Chap. 15.] THOSE WHO HAVE HAD MOST GOLD AND SILVER. 93 



insult upon Nature. Oh how righteously would he himself 

 have been proscribed ! but then the proscription should have 

 been made by Spartacus.'^ 



CHAP. 15. THE PERSONS WHO HAVE POSSESSED THE GEEATEST 



QUANTITY OF GOLD AND SILVER. 



For my own part, I am much surprised that the Eoman peo- 

 ple has always imposed upon conquered nations a tribute in 

 silver, and not in gold ; Carthage, for instance, from which, 

 upon its conquest under Hannibal, a ransom was exacted in 

 the shape of a yearly''* payment, for fifty years, of eight hun- 

 dred thousand pounds' weight of silver, but no gold. And yet 

 it does not appear that this could have arisen from there being 

 so little gold then in use throughout the world. Midas and 

 Crcesus, before this, had possessed gold to an endless amount : 

 Cyrus, already, on his conquest of Asia,'^^ had found a booty 

 consisting of twenty-four thousand pounds' weight of gold, 

 in addition to vessels and other articles of wrought gold, as 

 well as leaves'^^ of trees, a plane-tree, and a vine, all made of 

 that metal. 



It was through this conquest too, that he carried off five 

 hundred thousand''^ talents of silver, as well as the vase of 

 Semiramis,^^ the weight of which alone amounted to fifteen 

 talents, the Egyptian talent being equal, according to Yarro, 

 to eighty of our pounds. Before this time too, Saulaces, the 

 descendant of ^etes, had reigned in Colchis,^^ who, on finding 



"^3 A slave only ; and not by any of his brother patricians. Antony was 

 rendered infamous by his proscriptions. 



'* Appian and Livy mention the fine as consisftng of ten thousand 

 talents in all, or in other words, eight hundred thousand pounds of silver 

 (at eighty pounds to the talent). Sillig is therefore of opinion that Pliny 

 is in error here in inserting the word " annua." The payment of the tea 

 thousand talents, we learn from the same authorities, was spread over fifty 

 years. ''^ Asia Minor. 



76 "Folia." Hardouin prefers the reading "solia," meaning "thrones." 

 or "chairs of state," probably. 



" Ajasson refuses to place credit in this statement. 



"'^ This vase of Semiramis was Ler drinking bowl, in much the same 

 sense that the great cannon at Dover was Queen Elizabeth's "pocket 

 pistol." 



''^ The country to which, in previous times, the Argonauts had sailed in 

 quest of the Golden Fleece, or in other words in search of gold in which 

 those regions were probably very prolific. 



