The object of this essay is to enquire into the origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards. Since August Boeckh in his metrological enquiries[1] put forth the idea that the weight standards of antiquity had been obtained scientifically, all subsequent writers with scarcely an exception have followed in the same path. This theory was undoubtedly suggested by the fact that the French Republic had established a new scientific metric system. Yet reflection might have shown scholars that even the French system was not a wholly independent outcome of science, for beyond doubt the mètre and litre and hectare were only varieties of older measures of length, capacity and surface, then for the first time scientifically adjusted. The discovery of certain weights of bronze and stone in the ruins of Nineveh, Khorsabad and Babylon lent force to the theory of Boeckh; the imaginations of scholars were excited by the marvellous remains of Chaldaean and Assyrian civilization which had just been brought to light by Sir A. H. Layard, and they hastened to conclude that in the mathematical science of Mesopotamia the source of all weight-standards was to be found. Egypt however put in her claim to priority, and standards based on the measurements of the Great Pyramid, or on the weight of a given quantity of Nile-water, have entered the lists against the astrologers of Chaldaea. This battle still rages hotly, Assyriologists and Egyptologists hurling at each other statements drawn from tablets and papyri, as regards the translation of which no two of these savants are agreed. In spite of this all modern works on metrology start with the systems of Babylon and Egypt and from these they derive the systems of Greece and Italy. It would at least be more scientific to move backwards from the known to the unknown, but beguiled by the glamour of a “scientific” metrological system, scholars have turned their backs upon scientific method. Whilst our knowledge of the Assyrian and Egyptian weight systems is most imperfect, being derived from literary monuments, or from inscriptions on weights not half understood, the systems of Greece and Rome are known to us not simply from the vast literatures written in languages thoroughly intelligible, but likewise from the evidence of immense numbers of coins struck in gold and silver, by the weights of which we are enabled to check off and substantiate the literary sources.
As Greece coined money several centuries before Italy, and as its literature reaches much further back than that of Rome, it is plain that any sound enquiry into the origin of weight standards must commence with Greece. We shall therefore without further preface proceed to investigate the evidence afforded to us by the oldest Greek records.
In the Homeric Poems, which cannot be dated later than the eighth century B.C., there is as yet no trace of coined money. We find nevertheless in those Poems two units of value; the one is the cow (or ox), or the value of a cow, the other is the Talent (τάλαντον). The former is the one which has prevailed, and does still prevail, in barbaric communities, such as the Zulus of South Africa, where the sole or principal wealth consists in herds and flocks. For several reasons we may assign to it priority in age as compared with the Talent. In the first place it represents the most primitive form of exchange, the barter of one article of value for another, before the employment of the precious metals as a medium of currency; consequently the estimation of values by the cow is older than that by means of a Talent or “weight” of gold, or silver or copper. Again, in Homer, all values are expressed in so many oxen, as “golden arms for brazen, those worth one hundred beeves, for those worth nine beeves[2]” (Il. VI. 236).
The Talent on the other hand is only mentioned in Homer in relation to gold (for we never find any mention of a Talent of silver) and we never find the value of any other article expressed in Talents. But the names of monetary units hold their ground long after they themselves have ceased to be in actual use as we observe in such common expressions as “bet a guinea,” or worth a “groat,” although these coins themselves are no longer in circulation, and so the French sou has survived for a century in popular parlance, and the Thaler has lived into the new German monetary system. Accordingly we may infer that the method of expressing the value of commodities in kine, which we find side by side with the Talent, is the elder of the twain.
Was there any immediate connection between the two systems or were they as Hultsch (Metrologie², p. 165) maintains entirely independent? It is difficult to conceive any people, however primitive, employing two standards at the same time which are completely independent of each other. For instance when we find in the Iliad[3] that in a list of three prizes appointed for the foot-race, the second is a cow, the third is a half-talent of gold, it is impossible to believe that Achilles or rather the poet had not some clear idea concerning the relative value of an ox and a talent. Now it is noteworthy that, as already remarked, nowhere in the Poems is the value of any commodity expressed in Talents; yet who can doubt that Talents of gold passed freely as media of exchange? A simple solution of this difficulty would be that the Talent of gold represented the older ox-unit. This would account for the fact that all values are expressed in oxen, and not in Talents, the older name prevailing in a fashion resembling the usage of pecunia in Latin.
