The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 02

by Unknown

When we find silver used as money by a people, it shows that it has either a great trade, or that it has reached a rather advanced stage of culture, and it mostly means both. Unworked rough silver pieces, like the oldest money, could only be of value where there were merchants who would take them in exchange for wares or where they understood how to work it. The former was the case with the Hebrews and in the neighbouring countries of Phœnicia, where it was almost exclusively in the hands of those settled in the country, or of the Phœnicians who resorted thither. But in Greece, where, in the Homeric period, the art of working precious metals was not known and trade was in a very backward state, advance had to be made in both directions before money became current. This did not occur till the ninth century, when Greece began to have important places of trade; and as commerce was at that time almost entirely in the hands of the Phœnicians, it led to the introduction of their mode of trade in the country. The use of silver money in Italy is of a later date still.

The localities of the use of silver as money in antiquity are thus made patent. The Phœnicians traded with other countries than those mentioned, for we know for certain that they went to the Balearic Isles, Spain, Britain, and western and northern Africa. Therefore the nearer a country lay to Phœnicia the earlier it adopted the use of silver as money, and the farther away it lay from this central point of ancient trade the later it was before silver appeared as a medium of exchange in that country, as it was evidently dependent on the country having commercial relations with the Phœnicians.

With regard to the origin of silver in antiquity, we must remark that silver was far more seldom found than gold, and that a great deal of that mentioned by the ancients was so mixed with gold that only an eighth part was silver. The Biblical books, although referring to several places where gold was found, only mention silver coming from Tarshish, or Turditania, and that also brought to Canaan by the trade with Ophir.

In Africa, from whence Western Asia procured her great quantities of gold, the ancients found no silver. In the whole of Western Asia, the seat of the Semitic races, there was no silver, and in Asia Minor there was only a small quantity procured from the mines; and these are the only silver mines mentioned in Asia in antiquity, beyond the unimportant ones of Canaan and northern India. Moreover, in Europe, with the exception of the silver country of Turditania, silver was found only in very few places and in very small quantities.

Cyprus had some silver and gold mines, but it is very doubtful whether it was also to be found in Crete; and albeit unimportant, there were also gold and silver mines in Siphnus. Greece and the neighbouring countries were very poor in silver until the Persian war, the places where it was to be found, like the mines in Attica and probably the silver mines of Epirus and Macedonia, being either not known, or being worked by the Phœnicians; and it was the same with the mines of Thasos and Thrace, which were more famous for their gold than their silver. And beyond these places, if we except the Phœnician commercial district of northern Europe, mention was only made of the silver of Sardinia and Gaul, where the metal was only a late discovery, and of Britain.

Under these circumstances, the Biblical records which tell of Western Asia’s treasures of silver coming from the Phœnician colony of Tarshish are of great value to the history of ancient commerce. The Euphrates is also mentioned in these records, and it is moreover shown that being the centre of the commerce of antiquity, it was the depot for the metals found in the western countries, and as the Phœnicians monopolised the trade with Turditania for nearly a thousand years, they brought the silver to the market of Asia.

The enormous amount of silver possessed by Western Asia even in remote times, shows the great amount circulated by Phœnicia, as it was almost exclusively obtained by trade with that country.

Although silver was more difficult to obtain than gold, and was mostly first secured with gold in small quantities, it was used more than gold. The Greeks generally reckoned that gold was worth the tenth part of silver, and in Biblical books, in the seventh century B.C., there are signs of a similar comparison; but in more remote times silver must have ranked lower than gold, at least in Western Asia.

According to the Mosaic books, of the silver and golden gifts which the twelve chiefs made to the sanctuary, the silver gifts were worth twenty times as much as the golden, and it is therefore presumable, as the ancients were accurate in their statements about hieratic matters, that the old valuation of gold and silver was still then in vogue. As, moreover, in more ancient times, a great deal of silver and a comparatively small amount of gold was imported into Palestine, as gold was used only for ornaments, and not as money, the above valuation is not so astonishing.