We now proceed to the statement and criticism of the old doctrines of the origin of metallic currency and weight standards. To enter into an elaborate account of the various shades of doctrine held by the followers of Boeckh would be useless and wearisome, for as they all alike are agreed in starting from an arbitrary scientifically obtained unit, it matters not as far as my object is concerned. Certain metrologists lay down that Egypt borrowed her system from Babylon, whilst others[250] again declare that Egypt is the true mother of weight standards, and this battle is raging hotly at the present moment. Thus but recently Professor Brugsch has written a vigorous article (in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie[251]) to prove that the Chaldeans borrowed their system from Egypt. But the Assyriologists were not prepared to assent to a doctrine which placed the Babylonians in an inferior position. Accordingly Dr C. F. Lehmann (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1889, p. 245 seqq.) has made an elaborate defence of the original doctrine first propounded by Boeckh and developed and expounded by Dr Brandis and Dr Hultsch. This Assyrio-Egyptian struggle for pre-eminence has at present no importance for our enquiry, as it is based almost entirely on à priori assumptions, although when we come eventually to deal with the question of efforts at systematization which arose at a later stage in the evolution of weight and measure standards, it will be necessary for us to examine the respective claims. At present we are engaged in searching for an historical basis, and as both the Assyriologists and Egyptologists alike unite in deriving all weights from a deliberate scientific attempt on the part of a highly civilized people, they are perfectly agreed in the principle, the soundness of which it is the object of the present investigation to test. The ablest exponent in this country of the German theory is Dr B. V. Head, who has given an admirable summary of the position of that school in his Introduction to his great work, Historia Numorum (p. xxviii.). To ensure a fair statement of the doctrine for the reader, it will be better for me to give here Mr Head’s exposition in preference to any summary of my own, as any statement by the critic of the doctrine to be criticized is always liable to the suspicion of being ex parte and consequently inadequate. Such a suspicion is avoided by letting as far as possible our opponents state their position in their own words.

“For many centuries before the invention of coined money there can be no doubt whatever that goods were bought and sold by barter pure and simple, and that values were estimated among pastoral people by the produce of the land, and more particularly in oxen and sheep.

“The next step in advance upon this primitive method of exchange was a rude attempt at simplifying commercial transactions by substituting for the ox and the sheep some more portable substitute, either possessed of real or invested with an arbitrary value.

“This transitional stage in the development of commerce cannot be more accurately described than in the words of Aristotle, ‘As the benefits of commerce were more widely extended by importing commodities of which there was a deficiency, and exporting those of which there was an excess, the use of a currency was an indispensable device. As the necessaries of Nature were not all easily portable, people agreed for purposes of barter mutually to give and receive some article which, while it was itself a commodity, was practically easy to handle in the business of life; some such article as iron or silver, which was at first defined simply by size and weight, although finally they went further and set a stamp upon every coin to relieve them from the trouble of weighing it, as the stamp impressed upon the coin was an indication of quantity.’ (Polit. I. 6. 14-16, Trans. Welldon.)

“In Italy and Sicily copper or bronze in very early times took the place of cattle as a generally recognized measure of value, and in Peloponnesus the Spartans are said to have retained the use of iron as a standard of value long after the other Greeks had advanced beyond this point of commercial civilization.

“In the East, on the other hand, from the earliest times gold and silver appear to have been used for the settlement of the transactions of daily life, either metal having its value more or less accurately defined in relation to the other. Thus Abraham is said to have been ‘very rich in cattle, in silver and in gold’ (Gen. xiii. 2, xxiv. 35), and in the account of his purchase of the cave of Machpelah (Gen. xxiii. 16), it is stated that ‘Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current with the merchants.’

“As there are no auriferous rocks or streams in Chaldaea, we must infer that the old Chaldaean traders must have imported their gold from India by way of the Persian Gulf, in the ships of Ur frequently mentioned in cuneiform inscriptions.

“But though gold and silver were from the earliest times used as measures of value in the East, not a single piece of coined money has come down to us of these remote ages, nor is there any mention of coined money in the Old Testament before Persian times. The gold and silver ‘current with the merchant’ were always weighed in the balance; thus we read that David gave to Ornan for his threshing-floor [including oxen and threshing instruments] 600 shekels of gold by weight (1 Chron. xxi. 25).

“It is nevertheless probable that the balance was not called into operation for every small transaction, but that little bars of silver and of gold of fixed weight, but without any official mark (and therefore not coins) were often counted out by tale, larger amounts being always weighed. Such small bars or wedges of gold and silver served the purposes of a currency, and were regulated by the weight of the shekel or the mina.

“This leads us briefly to examine the standards of weight used for the precious metals in the East before the invention of money.

“The metric systems of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians.

“The evidence afforded by ancient writers on the subject of weights and coinage is in great part untrustworthy, and would often be unintelligible were it not for the light which has been shed upon it by the gold and silver coins, and bronze, leaden and stone weights which have been fortunately preserved down to our own times. It will be safer, therefore, to confine ourselves to the direct evidence afforded by the monuments.

“Egypt, the oldest civilized country of the ancient world, first claims our attention, but as the weight system which prevailed in the Nile valley does not appear to have exercised any traceable influence upon the early coinage of the Greeks, the metrology of Egypt need not detain us long....

“The Chaldaeans and Babylonians, as is well known, excelled especially in the cognate sciences of arithmetic and astronomy. On the broad and monotonous plains of Lower Mesopotamia, says Professor Rawlinson, where the earth has little to suggest thought or please by variety the ‘variegated heaven,’ ever changing with the times and the seasons, would early attract attention, while the clear sky, dry atmosphere, and level horizon, would afford facilities for observations so soon as the idea of them suggested itself to the minds of the inhabitants. The records of these astronomical observations were inscribed in cuneiform character on soft clay tablets, afterwards baked hard and preserved in the royal or public libraries in the chief cities of Babylonia. Large numbers of these tablets are now in the British Museum. When Alexander the Great took Babylon, it is recorded that there were found and sent to Aristotle a series of astronomical observations extending back as far as the year B.C. 2234. Recent investigations into the nature of these records render it probable that upon them rests the entire structure of the metric system of the Babylonians. The day and night were divided by the Babylonians into 24 hours, each of 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds—a method of measuring time which has never been superseded, and which we have inherited from Babylon, together with the first principles of the science of astronomy. The Babylonian measures of capacity and their system of weights were based, it is thought, upon one and the same unit as their measures of time and space, and as they are believed to have determined the length of an hour of equinoctial time by means of the dropping of water, so too it is conceivable that they may have fixed the weight of their talents, their mina, and their shekel, as well as the size of their measures of capacity, by weighing or measuring the amounts of water, which had passed from one vessel into another during a given space of time. Thus, just as an hour consisted of 60 minutes and the minute of 60 seconds, so the talent contained 60 minae, and the mina 60 shekels. The division by sixties or sexagesimal system, is quite as characteristic of the Babylonian arithmetic and system of weights and measures, as the decimal system is of the Egyptian and the modern French. And indeed it possesses one great advantage over the decimal system, inasmuch as the number 60, upon which it is based, is more divisible than 10.

