Section CXXXV.

History Of The Values Of The Precious Metals.—In Antiquity And In The Middle Ages.

It is impossible to write a real history of the values of the precious metals in ancient and medieval times: the sources of information are too few. But it does seem possible to suggest some fragments and something of the development of that history,(820) at least in outline.

Thus, for instance, the supply of the precious metals furnished by the mines, in the earlier times of ancient history, was kept from entering the market by the system which then prevailed everywhere, of hoarding treasure by the state, by the temples etc., and later by great reserves of treasure kept by individuals.(821) The revolutions in prices in ancient times were produced as frequently by the sudden opening of such reservoirs, as by the discovery of richer sources. Thus, for instance, such events as the dissipation of Pericles’ treasures, the subsidies of the Persian kings, the spoliation of many temples in consequence of declining religiousness, the distribution of Persian treasures by Alexander the Great,(822) had a vast influence on the undeniable rise in the price of Greek commodities in the century succeeding the Peleponnesian war.(823) Later, it is said that in Rome, the price of pieces of land was doubled by the influx of Egyptian war-booty.(824) It is a remarkable proof of the undeveloped condition of trade in the earlier periods of ancient history, that the perturbations in prices were, apparently, at least, so entirely local. Phœnicia, Palestine etc., must have experienced, in the age of Solomon, a formal deluge of the precious metals, while Greece, for instance, was then, and for centuries after, extremely poor in them.(825) It is not, on the whole, to be doubted, that the value in exchange of the precious metals was on a continual decline until the most flourishing time of the Roman emperors.(826) During the middle ages, it seems to have stood much higher again; because the great loss of treasure caused by the migration of nations etc., the almost complete cessation of production at the mines, and the slowness of the circulation of money, played a much more important part than the decrease of trade.(827)(828)