AME Roundup Video: Laurion’s silver strike ‘bankrolled’ ancient Athens

Northern Miner Staff | February 5, 2026 | 10:47 am Video Europe Silver

The Northern Mienr’s Podcast Host, Adrian Pocobelli (R), chats with the title’s Western Editor, Henry Lazenby, about silver’s role in ancient Greece’s rise and fall.

A silver windfall more than 2,500 years ago helped turn Athens into the Mediterranean’s dominant sea power, The Northern Miner Podcast host Adrian Pocobelli says.

In a presentation delivered to the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference last week, Pocobelli pointed to a rich silver strike at the Laurion (Lavrion) mining district in southern Attica in 483 BCE (Before Common Era), when Athenians debated paying citizens a dividend or plowing the proceeds back into defence.

Statesman Themistocles convinced the assembly to fund a war fleet of about 200 ships and strengthen the port at Piraeus – spending that soon paid off when Athens helped defeat Persia’s navy at Salamis in 480 BCE.

“It’s great to have natural resources,” Pocobelli told The Northern Miner’s Western Editor, Henry Lazenby. “It makes you a powerful country, but it also makes you a target,”.

The episode, he argued, is a reminder for resource investors that minerals sit underneath geopolitics: wealth draws attention, trade routes become pressure points and alliances can morph into empires.

Watch below the full interview: