POTSHERDS AND OTHER FRAGMENTS

The glimpse at these cataclysmic events of relatively modern times, as in the previous chapter, will assist towards understanding of the implications of similar events in ancient times of which but the most fragmentary information exists.

 

As was written three thousand years ago:

"Is there anything whereof it may be said; See this is new ? it hath been already of old time which was before us." (1)

So returning to that smaller world of ancient days, the theme of this book, it may safely be said that similar conspiracy and secret manoeuvre led up to all that fast changing sequence of social events that clearly followed a definite design, in Attica; particularly from the collapse of hereditary kingship in 683 B.C.; which date marks, it most reasonably may be assumed, the commencement of rule by Money Creative Power either international or home grown...

 

A king created annually by vote has even less chance of ruling effectively than the so-called presidents of today, elective kings as they really are, though sorry enough spectacles some of them may be, and who have as much as five years to serve the purposes of whoever they front for...

Some writers dismiss the idea of a capitalism in antiquity, but accepting definition of capitalism as the condition of the unrestricted promotion of human activity through the instrument of the driving force of that power of creation, and loan against collateral, and at interest, of the unit of exchange, or of promises of the unit of exchange as denoted by Ledger Credit Page Entry, and which function as the same thing in exchanges between persons dealing with the same banker or interlocked system of banks, very little analysis of the circumstances that gave rise to the tyrants will show that a form of "capitalism" did exist, even if more local in character, and restricted to the individual city, or state, as a rule.

 

The tyrant was front man towards the total monetization of the state, the land and its labour, and towards the transfer of that independent labour formerly firmly placed in the Natural Order of God-Life, to a condition of dependence on a wage of money, directed towards being able to keep on living as with the notion of being a free man.

Today we but repeat the mistakes of the past; however today it is not merely disaster to a small city or state and its way of life, but with the existing refinement of that which can only be described as the money swindle as it was conducted in ancient times by the trapezitae at their bench in the market place, made possible by mass paper manufacture and the printing press, and the enormous potentialities therein towards quickening the speed and drive of human life and endeavor, it almost certainly will prove to be, one way or another, total disaster, and to all mankind...

Those lines of Solon say enough:

But of themselves in their folly the men of the city are willing Our great city to wreck, being won over by wealth. False are the hearts of the people's leaders. (2)

A further couplet indicates the meaning of "our great city to wreck".

Great men ruin a city: for lack of understanding Under a despot's yoke lieth the people enslaved. (3)

These lines written after the seizure by Peisistratus of the Tyranny at Athens would indicate that the same Peisistratus had the assistance in his rise to power of those former great landowning families of Attica who had been drawn into the schemes of the foreign money masters to their undoing...

 

These landowners had forgotten their duty towards their own people. Fascinated by strange luxuries and the stranger talk of the money men, the trapezitae, they had permitted themselves to be absorbed with visions of that new wealth measured by the numbers indicated by the precious metal symbols of these same trapezitae...

 

They forgot that in the absolute analysis they themselves were but stewards of a higher power. Lacking understanding, above all, of the true nature of this money as being above all their own law towards the facilitation of the exchanges amongst themselves and their people, they had been lead astray from their duty.

 

By conniving with the bankers and their protégées the new manufacturers, to drive their own people off the land into the cities, and into the industries rapidly speeding up from the new money economy, they forgot that in their capacity as rulers, the whole land was theirs in trust to their people, and that the people therefore were expectant of them to be their guides and shepherds.

These plausible aliens who set up the money economy via their so-called "banks", owned nothing but unmitigated gall, a vast contempt for mankind, and such as they could double-talk the naïve peasant rulers into giving them.

The folly of these rulers in equating possession with the master moneyers trifling pieces of gold and silver dated back to those grim Kings of the Homeric Sagas or before, who, being lain in their graves at Mycenae with all their riches, thus set off on their eternal journey with that small store of gold that the crafty Babylonian money-men had trained them to regard as wealth, as opposed to the real wealth of an organized state whose money was the benevolent law of the ruler in relation to surpluses, and directed towards the good and continuing life of the people and no more...