“About 1300 years before our era the Assyrian empire came to surpass in importance that of the Babylonians, but the learning and science of Chaldaea were not lost, but rather transmitted through Nineveh by means of the Assyrian conquests and commerce to the north and west as far as the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Let us now turn to the actual monuments. Some thirty years ago Mr Layard discovered and brought home from the ruins of ancient Nineveh a number of bronze lions of various sizes which may now be seen in the British Museum. With them were also a number of stone objects in the form of ducks[252].”

From this double series of weights Mr Head infers that there were two distinct minae simultaneously in use during the long period of time which elapsed between about B.C. 2000, and B.C. 625. “The heavier of these two minae appears to have been just the double of the lighter. Brandis is probably not far from the mark in fixing the weight of the heavy mina at 1010 grammes, and that of the light at 505 grammes.

“It has been suggested that the lighter of these two minae may have been peculiar to the Babylonian, and the heavier to the Assyrian empire; but this cannot be proved. But nevertheless it would seem that the use of the heavy mina was more extended in Syria than that of the lighter, if we may judge from the fact that most of the weights belonging to the system of the heavy mina have in addition to the cuneiform inscription an Aramaic one.

“The purpose which this Aramaic inscription served must clearly have been to render the weight acceptable to the Syrian and Phoenician merchants who traded backwards and forwards between Assyria and Mesopotamia on the one hand, and the Phoenician emporia on the other.

“The Phoenician traders.

“The Phoenician commerce was chiefly a carrying trade. The richly embroidered stuffs of Babylonia and other products of the East were brought down to the coasts, and then carefully packed in chests of cedarwood in the markets of Tyre and Sidon, whence they were shipped by the enterprising Phoenician mariners to Cyprus, to the coasts of the Aegean, or even to the extreme West.

“Hence the Phoenician city of Tyre was called by Ezekiel (xxvii.) ‘a merchant of the people for many isles.’

“But the Phoenicians in common with the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Hebrews etc. with whom they dealt were at no time without their own peculiar weights and measures upon which they appear to have grafted the Assyrio-Babylonian principal unit of account or the weight in which it was customary to estimate values. This weight was the 60th part of the manah or mina.

“The Babylonian sexagesimal system was foreign to Phoenician habits. While therefore these people had no difficulty in adopting the Assyrio-Babylonian 60th as their own unit of weight or shekel, they did not at the same time adopt the sexagesimal system in its entirety but constituted a new mina for themselves consisting of 50 shekels instead of 60. In estimating the largest weight of all, the Talent, the multiplication by 60 was nevertheless retained. Thus in the Phoenician system as in that of the Greeks 50 shekels (Gk. staters) = 1 Mina, and 60 Minae or 3000 shekels or staters = 1 Talent.

“The particular form of shekel which appears to have been received by the Phoenicians and Hebrews from the East was the 60th part of the heavier of the two Assyrio-Babylonian minae above referred to. The 60th of the lighter for some reason which has not been satisfactorily accounted for seems to have been transmitted westwards by a different route, viz. across Asia Minor, and so into the kingdom of Lydia.

“The Lydians.

“‘The Lydians,’ says E. Curtius (Hist. Gr. I. 76), ‘became on land what the Phoenicians were by sea, the mediators between Hellas and Asia.’ It is related that about the time of the Trojan Wars and for some centuries afterwards, the country of the Lydians was in a state of vassalage to the kings of Assyria. But an Assyrian inscription informs us that Asia Minor, west of the Halys, was unknown to the Assyrian kings before the time of Assur-banî-apli, or Assurbanipal (circ. B.C. 666), who it is stated received an embassy from Gyges, king of Lydia ‘a remote’ country, of which Assurbanipal’s predecessors had never heard the name. Nevertheless that there had been some sort of connection between Lydia and Assyria in ancient times is probable, though it cannot be proved.

“Professor Sayce is of opinion that the mediators between Lydia in the west, and Assyria in the east, were the people called Kheta or Hittites. According to this theory the northern Hittite capital Carchemish (later Hierapolis) on the Euphrates, was the spot where the arts and civilization of Assyria took the form which especially characterises the early monuments of Central Asia Minor.

“The year B.C. 1400 or thereabouts was the time of greatest power of the nation of the Hittites, and if they were in reality the chief connecting link between Lydia and Assyria it may be inferred that it was through them that the Lydians received the Assyrian weight, which afterwards in Lydia took the form of a stamped ingot or coin.

“But why it was that the light mina rather than the heavy one had become domesticated in Lydia must remain unexplained. We know however that one of the Assyrian weights is spoken of in cuneiform inscriptions as the ‘weight of Carchemish.’ If then the modern hypothesis of a Hittite dominion in Asia Minor turn out to be well founded, the weight of Carchemish might by means of the Hittites have found its way to Phrygia and Lydia, and as the earliest Lydian coins are regulated according to the divisions of the Light Assyrian mina this would probably be the one alluded to.

“From these two points then, Phoenicia on the one hand and Lydia (through Carchemish), on the other, the two Babylonian units of weight appear to have started westwards to the shores of the Aegean sea, the heavy shekel by way of Phoenicia, the lighter shekel by way of Lydia.”

So far I have thought it but right to give Mr Head’s exposition in extenso, that the enquirer may be enabled to fully grasp the principles of the orthodox school, before we enter on any criticism of them. I shall now treat more summarily all that remains to be said.

Let us briefly state the peculiar doctrines of two leading continental metrologists. The veteran Dr Hultsch derives all standards of weight thus: The royal Babylonian cubit was based on the sun’s apparent diameter; the cube of this measure gave the maris, the weight in water of one-fifth of which was the royal Babylonian talent, which was divided into 60 manehs (minae) and each mina in turn into 60 shekels. For silver and gold however they formed their standard by taking fifty shekels to form a mina[253]: thus after elaborating with such care a scientific system, they abandoned it as soon as they came to deal with the precious metals.

