Three Books on Gold

...namely, of having the truth. And first, it was always remembered that gold had not been preferred to others—not only to metals, but to all other external things—by the consent of nations; for I was not at all persuaded that the conspiracy of all ages, whether expressed or tacit, was to be judged as preferring it to other things which are called external. For there is no mention of gold in the beginnings of created man, which is recorded in the most ancient monuments of literature. Men spent their lives for many ages without gold. Nor have there been wanting those who have written that gold was discovered a little before the Trojan times by Aeacus, and silver by Indus, King of Scythia, who reported it was received from Thoas, and Aeacus, and Erichthonius, and some from Sol, and some from Vulcan, and some from Chrysos; of which opinion was Hippocrates, thinking it was named ton chryson, that is, gold, from its inventor. I also knew it was handed down to memory that gold was not held in use in Europe, and much less its smelting, before the times of Cadmus the Phoenician. What then? That after the affairs of the Greeks had grown and flourished, all of Greece could not produce enough gold (Athenaeus reported) so that the head of the Amyclaean Apollo could be gilded; and that such was its rarity and costliness under King Philip that he thought it was a good thing that he possessed a golden phial, indeed a very small one, which he would hide under his pillow, if Duris of Samos entrusted such truth to the monuments of literature, a habit of Philip which I marvel that Pliny ascribed to the greatest license, when he was inveighing against Philip's golden cup. It was so far from the Greeks to cherish that metal that they even forbade it by laws, that...