Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/265

 THE LYDIANS, THEIR COUNTRY, HISTORY, AND RELIGION. 249 So stated the assertion is incorrect, since Egypt and Phoenicia had small vendors long before Lydia. What Herodotus means, and says after his own fashion, is that the Lydians had a natural turn and genius for trade, which in their hands acquired a singular activity. At any rate, it was not retail, carried on in the shops of some street in the bazaar, but wholesale trade that gave the Lydian Pythius his enormous wealth, which he placed at the disposal of Xerxes when the latter marched against Greece. 1 Even if we only reckon the actual worth of the precious metals, the capital Pythius is said to have possessed would amount to the considerable sum of more than ^3,2OO,ooo. 2 Pythius was a citizen of Celsenae, situate by the head-springs of the Maeander, on the road which, a little beyond Colossoi, branched off in several directions, down the valleys leading to Miletus, Ephesus, Sardes, Magnesia, and Smyrna. I picture him as not unlike one of those Greek or Armenian merchants I have known in Asia Minor and Syria, for whom caravans travel between Smyrna, Messina, Alex- andretta or Beyrout, and Angora, Konieh, Caesarea, Aleppo, or Damascus. Transport of raw products and manufactured objects served to swell the royal coffers ; for it is probable that all imports and exports were heavily taxed, and that there existed fixed rates for everything sold, which were collected on the spot. Hence the gold and silver that filled the royal treasury chambers in the citadel of Sardes were derived from deductions made by the sove- reign upon capital continually created and renewed by universal labour. No wonder Greek imagination found some difficulty in realizing this enormous accumulation of the precious metals. 3 In the Hellenic world, capital was divided between a number of cities, and again subdivided between the well-to-do citizens of each town, so that it could not be condensed and amassed in one recep- tacle, as in Lydia, where the prodigality of the prince, however great it might be, could never exhaust it, since it always received more specie than it gave back to circulation. It is possible, nay probable, that what was in truth very considerable may have been exaggerated, notably by later writers, when their fancy 1 Herodotus, vii. 27-29. a Ibid., loc. cit. 8 Archilochus found no more appropriate expression to denote the largest con- ceivable fortune than the following : Ou pot ra Fvycw ro TroXu^puVov /ic'Aci (" The wealth of Gyves, he who is possessed of so much gold ").