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Aurum, Gold

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112
AURUM.
their power), because it absorbed the labour that otherwise would have been employed upon the land. This prohibition extended to all mines alike. Even the very productive copper-mines in Tuscany were not worked when Pliny wrote.7
After the introduction of gold as the most important currency, by Philip, the art of refining it was brought to extraordinary perfection. This was maintained for an astonishing length of time, considering the difficulty of the operation, and the vast temptation to needy princes to tamper with the standard. An aureus of Vespasian, when assayed, was found to contain only 1/788 of alloy; others about 1/300: a native mixture which the most careful modern process could hardly extract. Even the wretched Byzantine emperors long resisted the temptation of debasing their aurei, and were satisfied at first with but a slight depreciation of the standard. The bezants of the Comneni, in the 11 th century, are still of 22 carats, that is, hold 1/12 alloy, the proportion allowed in the English sovereign, now the highest standard issued in Europe.
But after their recovery of Constantinople from the Franks (1261), the Palaeologi debased the standard to a degree never attempted, either before or since. Michael, the restorer of the Greek Empire, had previously, whilst reigning at Nicaea, minted bezants of only 16 carats, or two-thirds, fine gold; but his son Andronicus was so beggared, says Pachymer (vi. 8), by the enor­mous subsidies he had to pay to the Latins (his Genoese allies), that he reduced even this miserable quality to 10, and ultimately to 8 carats fine, so that the alloy actually equalled twice the weight of the gold : hence his bezants have now the appearance of mere brass gilt.
The Venetians, amongst the first in mediaeval Europe to coin gold (their famous zecchino commencing in the year 1280), though they copied exactly the type of the contemporary bezant, the Saint presenting the gonfanon of sovereignty to the kneeling Doge, yet restored its standard to the utmost purity. So did the Florentines in their equally famous fiorino d'oro, issued a few years earlier (1252), taking its title from the fleur-de-lys, rebus of the city's
7 Nor the gold-mines of Aquileia.
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