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$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Monetary Systems
Part I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Del Mar, Alexander}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{gold
coins
coinage
roman
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money
empire
silver
sacred
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$Date{}
$Log{See Table 27*0211001.tab
}
Title:       History Of Monetary Systems
Book:        Chapter II: The Sacred Character Of Gold
Author:      Del Mar, Alexander

Part I

Chapter Contents

     Coinage the surest mark of sovereignty - Abstention of the Christian
princes from minting and coining gold, from Pepin to Frederick II. - Dates of
the earliest Christian coinages of gold in the West - Inadequate reasons
hitherto given to explain this singular circumstance - Opinions of Camden -
Ruding - Father Joubert - The true reason given by Procopius - The coinage of
gold was a Sacred Myth and a prerogative of the Roman emperor - Its origin and
history - Braminical Code - The Myth during the Roman Republic - During the
Civil Wars - Conquest of Egypt by Julius Caesar - Seizure of the Oriental
trade - The Sacred Myth embodied in the Julian Constitution - Popularity and
longevity of the Myth - It was transmitted by the pagan to the Christian
Church of Rome, and adopted by the latter - Its importance in throwing light
upon the relations of the Western kingdoms to the Roman Empire.

The Sacred Character Of Gold

     The right to coin money has always been and still remains the surest mark
and announcement of sovereignty.  A curious proof of this is afforded by the
story told by Edward Thomas, in his "Pathan Kings of Delhi," of that Persian
commander who, being suspected of a treasonable design towards his sovereign,
diverted suspicion from himself to the king's son by coining and circulating
pieces of money with the latter's superscription. ^1 Says Mr. Thomas: "Some,
perhaps many, of the Mahometan coinages of India constituted merely a sort of
numismatic proclamation or assertion and declaration of conquest and
supremacy." In ancient times such conquest and supremacy often embraced the
triumph of an alien religion.  Where printing was uncommon and the newspaper
unknown, a new gold or silver coinage was the most effective means of
proclaiming the accession of a new ruler or the era of a new religion. ^1 At
the period of the earliest voyages of the Portuguese to India, the same
significance was attached to the prerogative of coinage. Says Duarte Barbosa:
"There are many other lords in Malabar who wish to call themselves kings, but
they are not so, because they are not able to coin money. . . . The king of
Cochin could not coin money, nor roof his house with tiles, under pain of
losing his fief (to the king of Calicut, his suzerain); but since the
Portuguese went there, he has been released from this, so that now he lords it
absolutely and coins money." Father Du Halde, in his "History of China," makes
a similar statement in reference to that country.  Says he: "There were
formerly twenty-two several places where money was fabricated, at which time
there were princes so powerful that they were not contented with the rank of
duke, but assumed the dignity of sovereigns; yet they never durst attempt to
fabricate money, for, however weak the emperor's authority was, the coins have
always had the stamp that he commanded." ^2

[Footnote 1: "History Money," p. 89.]

[Footnote 1: Gibbon declared that were all other records destroyed the travels
of the Emperor Hadrian could be shown from his coins alone.  The Emperor
Theodoric the Goth stamped his coins with the view to instruct posterity
("History Money," p. 89, n.)]

[Footnote 2: Duarte Barbosa, pp. 103 and 157; Du Halde, ii., 293.]

     The custom of employing coins as a means of promulgating religious
doctrine and official information was adopted by the Romans during the
Commonwealth.  It may be traced, at a later period, in the otherwise
superfluous coinages of the Empire.  Julius, Hadrian and Theodoric depicted
the principal events of their reigns upon their coins.  In the absence of
felted paper and printing ink, it was the only means the ancients had of
printing and disseminating the most important intelligence and opinions.
Addison correctly regarded the Roman coinage as a sort of "State Gazette," in
which all the great events of the Empire were periodically published.  It had
this advantage over any other kind of monument: it could not be successfully
mutilated, forged, or suppressed.  Especially is the fabrication and issuance
of full legal-tender coins the mark of sovereignty.  Towards the end of the
Republic and during the Empire this attribute belonged alone to gold coins;
therefore, to speak of these is to speak of full legal-tender money.  Vassal
princes, nobles and prelates, under the warrant of their suzerains, everywhere
struck coins of silver, which, although legal tender in their own domains,
were not so elsewhere, unless by special warrant from the Basileus; but no
Christian vassal ever struck gold without intending to proclaim his own
independent sovereignty and without being prepared to defy the suzerainty of
the Caesars.

