110
TRANSFER OF THE
CHAP. III.
or about 300 after Solomon , no other metal wasto be seen in the temple of Delphi but brass,and that only in the tripods. One hundred andfifty years later still, the Lacedemonians wereobliged to have recourse to Croesus to procurethe gold of which they formed the statue ofApollo on Mount Thornax h Subsequently byfifty years, Hiero, king of Syracuse , soughteverywhere for a long time to obtain goldwherewith to form a statue of Victory, and atripod for the temple of Delphi, and at lengthfound some at Corinth, in the house of oneArchiletes, who had collected it by purchases insmall quantities. That person supplied the kingwith the weight he required, and, besides, gavehim a handful, which Hiero repaid by sendingin return a vessel laden with corn. Athenaeus ®quotes a passage from Anaximenes of Lampsacus ,the tutor of Alexander the Great , who wroteabout 350 years before Christ, which relates thatthe golden necklace of Eriphyle, which had beengiven to her by Polyneces, and had formerlybelonged to Venus, was chiefly celebrated be-cause gold was so scarce in Greece . The sameauthor says, that Philip, king of Macedon, inthe early part of his reign, before he had pro-cured gold from the mines of Thrace , wheneverhe retired to rest, placed under his pillow the
2 Athenams, book vi. cap. 5-