Herodotus, Histories 1.50.2 · 1.50.2
117 bars of gold
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ὡς δὲ ἐκ τῆς θυσίης ἐγένετο, καταχεάμενος χρυσὸν ἄπλετον ἡμιπλίνθια ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἐξήλαυνε, ἐπὶ μὰν τὰ μακρότερα ποιέων ἑξαπάλαιστα, ἐπὶ δὲ τὰ βραχύτερα τριπάλαιστα, ὕψος δὲ παλαιστιαῖα. ἀριθμὸν δὲ ἑπτακαίδεκα καὶ ἑκατόν, καὶ τούτων ἀπέφθου χρυσοῦ τέσσερα, τρίτον ἡμιτάλαντον ἕκαστον ἕλκοντα, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα ἡμιπλίνθια λευκοῦ χρυσοῦ, σταθμὸν διτάλαντα.
When the sacrifice was over, he melted down a vast quantity of gold and had it struck into half-bricks: six palms long for the longer ones, three palms long for the shorter, and a palm high. There were a hundred and seventeen of them, and four of these were of refined gold, each weighing two and a half talents; the rest were half-bricks of pale gold, weighing two talents each.
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The setting
After the sacrifices, Croesus turns his kingdom's gold into ingots for Delphi.
A note on this passage
Herodotus measures Croesus's gold the way a goldsmith would: in hēmiplinthia, "half-bricks," each one so many palaistai, hand-spans, long and one span high. A hundred and seventeen of them came off the furnace, and four were struck in apephthos gold, "refined" or "unfired," the purest grade, each one described as weighing triton hēmitalanton, literally "a third half-talent." Greek counts half-units the way a clock counts half-hours before the next whole number: the "third half-talent" is the span from two to two and a half, so the phrase means two and a half talents, a counting habit that survives today in German's dritthalb.
The rest were struck in leukou chrysou, "pale gold," which is electrum, gold naturally alloyed with silver. Lydia's own rivers, above all the Pactolus, washed this metal down from Mount Tmolus, and it is the likely source of the legend of Midas's golden touch. Croesus is melting down, quite literally, the wealth of his own kingdom's rivers and sending it to a foreign god, a hundred and seventeen ingots at a time.
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