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πάντα: 3000 of every kind (cf. the idiomatic πάντα δέκα, iv. 88. 1). The account of this holocaust is like that given by Lucian (de dea Syria 49, p. 485) of the spring sacrifice at Hierapolis; the offering of Croesus, however, is the provision of a feast for the god on a great scale, with all the furniture of the costliest, while that in Lucian leads up to self-mutilation in ecstatic frenzy.
The πλίνθος or ‘ingot’ was square; they were ‘beaten out’ with the hammer (cf. 68. 1 for ἐξήλαυνε); these ἡμιπλίνθια were about 18 by 9 by 3 inches. H. no doubt takes all these measurements from the inventory of Delphic treasures, and therefore is calculating by the Greek πῆχυς, not the Persian (cf. 178. 3 n.). τρίτον ἡ., ‘2 1/2 talents’; for this colloquial commercialism cf. Latin sestertius, German drittehalb, &c. λευκοῦ χρυσοῦ: ἤλεκτρον, a natural alloy of gold and silver, obtained from the washings of the Pactolus; it was also made artificially later. It consisted of at least 20 per cent. of silver to 80 of gold (cf. Plin. N. H. xxxiii. 80 ‘ubicumque quinta argenti portio est, electrum vocatur’); the usual proportion of silver was 27 per cent. Its value was to that of silver as 10 to 1 (that of gold to silver was reckoned at 13.3 to 1, cf. iii. 95. 1 n.), and so it was the first metal used in coins (cf. 94. 1 n.), for convenience of calculation as well as for its greater durability (Head, H. N.1 xxxiv). Stein thinks that, as electron ingots of this size, if solid, would weigh more than two talents, these were hollow. The number he explains by the arrangement of the pedestal; the lion stood on the ‘four ingots of pure gold’, under which were three stages of electrum ones, 15 (5 by 3), 35 (7 by 5), and 63 (9 by 7) respectively (i. e. 4 + 15 + 35 + 63 = 117). The ‘ingots’ were melted down by Phayllus in the Sacred War (Diod. 16. 56, who makes them 120, and mentions statues of a lion (cf. 50. 3) and of a woman (51. 5) as meeting the same fate).
The lion was the beast of Cybele and Sandon, and appears as a type on early Lydian coins (cf. Hill, G. C. Pl. I. 7); nearly half the coins found at Ephesus (1904-5) show it (Hogarth, E. p. 90). For its place in Lydian mythology cf. 84. 3 (the story of Meles' lion cub), and in Anatolian art J. H. S. xix. 46-7 (with fig.); a stone lion from Branchidae of this date is in the B. M. (No. 17). The temple at Delphi was burned down in 548 B.C. [Paus. x. 5. 13; cf. ii. 180. 1 n.; for the restoration and the general history of the temple cf. v. 62 n., and Frazer, P. v. 328 seq.]
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