110 TRANSFER OF THE 



CHAP. III. 



or about 300 after Solomon, no other metal was 

 to be seen in the temple of Delphi but brass, 

 and that only in the tripods. One hundred and 

 fifty years later still, the Lacedemonians were 

 obliged to have recourse to Croesus to procure 

 the gold of which tfrey formed the statue of 

 Apollo on Mount Thornax l . Subsequently by 

 fifty years, Hiero, king of Syracuse, sought 

 everywhere for a long time to obtain gold 

 wherewith to form a statue of Victory, and a 

 tripod for the temple of Delphi, and at length 

 found some at Corinth, in the house of one 

 Archiletes, who had collected it by purchases in 

 small quantities. That person supplied the king 

 with the weight he required, and, besides, gave 

 him a handful, which Hiero repaid by sending 

 in return a vessel laden with corn. Athenaeus 2 

 quotes a passage from Anaximenes of Lampsacus, 

 the tutor of Alexander the Great, who wrote 

 about 350 years before Christ, which relates that 

 the golden necklace of Eriphyle, which had been 

 given to her by Polyneces, and had formerly 

 belonged to Venus, was chiefly celebrated be- 

 cause gold was so scarce in Greece. The same 

 author says, that Philip, king of Macedon, in 

 the early part of his reign, before he had pro- 

 cured gold from the mines of Thrace, whenever 

 he retired to rest, placed under his pillow the 



1 Herodot. book i. sec. 19. 2 Athenseus, book vi. cap. 5. 