Those who had power and made men to marvel at their riches. (4)

This line indicates that Solon, like so many equally worthy people of this day, knew that money was an evil without understanding what it was about money that made it so... Not the having of the precious metal pieces of the banker recording the number of units represented, for such metal money lying inert beneath the floors (5) has no meaning so far as the quickening or slowing of the pulse of life is concerned...

 

It has no more meaning than have abstract units of exchange media that have not yet been recorded in the ledger on account of no suitable (to the banker!) demand for them... and, of course, they are without limit... Nor even the spending of it as the holder, according to law, might choose... The evil is in the forgetfulness of the ruler that money is no more than a recording of his law of exchange, its magnitude being governed by the number of units indicated... It can never be treasure which is merely items carrying with them a high valuation in relation to such units, relative to their desirability and portability...

 

The evil about money derives in consequence from lack of understanding of its true nature, and particularly from the confusing of money and treasure. It is the persistent failure of mankind to realize that money is but the result of agreement being arrived at amongst a sovereign people through their ruler, to provide themselves with a system of numbers by which their exchanges might be facilitated, and so help them to live a better life...

 

Treasure being but commodity by which the unit of value of whatever state may be, can best be stored; even though such state cease to exist; because of that ancient and international convention in respect to the valuation of such treasure such as has lasted from age to age; from the most ancient times, Palaeolithic or earlier, until today...

The evil lay and it may be said, lies, in the forgetfulness of the ruler to respect his duty to provide an adequate money supply for his people regulated by himself and free of obligation to external forces, in such manner as had existed in the Ancient Oriental civilizations in earlier times... It lay in the permitting to private and hence irresponsible persons the power to intervene in that which was the most sacred responsibility of the ruler through the priesthood, the creation and regulation of the medium of exchange: his people's money.

Therefore the hidden force behind the setting up of a tyranny was the far reaching power of a conspiratorial secret society, international in scope, controlling money emission in all countries which it penetrated through its continuing control of the sources of supply of that silver treasure by weight such as constituted the base of the exchange systems long ago established by itself.

The tyrant, therefore, was clearly the front man for the local banker more than actually being the banker himself... He it was who gave legality to the banker and the activities of that coterie of merchants, traders, and captains who flourished on the banker's financial organization, and, though this they did not understand, his connection with those international bullion brokers of the day.

 

These worthy businessmen depended for tiding themselves over difficult periods on that which the banker loaned them as money: maybe an entry in a ledger transferable to the account of a fellow merchant, visiting captain, or trader in slaves, or other merchandise; they also depended on the banker to be safe custodian for such treasure as came their way...

 

The tyrant was therefore, either naïve or corrupt, the instrument set up by the banker, firstly towards the legalization of his status, and secondly towards the removal of that class who might yet challenge his peculiar and secret power, the natural aristocracy of Hellas.

This natural aristocracy, in a growing system that clearly sought the alienation and subversion of its free dependents with the purpose of ultimately leading them into paid day labour or into slavery final and absolute, was uncertainly situated in states which now owed their existence to the bankers, and their coterie of entrepreneurs, and manufacturers, and merchants, as clearly did so many of the Greek states of the Greek industrial revolution.

The banker, lurking in the shade apart from men, knew that these proud noblemen, formerly lords of this lovely land which was Greece, had forgotten the meaning of their own existence, and its relation to the total ordering of their society, and he despised them as well he might, for permitting him to undermine the true order of life and cause these simple folk, their peasantry, to be driven off the land one way or another, to the wage slavery of the potteries at Corinth, or Athens, or wherever it might be or whatever it might be.

In the same way, the Lords of the Manors of England and Scotland had driven the peasantry off the common lands some 2400 years later; land now representing that magic of money of which previously they had seen little...

