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Aurum, Gold

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104
AURUM.
waggons" no fewer than 1470 tores and 250 pounds by weight of gold, besides silver vessels weighing 2340 pounds "made (in the national taste) with some degree of skill" (non infabre suo more facta); a singular notice on the part of the old annalist tran­scribed by Livy. But as those fertile plains had formerly been possessed by the Etruscans, those unrivalled goldsmiths of the ancient world, it may well be that the art yet lingered there under the savage conquerors, and this would explain the so frequent appearance of Graeco-Asiatic patterns in Celtic orna­mentation. It is evident the Celts imitated to the best of their ability the coinage of the Greeks: the same rule may be supposed to apply to their other works in metal.
This supply of gold lasted for many centuries. Proco'pius (Bell. Goth. iii. 33) records that the Frankish king Theodebert struck gold coin from the metal furnished by the mines of the country: an assumption of the imperial prerogative extremely galling to the pride of Justinian; Procopius remarking that even the Great King (of Persia) refrained, out of deference to the Romans! from issuing a gold currency with his own image upon it.
The sands of the Ehine below Basel are still washed every summer for gold-dust by the peasants of the grand-duchy of Baden, as are also those of the Aar below Bruhl. The return is but trifling at present, 5 francs' worth (little more than 1 dwt.) being the utmost obtained by each washer in a day's labour. Gold also exists in the quartz matrix in Switzerland. I have seen a small specimen extremely rich in fine filaments of the pure metal.
Astonishingly productive of gold was the soil around Aquileia, but it seems to have been quite exhausted before Pliny's times. These workings, Polybius says, were discovered in his own age. The gold was first met with at a depth of only two feet, and did not extend deeper than fifteen. The grains were as large as a bean, or a lupine; and so pure as only to lose one-eighth in the melting. Another kind required more smelting, but yielded amazing returns. At first the natives allowed Italians to work with them, but in two months after the discovery the price of gold throughout all Italy fell by one-third : whereupon
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