History of the Peloponnesian War

Besides, there was uncoined gold and silver in public and private dedications, and all the sacred vessels used in the processions and games, and the Persian spoils and other treasures of like nature, worth not less than five hundred talents.[*](About £100,000, or $486,000.)

And he estimated, besides, the large amount of treasure to be found in the other temples. All this would be available for their use, and, if they should be absolutely cut off from all other resources, they might use even the gold plates with which the statue of the goddess herself was overlaid.[*](The chryselephantine statue of Athena by Phidias in the Parthenon.)The statue, as he pointed out to them, contained forty talents' weight of pure gold, and it was all removable.[*](According to Plut. Per. xxxi., Phidias, by the advice of Pericles, laid on the gold in such a way that it could all be removed and weighed.)