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Aurum, Gold

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AURUM.
103
adjacent hills, breaks off vast mounds of earth, and fills their streams with gold-dust. This the people engaged in the trade collect, and grind and pound the clods containing the gold. Then removing what is earthy, by means of repeated washings, they commit the residue to the furnace for smelting. In this way they amass a quantity of gold, and use it up for ornaments, not merely for the women, but the men. For round their wrists and arms they wear bracelets, round their necks thick circles of solid gold, and finger-rings of marvellous size, and even golden breastplates. There is a peculiar and extraordinary custom pre­vailing amongst the Gauls in the interior with regard to the temples of their gods. In these sacred grounds and in the shrines there lies thrown upon the ground gold in abundance, dedicated to the deities, which, out of superstition, none of the natives dares to touch, although the Celts are naturally extremely covetous."
When the Consul Caepio took Tolosa, the capital of the Tecto-sages (b.c. 112), he seized upon the treasure deposited in the temple of Minerva there, amounting to the vast sum of 15,000 talents (about 3,000,000 l.). A large portion of this was the spoils of the Greek shrines, the offerings of the returning troops of Brennus, some two centuries before. This sacrilege brought so much evil upon Caepio that "aurum Tolosanum" passed into a proverb for all ill-gotten gains attended with a curse.
The tradition of the riches of these Gallic temples has been of late singularly confirmed. A peasant (1832), digging for trea­sure in a ruined Druidical circle near Vieuxbourg, S. Quentin, was for once lucky enough to hit upon what he sought in the shape of a hoard of tores. They were ten in number, with one bracelet, some very elegantly ornamented and of great weight, the heaviest being of 49 oz., the rest from 30 oz. upwards. The total value was about 1000 l. They will be found accurately figured in the Archseologia for 1838.
The Gauls wherever they went seem to have possessed an instinctive faculty for discovering gold. Those settled in Upper Italy were as rich in the metal as their brethren beyond the Alps. When the consul Corn. Nasica triumphed over the Boii (b.c. 159) there were carried in the procession " upon the Gallic
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