A complete parallel for such a practice can be still found at the present moment among some of the Samoyede tribes of Siberia. Thus we read in the account of a recent traveller: “He finally came to the conclusion that for the consideration of five hundred reindeer, he would undertake the contract. This I regarded as a very facetious sally on his part. The reindeer however I found was the recognised unit of value, as amongst some tribes of the Ostiaks the Siberian squirrel. For this purpose the reindeer is generally considered to be worth five roubles[4].” Again forty years ago Haxthausen[5] tells us that the Ossetes, a Caucasian tribe dwelling not very far from Tiflis, although long accustomed to stamped money, especially on the border of Georgia, kept their accounts in cows, five roubles being reckoned to the cow. Here then in Siberia and in the Caucasus, in spite of a long experience not merely of a metallic unit, but of actual coined money, we still find values estimated in reindeer, and in cows, the older units, just as in Homer they are stated in oxen.
We shall likewise find that when the ancient Irish borrowed a ready made silver unit (the uncia) from the Romans, they had to equate this unit to their old barter-unit the cow, just as in modern times the wild tribes of Annam when borrowing the bar of silver from their more civilized neighbours have had to equate it to their native standard, the buffalo; facts in close accord with the well known derivation of Latin pecunia, money from pecus, English fee from feoh, which still meant cattle, as does the German Vieh, and rupee (according to some) from Sanskrit rupa, also meaning cattle.
Let us now see if we have any data to support this hypothesis. That most trustworthy writer, Julius Pollux, says in his Onomasticon (IX. 60): “Now in old times the Athenians had this (i.e. the didrachm) as a coin and it was called an ox, because it had an ox stamped on it, but they think that Homer also was acquainted with it when he spoke of (arms) ‘worth an hundred kine for those worth nine[6].’ Moreover in the laws of Draco there is the expression, to pay back the price of twenty kine: and at the time when the Delians hold their sacred festival, they say that the herald makes proclamation whenever a gift is given by any one, that so many oxen will be given by him, and that for each ox two Attic drachms are offered: whence some are of opinion that the ox is a coin peculiar to the Delians, but not to the Athenians; and that from this likewise has been started the proverb, an ox stands on his tongue, in case any man holds his tongue for money[7].”
According to Pollux then the Attic didrachm, or at least a coin employed by the Athenians (perhaps certain coins of Euboea), was called an ‘ox.’ Plutarch (Theseus, c. 25) goes further and asserts that Theseus struck money stamped with the figure of an ox (ἔκοψε δὲ νὸμισμα βοῦν ἐγχαράξας), and the Scholiast on the Birds of Aristophanes (1106) quotes from Philochorus, an Athenian antiquary of the third century B.C.[8], the same account of the Attic didrachms being marked with an ox.
On the other hand the highest authorities on numismatics assert that the Athenians never struck any such coins. Yet after making due allowance for the additions made by Plutarch to the more crude statement of Pollux and Philochorus, it is hard to conceive that such a belief could have arisen without some foundation, and a probable solution may be found in the fact that certain uninscribed coins, bearing the type of an ox-head, which in recent years have been assigned to Euboea, are for the most part found in Attica. We know that Eretria, and Chalcis, the great cities of Euboea, were amongst the earliest places in Greece to strike money, and it is quite possible, nay probable, that these Euboic coins formed (along with the Aeginetan didrachms) the currency in use at Athens before the time of Solon (B.C. 596). Why the name ox was especially recollected in after years as that of the earliest currency, we can readily understand; the name derived from the old unit of barter would at once attach itself to the coin which bore the image of the ox, and in the course of time two traditions, one that the ancient unit was the ox, the other that the first coins current at Athens bore the symbol of an ox, would merge into one, and finally patriotic feeling would ascribe the first coinage to Theseus, who was regarded as the father of so many Athenian institutions.
