Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/264

 248 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. adapted themselves to the masters with whom more was to be gained than by staying away. The economy of the ancients was of the simplest ; in their estimation the prosperity of the Lydians and the vaunted opulence of their princes were sufficiently accounted for by gold extracted from the depths of their moun- tains or picked up in the torrents of Tmolus. 1 But though it is pretty certain that veins of the precious metal were then won from auriferous rocks of quartz for the benefit of Lydia and Mysia, 2 nothing proves its having been obtained in quantities that would compare with the amount the kings of Macedonia quarried in after years from the flanks of Pangseus. As to the Pactolus, its reputa- tion was doubtless due to the inflated language of poets ; for the gold-finders who washed and sifted its sands, of a certainty, created but a small fraction, perhaps a very small fraction indeed, of the wealth Alyattes and Crcesus would seem to have possessed. Other agencies contributed a much larger share in the formation of treasures which were the wonder of the Greeks. In the first place should be' named those soldiers who, after plundering half the peninsula in the interest of their chiefs, compelled the popula- tion to pay tribute ; then came agriculturists, who utilized this vast and fertile territory, either as pasturage or arable land and vine-culture ; craftsmen of either sex who, in the urban as in the rural workshop, practised those high-class industries already in vogue in the days of Homer; 3 merchants who served as middle- men between the Greek ports and the productive centres, as well as the markets of the whole of Anterior Asia. Herodotus says that " the Lydians were the first retailers." 4 1 Herodotus, who has often been reproached with undue credulity, says nothing of the kind (i. 93, v. 101); he confines himself to the statement that the deciduous torrents of the Lydian mountains carry along with them gold particles. It is by much later writers that the Pactolus is described as the main source of Croesus's wealth (Strabo, XIII. iv. 5). Upon the gold of Pactolus, consult TCHLATCHEF, Le Bosphore et Constantinople, 8vo, 1864, pp. 232-242. This traveller supposes that towards the seventh century B.C. the stream came upon a rich gold ore, which it disintegrated and worked out after a number of years', and as a matter of course ceased to produce gold in any quantity. The geological formation of Tmolus, as is well known, does not belie the above hypothesis; it accounts, too, for the exaggerated language of later times, as a reminiscence of what had once been a substantial fact. 2 Strabo, XIV. v. 28; Pseudo-Aristotle, irepl 0av/xa<riW dKovoyxaTtov, 52. 8 HOMER, Iliad, iv. 141-145. 8c Kai Ka^Ao! cyevovTo (Herodotus, i. 94).