great quantities in the whole district which lay around Sardis, in the valleys of Tmolus, and the sands of Pactolus. The ancients found considerable difficulty in freeing the gold from the associated silver (p. 97).
Once known, Miletus and other important Ionian cities were not long in improving on the Lydian invention. The advantages of a metallic currency were so obvious that an intelligent and progressive race hastened to avail themselves of it. “Only those,” says Captain Gill (speaking of the borders of Thibet and China), “who have gone through the weary process of cutting up and weighing out lumps of silver, disputing over the scale, and asserting the quality of the metal, can appreciate our feelings of satisfaction at being once more able to make payments in coin5.” No sooner had the Ionians commenced coining than they appear to have adorned the face of the ingot with a symbol, probably both as a guarantee of weight and purity, and perhaps as a preventive of fraudulent abrasion. During this period it is not improbable that the arts of Ionia had made their influence felt in Lydia, and hence “it is impossible to distinguish with absolute certainty the Lydian issues