Three Books on Gold

That it is clearly known from histories that Lacedaemon both stood and grew without gold and silver coins, and fell and collapsed when, under Lysander, it admitted gold spoils after Athens was captured. Plato added to this, who in his laws prohibited gold from being possessed by any private individual; and he had promulgated the same regarding silver. It occurred to his mind that perhaps the use of silver and gold was once very rare in favor, and that it was accustomed to be seen only in temples. And not except in tripods and small images, which first the kings of Lydia, Gyges and Croesus, and then the Sicilian tyrants, had placed; soon, as the Phocians were plundering Delphi, this metal began to be common throughout Greece in some way. Furthermore, to diminish the estimation of gold, it occurred to me that among the Hebrews, in the abundance of this metal, bronze was found to be superior to gold, if Josephus reported the truth in the seventh and eleventh books of his Antiquities. It also came to mind that it was committed to memory in histories that Spartacus himself in Italy forbade his camps, so that no one might have gold or silver. And after the countless cycles of so many centuries, it persisted among some nations of Asia and Africa that some esteemed gold as little, others held it as nothing; and in India, which is thought to be most abundant in gold—if we make mention of that part which Alexander the Macedonian conquered—we have received from the Greek writers of his deeds that there was no gold, even though the king himself, through treacherous plunder, obtained so much gold that to transport it there were scarcely