Abstract
DURING the bronze age, Greece was remarkably wealthy in gold; though the most sensational finds have been those of Mycenæ, there is little doubt from the amount that has been turned up elsewhere that the contents of the shaft-graves only represent a small portion of the gold that was at one time available. Homer still has many lines reminiscent of the riches of Mycenæ, but seems no longer to be living himself in times of such plenty, and thus many of the gold objects which he describes are said to have been of foreign workmanship. In the early iron age gold was even rarer, as is seen by the astonishment of the Greeks at the regal wealth of a man like Crœsus. One may therefore ask oneself what happened to all the gold, seeing that only some of it seems to have been laid in tombs, and it is not possible for it to be destroyed by rust. Some may have been carried off by pirates, but if we look to the history of the period of reconstruction at the beginning of the iron age, we find two figures noted for their wealth, Midas in Phrygia and Solomon in Palestine; to Solomon may have gone some of the Aegean gold, brought originally to the Levant by the sea-raiders of the twelfth century B.C. or by Phœnician traders; and it is not unlikely that Midas made a good profit by selling to the Greeks the new metal iron before they had learnt to produce it for themselves, though it is probable that he also had gold mines of his own.
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References
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DAVIES, O. Bronze Age Mining Round the Aegean*. Nature 130, 985–987 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130985a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130985a0
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