M. Soutzo[254] in a clever essay has maintained that all the weight systems both monetary and commercial of Asia, Egypt, Greece, come from one primordial weight the Egyptian uten (96 grammes), or from its tenth, the kat (9·60 grammes). He ascribes the origin of these weights to an extremely remote epoch not far perhaps from the time of the discovery of bronze in Asia, and the invention of the first instruments for weighing: he considers also that bronze by weight was the first money employed in Asia, Egypt, and Italy, and that everywhere the decimal system of numeration has preceded the sexagesimal.

The evidence which we have produced in the earlier part of this work has I trust convinced the reader that gold, not copper, was the first object to be weighed; M. Soutzo’s assumption that the uten is the primordial unit is upset even for the Egyptians themselves by the passage already cited from Horapollo (p. 129).

The invention of coinage.

The evidence of both history and numismatics coincides in making the Lydians the inventors of the art of coining money. At first sight it may seem surprising that none of the great peoples of the East, whose civilization had its first beginning long ages before the periods at which our very oldest records begin, should have developed coined money, acquainted as they indubitably were with the precious metals, both for ornament and exchange. But a little reflection shews us that it has been quite possible for peoples to attain a high degree of civilization without feeling any need of what are properly termed coins. Transactions by means of the scales are comparatively simple, and as a matter of fact we shall find hereafter that even after a coinage had been for centuries established, men constantly had recourse to the balance in monetary transactions, just as down to the present moment the Chinese, who have enjoyed a high degree of culture for several thousand years, still have no native currency but their copper cash, foreign silver dollars being the only medium in the precious metals, whilst all important monetary transactions are carried on by the scales and weights. I may here likewise point out incidentally that where the supply of the precious metals is only sufficient to meet the demand for personal adornment, the establishment of a coinage in those metals will naturally be slow, whilst on the other hand where there is so abundant a supply of the metals, that there is more than sufficient for purposes of personal use, the tendency to produce a coinage will be much greater. If we enquire what were the metalliferous regions of Asia Minor, we at once find that Lydia above all other countries was especially rich in gold, or rather a natural alloy of gold and silver. The wealth of two Lydian kings, Gyges and Croesus, which has been through the ages a proverb consisted of vast quantities of this metal, which the Greeks called electron (ἤλεκτρον) or white gold (λευκὸς χρυσός, Herodotus, I. 50). The ancients regarded it as almost a distinct metal, doubtless because from their imperfect methods they experienced the greatest difficulty in extracting the pure metal. The pure gold in circulation in Asia Minor must have come from the valley of the Oxus, or the Ural mountains. Thus Sophocles speaks of “the electron of Sardis and the gold of Ind[255].” Even in the time of Strabo (A.D. 21), the process was regarded as so difficult that the great geographer thinks it worth while to quote from Posidonius (flor. 90 B.C.), the description of how the separation of the metals was effected (III. 146). It is therefore natural to find in Lydia, the land of gold, the first attempts at coined money.

“So far as we have knowledge,” says Herodotus[256], “the Lydians were the first nation to introduce the use of gold and silver coin.”

This statement is fully borne out by the evidence of Xenophanes[257], and also by the coins themselves, although some writers, e.g. Th. Mommsen[258], have held that it was in the great cities of Ionia, Phocaea and Miletus that money was first coined. “From the little we know of the character of this people (the Lydians) we gather that their commercial instinct must have been greatly developed by their geographical position and surroundings, both conducive to frequent intercourse with the peoples of Asia Minor, Orientals as well as Greeks.”

About the time when the mighty Assyrian empire was falling into decay, Lydia, under a new dynasty called the Mermnadae, was entering upon a new phase of national life.

“The policy of these new rulers of the country was to extend the power of Lydia towards the West, and to obtain possession of towns on the coast. With this object Gyges (who, according to the story told by Plato, was a shepherd who owed his good fortune to the finding of a magic ring in an ancient tomb, and who was the founder of the dynasty of the Mermnadae, circ. B.C. 700) established a firm footing on the Hellespont, and endeavoured to extend his dominions along the whole Ionian coast. This brought the Lydians into direct contact with the Asiatic Greeks.

“These Ionian Greeks had been from very early times in constant intercourse, not always friendly, with the Phoenicians, with whom they had long before come to an understanding about numbers, weights, measures, the alphabet, and such like matters, and from whom, there is reason to think, they had received the 60th part of the heavy Assyrio-Babylonian mina as their unit of weight or stater. The Lydians on the other hand had received, probably from Carchemish, the 60th of the light mina.

“Thus then, when the Lydians in the reign of Gyges came into contact and conflict with the Greeks, the two units of weight, after travelling by different routes, met again in the coast towns and river valleys of Western Asia Minor, in the borderland between the East and the West.

“To the reign of Gyges, the founder of the new Lydian empire as distinct from the Lydia of more remote antiquity, may perhaps be ascribed the earliest essays in the art of coining. The wealth of this monarch in the precious metals may be inferred from the munificence of his gifts to the Delphic shrine, consisting of golden mixing cups and silver urns, amounting to a mass of gold and silver such as the Greeks had never before seen collected together.” This treasure was called the Gygadas, and is described by Herodotus[259].

“It is in conformity with the whole spirit of a monarch such as Gyges, whose life’s work it was to extend his empire towards the West, and at the same time to hold in his hands the lines of communication with the East, that from his capital Sardes, situated on the slopes of Tmolus and on the banks of the Pactolus, both rich in gold, he should send forth along the caravan routes of the East and into the heart of Mesopotamia, and down the river valleys of the West to the sea, his native Lydian ore gathered from the washings of Pactolus and from the diggings on the sides of Tmolus and Sipylus.

“This precious merchandize (if the earliest Lydian coins are indeed his) he issued in the form of oval-shaped bullets or ingots, officially sealed or stamped on one side as a guarantee of their weight and value. For the eastern or land-trade the light mina was the standard by which this coinage was regulated, while for the western trade with the Greeks of the coast the heavy mina was made use of, which from its mode of transmission we may call the Phoenician, retaining the name Babylonian only for the weight which was derived from the banks of the Euphrates.”

To prevent misapprehension, it may be advisable to mention that the standards here termed Phoenician and Babylonian are not to be confounded with the heavy and light shekels already mentioned, but are the standards derived from the latter specially for silver, in the ways shown a little lower down.

