single
treasury is corroborated by what the historian relates of Pythius, a
Lydian, in the next generation to Croesus, after the country had become
subject to the Persians. This person, though only a private
man, offered Xerxes (besides silver to an incredible amount.) four
millions, less seven thousand, of gold darics, each of which weighs
one of our guineas (vii. 20). He had, some years before, presented his
father, Darius, with the plane-tree and vine of solid gold.
The
annual amount of tribute paid into the treasury of Darius was 14,560
Eubœic talents ; out of which Herodotus remarks (iii. 95) that the
gold-dust weighed 360 talents. The latter was paid in by the Indians,
and equalled the entire assessment of all the other tributaries.* That
this "360 talents"· signifies the weight appears from its reduction
(in the ratio of 13 to 1) to Eubœic silver talents, in which
denomination it came to 4680. The whole was melted down and run into
pots of clay, which were then removed, and a round ingot (like a
Chinese tael) remained until required. Besides this store of ingots, an
enormous coinage of darics in fine gold had been issued in the same
reign, as the tale of Pythius shows, and continued to the epoch of the
Macedonian conquest.
The
Persians, in the reign of Justinian, had gold-mines at Pharangion in
Persarmenia (Procop. Bell. Pers. i. 15). This was probably the source
of the gold-dust so plentiful in Colchis in the earliest age of Grecian
enterprise ; for Pliny has a notice (xxxiii. 15) of " Saulaces king of
Colchis, who, having got possession of a soil still virgin, extracted
