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CHAP. 17.—AT WHAT PERIODS THERE WAS THE GREATEST QUANTITY OF GOLD AND SILVER IN THE TREASURY OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

In the consulship of Sextus Julius and Lucius Aurelius,1 seven years before the commencement of the Third Punic War, there was in the treasury of the Roman people seventeen thousand four hundred and ten pounds' weight of uncoined gold, twenty-two thousand and seventy pounds' weight of silver, and in specie, six million one hundred and thirty-five thousand four hundred sesterces.

In the consulship of Sextus Julius and Lucius Marcius, that is to say, at the commencement of the Social War,2 there was in the public treasury one million3 six hundred and twenty thousand eight hundred and thirty-one pounds' weight of gold. Caius Cæsar, at his first entry into Rome, during the civil war which bears his name, withdrew from the treasury fifteen thousand pounds' weight in gold ingots, thirty thousand pounds' weight in uncoined silver, and in specie, three hundred thousand sesterces: indeed, at no4 period was the republic more wealthy. Æmilius Paulus, too, after the defeat of King Perseus, paid into the public treasury, from the spoil obtained in Macedonia, three hundred millions5 of sesterces, and from this period the Roman people ceased to pay tribute.

1 A.U.C. 597.

2 Or Marsic War. See B. ii. c. 85.

3 There is an error in this statement, probably, unless we understand by it the small libra or pound of two ounces, mentioned in c. 13 of this Book.

4 This remark is confirmatory of the incorrectness of the preceding statement.

5 The reading here is doubtful.

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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