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Aurum, Gold

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AURUM.                                          119
This must have been a votive clipeus, embossed with the bust in high relief. If a subordinate dedicated pieces of this magni­tude, some notion may be formed of the magnitude of similar gifts from imperial and noble devotees.
The rare Greek reliefs and figures that have come down to us in this metal are of thin plate, beaten out in the manner now termed Repoussé, and originally filled up with mastic for the sake of giving the work stability. When Philip first became owner of a golden cup he set so high a value upon it as always to keep it under his pillow, a sufficient proof of the extreme rarity of such articles in Greece before the conquest of Persia.
The anecdote concerning Antony's veteran recalls the fact that at a later period of the empire the luxury of the Eomans exhibited itself in the vast size of their golden dishes. Thus, in the 5th century, Aëtius presented a " missorium," weighing 500 lbs., of exquisite workmanship, enriched with precious stones, to Torismond, King of the Goths.1 The King of the Burgundians, Gontron, tells the assembled Gallican bishops, showing them a large gold basin, that, having captured the plate of the Roman Prefect Mummolus, he had only retained for himself one dish 150 lbs. in weight, with this basin, and had ordered fifteen others exactly like it to be broken up, having no use for them him­self.2—(Gregory of Tours.)
Another mode in which vast quantities of gold were used up in Eoman times, in imitation of the Persian fashion, was in the χρυσόπατα, or robes covered with disks in thin plate, adorned with designs en repoussé. Of these embossed dishes many are yet in existence. The substance of the gold plate is the thick­ness usually of stout cartridge paper ; hence the weight that went to the embellishment of a single robe was very consider-
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