Considering the evidence already adduced for equating the sixth century miners at Laurium with the presumably free Diakrioi, may we not use the notices already quoted about the latter as being of impure race and a mob of hirelings[259], and infer that in the sixth century the mines of Laurium were worked by free men, partly of foreign extraction and mainly working for hire? This is of course conjecture. But it produces for the first time a picture of the Diakrioi that harmonizes with the notices in question. Alien shepherds and alien small farmers are most unlikely in autochthonous Attica. Outlander miners on the other hand have always been familiar, wherever there have been mines to work. When mining operations were resumed at Laurium some thirty years ago, the immediate result was a very mixed population, the local supply of labour being supplemented from France, Italy, and Turkey. One of the ancient gold mines near Philippi bore the significant name of the asylum[260]. In the Laurium district itself in ancient times the people of at least one deme, Potamioi, were famous for their readiness to admit foreigners to citizenship[261]. Potamioi is placed by Loeper right in the centre of the mining district, well away from the sea[262], and very near the probable site of Maronea[263]. A member of the deme Semachidai is found sharing a tombstone with two strangers from Sinope[264]. We have just had occasion to notice a Paphlagonian miner, though of a later date, and we shall see in a moment that in the sixth century the mines of Laurium were worked in close connexion with those of Thrace. There are no records of specific Thracians employed in the Attic mines during the sixth century. We only know that just after the Persians conquered Thrace, at the close of the reign of Hippias, there was a large Greek element in the mining population near the Strymon[265]. But in the fifth century we have a famous case of a Thracian mine-owner settling in Athens in the person of Thucydides, whose father was a Thracian, and whose Thracian mines probably lost him his command in the Athenian navy, and turned a second-rate admiral into the greatest of historians[266]. Nikias hired out a thousand hands whom he owned in the mines to Sosias the Thracian[267]. This ends our examination of the various steps by which Peisistratus made himself tyrant, effected his second restoration, and finally rooted his power. In all three cases the evidence points to the conclusion that the secret of the tyrant’s power was his control of mines either in Attica or Thrace. To complete the enquiry it is necessary now to examine the accounts of his first restoration. As observed already, this event is recorded only in anecdotal form. As independent evidence it would hardly be worth considering. All that is here claimed for it is that it can be so interpreted as to corroborate the conclusions already reached. [Sidenote: The strange story of Peisistratus’ first restoration]