Three Books on Gold

mass of gold provided. Furthermore, use in exchanging goods was not a powerful cause for valuing gold so highly, since the most ancient kings did not coin gold and silver, but clearly bronze, the inventor of which they say was Saturn, from whom it is even now called aerarium [treasury], which pleased Caecilius Cyprianus, and whom others write was the prince of coining money, Janus, the equal and guest of Saturn, who impressed the ship by which he had been carried onto the coins. Among the Romans also, at first a mark was burned onto bronze, then silver, and some years later gold, since indeed the first of the seven kings of the Romans, Servius, ordered a mark for bronze; the first of the consuls, Fabius, for silver; and soon gold was also coined.

THAT THE EXCELLENT ESTIMATION OF GOLD DOES NOT DEPEND ON MEDICINE. CHAP. III.

The arguments regarding the medical faculty that were taken by me against myself—certain common epicheiremata—and [those] drawn from afar from joy and from the work of bodily temperament, were also being taken for me from the same faculty, since that joy from gathered gold coins is only for such time as it enters the mind of the wealthy that other things which please them can be acquired by the expenditure of coins; but this is proper to the imagination, and thought, and mind,