That, at all events, the name might be applied to a certain sum, or coin, is rendered highly probable by the fact that Draco, with true legal conservatism, retained in his code the primitive method of expressing values in oxen. Now it is evident that the term, ‘price of twenty oxen’ (εἰκοσάβοιον), must have been capable of being translated into the ordinary metallic currency, whether that consisted of bullion in ingots or coined money. The “cow” therefore must have had a recognized traditional and conventional value as a monetary unit, and this is completely demonstrated by the practice at Delos. Religious ritual is even more conservative than legal formula, so we need not be surprised to find the ancient unit, the ox, still retained in that great centre of Hellenic worship. The value likewise is expressed in the more modern currency. But we are not yet certain whether the two Attic drachms, which are the equivalent of the ox, are silver or gold. Now Herodotus (VI. 97) tells us that Datis, the Persian general (B.C. 490), offered at Delos three hundred talents of frankincense. Hultsch (Metrol. p. 129) has made it clear that the talent here indicated must be the gold Daric, that is the light Babylonian shekel. For if they were either Babylonian or Attic talents, the amount would be incredible. Frankincense was of enormous value in antiquity; wherefore Hultsch is probably right in assuming that in the opinion of the Persian who made the offering, the three hundred “weights” of frankincense, each of which weighed a Daric, were equal in value likewise to 300 Darics. We shall see in a moment that there was a distinct tradition that the Daric was a Talent, and that the Homeric one. Now the gold Daric = two Attic gold drachms; but as the cow at Delos also = two Attic drachms, and the offering of frankincense at Delos is made in Talent, each of which is equivalent to two gold Attic drachms, there is a strong presumption that this Talent is the equivalent of the ox, and that the Attic drachms mentioned by Pollux are gold. Besides, it is absurd to suppose that at any time two silver drachms could have represented the value of an ox. Even at Athens, in a time of extreme scarcity of coin, Solon, when commuting penalties in cattle for money in reference to certain ancient ordinances, put the value of the ox at five silver drachms[9]. Moreover it is not at all likely that the substitution of silver coin for gold of equal weight would have been permitted by the temple authorities. But we get some more positive evidence of great interest from the fragment of an anonymous Alexandrine writer on Metrology, who says[10], “the talent in Homer was equal in amount to the later Daric. Accordingly the gold talent weighs two Attic drachms.” Here we can have no doubt that Attic drachms mean gold drachms. Are we wrong then in supposing that at Delos still survived the same dual system which we found in Homer, the Ox and the Talent? But that at Delos both were of equal value we can have little doubt. For the ox = 2 Attic drachms = 1 Daric = 1 Talent = (130 grains Troy). Who can doubt that at Delos was preserved an unbroken tradition from the earliest days of Hellenic settlements in the Aegean? Modern discovery comes likewise to our support, and we shall find that it is probable that the gold rings found by Dr Schliemann in the tombs at Mycenae were made on a standard of about 135 grs.
This identification of the ox and the Homeric Talent is of importance: for it gives a simple and natural origin for the earliest Greek metallic unit of which we read. It likewise incidentally explains the proverb, βοῦς ἐπὶ γλώσσῃ which dates from a time long before money was yet coined, or even the precious metals were in any form whatever employed for currency; it possibly explains why the ox was such a favourite type on coins, without having to call to our aid recondite mythological allusions; and it clears up once for all some interesting points in Homer. In the passage of the Iliad (XXIII. 750 sq.) already referred to the ox is second prize, whilst an half-talent of gold is the third. The relation between them is now plain; the ox = 1 talent, and the half-talent = a half-ox.
The vexed question of the Trial Scene[11] can now be put beyond doubt. In the Journal of Philology (Vol. X. p. 30) the present writer argued that the two talents represented a sum too small to form the blood-price (ποινή) of a murdered man, and consequently must represent the sacramentum (or payment made to the Court for its time and trouble, as in the Roman Legis actio sacramenti described by Gaius, Bk. IV. 16), as proposed by that most distinguished scholar and jurist, the late Sir H. S. Maine[12]. We know that the two talents are equal to two oxen, but in the Iliad, XXIII. 705, the second prize for the wrestlers was a slave woman “whom they valued at four oxen[13].” Now if an ordinary female slave was worth four oxen (= four talents) it is impossible that two talents (= two oxen) could have formed the bloodgelt or eric of a freeman. Probably four oxen was not far from the price of an ordinary female slave. Of course women of superior personal charms would fetch more, for instance, Euryclea,
The poet evidently refers to this as an exceptional piece of extravagance on the part of Laertes. We can likewise now get a common measure for the ten talents of gold and the seven slave women who formed part of the requital gifts proffered by Agamemnon to Achilles[15], and can form some notion of the comparative value of the prizes for the chariot race and other contests[16].
But results far more important than merely the determination of the value of Homeric commodities may be obtained as regards the weight-standards of Europe and their congeners in Asia. For by taking as our primitive unit the cow or ox, we may be able to give a much more simple account of the genesis of those standards than that which hitherto has been the received one.
We have found the Homeric ox and talent identical with the didrachm or stater of the Euboic-Attic standard. All the silver coinage of Greece proper was struck either on this standard or the Aeginetic, and what is still more important for us it was on the Euboic-Attic standard alone that gold was estimated in every part of Greece. Practically the stater of this system was of the same weight as the famous Persian daric which in historical times formed the chief coin-unit of all Asia from India to the Aegean shores.