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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
During the course of history there have been three occassions upon which great masses of treasure—gold and silver—have suddenly, or within the span of a comparatively few years, been released and thrown upon the world's markets. These occasions have been at the end of the fourth century B.C., when Alexander the Great captured the hoards of the Persian kings; during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the treasures of Mexico and Peru were brought to Europe by the Spaniards, and during the nineteenth century with the discovery of gold first in California and Australia and later in Alaska and South Africa. We are singularly fortunate in having for our consideration, price series which exhibit the effect of these sudden accessions of treasure for all three periods. The object of the present article will be to examine the first two of these momentous happenings.
1 I am most grateful for the care with which the first part of this paper was read in manuscript by Professor J. A. O. Larsen ami the second part by Professor Earl J. Hamilton. Both these gentiemen have made most valuable suggestions and saved me from errors both in fact and inference.
2 Plutarch, , Life of Alexander, 31 Google Scholar; Strabo, XV, 3, 9 (c. 731); Arrian, III, 16; Diodorus Siculas, XVII, 66, 71. Meyer, Eduard, Geschichte des Altertums (Stuttgart, 1893–1902), III, 1, p. 47 ff.Google Scholar estimates the amount of treasure at 180,000 Persian talents. This is quite conjectural. We do not know how much was in gold or silver.
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8 The sort that scandalized poor Ezekiel so deeply. The picture of Mediterranean commerce in chap. 27 is well worth reading.
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12 Xenophon, de Vectigalibus, passim.
13 Aristophanes, , Wasps, 300, 6Google Scholar Obols to the drachma, about 65 grains of fine silver; medimnus, 1¼ bushels.
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30 I.e. 10 drachmas a month; the 130 were for intercalary years when a thirteenth month was added to the calendar.
31 I do not know what to make of Mr. Tarn's figures with regard to the reduction in the prices paid skilled masons in cutting letters in inscriptions. From 282-100 B.C. the tariff for cutting 100 letters was reduced from 9 to 2 abols. Tarn, , Social Question, pp. 124 ff.Google Scholar, calls these “extraordinary figures.” There must be some explanation which we do not know. Either there was a surplus of omasons who would work for any wage, or inscription cutting was a part-time job.
32 Ferguson, W. S., Hellenistic Athens (London, 1911), p. 66 for refs.Google Scholar in comedies.
33 Diod. Sic., XXII, 5.
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37 Larsen, , Roman Greece, p. 390.Google Scholar
38 But doubtful. Cf. Larsen, , Roman Greece, p. 386.Google Scholar The actual quantity purchased is not given, but the price per medimnus may be not unjustifiably inferred from the inscription.
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54 In a famous passage in his Natural History, XII, 41 (84)Google Scholar he says that a hundred million sesterces went to the East every year to pay for luxuries “Tanto nobis deliciae et feminae constant.”
55 Conveniently summarized in Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economics, art. Debasement.
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61 Gilboy, , Wages in Eighteenth Century England, pp. 220, 240 ff.Google Scholar These conclusions must be accepted with a certain amount of reserve. The series of wage quotations is discontinuous and in many instances scanty. But, with all due caution, they may be accepted as presenting an over-all picture of wage movements in the eighteenth century.
62 Pinchbeck, I., Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (London 1930).Google Scholar
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64 Gilboy, , Wages in Eighteenth Century England, pp. 225 ff.Google Scholar That the first half of the century saw the “golden age” of labour is curiously borne out by conditions in China Where, Mr. K. W. Taylor tells me, prosperity was marked. Nature was benign, peace reigned and there were no major disasters.
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