Gold and the Gods

As gold’s value and importance grew, it is not surprising that it became a recurring theme in the stories people told about themselves and the gods in which they believed. The biblical stories of an angry Moses smashing the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments because his people had fashioned a golden idol to worship in his absence, and the golden homage paid by the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, who already had vast stockpiles from his own mines, are but two examples of the place of gold in the history of the Jews.

The story of Jason who sailed with his Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece is a reminder of the methods used to harvest river gold in ancient times. It was common practice to wash slurry through a greasy sheepskin. The fine gold entrapped on the wool fibers could then be retrieved by burning the fleece.

As well as telling history, these stories often carried a moral lesson about greed and the dangers of coveting that which belongs to others, as poor King Midas learnt to his cost. Granted the power to turn all he touched into gold, he found he had nothing to eat and his family had become statues. He begged the god Bacchus, who had bestowed the gift on him, to reverse it. Poverty was preferable to being surrounded by inanimate objects of gold.

Gold and plunder

Gold made excellent plunder. Not only could it be carried off after a raid with relative ease, but it was lasting. It would still be intact when the cattle or slaves that the earlier aggressors had been content with plundering had been eaten or worked to death. As one civilization overtook another, the gold that had been in the possession of the vanquished was melted down to be recast and rest amped either in bars or coins with the insignia of the victor. Greek gold became Roman gold called libra with the written symbol £ still in use in England today. Coins of lesser value, cast in silver, were called denarius, the symbol of which became the ‘d’ in £.s.d. (pounds, shillings and pence).

Not oniy did the actual treasuries of gold bars and coin drive rulers to wage war on neighbors, access to the means of supply motivated much territorial expansion. Alexander the Great engulfed the Persian Empire in a march which took him across southern Asia to India, even though he already had control of the mines in Macedonia and the Balkans, where seams rich in gold were being worked by slaves.

When the Romans supplanted the Greeks, they spread their empire westward, defeating Carthage to gain control of the incredible deposits of gold, silver and other minerals the Carthaginians had commanded in Spain. They also overran Gaul and colonized England and Wales, establishing their civilization across their colonies and taking away all they could in precious metals gold from Gaul and Wales, and silver from Cornwall much as the Spanish would do 1500 years later once Christopher Columbus had discovered America.

As more recent empire builders would discover, the Roman Empire found that colonization came at a cost, which ultimately negated the gains made. The legions of soldiers and officials of every rank, which were needed to secure territory and keep the colonized population subjugated, all had to be paid. Gold coins were a convenient method of payment but they did encourage a cash economy the like of which had not previously been experienced. People bought rather than grew or made what they needed, and their needs expanded as the money at their disposal increased. More gold was required to keep pace with the demand.

The establishment of a second empire in Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 306 AD by the Emperor Constantine gave Rome access to the riches of Byzantium, and facilitated the coining of more gold in the form of bezants which rapidly made their way westward across the entire civilized world. They would continue to be used for the next 100 years until Rome was overrun by barbarians from northern Europe, and the empire succumbed to the period of darkness called the Dark Ages. Trade ceased to exist in the West while it flourished in Byzantium and the Arab world, which had access to gold carried across the Sahara from deep within Africa to trading centers like Timbuktu.

https://youtu.be/50hjj6zl6z8