 

The same peasantry drifting into the new manufacturing and mining towns, dazed and leaderless, then formed a plentiful labour supply for that similar putrescent wickedness which was the industrial revolution in England's green and pleasant land. If they were lucky they were able to emigrate.

In the lines of Theognis whose political aim was to prevent a recurrence of the Tyranny in Megara which was a centre for the manufacture of textiles:

Tradesmen reign supreme : the bad lord it over their betters. This is the lesson that all must thoroughly master: How that in the world wealth has the might and the power. Many a bad man is rich and many a good man is needy. Not without cause, Oh Wealth, do men honor thee above all things. Must men reckon the only virtue the making of money ? Everyone honours those that are rich and despises the needy. (6)

The banker, trained from the money shops of Babylonia, knew that for him the only desirable political situation was where the lowly and vulgar (7) held the appearance of power and wealth and "money", for such would not question too intently the source from whence they derived that "money", nor the nature of that "money" such as had paved their way to so-called power, for fear its so necessary supply might be cut off. In the words of Aristophanes:

Often has it crossed my fancy that the cities apt to deal With the very best and noblest of the Commonweal Just as with our ancient coinage, and the fine new minted gold These, sir, our sterling pieces, all of pure Athenian mould, All of perfect die and metal, all the fairest of the fair, All of workmanship unequalled, proved and valued everywhere, These we use not.

 

But the worthless pinchbeck coins of yesterday, Vilest die and basest metal, now we always use instead. Even so our sterling townsmen, nobly born and nobly bred, Men of worth and rank and mettle, men of honourable fame, Trained in every liberal science, choral dance and manly game, These we treat with scorn and insult.

 

But the strangers newliest come, Worthless sons of worthless fathers, pinchbeck townsmen, coppery scum (Whom in earlier days the city hardly would have stooped to use Even for her scapegoat victims) these for every task we choose. (8)

Where, as in a city such as Megara, one banking house might control all credit or money creation, to question and seek to know how this was done would also mean search for knowledge of the banker's secrets and this, our tyrant instinctively knew, was dangerous for his continued success.

What are the gains that lead up to a tyranny? Is it not more probable that they are some form of payment received by the commons (those that are bad) from the would-be tyrant ?

Not at all... Merely the word was passed by that banking institution to which the majority of tradesmen or manufacturers in that particular city were indebted, that the banker, giver of all, (and taker of all!), favored this move.

 

Ah!... and indeed it would be good for all, and to please the common people there would be plenty of work! ... It may safely be considered that the first legislation passed by our new tyrant would legalize the position of his backers, which previously, as likely as not, had been illegal!

The tyrant at this stage of history, was a necessity to Money Power, and while possibly having the appearance of being wealthy, he depended for his real finances on that backer whose interests he promoted.

 

Those two officers of Alexander for example, who accepted the tyranny of Asiatic cities could in no way have understood the reality of finance, international or otherwise, except perhaps if they had been clerks in the paymaster corps of officer status. If they had so understood such finance, it is doubtful that they would have been promoted as they were...

The tyrant was one who the banker could rely on to put through his "Leveling" program, or in the double talk of today, could be relied on to "Press ahead with Democratization", and to work against the class from which he was supposed to have come. (9)

 

He was one who could be relied on to put through programs of public works, maintain military expenditures etc.; for all such activities strengthened the banker's position as creator and regulator of the exchange unit, and therefore, from those exclusive courtyards wherein he schemed, designer of the life of the city.

 

The banker could not maintain his hold over the city, except his product, ledger credit page entry money, however created, was in constant demand, and the local government deeply embroiled in his schemes. The tyrant had to be one completely in accord with that so-called "democratic" political attitude, which the banker always seemed to espouse ...

 

His ostensible purpose had to be to "Level"; such leveling meaning of course, tearing down everything above themselves, (and above the banker too! ...)

