Athene in the Parthenon was draped in gold at an expense of half a million of dollars. The amount of gold and silver withdrawn from circulation to be deposited in temples as sacred offerings to the gods, is almost incredible. Gyges consecrated to the Delphian Apollo a long list of rich and costly offerings; among which we read of six huge golden bowls, weighing in the aggregate some seventeen hundred pounds, and worth $300,000. Croesus is as famed for his pious liberality as for his princely wealth. His votive offerings, though scattered through numerous temples, were accumulated in richest abundance at Delphi. The devotee, as he entered that famed temple, was overawed by the magnificent display of costly articles in gold and silver of every variety of size and shape, with which the fabulous wealth of the Lydian prince had enriched it. There were bowls, casks, water-pots and ewers, all of massive silver; a golden statue three cubits high, a golden lion of some five or six hundred pounds weight, a huge golden bowl weighing a quarter of a ton; indeed the votive offerings of this one prince, consecrated in this single temple, must have contained upwards of seven tons of gold. The estimate of Diodorus is still higher; he tells us that, from the gold alone, coins were struck in later times to the almost incredible sum of $1,000,000. The aggregate amount of gold and silver coined by the Phocians in the Second Sacred war, from the accumulated treasures of Delphi reached $10,000,000.

The vast quantities of gold and silver, thus kept out of circulation, produced a comparative scarcity, and, of course, greatly enhanced the value of the precious metals. It has been a common opinion among scholars that modern prices are some ten times as high as those which prevailed in ancient Greece; and though Prof. Boeckh thinks this ratio quite too high, it may still be doubted whether he has succeeded in proving it to be so. It is well known that the amount of gold and silver thrown into circulation in Greece by the Persian wars, by the magnificent works of Pericles, by the lavish expenditures of Philip of Macedon, and by other kindred causes, raised prices at Athens, in the course of two

centuries, some five-fold; the money coined by Constantine the Great, from the treasures of heathen temples, at once caused a marked rise in prices; the working of the mines of the New World in the 16th century reduced gold and silver to one third of their former value. It may not, indeed, be possible to measure the united results of these and other causes acting through a period of so many centuries, but, with all due allowance for the counteracting influence of luxury and commerce, the advance in prices since the time of Solon must have been manifold.

It may not be improper to subjoin a few illustrations of prices once current in ancient Athens.

Landed property about Athens was comparatively high, as indeed we should expect to find it in a densely peopled country in the vicinity of a great and flourishing metropolis. Boeckh conjectures on data which do not warrant a decided opinion, that the average price of land in Attica was about. $30 per acre.

Houses sold at prices ranging from $50 to $2000; though there is probably but one instance on record in which this last sum was paid for a residence, and that is cited by Plautus as a piece of comic extravagance. The rich banker Pasion owned a house valued at $1700. Before luxury and corruption had begun to undermine Athenian simplicity and virtue, the citizen ever true to his lofty sentiments of public spirit, scorned private display, and reserved his treasures for the public call. Private houses were, accordingly, of moderate dimensions, simple and unadorned. Four or five hundred dollars were thought quite sufficient to purchase a comfortable home. Even the residences of the most illustrious citizens, of Miltiades, Themistocles, and Aristides, as Demosthenes expressly assures us, were not at all distinguished from those of their humble neighbors. Perhaps few New England mechanics would live content in the unpretending homes of the victors of Marathon and Salamis. In the golden age of Athenian greatness and freedom, there was no more striking contrast, even in that city of contradictions. and extremes, than that presented by the simplicity and

cheapness of its private houses, when compared with the unrivalled richness and magnificence of its public edifices.

The price of ordinary slaves seems to have varied from $10 to $175. Those employed in the work of the house, the mine or the mill, seldom sold higher than $25; and yet a common horse, trained to the plough, would bring twice that sum. A steed for the chariot could not be bought for less than two or three hundred dollars. The fancy price of $13,000 paid by Alexander for his noble charger Bucephalus would have purchased five hundred slaves; and the coxcomb Alcibiades did not hesitate to invest the value of fifty faithful servants in a single dog.

The low price of cattle in the Athenian market in the sixth century B. C. is quite remarkable. With the gold which a good yoke of oxen would bring to-day in the Brighton market, Solon might have purchased a full hecatomb of choice bullocks and heifers for the altar. Sheep sold at ten cents per head.

