Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/220

 degree of civilization without feeling any need of what are properly termed coins. Transactions by means of the scales are comparatively simple, and as a matter of fact we shall find hereafter that even after a coinage had been for centuries established, men constantly had recourse to the balance in monetary transactions, just as down to the present moment the Chinese, who have enjoyed a high degree of culture for several thousand years, still have no native currency but their copper cash, foreign silver dollars being the only medium in the precious metals, whilst all important monetary transactions are carried on by the scales and weights. I may here likewise point out incidentally that where the supply of the precious metals is only sufficient to meet the demand for personal adornment, the establishment of a coinage in those metals will naturally be slow, whilst on the other hand where there is so abundant a supply of the metals, that there is more than sufficient for purposes of personal use, the tendency to produce a coinage will be much greater. If we enquire what were the metalliferous regions of Asia Minor, we at once find that Lydia above all other countries was especially rich in gold, or rather a natural alloy of gold and silver. The wealth of two Lydian kings, Gyges and Croesus, which has been through the ages a proverb consisted of vast quantities of this metal, which the Greeks called electron ([Greek: êlektron]) or white gold ([Greek: leukos chrysos], Herodotus, 50). The ancients regarded it as almost a distinct metal, doubtless because from their imperfect methods they experienced the greatest difficulty in extracting the pure metal. The pure gold in circulation in Asia Minor must have come from the valley of the Oxus, or the Ural mountains. Thus Sophocles speaks of "the electron of Sardis and the gold of Ind ." Even in the time of Strabo ( 21), the process was regarded as so difficult that the great geographer thinks it worth while to quote from Posidonius (flor. 90 ), the description of how the separation of the metals was effected ( 146). It is there-*]