     Lenormant, in his great work on the "Moneys of Antiquity," holds similar
language.  "With the exception of the Sassanian coinages down to the reign of
Sapor III., it is certain that the coinage of gold, no matter where, was
always intended as a marked defiance to the pretensions of sovereignty by the
Roman Empire; for example, during the period of the Republic, about B. C. 86,
the gold coinages of Mithridates, in various places over which he had extended
his conquests.  The supremacy of Rome was so widely accepted both East and
West, that for many centuries neither the provinces subject directly or
indirectly to the Basileus, nor even the more or less independent States
adjacent to the Empire, ever attempted to coin gold money.  When gold was
struck by such States it was as a local money of the Roman sovereign." ^1 As
such it yielded him seigniorage; it bore his stamp; its use implied and
acknowledged his suzerainty, both spiritual and temporal; while its issuance
was subject to such regulations as he chose to impose.

[Footnote 1: Lenormant, ii., 427.]

     Commodus refused to believe that his favorite Perennius aspired to the
Empire until he was shown some pieces of provincial money, upon which appeared
the effigy of his faithless minister. ^1 Elagabalus condemned Valerius Paetus
to death for striking some bijoux pieces of gold for his mistress, upon which
he had imprudently caused his own image to be stamped. ^2 The very first act
of a Roman sovereign after his accession, election, or proclamation by the
legions, was to strike coins, that act being deemed the surest mark of
sovereignty.  Vespasian, when proclaimed by the legions in Asia, hurried to
strike gold and silver coins at Antioch. ^3 Antoninus Diadumenus, the son of
Macrinus, was no sooner nominated by the legions as the associate of his
father in the Empire, than the latter hastened to strike money at Antioch in
his son's name, in order to definitively proclaim his accession to the purple.
^4 When Septimius Severus accepted his rival, Albinus, as his associate on the
imperial throne, he coined money at Rome in the name of Albinus as evidence to
the latter of his agreement and good faith. ^5 Vopiscus, in his life of
Firmus, asserts that the latter was no brigand, but a lawful sovereign, in
whose name money had been coined. Pollion says that when Trebellius was
elected emperor by the inhabitants of Isaurus, he immediately hastened to
strike money as the sign of his accession to power. ^6 When the partisans of
Procopius, the rival of Valens, sought to win Illyria to their master's cause,
they exhibited the gold aurei which bore his name and effigy, as evidence that
he was the rightful head of the Roman Empire. ^1 Moses of Khorene informs us
that "when a new king of Persia ascended the throne, all the money in the
royal treasury was recoined with his effigy." ^2 Even when countermarks were
stamped upon the Roman coins, care was taken never to deface the effigy of the
sacred emperor. ^3 The interchange of religious antipathy and defiance, which
Abd-el-Melik and Justinian stamped upon their coins, is related elsewhere.
Indeed, history is full of such instances.  The coinage of money, and
especially of gold, was always the prerogative of supreme authority. ^4 The
jealous monopoly of gold coinage by the sovereign-pontiff ascends to the
Achimenides of Persia, that is to say, to Cyrus and Darius; ^5 in fact, it
ascends to the Bramins of India.  The Greek and Roman Republics broke it down;
Caesar set it up again.

[Footnote 1: Herodian, i., 9.]

[Footnote 2: "Dion. Cass.," lxxix., 4.]

[Footnote 3: "Tact. Hist.," ii., 82.]

[Footnote 4: Lampridinus, in "Diadumenus," 2.]

[Footnote 5: Herodian, ii, 15.]

[Footnote 6: "Thirty Tyrants," xxv.]

[Footnote 1: "Ammianus Marcellinus," xxvi., 7.]

[Footnote 2: Lavoix, Ms., p. 12.]

[Footnote 3: Lenormant, ii., 389; iii., 389.]

[Footnote 4: Lavoix, Ms., p. 16.]

[Footnote 5: Lenormant, ii., 195, 196.]

