron mines the charcoal of the Eubœan walnut-tree was preferred for second smelting. ----- Footnote 984: