(_Value of Solidus Gallicus?_)
(Vol. v., p. 277.)
I undertake to answer C. W. B.'s Query with the greater readiness,
because it affords me an opportunity of upholding that which has ever
been the leading object in every amendment of Shakspeare's text
advocated by me, viz., the unravelling and explaining, rather than the
alteration, of the original. Perhaps it is with a similar aim that C. W.
B. wishes to investigate the value of "siclus;" if so, he must pardon me
if I forestall him.
I see no difficulty in the passage which he asks to have construed; its
meaning is this:
"The sacred sickle (or shekel) was equivalent to an Attic
tetradrachma, which Budæus estimated at 14 Gallic solidi, or
thereabouts; for the didrachma was seven solidi, since the single
drachma made three and a half solidi, _less_ a denier Tournois."
Which is as much as to say, that the sickle equalled fourteen solidi,
less four deniers; or 13-2/3 solidi.
But owing to the rapid declension in the value of French coin after the
tenth century, it is manifestly impossible to assign a value to these
solidi unless the precise date of their coinage were known. A writer
may, of course, allude to coin indefinitely precedent to his own time.
In the present case, however, we may, as a matter of curiosity,
_analytically_ approximate to a result in this way:--
The drachma is now known to have contained about 65 grains of pure
silver, consequently the tetradrachma contained 260 grains. The present
franc contains about 70 grains of pure silver, and consequently the sol,
or 20th part, is 3-1/2 grains.
This last, multiplied by 13-2/3, produces about 48 grains. But the
weight of the tetradrachma is 260 grains; therefore the sol with which
the comparison was made must have contained upwards of fivefold its
present value in pure silver.
Now, according to the depreciation tables of M. Dennis, this condition
obtained in 1483, under Charles VIII., at which time Budæus was actually
living, having been born in 1467; but from other circumstances I am
induced to believe that the solidus gallicus mentioned by him was coined
by Louis XII. in 1498, at which time the quantity of pure silver was
fourfold and a half that of the present day.
So much in answer to C. W. B.'s Query; now for its relation to
Shakspeare's text, with which however the "siclus" in question has
nothing in common except the name; since the "sickles," so beautifully
alluded to by Isabella, in _Measure for Measure_ (Act II. Sc. 2.), were
_sicli aurei_, "of the tested gold."
But I have designedly used the word _sickle_ as the English
representative of the Latin _siclus_ (Gallicè _cicle_), because it is
the original word of Shakspeare, which was subsequently, most
unwarrantably and unwisely, altered by the commentators to _shekels_ in
conformity with the Hebraicised word of our scriptural translation.[2]
Hence it is that "sickles" has come to be looked upon as _a corruption
of the text_; and "shekels" as a very clever _conjectural emendation_!
We retain _sickle_, Anglicè for _sicula_, a scythe; but we refuse it to
Shakspeare for a word almost identical in sound--_siculus_, or siclus!
The real corruption has been that of Shakspeare's commentators, not his
printers'; and I hope that some future editor of his plays will have the
courage to permit him to spell this, and other proper names, in his own
way. For how can his text continue to be an example of his language, if
his words may be altered to suit the _précieuse_ fashion of subsequent
times?