Modern analysis of electrum from Tmolus shows that it consists of 27 per cent. of silver and 73 per cent. of gold[260]. It consequently stood to silver in a different relation from that of pure gold. Thus while gold stood to silver as 13·3:1, electrum would stand at 10:1 or thereabouts. Mr Head considers that “this natural compound of gold and silver possessed some advantages for coining over gold. In the first place it was more durable, harder, and less liable to injury and waste from wear. In the second place it was more easily obtainable, being a natural product; and in the third place, standing as it did in the proportion of about 10:1 to silver, it rendered needless the use of a different standard of weight for the two metals, enabling the authorities of the mints to make use of a single set of weights, and a decimal system easy of comprehension and simple in practice” (p. xxxiv.). The second of these reasons is probably the true one, the first being a good example of the tendency of even the most able modern writers to ascribe to early times ideas which are only the outcome of a far later period. The idea of getting a metal which will be more durable in circulation is purely modern, and not even received by Orientals in modern times. Thus the gold mohurs of India down to their latest issue were of pure gold, free from alloy (in consequence of which they are still sought after by the native Hindu goldsmiths in preference to the English sovereign, as the addition of alloy makes the latter less easy to work up into jewellery).

I allude to this here because we shall find in the course of our enquiry that most of the errors into which metrologists have fallen, are the consequence of their failing to recognize the great gulf which is fixed between the habits and ideas of a primitive community, slowly evolving principles which are now part and parcel of the common heritage of civilization, and an era like our own, when all progress is effected by the development and application of scientific principles long since discovered.

Electrum was thus coined on the same standard as silver, one talent, one mina and one stater of electrum being consequently equal to ten talents, ten minae, or ten staters of silver. The weight of the electrum stater in each district would depend therefore on the standard which happened to be in use there for silver bullion, or silver in the shape of bars or oblong bricks, the practice of the new invention of stamping or sealing metal for circulation being in the first place only applied to the more precious of the two metals, electrum representing in a small compass a weight of uncoined silver ten times as bulky and ten times as difficult of transport.

The invention was soon extended to pure gold and silver, and there is good reason to believe that by the time of Croesus (568-554 B.C.) both these metals were used for purposes of coinage in Lydia.

The Greeks begin to coin money.

The clever Greeks of Asia Minor, who formed the portal through which so many of the arts of the East reached the Western lands, were not slow to adopt, and by reason of their superior artistic taste to improve, the great Lydian invention. To the Ionic cities such as Phocaea and Miletus we must probably ascribe the credit of substituting artistically engraved dies for the rude Lydian punch-marks, and at a somewhat later period of inscribing them with the name or rather the initial of the people or potentate by whom they were issued.

The official stamps by which the earliest electrum staters were distinguished from mere ingots consisted at first only of the impress of rude unengraved punches, between which the lump or oval-shaped bullet of metal was placed to receive the blow of the hammer. Subsequently the art of the engraver was called in to adorn the lower of the two dies, which was always that of the face or obverse of the coin, with the symbol of the local divinity under whose auspices the currency was issued.

As our object is to deal with coins from the point of view of metrology, the short summary here given of the genesis of the art of coining will suffice for our purposes.

Weight standards.

“Silver was very rarely at this early period weighed by the same talent and mina as gold, but, according to a standard derived from the gold weight, somewhat as follows:—

Gold was to silver as 13·3:1. This proportion made it difficult to weigh both metals on the same standard. That a round number of silver shekels or staters might equal a gold shekel or stater, the weight of the silver shekel was either raised above or lowered below that of the gold. The heavy gold shekel weighed 260 grains Troy, being the double of the light gold shekel, which weighed 130 grains Troy (8·4 grammes).

The Silver Standards derived from the Gold Shekel[261].

I. From the heavy gold shekel of 260 grains:

On the silver shekel of 230 grains the Phoenician or Graeco-Asiatic silver standard may be constructed:

II. From the light gold shekel of 130 grains we get the so-called Babylonian or Persian standard:

On the silver shekel or stater of 172·9 grains the Babylonic, Lydian, and Persian silver standard may be thus constructed:—

It is desirable “to take note of the fact that in Asia Minor and in the earliest periods of the art of coining, (α) the heavy gold stater (260 grains) occurs at various places, from Teos northwards as far as the shores of the Propontis; (β) the light gold stater (130 grains) in Lydia (Κροίσειος στατήρ) and in Samos (?); (γ) the electrum stater of the Phoenician silver standard, chiefly at Miletus, but also at other towns along the west coast of Asia Minor, as well as in Lydia, but never however in full weight; (δ) the electrum and silver stater of the Babylonic standard, chiefly if not solely in Lydia; (ε) the silver stater of the Phoenician standard (230 grains) on the west coast of Asia Minor[262].”

Here we may call attention to the fact that whilst Miletus struck her electrum staters on the Phoenician silver standard (their normal weight being 217 grains), the Phocaeans always from the infancy of coining employed for their electrum the gold standard of the heavy shekel (260 grains). But the proper time for discussing why the Lydians, Milesians and Phocaeans all struck their electrum coins of various standards, will come further on in our enquiry.

The coin-standards of Greece Proper.

Before we attempt to examine into the connection of the Homeric talent or ox unit, and the ancient systems of the East, it will be advisable to get a clear view of the coin-standards found in actual use in historical times, and to understand the common doctrine of the derivation of the same. As gold was not coined in Greece Proper until a comparatively late period, owing doubtless to the fact that there was no great supply of it to be had, and that all of it was required to meet the demand for personal adornment, the entire early coinage of Greece (with some few exceptions to be presently noted) consisted of silver. These silver issues were all struck on either of two systems; (1) the Aeginean, or Aeginetic, and (2) the Euboic, the stater of the former weighing about 195 grains, that of the latter about 135-130 grains. But it is a fact of paramount importance that gold, whenever and wherever coined in Greece, was always on the Euboic standard, and there is likewise every reason to believe that gold bullion in the days before gold was coined was computed according to the same standard. Such at least was undoubtedly the case at Athens, as we learn from Thucydides[263], where he describes the resources of Athens both in coined and uncoined metal, and in the gold plates which overlaid the famous chryselephantine statue of Pallas Athene, the masterpiece of Pheidias, and the glory of the Acropolis; and such also, as we shall see, was the case, in the days of Solon.

All ancient accounts are agreed in the statement that Aegina was the first place in Hellas Proper which saw the minting of money. That island was famous from old time as the meeting-place of merchants, and as such under its ancient name of Oenone was glorified by Pindar[264]. Its position rendered it a most convenient emporium, where the merchantmen of Tyre met in traffic the traders from both Peloponnesus and northern Greece. Tradition makes its population a very mixed one: “It was called Oenone,” says Strabo, “in ancient times, and it was settled by Argives, Kretans, Epidaurians, and Dorians[265].” According to a fragment of Ephorus, to be referred to presently, it was owing to the barren nature of the soil that the natives turned to trade.

All Greek tradition is unanimous in representing Pheidon of Argos as the first to coin money in Hellas Proper, and to have done so at Aegina. Much obscurity enshrouds the history and the date of Pheidon, owing to the conflicting accounts of the historians. For our immediate purpose it would be quite sufficient to state simply that he cannot have lived later than 600 B.C., but in consequence of some prevailing doctrines with regard to the history of Greek weights being based on inferences (probably quite unwarrantable) which have been drawn from the statements given about this despot, we must take a more elaborate survey of the sources.

Pausanias[266], writing about 174 A.D. says that the Pisaeans in the eight Olympiad (747 B.C.) brought to their aid Pheidon of Argos, who of all despots in Hellas waxed most insolent, and that along with him they celebrated the festival. But now comes the testimony of Herodotus[267], who was writing circ. 440 B.C., and who tells us (VI. 127) that when Cleisthenes the despot of Sicyon held the svayamvara for his daughter Agariste; amongst the suitors who came from all parts of Hellas, was “Leocedes, son of Pheidon, the despot of the Argives, Pheidon, who had made their measures for the Peloponnesians, and had of all Greeks waxed to the greatest pitch of violence, he who expelled the Elean presidents of the games and himself held the festival.” There cannot be the slightest doubt that both Pausanias and Herodotus refer to the same tyrant, but the dates are irreconcileable. As Cleisthenes, the Athenian law-giver, was the son of Agariste, her wooing cannot have been much earlier than 560 B.C., and consequently Pheidon must have reigned at Argos shortly before 600 B.C.

Weissenborn (followed by Ernst Curtius) has sought to cut the Gordian knot by emending the text of Pausanias, thus reading 28th instead of 8th Olympiad, which would make Pheidon help the Pisaeans in the year 668 B.C. But even this drastic remedy is hardly sufficient to meet the requirements of the statement of Herodotus.

Our earliest authority for the tradition that Pheidon coined at Aegina is a passage of Ephorus preserved by Strabo (VIII. 376)[268]: “Ephorus says that in Aegina silver was first struck by Pheidon; for it had become an emporium, inasmuch as its population, owing to the barrenness of the land, engaged in maritime trade; whence trumpery goods are called Aeginean ware.” According to another passage of Strabo, which may be likewise from Ephorus, as it comes at the end of a long statement, the first part of which Strabo expressly declares is taken from that writer: (“They say) that Pheidon of Argos, who was tenth in descent from Temenus, and who surpassed his contemporaries in his power, whence he recovered the whole of the inheritance of Temenus, which had been rent into several parts, and that he invented the measures which are called Pheidonian and weights and stamped currency, both the other kind and that of silver.” It must be carefully observed that this is the only ancient passage which says a word about the invention of weights by Pheidon. If this statement can be taken as trustworthy we might very well conclude that Pheidon was the person who introduced the decimal principle and made 10 silver pieces instead of 15 equivalent to the gold stater. If however this is an addition of Strabo[269], who wrote about A.D. 1-21, and whose account of Greece Proper is the most defective portion of his great work, we cannot let this passage weigh against that already given from Herodotus, who is perfectly silent as regards the invention of weights. Furthermore there is the fact that Strabo does not venture to describe the weights as called Pheidonian, but carefully limits that appellation to the measures as we find also to be the case with Pollux, when he is describing various kinds of vessels: “and likewise a Pheidon would be a kind of vessel for holding oil, deriving its name from the Pheidonian measures respecting which Aristotle speaks in his Polity of the Argives[270].” Here again we find a clear mention of the Pheidonian measures, coupled with the high authority of Aristotle’s treatise on the Constitution of Argos in his great “Collection of Polities,” formed to serve as the material from which to build his great philosophic work on Politics.

There is again no mention of Pheidonian weights in the newly found Polity of the Athenians (which seems beyond doubt the same as that known to the ancients under the name of Aristotle), where it is stated that “in his (Solon’s) time the measures (at Athens) were made larger than those of Pheidon” (c. 10)[271]. Although the writer refers to the Aeginetic coin-weights in the next clause, he does not refer to them as the Pheidonian.

Now let us pass on to a remarkable passage in the Etymologicum Magnum (s.v. Ὀβελίσος).

“First of all men Pheidon of Argos struck money in Aegina; and having given them (his subjects) coin and abolished the spits, he dedicated them to Hera in Argos. But since at that time the spits used to fill the hand, that is the grasp, we, although we do not fill our hand with the six obols (spits) call it a grasp full (δραχμὴ) owing to the grasping of them. Whence even still to this day we call the usurer the spit-weigher, since by weights the men of old used to hand (money) over[272].” The writer of this passage evidently regards Pheidon as the first inventor of the art of coining but not of weight standards.

Finally the Parian Marble recounts that, “Pheidon the Argive confiscated the measures ... and remade them and made silver coin in Aegina[273].” Such then is the body of evidence which we possess, all pointing to Aegina as the first place in Greece which saw a mint set up, and to Pheidon of Argos as the first to establish that mint. As we have pointed out above we have nothing but a very dubious statement of Strabo (which is coupled with another most certainly wrong, i.e., that Pheidon was the inventor of every other kind of money as well as silver) as regards the invention of weights by Pheidon, although from the passage in Herodotus already quoted, metrologists one after another have assumed that the measures (μέτρα) meant a metric system in the modern sense, and have not hesitated to build on this somewhat crazy foundation an elaborate Aeginetic system of weights and measures intimately related to each other.

We are then probably justified in assuming that Pheidon coined silver at Aegina. The numismatic evidence coincides with the literary authorities. The coins of Aegina are well known, for from first to last the symbol of the sea tortoise (χελώνη, from which they are called in vulgar parlance tortoises) is found on them. Why Pheidon set up his mint in Aegina instead of in his own city of Argos is not very difficult to understand. Argos was an inland town remote from the highways of commerce, and little in contact with the merchants of the Levant. On the other hand Aegina stood at the portal of central Greece, intercepting the trade of Athens and Corinth; in later days Pericles called it the “eyesore of the Piraeus.” It would be probably here that the Greeks first saw the new invention of the East in the hands of the foreign traders, and it would be here, in a great emporium, that the need of a currency would be most felt. In an inland city like Argos or Sparta bars of bronze or iron would serve well for the small commercial transactions of a very primitive society, as we know that the iron currency actually did at Sparta in historical times. E. Curtius suggested (Numism. Chron., 1870) that the tortoise on the Aeginetan coins, which is the symbol of Ashtaroth who was the Phoenician goddess both of the sea and of trade, may be an indication that the mint was set up in the temple of Aphrodite, which overlooked the great harbour of Aegina. Whilst his hypothesis as regards the origin of the tortoise type on the coin is probably wrong, it is quite possible that the coins were first struck in some temple, as we know that the great shrines of the ancient world served as banks and treasuries, as for example the temple of Athena at Athens, that of Apollo at Delphi, and that of Juno Moneta at Rome. The temple priests of Delphi and other rich shrines had at their command large stores of the precious metals, which in the earliest times doubtless were in the shape of small ingots or bullets, such as the gold talents mentioned in the Homeric Poems.

