This is a picture of billions of dollars of gold stored in the vaults of the Banks of England beneath London.

This wealth of a "barbarous relic" represents the property of multiple nations, and in fact it is a relic of the days when the currency of a nation was actually backed by gold and silver.  

It is interesting to wonder how much of this gold, now poured into practical but boring blocks, was at one time worn by Romans, Greeks or Celts as lurid, savage jewelry, or how much of it was traded back and forth in ancient coin, or how much came from the defeated Incas and Aztecs of the Americas.