The silver (or strictly silver-bearing lead) mines in the Laurion district of south Attica were an important source of wealth concentration for Athens, from the time of Themistokles to the days of Demetrios of Phaleron.
Laurion silver started to be used for minting the Athenian coinage after the 520s B.C.

The Laurion mines worked on two categories of leases. One applied to partly-worked mines; the other to virgin land or new leases. In the first case there was a simple three-year lease with the option of renewal. In the second, a mine was leased for from seven to ten years. Leasing rights were granted by the council of poletes (sellers). Every year, at the end of their period of service, they would keep an archive of not only mine leases but sales of forfeited property. Each lease bore the name of the lessee; the price he was paying; the name of the person entering up the mine, the mine's location and category, and details of the claim boundary.

A lessee's only outgoings were the hire of slaves and their minimal upkeep. By using a labour force of this sort the cost of revenue could be kept low and greater returns on investment achieved. In this way there was greater profit, both for wealthy private lessees and, in the form of prospecting rights and taxes, for the state.

The twenty-fourth part of the revenue from any mine, irrespective of the length of lease, belonged to the city of Athens. The claims might belong to private individuals, but whatever minerals were dug up at Laurion were the property of the polis. Indeed it is very probable that the polis itself owned a good many acres of workable land. Be this as it may, no private individual was able to work a mine unless (after first putting down a sum of money) he was given the right to do so, by the polis. Rights might also be given to groups of private persons.

Should a lessee be unable to pay his rent, no action was taken against him - or at any rate no legal action. If on the other hand he was found guilty of shifting any of the posts that secured the mine or propped up the gallery roof, he was liable to the death penalty, his estate being forfeit and distributed among the [Athenian] citizens. This law was brought in not so much to protect the lives of the workers in the galleries - they were slaves - as to keep mining operations running smoothly.

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