Those fragments of verse as quoted here, reputed to be by Solon, leave little doubt of the sincerity of Solon, at least superficially. The fact remains that as a merchant, whether of necessity or otherwise, he must have been marked with some of the outlook of that class.

 

His famous laws, amongst which was that law releasing the peasantry from the debt slavery into which their natural rulers had permitted them to be drawn, and that was eating into the very vitals of Attica, in view of the fact that he offered citizenship to any family moving to Athens with the intention of taking up some manual trade, might very well have been promoted by his backers.

 

The city was clearly very short of suitable free labour.

 

It very well might be that his backers were those money lenders and bankers that controlled the growing manufacturies of Athens, and who saw that there was more profit and work for that which they loaned as money, in bringing the peasantry to Athens as free men (if a wage slave is really any more free than a slave owned outright!) (10) and in having thus a plentiful supply of labour, than in tying such peasantry to the soil by debt slavery, and in the case of distraint, their sale on to a surfeited market abroad.

 

While there was still a healthy population of small holders as well as the great landlords, there was always possibility of recovery by the enslaved state, and themselves, the enslavers, as happened at Sparta in the time of Lycurgus, driven out of the land for hundreds of years...

 

With a massive proletariat beholden to the men of the city for their freedom (as day labourers!), the former aristocracy even if they should ever awaken to their duty, would have no chance... Nor did they.

 

All those "liberalizing" laws promulgated by Solon and his successors, steadily deprived the ancient families of Attica of their former power and prerogative. The shadow of power was put into the hands of ignoble persons, as indeed would have been so many of the "Demagogues", and other "Democratic" officials, who, too often would have been no more than blind creatures lifted up from the mob to the service of money power...

 

By the devices existing as part of what is known as "democracy", such as Ostrakism through rumor put into circulation by the secret societies in the city, controlled, as in today, by the bankers without a doubt, "Leaders" no longer "suitable" could be removed.

"The tyrants themselves are repeatedly found making it part of their policy to keep their subjects employed on big industrial concerns. In more than one case we shall see their power collapsing just when this policy becomes financially impossible." (11)

In other words if that tyrant proved unsatisfactory to his masters, money that source of strength in political life, was cut off just at the time it would be most needed, such as when he had become involved in heavy spending.

 

Herein is further proof of the tyrant being not money power itself, but front man for money power...

"...This part of the tyrant's policy is noticed by Aristotle who quotes the dedications (buildings and works of art) of the Cypselids at Corinth, the buildings of Olymphian Zeus at Athens by the Peisistratids, and the works of Polycrates around Samos. To these names we add Theagenes of Megara, Phalaris of Agrigentum, Aristodemus of Cumae and the Tarquins of Rome, all of whom are associated with works of this kind." (12)

It is pointed out by Professor Ure that it can scarcely be an accident that the Tyranny of Athens ended almost immediately after the removal of one of its two roots; the mines of the country of the Thracians and Paionians (13) ...

 

Which is to say that if the source of bullion on which the money power of a so-called banker was founded, petered out, or was lost to enemy action, the tyrant he had promoted could be discarded as having no further purpose.

Such activities being ordered by a class of persons who had achieved despotic power in the same period of history, roughly the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries B.C., the period which saw extensive development of mining in all of Europe including Lydia, Cyprus, Spain, (14) Carpathia, Epirus, Illyria, Thrace and Greece itself, without mentioning the flow of precious metal plunder deriving from the depredations of the Assyrian, can only have been the result of a policy deep laid, and far reaching in its consequences.

 

This policy can only have been created in some central point from which flowed the springs of world power such as would have designed, wittingly, or unwittingly, so much of the ancient world.

The same period also coincided with the development of mining tools of hardened iron, highly efficient methods of reduction of silver bearing ores, (15) and the growth of an adequate supply of slave labour from various sources and due to the above mentioned depredations of the Assyrian etc.; all of which was so necessary towards profitable mining operations at that time. It may not unreasonably be supposed that this central point was still in the cities of lower Mesopotamia, such as Babylon, Ur, Lagash, Uruk etc.

 

From this area the merchant houses would have continued to have spread their operations around the world (16) in the same way, as, it is recorded, had been done from Ur as much as fifteen hundred years before during the so-called IIIrd Dynasty; (17) or for that matter during the period of seeming glory and empire that so often follows the accession to power of private money creative force in any organized and potentially vigorous state.

 

A most outstanding instance of the latter in modern times exists in the period of empire that came to Britain following the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 A.D. (18)

The silver which the international bankers drew from Greece etc. at a ratio of 10:1 or more, would have been used in settlement of trade balances with India, Bactria, or China, at a ratio of 6:1 or less, as to gold. According to Alexander del Mar, this movement of silver to the Orient from Athens, was arranged by the Athenian Government; (19) but except this early Athenian Government was fronting for the bankers, this could not have been so.

 

International trade balances have always been settled from the world's banking capital or headquarters of the international bankers or bullion brokers, such as was London during the last three centuries until very recently. In the days of which we write, this world banking capital was still located in Babylon city, it may reasonably be assumed.

The money of the cities of lower Mesopotamia and the whole Near East for that matter, had been based for a long time on the international valuation of silver by weight, and therefore these cities had long ago sought to obtain control of all sources of supply of such silver.

 

As far back as 2470 B.C., King Manishtusu of Akkad invaded Southern Persia with no purpose other than gaining control of its silver mines. (20)

 

When the rapid expansion of mining, as mentioned above, brought on to the markets of the world a relative deluge of silver and gold, the latter taking no mean second place, those groups controlling International finance from Babylonia, and possibly from Nineveh, decided no doubt to seek for further worlds to conquer, as it were.

The thing was to find a use for their surfeit of bullion, particularly silver, and of which metal they were now in a position to arrange extensive supplies to any banker who would be able to use such advantageously towards the promotion of their general worldwide plans. The growing commercial and industrial vigour of the Greeks showed them an answer to this problem...

 

Thus the significance of the advent of the tyrants as promoters of heavy public spending of moneys based originally, on the silver standards of Babylonia, cannot be dismissed...

The policy of the bankers, for whom the tyrants fronted, would be to spread the main practice, at least their most profitable one, of private money creation, one way or the other. Using silver as base, they knew full well the tremendous possibilities that existed towards the creation of an abstract money whose equally efficient units cost them no more than entry by the slave scribe on the clay tablet that sufficed as his ledger.

 

Such policy spread, together with competition in manufacture, the need for that which the international bankers of that day, faceless as in this day, loaned against collateral as money.

 

This money was based on the silver bullion they let it be known they were possessed of or held on deposit for their customers, be they individual, corporate body, or state.

It is reasonable to assume that there was little difference as between that first tangible money of private issuance in England as denoted by the goldsmiths receipts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (21) and the money as issued by the banks of the Greek cities. Its efficacy in the exchanges, although it was in reality no more than a highly organized system of counterfeit, derived from the total secrecy maintained by those involved in its issue.

 

Little clear information exists on this subject today as in ancient times and much of which, even if all the millions of tablets unearthed in Mesopotamia are ever translated and evaluated by scholars competent to do so, must remain as but faint outline...

One such faint outline of particular interest, though not deriving from the Mesopotamian tablets, is discernible in this information of Servius Tullius, slave king of early Rome:

"According to Charisius, Varro wrote: Nummum argenteum flatum primum a Servio Tullio dicunt, is IIII scripulis major fuit quam nunc." "It is said that silver money was first made by Servius Tullius and was IIII scripulis heavier than now." (22)

As it was Servius Tullius who ordered the establishment of the census at Rome that gave the basis for both taxation and military service, both essential organizations as to a state being taken over by international money power, the truth of this statement by Varro need not be questioned.

It is interesting to note in passing that although Servius Tullius was a usurper undoubtedly of slave origin, Livy carefully draws him in rather more favourable light than the Tarquins, particularly Superbus, the last of the line...

