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Index
inety-one years ago, Lytton Strachey observed that "Every history worthy of the name is, in its own
PROLOGUE: The Supreme Possession
1. Get Gold at All Hazards
2. Midas's Wish and the Creatures of Pure Chance
3. Darius's Bathtub and the Cackling of the Geese
4. The Symbol and the Faith
5. Gold, Salt, and the Blessed Town
6. The Legacy of Eoba, Babba, and Udd
7. The Great Chain Reaction
8. The Disintegrating Age and the Kings' Ransoms
9. The Sacred Thirst
10. The Fatal Poison and Private Money
11. The Asian Necropolis and Hien Tsung's Inadvertent Innovation
12. The Great Recoinage and the Last of the Magicians
13. The True Doctrine and the Great Evil
14. The New Mistress and the Cursed Discovery
15. The Badge of Honor
16. The Most Stupendous Conspiracy and the Endless Chain
17. The Norman Conquest
18. The End of the Epoch
19. The Transcending Value
20. World War Eight and the Thirty Ounces of Gold
EPILOGUE: The Supreme Possession?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Gold is almost as soft as putty. The gold on Venetian glasses was hammered down to as little as five
but the 125,000 tons or so of gold would be worth a trillion dollars at today's prices.*
But we should hesitate before admiring the sophistication of our contemporary currency while snicker
These movements of just a few feet from one closet to another often reflected a major change in weal
The process of weighing the precious metals in each transaction was indeed a nuisance for everyone c
The first three descendants of Gyges-Ardys, Sadyattes, and Alyattes-ruled for a total of 118 years,
Herodotus tells us that the Lydians "are the first people we know of to mint and use gold coins and
One ingenious Lydian innovation was the use of a local black stone, similar to jasper, for testing t
He began where he should have begun: with agriculture. Through irrigation, canal construction, land
symbol £. In addition, the Latin word denarius came to stand for penny and was conventionally abbrev
After Diocletian came to power in AD 284, he spent some twenty years trying to reform the currency a
Because gold is chemically inert, it survives the passage of time, the ravages of nature, the vagari
That approach was especially important in the case of the Lombards, with whom the Byzantine emperors
Unfortunately, Nubia was a source for the Byzantines for only a short time. The Arabian Muslims conq
Timbuktu, where political tensions and turnover were frequent, Jenne was a peaceful place that sprea
During the first one thousand years after the fall of Rome, gold's role in Europe was much less impo
When Richard I-Richard the Lion-Hearted-was captured by Leopold, duke of Austria, in 1192 on his way
It is also difficult to imagine the sheer mechanics of transferring 24 million pennies. When, in 152
Gold coins were so valuable in the Middle Ages that they did not circulate much among the common peo
Pyx derives from the Greek word for "box" and refers to the container in which the officials stored
The awful weather of 1314, however, was just the beginning of a succession of catastrophes. Bad crop
Meanwhile, the little country of Portugal was also stirring. The Portuguese had always been great sa
a year of the coinage also disappeared due to ordinary wear, hoarding, shipwreck, and movement into
vividly written with exceptional grace and impeccable historical scholarship.*
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