190 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS METALS, &c.
later
kings had carried on their mining operations - by means of forced
labour. Whatever the source, the wealth accumulated by the Macedonian
princes was enormous. The treasure of the last of the line confiscated
for* the Roman Republic by Paulus AEmilius amounted to " ter millies,"
or above three millions sterling, which accession of wealth enabled the
State ' to dispense thenceforth -with taxing its citizens (Plin.
xxxiii. 17) : and it must be remembered the monarchy had, long ere
this, been shorn of its foreign dependencies, reduced to its original
limits, and drained by the long ruinous wars carried on by Philip, the
father of Perseus, and by the latter also, chiefly by means of
mercenaries.
To
return to Philip : the metal for his coinage, besides the produce of
the Thfacian mines, doubtless represents much of those treasures of
Delphi seen by Herodotus, but melted down by the tyrants Philomelus and
his. brothers to defray the expenses of the .ten years' war they waged
against the Amphictyons, whose general Philip was.
Diodorus (xvi. 56) states that Phayllus, the last of the three brother-chiefs, coined into
money the 120 ingots presented by Croesus, each ingot weighing two
talents (120 lbs.), as well as 360 bowls of two minse (2 lbs.) each :
also the woman and the lion in gold, weighing together thirty talents.
All this gold amounted in value to 4000 talents of silver (800,000/.),
the whole of which went to pay his mercenary troops. The donaria in silver which
the three " tyrants " melted down amounted to 60,000 talents. When all
was spent they set to work to dig up the floor of the temple in search
of hidden treasure, but were made to desist by an earthquake. The sums
thus sacrilegiously obtained equalled the whole of the Persian
treasure afterwards captured by Alexander. By a more wanton sacrilege
one gave, his wife. Eriphyle's necklace (the
