CHAP. III.

PRECIOUS METALS.

1 29

treasure collected and expended by Solomon betrue—if the mines of Egypt produced but onequarter of the gold and silver which, according toDiodorus, was inscribed in the palace of Thebes —and if the treasure affirmed to be in the pos-session of Croesus and Pytheus approached nearto the amount at which Herodotus represents it,there seems good grounds to conclude that thewhole spoil of Persia might amount to the sumat which Appian has stated it, or more thanseven hundred thousand Ptolemaic talents, orupwards of forty millions sterling. The goldand silver which was in existence, at least thegreater part of it, appear in that age and state ofsociety to have followed in the train of the con-querors. Persia had conquered all that part ofthe world in which the greater portion of thosemetals were in use; for with the Romans littlewas to be found in that age; and it can scarcelybe thought that forty or fifty millions, or evena larger amount, is an extravagant estimate ofthe coined and uncoined precious metals thatcould be collected in the Asiatic part of the"World.

Without presuming such a quantity to haveexisted, perhaps without a much higher estimate,it will be impossible to account for the quantityat later periods, when the more clear and vera-eious statements of the Roman writers represent

VOL. I.

K