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in thickness.*

ACTIVE WIDELY

There cannot, indeed, be adduced a more convincing proof of the unequalled wealth of the Lydians, nor of the tranfmutative power of ACTIVE DIFFUSED Commerce, than the astonishing relation which we find in Herodotus, of the wealth of Pythias, a merchant of that country, who was enabled by that commerce, in afterages; when Lydia flourished in meridian splendor, under the powerful protection of the imperial dynasties of Perfia, to present Darius, as we have before had occafion to remark, with a plane-tree and a vine of wrought gold; and, as he had thus fhewn his munificence to one fovereign, so did he not less display hofpitality blended with munificence to the other; for, when Xerxes marched with his innumerable army against Greece, the fame Pythias not only entertained, at Celænæ, in Phrygia, the whole of this vaft army, but made him a proffer, towards the charges of carrying on that war, of two thousand talents of filver, and three millions nine hundred and ninety-three thousand gold Darics. With which noble act of generosity Xerxes was fo charmed, that

* See Herodotus, lib. i, p. 47, et feq.

instead

instead of accepting the proffer, he ordered feven thousand additional Darics to be given to Pythias from the royal treasury, to make the round sum of four millions in gold.

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In the second place, it should be remembered, that the whole amaffed wealth of Egypt felt the plundering hand of Cambyfes, whose vindictive fury led him not merely to plunder, but to destroy, the temples of Egypt; and that, at the burning of that of Thebes, the remains of the wealth faved from the flames amounted to three hundred talents of gold and two thousand three hundred talents of filver: but the richest article among the fpoils of that temple was the ftupendous circle of gold, infcribed with the zodiacal characters and aftronomical figures, that encircled the fepulchre of Olymandes. At Memphis, alfo, then the capital of the empire, he obtained, in the ancient palace of the Pharaohs, fuch an immense treasure in bullion, and ornamental vafes, and ftatues of gold and filver, representing gods and deified men, as perhaps no palace ever before contained; and many of these statues were restored, fome ages afterwards, to the transported Egyptians, by Ptolemy, the fon of Philadelphus, when his armies had vanquished Antiochus,

Antiochus, the third fovereign of the dynasty of the Seleucidæ, and on whom, in confequence, the Egyptians bestowed the illuftrious title of Euergetes, or the Beneficent. Such were the fources from which, independent of its flourishing commerce, the Perfian emperors drew that enormous quantity of treasure which was necessary to sustain the unparalleled magnificence of their courts of Sufa and Perfepolis, and which in the end was doomed to reward the military ardour of the invading Greeks.

Previously, however, to our following Alexander in the rapid career of his triumphs over the humbled fovereign of Perfia, we must digrefs a little from our fubject, which is properly the bullion of the ancients, to one not less important and interesting, their coined money, which, according to the general judgment of medallic writers, was not in existence before the conqueft of Babylon by Cyrus; though others, on the credit of Herodotus, fix the first coinage in Afia to the very early periods of the Lydian empire. In the course of the following ftrictures I may poffibly be able to produce arguments for supposing mo

ney

ney to have been coined and current in eras ftill more remote.

ON THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF COINED

MONEY.

THE first commerce of mankind was carried on without the medium of any money, stamped or unftamped: it fimply confifted in the barter of one commodity for another, according to the respective wants of the parties concerned in it. The greater or lefs urgency of the want, in general, fixed the higher or inferior price of the commodity; but the eye was often the fole judge, and quantity the chief rule of determining. There is a curious account in Cofmas, called Indicopleuftes, of the ancient mode of carrying on traffic between the inhabitants of Axuma, the capital of Æthiopia, and the natives of Barbaria, a region of Africa near the fea-coast, where were gold mines, which will give us a tolerable idea of this primitive kind of commerce. Every other year, fays he, a caravan of merchants, to the number of five hundred, fets of from Axuma to traffic with the Barbarians

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for gold. They carry with them cattle, falt, and iron, to barter for that gold. Upon their arrival at the mines, they encamp on a particular spot, and expofe their cattle, with the falt and iron, to the view of the natives. The Barbarians approach the mart, bringing with them small ingots of gold; and, after surveying the articles exposed to fale, place on or near the animal, falt, or iron, which they wished to purchase, one or more of the ingots, and then retire to a place at fome distance. The proprietor of the article, if he thought the gold fufficient, took it up and went away; and the purchaser alfo fecured and carried away the commodity he defired. If the gold was not deemed fufficient, the Axumite let it remain affixed to the article, till either more ingots were added to fatisfy the full demand for it, or the first offered taken away. Their total ignorance of each other's language ren-, dered this filent mode neceffary, and the whole business terminated in five days, when the Axumite caravan departed homewards, a journey of not less than fix months.* In these compacts, however, the eye must often have

* Vide Cofmas Indic. page 138, et feq.

been

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