 

By the time of Livy (59 B.C.-17 A.D.) the most powerful sector of the Roman population, the equites or knights, was taken over by wealthy freedmen and enfranchised foreigners (23) ... Livy, when writing in that day under the threat of Lex Majestus (24) would clearly have seen the value of finding and extolling true virtue in the character of the slave king, whether such virtue was there or not...

...However, if Servius actually did exist, and there seems to be a school of thought amongst the scholars that questions his existence, then it would be more likely as one who had raised himself up in a similar manner to Gyges of Lydia, (25) having at the same time a special backing by local money power; possibly in opposition to that money power emigrant from Corinth to Tarquinii in Etruria, which, according to Livy, was the Tarquin family.

The establishment of a silver standard as a base for monetary issuance might very well have been their reward for their assistance towards raising Servius to the throne.

 

The Census, supposedly established by Servius, while being the foundation of the organization of the whole state for defense or aggression, would give that money power a complete picture of the people it was their intention, one way or another, to exploit.

 

In the same manner the doomsday books of the Middle Ages, while recording for the reference of the king, all that in the kingdom was, also made valuable record for the money creative power, which had kings, nobles, ecclesiastics, and the common people, groaning under a burden of debt quite impossible to meet (which certainly was one of the main causes of the mood of the English that gave rise to Magna Carta, and of those events which followed until 1290 A.D. when the tax-collecting and money-lending classes, such as had followed the "Conqueror" across the English Channel, were finally evicted). (26)

In a similar manner some 2500 years later, William III of England, owing his throne to the intrigues of the international bullion brokers at Amsterdam, granted them as reward that which they wanted more than anything on earth, which was the establishment of the legality of an undeterminable amount of abstract money, ledger credit page entry, or paper notes, to be based on their gold loans to the state, and the creation of a "Bank" at London from which they might issue this money known as "Credit" as loan against real collateral throughout the whole kingdom.

 

This bank was to be given the appearance of a state department. In this case such status was obtained by permitting it to be named: "The Bank of England." (27)

Considering the above known instance of reward to international money powers for their services, far reaching in its consequences, and many other instances of which there is neither time nor place to write herewith, conjecture in respect to the establishment of a silver standard at Rome by Servius, may not be too far afield.

 

That Romans later rejected this standard as a base for their money, and the calamity and loss of sovereignty it brought them also is clear, for there is no further reference to silver money until that period when Rome was drifting towards the all-out struggle with Carthage: the year of the establishment of the board of Moneyers for the striking of bronze, silver and gold money (289 B.C.): tresviri aere argento auro flando feriurado; (28) thereby no doubt yielding to the importunities of the International Bullion brokers, with the ensuing outbreak of war thus being made a certainty.

One of the main purposes of those extensive public works which almost invariably followed the establishment of a tyranny, would be towards the establishment of some kind of National Debt, in which is, and was in that day too, most control and profit to those manipulating international finance. That there is no evidence of the existence of such state indebtedness in those days does not necessarily mean that such did not exist.

 

Excavation, or other methods, 2500 years from now would not reveal this indebtedness for instance in the case of England, so far as its relation to the Bank of England was concerned, for, unbelievable though it may seem, there is "remarkable absence of official records" for the first hundred years of the bank's existence! (29)

 

In the time of the tyrants, failure to keep books or records would be even more of a certainty.

Valuable by-products of their extensive public works programs would be:

  1. The peasants would leave the land enticed by the money wages offered for work on these projects, and the pleasures and excitement that could be bought in the city with such money wages. There, once the construction boom was over, they formed a leaderless, hungry, and easily embittered "Proletariat".
     

  2. The same "Proletariat" could be manipulated by the agents of Money Power as a mob, towards such political purposes as such Money Power might desire; including, besides removal of the natural nobility, removal of the so-called tyrant when his purpose was served.

Professor Ure, author of The Origins of Tyranny, ventures as close to the truth in respect to the meaning of a tyranny as any others who have written on the subject...