The temple shrines of Delphi and Olympia, Delos and Dodona were centres not merely of religious cult, but likewise of trade and commerce, just as the great fairs of the Middle Ages grew primarily out of the feast day of the local saint, merchants and traders taking advantage of the assembling together of large bodies of worshippers from various quarters to ply their calling and to tempt them with their wares. The temple authorities encouraged trade in every way; they constructed sacred roads, which gave facility for travelling at a time when roads as a general rule were almost unknown, and what was just as important, they placed these roads and consequently the persons who travelled on them under the protection of the god to whose temple they led in each case, thus affording a safe conduct to the trader as well as the pilgrim; again at the time of the sacred festivals all strife had to cease, the voice of war was hushed, and thus even amidst the noise of intestine struggles and international strife, peace offered a breathing space for trade and commerce. Hence the probability is considerable that the art of minting money, that is, of stamping with a symbol the ingots or talents of gold or silver which had circulated in this simple form for centuries, first had its birth in the sanctuary of some god.

On the whole then we may assume that the bullet-shaped coins of Aegina, which are undoubtedly the earliest coins of Greece Proper, are the Pheidonian currency mentioned in the ancient authors and on the Parian Marble. As silver was probably not at all plenty at Argos, but was brought to Aegina by the traders, Pheidon had every motive for minting at Aegina instead of at his own capital. The fact that the Romans struck silver coins in Campania before they issued any at Rome affords a curious parallel. A local supply of the metal offers the explanation in each case. “It may be also positively asserted that none of the Aeginetan coins are older than the earliest Lydian electrum money, and that consequently the date of the introduction of coined money into Peloponnesus must be subsequent to circ. 700 B.C. It follows that Pheidon was not the inventor of money, for already before his time all the coasts and islands of the Aegean must have been acquainted with the pale yellow electrum coins of Lydia and Ionia[274].”

What then was the standard on which these early coins of Aegina were struck?

The heaviest specimens of these Aeginetan staters or didrachms weigh over 200 grains Troy, but these seem somewhat exceptional. The best numismatic authorities are agreed in setting the normal weight at 196 grains Troy; the drachm consequently weighs 98 grains, and the obol about 16 grains. The origin of this standard has caused much difficulty to metrologists. For it is not the standard of the Babylonian gold shekel of 130 grains, nor of the Babylonian silver shekel of 172 grains, nor again that of the Phoenician silver shekel of 230 grains. Various solutions have been proposed. Brandis[275] regards it as a raised Babylonian silver standard, 172·9 to 196 grains. Mr Head regards it as the reduced Phoenician standard; “The weight standard which the Peloponnesians had received in old times from the Phoenician traders had suffered in the course of about two centuries a very considerable degradation[276].” Others, like Mr Flinders Petrie (Encyclop. Britannica, Weights and Measures), regard it as Egyptian in origin. According to Herodotus (II. 178) the Aeginetans were on terms of friendly intercourse with Egypt; furthermore weights of this standard have been found in Egypt.

Again, Dr Hultsch (Metrol.² p. 188) regards it as an independent standard midway between the Babylonian silver standard (172·9 grs.) on the one hand, and the Phoenician silver standard (230 grs.) on the other, the old Aeginetan silver mina being equivalent in value to six light Babylonian shekels of gold (130 × 6 = 780 grs. = 10300 grs. of silver), assuming that in Greece as in Asia Minor gold was to silver as 13·3:1.

All these theories labour under serious difficulties. Brandis’ theory was overthrown easily as soon as attention was called to the well-defined heavy series of Aeginetic coins, he having been led to his opinion by a comparison of the heaviest specimen of the Babylonian standard with the lightest of the Aeginetic. Here incidentally we may call the readers’ attention to the fact that in numismatics the weight of the heaviest specimens of any series must be regarded as the true index of the normal weight, for whatever may have been the inclination to mint coins of a weight lighter than the proper standard, we may rest assured that the ancient mint-master was no more inclined than his modern representative to put into coins of gold or silver a single grain more than the legal amount. Hence it is a most faulty and fallacious method when dealing with coin weights to take the average of a certain number of specimens as the true standard. Out of 30 specimens 29 may have lost more or less in weight by wear, whilst one may be a fleur de coin, perfect as at the moment when it left the die. No one can doubt that the evidence of that single coin as regards the standard is worth far more than that of all the remaining 29 examples. I have thought it well to call attention to this question of method as the vicious principle of arriving at standards by taking the average is still found in works of men of great eminence.

Next let us consider the probability of the derivation of the Aeginetic standard from Egypt. The fact that weights of like standard have been found in that country, although superficially plausible, in reality is of little force as evidence of borrowing. For unless we find that the Egyptians used those weights for weighing silver, even the prima facie case breaks down at once. As a matter of fact there is no evidence up to the present that these weights were so employed, although there is some evidence of their being employed for gold (Flinders Petrie, op. cit.). But even granting that the Egyptians used the same standard as the Aeginetans for silver, it does not at all follow that there has been borrowing on either side. On the principle laid down below it will be seen that it is quite possible for two peoples to evolve a like silver standard perfectly independently of each other. But the real difficulty which besets the theory of an Egyptian origin is that if the Aeginetans were to borrow their standard from abroad, the people from whom they would in all probability have obtained it were not the Egyptians, with whom they had but slight relations directly, but rather the Phoenicians, with whom they were in constant intercourse.

It cannot be proved that at any time the Egyptians were a maritime people trading round the coasts of Greece. There was undoubtedly intercourse between Greece and Egypt, but that intercourse was through the medium of the shipmen of Tyre. Why should then the Aeginetans adopt a standard from abroad which differed from that of the Phoenicians with whom they were in constant commercial relations? Again, if there is any connection between the importation of weight standards and the commencement of coinage, it may be urged that whilst it was from the Phoenicians the Aeginetans learned the art which had been originated in Asia Minor, or at all events from the Greeks of the coast of Asia Minor who coined electrum money on the Phoenician standard, we ought naturally to find the Greeks of Aegina using this standard for their earliest coinage rather than a standard borrowed from Egypt, which most certainly was very backward in developing the art of coining, seeing that it was not until after the conquest of that country by Alexander the Great (B.C. 330) that money was there struck for the first time[277].

