Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/315

 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF LYDIAN CIVILIZATION. 299 crucible had converted into portable bars. The productive activity of the colonist, the artisan, and merchant had more to do with creating the wealth of Lydia, than all the washings of her aurifer- ous sands, the contemplation of v/hich gave the Greeks their first insight into the power of capital. In a restricted sense, a phenomenon of a similar nature had already taken place in Phrygia. The Greeks nowhere extracted the noble metals from their soil ; they only obtained them by way of exchange. This it was which caused their lively imagination to exaggerate the importance of the gold fields the Phrygians were supposed to possess in the flanks of their mountains, and the beds of their torrents ; they invented tales which, sprung from childish credulity and wonderment, a later age endowed with moral and philosophical import. The untold wealth of Midas had been no good to him ; it disappeared along with that of the country, both during the Cimmerian invasion and the wars that had to be carried on against the Medes and the Lydians. The affairs of Lydia took a different turn, and she retained her autonomy for another hundred years. In the meanwhile, her military preponderance caused a large proportion of the capital, that had accumulated for centuries in the most thriving parts of the peninsula, to flow in the royal treasury. Thanks to her commerce and industry, the difference of exchange was always to her benefit, so that what- ever gold came out of the soil circulated within the territory, either for the use of her princes and merchants or that of the country generally. The superabundance and plethora of the noble metal suggested the first idea of an invention which will ever shed lustre on the Lydian name. The glory of Phoenicia is to have made the civilized world richer with an alphabetical writing ; that of Lydia to have given it a monetary system. This she did when she put a stamp upon her ingots, thereby endowing them with a fixed official value, that made them acceptable and things to be desired throughout the vast empire, which had Sardes for its capital. In the sequel of this history, we shall show what splendid use the art of Greece and Rome made of the double field yielded by the two faces of the coin, and how medal-engraving became one of the most flourishing branches of sculpture, one that was pro- ductive of the richest and most exquisite harvest. No effort of plastic genius conveys, in the same degree, the impression of