210 RARITY OF GOLD AND SILVER CHAP. IX. 



in actual existence, including utensils, ornaments, 

 jewelry, trinkets and watches, is three or four times 

 as great as the value of those metals which exists 

 in the form of money. In case circumstances 

 should arise to induce the conversion of plate 

 into money, there would be a resource which 

 could furnish a supply : but in the Roman em- 

 pire, the plate arid jewels of two thousand wealthy 

 families would have been but a feeble aid to the 

 money circulating in that powerful empire, 

 which comprehended within its limits the most 

 populous and extensive parts of the known 

 world. 



The cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were 

 buried by an irruption of Vesuvius about the 

 year 79, when the Roman power and prosperity 

 had shown no visible tokens of that decline 

 which began a few years afterwards. The latter 

 was one of the most industrious arid populous 

 cities on the coast of Italy. Within the last cen- 

 tury their ruins have been examined. Pompeii 

 was covered with ashes and cinders, rather than 

 with lava, and the investigators have been more 

 successful in their examinations there than at 

 Herculaneum. In some of the houses skeletons 

 of the inhabitants have been discovered, in all, 

 domestic utensils and personal ornaments. But 

 among the utensils none have been found either 

 of gold or of silver; but those for which in our 

 day silver is almost exclusively adopted by the 