Passing by for the moment Mr Head’s view, let us next deal with that of Dr Hultsch. This theory has the great merit of granting that the Greeks were capable of evolving a silver standard for themselves from a knowledge of the relative value of gold and silver, whilst the other theories assume that they borrowed blindly ready-made standards, which they for some unknown reason either raised according to Brandis, or degraded according to Head. But Dr Hultsch is met by two crucial difficulties. (1) Why should the Aeginetans have taken six light Babylonian shekels of gold and arbitrarily made them the basis of their new silver standard? (2) But the fatal objection is that whereas Hultsch’s theory depends on gold being to silver in the same relation (13·3:1) in Greece Proper as it was in Asia Minor, as a matter of fact it can be proved that the precious metals there stood in a very different relation to each other. In the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1887, I gave some reasons for believing that in early times gold was to silver in Greece in the relation of 15:1. For whilst gold was plentiful in Asia, at no place in Greece Proper were there auriferous deposits. Hence it is probable that gold had to silver a higher relative value in Greece than it had in Asia. Certain archaeological discoveries recently made at Athens add great strength to the view which I then put forward. At a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Science in 1889 Dr Ulrich Köhler discussed certain fragments of inscriptions which refer to the famous statue of Athena, wrought in gold and ivory by Pheidias for the Parthenon. By combining with a fragment published by M. Foucart (Bullet. de Corresp. Hell. 1889, p. 171), another fragment previously copied by himself, Dr Köhler arrived at the result that the fragments relate to the purchase of materials for the construction of the statue, that is of gold and ivory. The gold purchased is described both according to its weight and according to the price (τιμή) paid for it in Attic silver currency (whilst the ivory is only described by the value or price). The sum paid for gold amounted to 526·652 drachms, 5 obols, the weight of the gold being 37·618 drachms: from this we learn that the relative value of gold to silver at that time was as 14:1. According to Thucydides (II. 13), forty talents of gold were used in the making of the statue, whilst according to the more explicit statement of Philochorus the amount was forty-four. The image was dedicated at the great Panathenaic festival of the year 438 B.C. As not more than 10 to 11 talents of gold were used in the three years to which the fragments refer, Köhler draws the inference that the construction of the statue commenced in the same year as that of the Parthenon (447 B.C.), and that Pheidias was engaged on his great work for fully nine years.

We thus know now the relative value of silver and gold in Attica about 450 B.C. But we must not regard this as the relation which existed at earlier times. It was only after the Persian wars that Athens had got possession of the island of Thasos with its rich gold mines, and the equally rich districts on the Thracian coast. The fact of her coming into the possession of such wealthy gold-producing regions must have materially lowered the price of gold in Athens. We know how the development of the mines of Pangaeum by Philip of Macedon in the following century lowered the value of gold throughout Greece, for by the time of Alexander the relative value of the two precious metals was as 10:1. In the sixth century B.C. gold was so scarce in Greece that when the Spartans wanted to make a dedication in gold they had to send to Asia to obtain a sufficient supply of the metal[278]. Hence if we conclude that in earlier times the relative value of gold to silver in Greece proper was as 15:1, we shall not be far from the truth. At all events it is put beyond doubt that the relation was higher than that of 13·3:1, and accordingly Dr Hultsch’s theory of the origin of the Aeginetic silver standard, which is based on that relation falls at once to the ground, unless he can shew that such a standard, based on six light gold Babylonian shekels had been previously fixed in Asia or Egypt, and thence adopted by the Greeks without any regard to the relative value existing in Greece itself between the precious metals. But as a matter of fact Dr Hultsch does not make any such attempt. Thus this essay at a solution breaks down.

On the other hand if we make the very slight and very probable assumption that the early Greeks had formed a definite idea of the relative value of gold and silver, which they would have determined exactly on the same principle as they would arrive at a notion of the relative value of any other two commodities, which they were in the habit of giving and taking in exchange, that is by the simple principle of supply and demand, we shall find a ready solution without having to resort to either Egypt or Babylon. If gold was to silver as 15:1 in Greece, it follows that the Homeric talent, the earliest Greek standard, being about 135 grains, ten silver pieces of 202 grains each would be equivalent to one gold unit.

This gives a singularly close approximation to the weight of the existing coins of the Aeginetic standard of the earliest and heaviest kind. Taking the Homeric talent at 130 grains of gold, by the same process we obtain 10 silver pieces each of the weight of 195 grains (130 × 15 = 1950; 1950 ÷ 10 = 195 grs.)

The second standard which we find in Greece at the beginning of the historical epoch was the Euboic. This standard was used for both silver and gold. The ordinary account of its origin is as follows: “From Ionia possibly through Samos the Euboeans imported the standard by which they weighed their silver. This standard was the light Assyrio-Babylonian gold mina with its shekel or stater of about 130 grains. The Euboeans having little or no gold transferred the weight used in Asia for gold to their own silver, raising it slightly at the same time to a maximum of 135 grains, and from Euboea it soon spread over a large part of the Greek world by means of the widely extended commercial relations of the enterprising Euboean cities. This may have taken place towards the close of the eighth century and before the war which broke out at the end of that century between Chalcis and Eretria, nominally for the possession of the fields of Lelantum, which lay between the two rival cities”[279].

This Euboic standard of 135-130 grains is seen at once to be identical in weight with the Homeric talent.

Several difficulties (irrespective of the fact that there was no need for the Greeks to borrow from Asia a standard which they themselves already possessed from very early times) meet this theory.

(1) If the Euboeans derived their standard from Ionia why did they not rather adopt the Phoenician standards, on which we have already seen the great Ionian cities based their coinages of gold, silver, and electrum? Some very early electrum coins found at Samos (Head, op. cit. XLI.), have suggested that that island formed the link. “The theory,” says Mr Head, “that Samos was the port whence the Euboeans derived the gold standard subsequently used by them for silver, rests upon the weight of some very early electrum coins (about 44 grs.) which have been found in the island of Samos, and of the earliest Euboean coins, Euboea and Samos having been two of the greatest colonizing and maritime powers of the Aegean Sea. Thus I think we may account for the fact that the towns of Euboea, when they began to strike silver money of their own, naturally made use of the standard which had become from of old habitual in the island, precisely in the same way as Pheidon in Peloponnesus struck his first silver money on the reduced Phoenician standard which was prevalent at the time in his dominions.” But as a matter of fact the recognized Samian coins are of the Phoenician standard (220 grs.) in its slightly reduced state as found at Miletus (Head, op. cit. 515). This being so it would indeed be strange if the Euboeans from occasionally coming in contact with Lydian coins at Samos would have adopted that standard in preference to that in use in the great cities of Ionia with which their commerce directly lay.

