Esther 3:9

And I will pay ten thousand talents of silver— The sum which Haman here offers the king in lieu of the damage that his revenues might sustain by the destruction of so many of his subjects, is prodigious for any private man, and shows how outrageously he was bent against the Jews. We read, however, of several private persons in history, who in ancient times were possessors of much greater sums. Pithius the Lydian, for instance, when Xerxes passed into Greece, was possessed of two thousand talents of silver, and four millions of daricks in gold, which together amounted to near five millions and a half of our sterling money. Though this may seem strange to us at present, our wonder will cease, if we consider, that from the time of David and Solomon, and for one thousand five hundred years afterwards, the riches of this kind were in much greater plenty than they are now. The prodigious quantities of gold and silver that Alexander found in the treasuries of Darius; the vast loads of them which were often carried before the Roman generals when they returned from conquered provinces; and the excessive sums which certain of their emperors expended in donatives, feasts, shows, and other instances of luxury and prodigality, are sufficient instances of this. But at length the mines of the ancient Ophir, which furnished all this plenty, being exhausted, and by the burning of cities and devastation of countries upon the irruption of barbarous nations both of the west and east, a great part of the gold and silver wherewith the world then abounded, being wasted and destroyed, the great scarcity of both which afterwards ensued was thus occasioned; nor have the mines of Mexico and Peru been as yet able fully to repair it.