 

Although attributing the rise of the tyrants to Money Power he does not define what this Money Power may be; whether money creative power, or just those of considerable possession and treasure. In this omission he cannot be blamed.... Professor Ure for instance traces the source of the power of Peisistratus, Tyrant of Athens 561-527 B.C. according to Herodotus, (30) as being partly from those silver mines in the district in Thrace through which flows the Strymon river, and partly from the Laurion mines in Attica.

However, it must be pointed out that a man who apparently was a mining man and lived therefore within that restriction, would be unlikely to understand the finer shades of monetary emission. It seems quite reasonable to suppose that the class of persons hidden within the Aramaic speaking middle classes that permeated the whole Levant and Near East during the first Millennium B.C., and whose business was money and all that stemmed therefrom, in that they were interfering with that which clearly was a power to be exercised only by the very gods themselves, were scarcely likely to instruct their instrument, Peisistratus, therein...

 

Therefore, it may be concluded, the tyrant rose because he was the one who had found favor with the all-pervading money power of the day. He was not money power itself !

In that most of the great public works of the Greek cities had been carried forward by the tyrants is the evidence; for as the secretive money power of today, world-wide in scope, thrives primarily upon government loans directed to purposes of war and the enormous spending that wars involve in order to strengthen their outrageous claims against the nations, in ancient days similar heavy spending had to be devised.

 

In that day, as previously pointed out, a great Acropolis or some other such magnificent public work with whose construction and financial organization Money Power was fully conversant, sufficed equally well with war; which, all said and done, with hardy aggressive peoples could also prove considerable danger to themselves, or their purposes.

So, with the tyrant, we see the force by which Greece, previously living in natural order, was molded to an instrument more suitable to those bankers: private money creative power, who, lurking in the shade as needs they had to, burned with rancor at the natural rulers who but treated them as stewards, although the essence of power for all that, lay in their hands for more than such rulers understood...

Thus were the simple and industrious and brave Greeks now raised up to be the new vehicle through which the final and destructive purposes of those controlling international bullion and slave trades would be achieved, as they shepherd the peoples of the world further down that road of no hope for themselves or the rest of mankind...

 

 

 

References

1. Ecclesiastes. Chapter 1, Verse 10; King James Version.

2. P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny; New York; 1922.

3. Ibid.

4. P.N. Ure: The Origins of Tyranny, P. 8; New York; 1922.

5. It was the custom in ancient times to bury hoarded wealth (tangible) beneath the floor of the house.

6. The Origins of Tyranny, P. 8, P.N. Ure, M.A., New York, 1922.

7. Hence the situation at Athens so similar to the situation in the Anglo-Saxon world today. Athens at that stage of the Peloponnesian War was undoubtedly completely under the political control of the banks (or trapezitae). It was not long after the battle of Aegospotami, 405 B.C., in which Lysander of Sparta destroyed the whole Athenian fleet as it lay drawn up on the beach, that the war ended with the usual results of such "Great" wars in so called "democratic" states, and with Athens completely dependent on privately created money for its finances, that is, on the International Bankers, and with such types of persons suitable to them and their plans for the future, occupying key positions. The victor, Sparta, was equally dependent on their good will, as a result of those concessions undoubtedly made at the Treaty of Miletus, 412 B.C. in order to obtain money such as was desirable internationally, and with which could be purchased the ships so necessary to defeat Athens, and without which the war could not have been brought to definite conclusion.

8. The Frogs of Aristophanes, lines 717 to 733, trans. by B.B. Rogers (with slight variations). (Page 138, Greek Coins, Charles Seltsman, M.A., London, 1933.)

9. In exactly the same way as Lenin, Dictator (or Tyrant) of Russia 1917-1922 was supposed to be drawn from the Nobility, or as Mao-Tse-Tung, at a later date dictator in China, was supposed to have derived from a similar class in China.