     Assuming the common belief that the Christian princes of mediaeval Europe
were in all respects independent sovereigns before the destruction of the
Roman Empire by the fall of Constantinople, in 1204, it is difficult to
explain the circumstance that none of them ever struck a gold coin before that
event, and that all of them struck gold coins immediately afterwards. There
was no abstention from gold coinage by either the Goths, the Celts, the
Greeks, or the Romans-of-the-Commonwealth; there was no abstention from gold
coinage by the Merovingian Franks or the Arabians of later ages; there was no
lack of gold mines or of gold river-washings in any of the provinces or
countries of the West; there was no want of knowledge concerning the manner of
raising, smelting or stamping gold; yet we find the strange fact that wherever
the authority of the Roman sovereign-pontiff was established, there and then
the coinage, nay, sometimes even the production, of gold at once stopped.  It
must be borne in mind that it is not the use of gold coins to which reference
is made, but the coinage - the minting and stamping of gold. In England gold
coins, except during the early days of the Heptarchy, have been in use from
the remotest era to the present time.  Such coins were either Gothic
(including Saxon), Celtic, Frankish or Moslem, but never Roman, unless struck
by or under the sovereign-pontiff.  In a word, for more than thirteen
centuries - that is, from Augustus to Alexis IV. - the gold coins of the
Empire, East and West, were struck exclusively by the Basileus. Again, from
the eighth to the thirteenth century, a period of five hundred years, we have
no evidence of any native Christian gold coinage under any of the kings of
Britain.  With the exception of a unique and dubious coin, now in the Paris
collection, which bears the effigy of Louis le Debonnaire, the same is true of
France, Germany, Italy; indeed, of all the provinces of the Empire whose
princes were Christians.

     Before pointing out the significance of these circumstances, it will be
useful to clear the ground by examining the explanations of others.  Camden
conjectures that "ignorance" was the cause; but Dr. Ruding very justly remarks
that it could not have been ignorance of refining or coining gold, because
silver, a much more difficult metal to treat, and one that in its natural
state is nearly always combined with gold, had been refined and coined in
Britain for many ages. ^1 Dr. Ruding and Lord Liverpool both have supposed
that coins of gold were not wanted during the middle ages; but this is worse
than Camden's conjecture, for it flies in the face of a palpable fact.  That
gold coins were indeed wanted is proved by the very common use of gold aurei,
solidi, folles, or besants throughout all this period.  Not only this, but the
Arabian gold dinar, or mancus, was current in all the countries of the North;
and either this coin or the gold maravedi was the principal medium of exchange
in the trade of the Baltic.

[Footnote 1: Camden's "Remains," art.  "Money," p. 241.]

     Another explanation which has been advanced is, that the confusion caused
by the conquests or revolts of the barbarians resulted in the closure of the
gold mines, and rendered gold metal too scarce for coinage into money.
Explanations which take no heed of the truth, made either in ignorance or
desperation, may be multiplied indefinitely without serving any useful end.
The facts were precisely the reverse of what is here assumed.  It was the
barbarians who opened the gold mines and the Christians who closed them.  The
heretical Moslem, Franks, Avars, Saxons, Norsemen and English all opened gold
mines during the mediaeval ages.  The moment these people became Christians,
or were conquered or brought under the control of the Roman hierarchy, their
gold mines began to be abandoned and closed. ^1

[Footnote 1: "History Precious Metals;" "History Money."]

     All such futile explanations are effectually answered by the common use
of Byzantine gold coins throughout Christendom.  In England, for example, the
exchequer rolls relating to the mediaeval ages, collated by Madox, prove that
payments in gold besants were made every day, and that gold coins, as compared
with silver ones, were as common then as now. ^2 If metal had been wanted for
making English gold coins, it was to be had in sufficiency and at once.  All
that was necessary was to throw the besants into the English melting-pot.  As
for the feeble suggestion that for five hundred years no Christian princes
wished to coin gold so long as the Basileus was willing to coin for them, when
the coinage of gold was the universally recognized mark of sovereignty, and
when, also, the profit, as we shall presently see, was one hundred per cent,
it is scarcely worth answering.  The greatest historians of the mediaeval ages
- Montesquieu, Gibbon, Robertson, Hallam, Guizot, etc. - have neither remarked
these facts nor sought for any explanation concerning the gold coinage.  In
their days the science of numismatics had not yet freed itself from the toils
of the sophist and forger, and it offered but little aid to historical
investigations.  It has since become their chief reliance.

[Footnote 2: Lord Liverpool does not appear to have perused this valuable and
instructive work.  For other historical omissions in his Letter to the King,
see Sir David Balfour's Memorandum of October 20, 1887.]