Meats were of course cheap. Aristophanes tells us that a meal could be bought for one and a half cents. A Grecian proverb allows three cents for a meal of salted meat, and the same sum for the spices to season it.

But grain, everywhere indeed a most important staple, claims special attention from the student of the Athenian polity. Attica was not a productive country, and, being densely peopled, was obliged to rely on its foreign commerce for the annual supply of grain to the amount of a million and a half of bushels. The regulation of the corn trade, therefore, became from the very first a prominent object in Athenian legislation. The exportation of grain was prohibited by the most stringent enactments; all corn vessels which touched at the Piræus were required to offer two thirds of their cargoes at the Athenian market; it was declared a capital offence to attempt to forestall or monopolize the trade in time of scarcity; indeed, it was criminal in the sight of the law to demand, at any time, more than three cents profit on the bushel. The necessity of stringent legislation on this subject is sufficiently obvious. Could the grain dealers have

escaped the wise severity of the Athenian laws, their rapacity would have reduced the poor to the very verge of starvation. Like Cleomenes of Alexandria, many an extortioner would have grown rich on the calamities and sufferings of his fellow citizens. Even the severity of the Athenian code, with all the terrors of the death penalty, furnished but a partial protection against the unholy designs of grasping speculators. The eloquent Lysias well nigh exhausts even his copious vocabulary in quest of opprobrious epithets to designate the villanous characters and practices of the grain dealers at Athens.

The current price of wheat per bushel, in the time of Solon, was ten or twelve cents; in the age of Socrates it had risen to thirty, and in that of Demosthenes to fifty or sixty

cents.

Ordinary clothing sold extremely low. The exquisite indeed, who affected great splendor, flourished the finest textures, and displayed the richest dyes, who wore Alcibiades boots, and was fragrant with perfumery expensive beyond anything which Parisian luxury ever knew, may have found a fortune requisite to replenish his wardrobe and supply his toilet; yet the plain Athenian citizen, with his simple habits and tastes, was perfectly content and comfortable in his homespun suit, which had not cost him more than two or three dollars.

From the details already given, it is evident that the necessary expenses of living in ancient Athens were quite inconsiderable. Boeckh makes the calculation that a family of four adults could have lived in the time of Socrates for $65 per annum, and in the age of Demosthenes for $80. This low estimate, however, presupposes a degree of economy to which even a bare competency could scarcely be expected to submit. Demosthenes found that for himself, sister and mother $120, exclusive of rent, was not too generous a support. Wealth, of course, indulged in various degrees of luxury. While Athenian frugality might judge eight or ten cents quite adequate to furnish a family of three or four persons with a suitable meal, Macedonian extravagance

loaded the table of Alexander with all the luxuries which the daily expenditure of $1700 could command.

Another important inquiry relates to the compensation of labor. In the time of Pericles, a common laborer received a drachma, or about seventeen cents, per day for his services; and indeed we read in Athenæus that the philosophers, Menedemus and Asclepiades, in youth, after the studies of the day, each earned in a grain mill at night the comfortable support of two drachmas. These prices show how much better ordinary labor was paid at ancient Athens than it now is in many of the countries of Europe. It was this healthful arrangement which saved Athens from becoming, like modern Naples, the home of vicious mendicants and reckless, starving vagrants.

The genius of the Athenian democracy tended to equalize the compensation of labor in all the departments of human industry. The general received but four-fold more than the private soldier; the architect of the temple of Minerva Polias could aspire to no higher pay than the common laborer engaged in the work; yet rare ability and eminent skill, triumphing over the arbitrary rule of democratic equality, not unfrequently commanded wages commensurate with their high services. The famous Democedes, at a time when money had ten-fold its present value, received as public physician at Crotona a regular salary of upwards of $1000. He afterwards removed to Athens on a salary of $1700, and finally accepted the still higher offer of $2000 from Polycrates of Samos. The passion for the fine arts, so inordinate in the Athenian breast, secured to the great masters in music, dramatic action, and sculpture, the most extravagant rewards. Aristodemus received $1000 for performing in a single drama; and Amabeus the same sum for a single concert. Even Jenny Lind was scarcely better rewarded by the enthusiastic admiration of the American people, than were the celebrated masters of song by the music-loving Athenians.

The Athenian devotion to learning also secured enormous incomes to eminent instructors in philosophy and eloquence. Protagoras of Abdera, Gorgias and Zeno the Eleatic de