10. The following letter circularized amongst American Bankers by European Banking interests during the American civil war gives a most revealing light on this subject. There is no reason to suppose that the motives of the trapezitae of the Greek city states were in any way more altruistic: " Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are in favour of, for slavery is but the owning of labour and carries with it the care of the labourers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labour by controlling wages..." This letter, known as the Hazard Circular, is to be found on Pages 44-45 in The Money Manipulators by June Grem.

11. Ure: The Origins of Tyranny, P. 15.

12. Ibid. P. 14.

13. Ibid. P. 59.

14. Ibid. P. 46.

15. A. Del Mar: A History of the Precious Metals, pp. 47-51.

16. Cambridge Ancient History, P. 392, Vol. I.

17. Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, P. 121-126.

18. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England. Also see Tragedy and Hope, by Dr. Quigley.

19. A. del Mar: The Halcyon Age of Greece, P. 5.

There also were to be found outlying places in the Orient where the ratio of gold to silver went as low as l :1 during the 1st Millennium B.C., remaining so until a very late date, in certain instances. It is reported by Sir Henry J. Reid, who wrote during the 19th Century, in his book Japan (Chapter XVIII), that the ratio of silver to gold, governing the use of the precious metals in settlement of trade balances, was still 1:1 in Japan during the 17th Century A.D.; long after contact with Europeans. The advantage the European bullion brokers took of this situation with its resultant disturbance to the status quo, was one of the main factors leading up to the almost total expulsion of Europeans from Japan during the period 1624 A.D. - 1853 A.D.

20. Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, P. 122.

21. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, pp. 22-26.

22. Theodore Mommsen & Joachim Marquardt: Manuel des Antiquités Romaines, P. 12, Tome IX; De l'Organisation Financière chez les Romaines, Paris, 1888.

23. Ibid. P. 68.

24. In its origins in 100 B.C., Lex Majestus (lex appuleia de maiestate imminuta) was an extension of the definition of treason as being internal revolt, to include any act impairing the "Majesty" of the Roman people. By the time of the early Empire, this law had been extended to cover almost any word or deed against the Emperor, and, it may reasonably be assumed, those who guided his policies. Spies and informers were everywhere...

Of this period Tacitus wrote at the very beginning of the Annals: "What has been transmitted to us concerning Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, cannot be received without great distrust." He further wrote in "The Histories: "... But when the battle of Actium had been fought and the interests of peace demanded the concentration of power in the hands of one man, this great line of classical historians came to an end. Truth suffered in more ways than one. To an understandable ignorance of policy, which now lay outside public control, was in due course added a passion for flattery or else a hatred for autocrats... Adulation bears the ugly taint of subservience, but malice gives the false impression of being independent..." (The Histories; I.I.; Tr. K. Wellesley; London; 1964.)

25. It is to be noted that the seal to the establishment of Gyges on the throne of Candaules, otherwise known as Myrsilus last king of Hittite descent on the throne of Lydia, and who he had cuckolded and destroyed, apparently with the ready assistance of Candaules' wife, was the pronouncement of the Pythian Oracle (Herodotus, Book I). Clearly the Oracles would be one of the most important instruments of the international money creative power towards the furtherance of its purposes; and it would have sought, as much as possible, to keep them under its control.

26. John Richard Green: A Short History of the English Peoples, P. 205; London; 1936.

27. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, P. 73; London; 1966.

28. R.A.G. Carson: Coins, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, P. 106.

29. A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, P. xxvii. In the words of H.S. Foxwell who wrote the preface to this work in giving the reasons why no adequate history of the Bank of England appears to have been written previous to Andreades: " The first is the remarkable absence of official records in connection with the Bank, especially for the first century of its activity. It has often been observed that the English are peculiarly fortunate in this matter of records; ... The Bank of England stands out as a striking exception to the rule. It never seems to have published any reports or even to have preserved its own minutes and accounts."

30. Herodotus: The Histories, Book I.

 

 

 

 

 

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