     The true reason why gold money was always used but never coined by the
princes of the mediaeval empire, relates not to any circumstances connected
with the production, plentifulness, scarcity or metallurgical treatment of
gold, but to that hierarchical constitution of pagan Rome, which afterwards
with modifications became the constitution of Christian Rome.  Under this
constitution, and from the epoch of Julius to that of Alexis, the mining and
coinage of gold was a prerogative attached to the office of the
sovereign-pontiff, and was, therefore, an article of the Roman constitution
and of the Roman religion.  Although it is probable that during the dark and
middle ages the prerogative of mining was violated by many who would never
have dared to commit the more easily detected sacrilege of coinage, there are
no evidences of such violation by Christians.

     The mines of Kremnitz, which contained both silver and gold, and which
Agricola says were opened in A. D. 550, were in the territory of the pagan
Avars; the gold washings of the Elbe, re-opened in 719, were in the hands of
the pagan Saxons and Merovingian Franks; so were the gold washings of the
Rhine, Rhone and Garonne; the gold mines of Africa and Spain, re-opened in the
eighth century, were worked by the heretical Moslem; the gold mines of
Kaurzim, in Bohemia, opened in 998, were managed by pagan Czechs.  Whenever
and wherever Christianity was established, gold mining appears to have been
relinquished to the Basileus or abandoned altogether.  So long as the
Byzantine empire lasted, neither the emperor of the West, nor any of the other
princes of Christendom, except the Basileus himself, seem to have conducted or
permitted gold mining.

     With regard to gold coinage the facts are simple and indisputable. Julius
Caesar erected the coinage of gold into a sacerdotal prerogative; this
prerogative was attached to the sovereign and his successors, not as the
emperors, but as the high priests of Rome; it was enjoyed by every Basileus,
whether pagan or Christian, of the joint and Eastern empires from the Julian
conquest of Alexandria to the papal destruction of Constantinople; the pieces
bore the rayed effigies of the deified Caesars, and some of them the legend
"Theos Sebastos." When emperor-worship was succeeded by Christianity they bore
the effigy of Jesus Christ. ^1 It would have been sacrilege, punishable by
torture, death and anathema for any other prince than the sovereign-pontiff to
strike coins of gold; it would have been sacrilege to give currency to any
others; hence no other Christian prince, not even the pope of Rome, nor the
sovereign of the Western or Mediaeval "empire," attempted to coin gold while
the ancient Empire survived.

[Footnote 1: William Till (p. 39) says that Justin II. (A. D. 565-78) first
struck the aureus (solidus, or besant) with the effigy of Christ and the
legend "Dominus Noster, Jesus Christus, rex regnantium," and that this
practice was observed down to the fall of the Byzantine empire.  This
statement is erroneous in several respects.  The first name of Christ on the
Roman coins was never spelled "Jesus," but, successively, "Ihs," "Issus," and
"Iesus." The effigy of Christ did not appear on the coins of Justin II.  It
first appeared on a gold solidus of Justinian II.  (Rhinotmetus), who reigned
685-95, and again 705-11 (Sabatier, "Monnaies Byzantines," ii., 22).]

     Says Procopius: "Every liberty was given by the Basileus Justinian I. to
subordinate princes to coin silver as much as they chose, but they must not
strike gold coins, no matter how much gold they possessed;" and he intimates
that the distinction was neither new nor its significance doubtful. Theophanus
(eighth century), Cedrenus (eleventh century), and Zonaras (twelfth century)
state that Justinian II. broke the peace of 686 with Abd-el-Melik because the
latter paid his tribute in pieces of gold which bore not the effigy of the
Roman emperor.  In vain the Arabian caliph pleaded that the coins were of full
weight and fineness, and that the Arabian merchants would not accept coins of
the Roman type.  Here are the exact words of Zonaras: "Justinian broke the
treaty with the Arabs because the annual tribute was paid, not in pieces with
the imperial effigy, but after a new type, and it is not permitted to stamp
gold coins with any other effigy but that of the emperor of Rome." ^1 The "new
type" complained of probably had as much to do with the matter as the absence
of Justinian's effigy.  That new type was the effigy of Abd-el-Melik with a
drawn sword in his hand, and the Mahometan religious formula: a triple offense
- an insult, a defiance and a sacrilege.

