And Lysias, in his Oration on the Golden Tripod, if indeed

[[365]]the speech be a genuine one of his, says—"It was still possible to give silver or gold plate." But those who pique themselves on the purity of their Greek, say that the proper expression is not ἀργυρώματα and χρυσώματα, but ἀργυροῦς κόσμος and χρυσοῦς κόσμος.

19. When Æmilianus had said this, Pontianus said—For formerly gold was really exceedingly scarce among the Greeks; and there was not indeed much silver; at least, not much which was extracted from the mines; on which account Duris the Samian says that Philip, the father of the great king Alexander, as he was possessed of one flagon of gold, always put it under his pillow when he went to bed. And Herodotus of Heraclea says, that the Golden Lamb of Atreus, which was the pregnant cause of many eclipses of the sun, and changes of kings, and which was, moreover, the subject of a great many tragedies, was a golden flagon, having in the centre a figure of a golden lamb. And Anaximenes of Lampsacus, in the first of those works of his, called Histories, says that the necklace of Eriphyle was so notorious because gold at that time was so rare among the Greeks; for that a golden goblet was at that time a most unusual thing to see; but that after the taking of Delphi by the Phocians, then all such things began to be more abundant. But formerly even those men who were accounted exceedingly rich used to drink out of brazen goblets, and the repositories where they put them away they called χαλκόθηκαι.

And Herodotus says that the Egyptian priests drink out of brazen goblets; and he affirms that silver flagons could not be found to be given to all the kings, even when they sacrificed in public; and, accordingly, that Psammetichus, who was later than the other kings, performed his libations with a brazen flagon, while the rest made their offerings with silver ones. But after the temple at Delphi had been plundered by the tyrants of Phocis, then gold became common among the Greeks, and silver became actually abundant; and afterwards, when the great Alexander had brought into Greece all the treasures from out of Asia, then there really did shine forth what Pindar calls "wealth predominating far and wide."

20. And the silver and gold offerings which were at Delphi were offered originally by Gyges the king of the Lydians. For before the reign of this monarch Apollo had no silver,

[[366]]and still less had he gold, as Phanias the Eresian tells us, and Theopompus, too, in the fortieth book of his History of the Transactions of the Reign of Philip. For these writers relate that the Pythian temple was adorned by Gyges, and by Crœsus who succeeded him; and after them by Gelo and Hiero, the tyrants of Syracuse: the first of whom offered up a tripod and a statue of Victory, both made of gold, about the time that Xerxes was making his expedition against Greece; and Hiero made similar offerings. And Theopompus uses the following language—"For anciently the temple was adorned with brazen offerings: I do not mean statues, but caldrons and tripods made of brass. The Lacedæmonians, therefore, wishing to gild the face of the Apollo that was at Amyclæ, and not finding any gold in Greece, having sent to the oracle of the god, asked the god from whom they could buy gold; and he answered them that they should go to Crœsus the Lydian, and buy it of him. And they went and bought the gold of Crœsus. But Hiero the Syracusan, wishing to offer to the god a tripod and a statue of Victory of unalloyed gold, and being in want of the gold for a long time, afterwards sent men to Greece to seek for it; who, coming after a time to Corinth, and tracing it out, found some in the possession of Architeles the Corinthian, who had been a long time buying it up by little and little, and so had no inconsiderable quantity of it; and he sold it to the emissaries of Hiero in what quantity they required. And after that, having filled his hand with it he made them a present of all that he could hold in his hand, in return for which Hiero sent a vessel full of corn, and many other gifts to him from Sicily."

21. And Phanias relates the same circumstances in his history of the Tyrants in Sicily, saying that the ancient offerings had been brass, both tripods, and caldrons, and daggers; and that on one of them there was the following inscription—

Look on me well; for I was once a part
Of the wide tower which defended Troy
When Greeks and Trojans fought for fair-hair'd Helen;
And Helicon, brave Antenor's son,
Brought me from thence, and placed me here, to be
An ornament to Phœbus' holy shrine.

And in the tripod, which was one of the prizes offered at the funeral games in honour of Patroclus, there was the inscription—

[[367]] I am a brazen tripod, and I lie
Here as an ornament of Delphi's shrine.
The swift Achilles gave me as a prize
What time he placed Patroclus on the pile,
And Tydeus' mighty son, brave Diomede,
Offer'd me here, won by his speedy coursers
In the swift race by Helle's spacious wave.