(2) Why did the Euboeans take the Lydian gold standard of 130 grs. for their own electrum and silver instead of the Lydian silver standard of 172·9 grs.? According to Mr Head’s view, as we have seen above, the early Lydian electrum was struck on the standard of 172 grs. (the so-called Babylonian silver) when meant for circulation in the interior of Asia Minor, but on the Phoenician standard for circulation in trade with the Greeks of the coast of Ionia.

(3) We may ask the question, why did the Euboeans if they were taking over a ready-made standard which had no relation to any standard which they themselves already possessed, adopt the gold standard of 130 grs. instead of the electrum and silver standard which was in use among all the Greek cities with which they traded?

We can now conveniently revert to the theory that the Aeginetan silver standard was a reduced Phoenician. Much has been written about degradation of coin weights and reduced standards. It may be therefore well to clear our notions on the subject by asking ourselves what do we mean by such terms. Both the terms and the process are equally familiar to those at all acquainted with the history of mediaeval coinage. The king then controlled, as for instance in England, the mintage. If the sovereign thought fit to reduce the amount of silver in the groat from 80 to 72 grains his subjects had no alternative but to take the new and lighter pieces as equivalent to four pennies sterling. The sovereign thus was able to relieve an exhausted treasury, making a considerable profit off every groat and penny put into circulation. Again, the impecunious monarch might resort to another method of making a profit, by debasing the coinage, and might issue one such as the fourth of Henry VIII., of exceeding base silver, and again his subjects could simply grumble and take the new money. These groats and pennies passed as such within the realm, but when the question of foreign exchange came, the matter assumed an entirely new complexion. Would a shrewd Flemish merchant from Antwerp accept a base or a reduced English groat at the same rate for which it passed current in England? Of course he did no such thing, and the scales were at once called into use, and the silver changed hands not by tale, but by weight. Now the condition under which such a degradation or debasing of the coinage as we have described can take place is that a state or country shall be of such considerable magnitude that it has room within its own borders to employ a large amount of coin in internal trade without much necessity of external commerce. Did such conditions exist among the Greek states of antiquity? There is another condition, namely, sovereign power vested in the hands of a monarch possessed of unlimited authority, who has a direct personal interest in the profit to be made from the degradation of the coinage, and who has power sufficient to enable him to force his debased coinage on a reluctant people. Did such conditions exist in any of the Greek states of antiquity? Nowhere in Greece Proper do we find them fulfilled, but if we turn to Sicily we get a good example of the practice so often followed in after centuries by the mediaeval monarchs. The tyrant Dionysius there put an arbitrary value on gold in relation to silver: for although this relation was probably not more than 12:1, this despot raised it perforce to 15:1[280]. He also issued a coinage of tin, according to Aristotle[281], which he perhaps forced his subjects to take as equivalent to silver coins of like size. In later years again when Timoleon liberated Syracuse and the democracy was once more restored, the state issued a coinage of electrum instead of that of pure gold, which had previously been in currency, by this means making a profit of 20 per cent.[282] It is hardly necessary to point out that whilst this coinage of Dionysius might pass for an artificial value within the dominions of Syracuse, the moment a Syracusan came to make payment to a foreign merchant, its factitious value vanished and the transaction took place according to the current value of the metals. So as long as the English penny remained of good weight and quality it found ready currency on the continent, and the potentates of Flanders issued numerous imitations of them known as esterlings, but when the English silver penny became debased all foreign imitations ceased[283]. Now the Greek states of Greece Proper were very small in extent, and seldom had a very strong central authority. The area being limited it was absolutely necessary for them to have constant dealings with their neighbours. It would have been difficult for any government in republican times to have forced on its citizens a debased silver currency, and even had this been possible, any benefit derived therefrom would have been counterbalanced by the great drawback arising to trade. If Athens had reduced her famous “Owls” or as they were otherwise called “Maidens” (from the head of Pallas Athena), by five grains, her credit would have suffered and her merchants have gained nothing by it, as the balance would have been at once resorted to, and allowance would have had to be made on each coin of the new debased standard. We who live in modern times are too apt to forget the readiness with which men in older days had resort to the scales, although at this moment large transactions in gold between bankers and financiers are carried out by weight. Only so late as the beginning of this century, when the gold coinage of the country was in a wretched state, every farmer and trader went to fairs in Ireland equipped with a pocket balance (which was adjusted for the guinea, half-guinea, sovereign, half-sovereign, and gold seven-shilling-piece).

It is difficult then to see what it would have availed the Aeginetans to have reduced the standard which they are supposed to have got from the Phoenicians.

Their island state was of diminutive proportions; they devoted themselves almost entirely to traffick by sea, their island was an emporium where strangers resorted. In all dealings with the Phoenicians they would have to pay a drawback on their debased coin; for the cunning Phoenician or Ionian was not likely to be beguiled into taking staters of 200 grs. as equivalent to 230 grs. It is plain therefore that when we find divergencies of standard these are not due to mere degradation, but to some far more practical consideration, and this will be seen all the more clearly when we shall find that whilst we have divergencies in silver standards, the gold standard which was in use in Greece from Homeric times down to the Roman Conquest remains almost absolutely without variation. But there are other and stronger objections against the Phoenician origin of the Aeginetic standard.

Now if we accept the doctrine that the Greeks received their coin-standards across the sea from Asia, the Aeginetic from the Phoenician traders whose commerce lay with Aegina and Peloponnesus, the Euboic on the other hand from Lydia by way of the great Ionian cities on the coast of Asia Minor, we become involved in a serious difficulty. At the time represented in the Homeric Poems, there is not as yet a single Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor[284]. Miletus, destined to be in after years the Queen of Ionia, and to be one of the greatest centres of Hellenic commerce and culture, is as yet known only as the city of the barbarous-speaking Carians[285]. Yet we find the Greeks represented in these self-same poems as already in possession of a standard for gold identical with the light Babylonian or Lydian gold shekel (130 grs.). But again we find from the same source that the Greeks were already in full commercial intercourse with one Asiatic people, but not a people who could serve as a bridge between Lydia and Euboea. Everywhere in the Homeric Poems we meet the shipmen of Tyre, who are represented as bringing the products of the skilled artists of Sidon, beautiful cloths, and cunningly wrought vessels of silver, articles of jewellery, necklaces[286] set with amber (perhaps brought from the coasts of the Baltic), and now and then as chance arose, kidnapping women and children to sell as slaves in the marts of the Mediterranean[287].