at no place in Greece Proper were there auriferous deposits. Hence it is probable that gold had to silver a higher relative value in Greece than it had in Asia. Certain archaeological discoveries recently made at Athens add great strength to the view which I then put forward. At a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Science in 1889 Dr Ulrich Köhler discussed certain fragments of inscriptions which refer to the famous statue of Athena, wrought in gold and ivory by Pheidias for the Parthenon. By combining with a fragment published by M. Foucart (Bullet. de Corresp. Hell. 1889, p. 171), another fragment previously copied by himself, Dr Köhler arrived at the result that the fragments relate to the purchase of materials for the construction of the statue, that is of gold and ivory. The gold purchased is described both according to its weight and according to the price ([Greek: timê]) paid for it in Attic silver currency (whilst the ivory is only described by the value or price). The sum paid for gold amounted to 526·652 drachms, 5 obols, the weight of the gold being 37·618 drachms: from this we learn that the relative value of gold to silver at that time was as 14 : 1. According to Thucydides (II. 13), forty talents of gold were used in the making of the statue, whilst according to the more explicit statement of Philochorus the amount was forty-four. The image was dedicated at the great Panathenaic festival of the year 438 B.C. As not more than 10 to 11 talents of gold were used in the three years to which the fragments refer, Köhler draws the inference that the construction of the statue commenced in the same year as that of the Parthenon (447 B.C.), and that Pheidias was engaged on his great work for fully nine years.
We thus know now the relative value of silver and gold in Attica about 450 B.C. But we must not regard this as the relation which existed at earlier times. It was only after the Persian wars that Athens had got possession of the island of Thasos with its rich gold mines, and the equally rich districts on the Thracian coast. The fact of her coming into the possession of such wealthy gold-producing regions must have materially lowered the price of gold in Athens. We know how the development of the mines of Pangaeum by Philip of Macedon