[Footnote 1: From the period A. D. 645, when their conquests deprived the
Roman empire of the bulk of its Asiatic and African possessions, to about the
beginning of the eighth century.  the Arabians struck coins with the effigy of
the Roman emperor and the emblems P* and the cross.  At that period they
struck coins still with these emblems, but in place of the emperor's effigy,
that of Abd-el-Melik with a drawn sword in hand.  Like the maravedis of Henry
III. (1257) and the nobles of Edward III. (1344), the issue of these coins
amounted to an assertion of independent sovereignty, and as such was resented
by Justinian.  To the nummulary proclamation of the Arabian: "The servant of
God, Abd-el-Melik, Emir-el-Moumenin," the Roman replied: "Our Lord Justinian,
servant of Christ."]

     The privilege accorded to subject-kings with regard to silver was
extended to both mining and coinage.  Silver mining and coinage was conducted
by all the Western princes, the Western emperor included.  The pope disposed
of a few coining privileges to new or weak States, or dependent bishoprics,
the Western emperor disposed of others to the commercial cities; but for the
most part silver was coined by the feudal princes, each for himself, and not
under any continuing prerogative of the empire, whether ancient or mediaeval.

     The following table shows some of the earliest gold coinages of Christian
Europe: -


[See Table 27: Gold Coinages.]

     That Christian Europe abstained from coining gold for five centuries
because such coinage was a prerogative of the Basileus, is an explanation that
may not be acceptable to the old school of historians; but this is not a
sufficient reason for its rejection.  The old school would have been very
greedy of knowledge if they had not left something for the new school to
discover.

     In his "Science des Medailles" (i., 208-11), Father Joubert, and after
him other numismatists, observing the strange abstention of the Christian
princes from coining gold, and perhaps anxious to supply a reason for it which
would have the effect to discourage any further examination of so suggestive a
topic, invented or promulgated the ingenious doctrine that the Roman emperors
from the time of Augustus were invested, in like manner, with the power to
coin both gold and silver.  If this doctrine enjoyed the advantage of being
sound, it would deprive the long abstention from gold coinage by the Western
princes of much of its significance; because, assuming that the coinage of
gold and silver stood upon the same footing, and remembering that all the
Christian princes coined silver, their omission to coin gold might, with some
reason, be attributed to indifference.  But that Father Joubert's doctrine is
not sound is easily proved.

     I.  With the accession of Julius Caesar was enacted a new and memorable
change in the monetary system of Rome.  The gold aureus was made the sole
unlimited universal legal-tender coin of the empire; the silver and copper
coins were limited and localized in legal tender; the ratio of gold to silver
in the coinage was suddenly - and in the face of greatly increased supplies
of gold bullion - raised from 9 silver to 12 silver for 1 gold; and the
mining and commerce of gold were seized, controlled, and strictly monopolized
by the sovereign-pontiff; whereas the mining of silver was thrown open to
subsidiary princes and certain privileged individuals. ^1 With the production
of gold thus limited to pontifical control, and that of silver thrown open
to numerous persons, the coinage of the two metals in like manner, or under
like conditions, was totally impracticable and historically untrue. ^1

[Footnote 1: The exportation of gold had been previously controlled by the
Senate.  Caesar made it a prerogative of the sovereign-pontiff.]

[Footnote 1: See "History Money," chapter xxv., for further consideration of
this subject.]

    II.  As will presently be shown more at length, the imperial treasury -
which was kept distinct from the public treasury, and known by another name -
was organized as a sacred institution; its chief officer, then or later on,
was invested with a sacred title; the coinage of gold, which was placed under
its management, was exercised as a sacred prerogative; and the coins
themselves were stamped with sacred emblems and legends. ^2 On the contrary,
the coinage of silver was a secular prerogative; it belonged to the emperor as
a secular monarch, and as such it was thrown open to the subsidiary princes,
nobles and cities of the empire, while that of copper-bronze was resigned to
the Senate.  These are not like conditions of coinage, but, on the contrary,
very unlike ones.

[Footnote 2: The officers of the sacred fisc, who were stationed in the
provinces to superintend the collection of gold for the sacred mint at
Constantinople, are mentioned in the Notitia Imperii.]

     III.  From the accession of Julius to the fall of Constantinople, the
ratio of value between gold and silver within the Roman empire, whether pagan
or Christian, was always 1 to 12; whereas, during the same interval, it was 1
to 6 1/2 in India, as well as in the Arabian empires, in Asia, Africa and
Spain; and it was 1 to 8 in Freisland, Scandinavia, and the Baltic provinces.
It is inconceivable that one single unvarying ratio of 1 to 12 should have
been maintained for centuries by the innumerable and irreconcilable feudal
provinces of the Roman empire, if the freedom to coin silver, exercised by the
feudal princes, was in like manner extended to gold.

