ANCIENT HISTORY.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2398, 9 December 1881, Page 3

ANCIENT HISTORY.

Some Chaps Who Had a Doliae oe Two. Thousands of men have envied Astor, Stewart, Vanderbilt, Mackey, Keene, Gould, and the other fellows who can buy strawberries at 1 dol. per box, but the richest of them are mere vagrants when compared to some of the ancients. There was Ninus, for instance. He was tho eon of Nimrod, tho old hunter, who made lions scratch for holes and tigers take to ditches. Old Nim left his boy about £130,000,000 in cash, besides 120,000 cattle, a piece of land about as big as Arkansas, and 14,000 likely slaves. There were no lawyers in those days who made a speciality of breaking wills and gobbling estates, and young Ninus quietly took possession and oast about for some plan to keep himself out of the poor house. He was considered a poor young man, and had he been seen lugging his girl to an ice cream saloon or riding out in a livery rig, his friends would have said he would bring up in a garret. By a lucky capture of territory from the Assyrians, together with 20,000 slaves, 135,000 cattle, ten wagon loads of silver and jewels, and a few other other trifles, Ninus walked up the social ladder until big-bugs asked after his wife and babies, and he could lose three games of billiards without wondering if the owner of the saloon would take a “stand off.” He was worth £350,000,000 when he died, and yet for the last five years of his life he went without mutton because tho price had raised to three cents per pound. The heiress with a 50,000 dols. bank account considers herself some pumpkins, but what a three-oont-picoe she would have been alongside of Queen Semiramis. She not only had the lucre left by Ninus, but in ten years she had increased it four-fold. Just multiply £350,000,000 by two and you have the amount of her bank balance, to say nothing of jewels and clothing and furniture and palaces and slaves and cattle. Had she sold out and cleaned up she could have drawn her little check for about £700,000,000. She didn’t worry about where her spring bonnet was to come from, and when a now style of dress goods came out she didn’t sit up nights for fear some neighbor would secure a pattern first. While she made it lively for her enemies she was soft on her friends. She gave her waiting maid half a million dollars in a lump for dressing her hair in a new style, and she tossed the same amount to her dressmaker as a reward for the excellent fit of one particular dress. One day when she saw a poor old man travelling the highway on foot she presented him with 500 asses to ride on, and insisted on his accepting £60,000 to pay his toll and tavern bills.

Cyrus, King of Persia, from the year 538 to 580, had some little change to begin with, and in ten years he could draw his check for £500,000,000. He didn’t haggle over the price of a slave when a man came to buy, but presented him with 1000. He at one time owned 30,000 horses, 40,000 cattle, 200,000 sheep, 15,000 asses, and 25,000 slaves, and when he got tired of a palace costing 100,000,000d01. he gave it away to some poor washerwoman with seven children to support. He one day sat down to a dinner which had cost £30,000, and in the afternoon he went on a £50,000 drunk. The police didn’t run him in, or he would doubtless have insisted on paying a fine of £20,000 and presenting his Honor with a corner house and lot in the toniest part of Babylon. King Menes was another well-heeled man. It was too much trouble to count his cash, and so he weighed it. One day when an old friend asked him for the loan of a few dollars until Saturday night he sent him a procession of sixty osses, each animal loaded with 150 pounds of gold coin. He paid £IOO,OOO for a bird which could whistle, the same for a trick dog, and he had such a fondness for white oxen that he shelled out £25,000 apiece for them, and at one time had a drove of 20C0. When he got out with the boys he made things lively. During one spree in his city of Memphis, he gave away 500,000d015., and didn’t get dead drunk at that. At one time ho had 600,000 gold chains, 1,000,000 finger rings, 100,000 costly swords, 300,000 daggers, and lord only knows how many fishlines, jack knives, corkscrews, and tobacco boxes. His wife had £1,000,000 a year as pin money, and when his eldest son went up to Thebes to see the elephant, he was followed by 500 friends, 1000 slaves, 2000 horses, and £500,000 for fare, checks, and beer money.