The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight StandardsRidgeway, William
History
The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards
Ridgeway, William
Money -- Origin; Weights and measures -- History
It is interesting to observe that according to tradition the wealth
of Midas, the king of Phrygia, who is perhaps more famous for his
ass’s ears than his riches, came from the Bermion Mount in that part
of Macedonia, which was occupied in historical times by the powerful
tribe of the Bryges. This in itself is an interesting indication of the
intimate connection and close communication between the countries and
peoples on both sides of the Dardanelles from the earliest epoch. There
were on either side lands gifted by nature with stores of wealth, as
well as possessing the portals of either continent. Hence the Hellespont
and Bosphorus have ever been the seat of rich cities, and have ever been
regarded amongst the greatest of prizes in the struggles of the nations.
It is possible that the ancient legend connecting the wealth of Priam of
Troy with the mines of Astyra, still worked in Strabo’s days, may serve
to explain the real cause of that invasion of the Achaeans, which in all
probability did occur, although on what form or at what time we know not,
and around which there grew in the mouths of the rhapsodists the tale of
Troy Divine. In all our enumeration of gold-mines we do not find a single
one allotted to Greece Proper. The wealth of Cadmus, the old Phoenician
founder of Thebes, who was said to have introduced the art of writing
into Hellas, came, according to Strabo’s tradition, from Thrace and the
mines of Pangaeum. As Cadmus is the typical wealthy potentate of Northern
Greece, so the line of Pelops are the typical wealthy potentates of
Peloponnesus. Their wealth, like that of Cadmus, is adventitious, for it
is the product of the mines of Phrygia and Mount Sipylus. This is quite
consistent with the statement of Thucydides that “those Peloponnesians
who have received the clearest accounts by tradition from the men of
former time declare that Pelops first by means of the mass of wealth
with which he came from Asia to men who were poor, having acquired for
himself power although he was a new-comer, gave occasion for the land to
be called after him.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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