     IV.  The authority of ancient writers is conclusive on this subject.
Cicero, Pliny, Procopius, and Zonaras, though they lived in distant ages, all
concur in representing that the coinage of the two precious metals was not
conducted in like manner nor under like conditions.

     V.  The authority of modern writers, for example, Letronne, Mommsen, and
Lenormant, is to the same effect.  This absolutely closes the subject, and
completely disposes of Father Joubert.

     The sacerdotal character conferred upon gold, or the coinage of gold, was
not a novelty of the Julian constitution; rather was it an ancient myth put to
new political use.  Concerning the testimony of witnesses, the very ancient
Hindu Code says: "By speaking falsely in a cause concerning gold, he kills the
born and the unborn" - an extreme anathema.  Stealing sacred gold is classed
with the highest crimes. ^1 A similar solicitude and veneration for gold
occurs elsewhere throughout these laws.  The Buddhists made it unlawful to
mine for, or even to handle gold, probably because the Bramins had used it as
an engine of tyranny.  According to Mr. Ball, this superstition is still
observed in some remote parts of India.  It is possible that, in some
instances, the sacerdotal character attached to gold by the Bramins belonged
only to such of it as had been paid to the priests, or consecrated to the
temples, and that when the priests paid it away it was no longer sacred; but
the texts will not always bear this reading.  For example: "He who steals a
suvarna" (suvarna, a gold coin) "dies on a dunghill, is turned to a serpent,
and rots in hell until the dissolution of the universe," (vide Braminical
inscription found on copperplate dug up at Raiwan, in Delhi). ^2 The same
superstition occurs among the ancient Egyptians, Persians and Jews.  There are
frequent allusions to it in the pages of Herodotus.  For example, Targitaus,
the first king of Scythia, a thousand years before Darius, the sacred king of
Persia (this would make it about B. C. 1500), was the divine son of Jupiter
and a daughter of the river Borysthenes or Dneister.  In the kingdom of
Targitaus gold was found in abundance, but being deemed sacred, it was
reserved for the use of the sacred king.  In another place Herodotus relates
that in the reign of Darius, B. C. 521 (of whom Lenormant says, in his great
work on the "Moneys of Antiquity," that he reserved the coinage of gold to
himself absolutely), Aryandes, his viceroy in Egypt, struck a silver coin to
resemble the gold darics of the king. Possibly, to make the resemblance
greater, it was also gilded.  For this offense Aryandes was condemned as a
traitor and executed. ^1 Josephus makes many allusions to the sacredness of
gold.  A similar belief is to be noticed among the ancient Greeks, whose
coinages, except during the republican era, were conducted in the temples and
under the supervision of priests.  Upon these issues were stamped the
symbolism and religion of the State, and as only the priesthood could
correctly illustrate these mysteries of their own creation, the coinage - at
least that of the more precious pieces - naturally became a prerogative of
their order.  Rawlinson notices that the Parthian kings, even after they threw
off the Syro-Macedonian yoke, never ventured to strike gold coins. ^2 The
reason probably was that in place of the Syro-Macedonian yoke they had
accepted the Roman, and that the Roman (imperial) law forbade the coinage of
gold to subject-princes.

[Footnote 1: Halhed's "Gentoo Code," viii., 99; ix., 237.]

[Footnote 2: "Jour. Asiat. Soc. Bengal," lvi., 118.]

[Footnote 1: Mel., 7, 166; Lenormant, i., 173.]

[Footnote 2: Geo. Rawlinson, "Seventh Monarchy," p 70.]

     Whatever credit or significance be accorded or denied to these ancient
glimpses of the myth, its significance becomes clearer when it is viewed
through the accounts of the Roman historians.  The Sacred Myth of Gold appears
in Rome at the period when the history of the Gaulish invasion of A. U. 369
was written.  The story runs that after the eternal city had been saved from
the barbarians, it was held by the Roman leaders that to the gold which had
been taken from the mass belonging to the temples should be added the gold
contributed by the women towards making up the ransom, or indemnity, of a
thousand pounds weight, and that all of it should thenceforth be regarded as
sacred.  Says Livy: "The gold which had been rescued from payment to the
Gauls, as also what had been, during the hurry of the alarm, carried from the
other temples into the recess of Jupiter's temple, was altogether judged to be
sacred, and ordered to be deposited together under the throne of Jupiter." ^1

[Footnote 1: Livy, v., 50.]