the precious metals throughout Western Asia for many centuries. I have
been compelled in the statement of the two silver systems to anticipate
one step in the growth of the fully developed weight system by speaking
of the _Talent_. We have seen that the mina of silver, like that of gold,
contains only 50 shekels, thus evidently having likewise been developed
before the full elaboration of the Chaldaean system of numeration, or at
least before the application of that system to their metric standards.
But when we come to deal with the talent we find that in every case
alike, whether it be the gold, silver, or royal talent of commerce,
the talent invariably consists of _sixty_ minae. From this we may with
safety infer that it was at a period posterior to the invention of the
sexagesimal method that the _Talent_ was added to the gold and silver
systems. When we turn to the royal system (both light and heavy), we find
that the mina consists of _sixty_ shekels, just as the talent consists
of 60 minae, and consequently we are constrained to believe that this
royal system was fixed at a date long after the growth of the gold and
silver _minae_, and when the sexagesimal system had now complete sway.
We have already seen good reason for considering the _royal_ talent to
be essentially a mercantile unit. It certainly was not used for gold or
silver. Corn was not sold by weight, and so in all probability it was
meant for copper, iron, lead, and merchandise of value. We have learned
from our studies in the metal trade of primitive peoples that copper
and iron are not weighed but are sold by measurement, being wrought
into bars or plates of a well defined size. It is only when communities
are well advanced in culture that they begin to employ the scales for
the buying and selling of the common metals. We argued above that the
double shekel system arose from a desire amongst a nation of traders
like the Phoenicians for a heavier standard, more serviceable for such
goods as were less valuable than gold. It was probably the same desire
which found its complete realization in the royal system. Whilst gold
and silver had only the mina as their highest unit, there was a new
system developed scientifically from the ancient shekel or ox-unit. The
sixty-fold of this unit was taken to form a mina considerably heavier
than the old gold mina, and now a new higher unit, the sixty-fold of the
mina, was introduced. This we know under its Greek name of _talent_, but
it was called _kikkar_ in the Semitic languages. Now are we to suppose
that this _kikkar_ or talent was purely and simply nothing more than a
higher unit formed by taking a convenient multiple of the lower unit,
just as in the French metric system the kilogram is 1000 times the
gramme; or was it rather some ancient natural unit, originally formed
empirically, and at a later epoch, when science had advanced, fitted into
the system of commercial weight by being made exactly the sixty-fold of
the _mina_? Comparison with other systems in various lands will incline
us to the latter alternative. If we enquire for a moment in what manner
the highest unit of weight for merchandise is fixed among barbarous and
semi-civilized nationalities, we shall find that the _load_, that is,
the amount that a man of average size and strength can carry, is the
universal unit. Readers of the various recent books of African travel
frequently meet in their dreary and monotonous pages allusions to so many
_loads_ for which porters have to be supplied. The amount of the _load_
seems to vary in different parts. Thus amongst the Madi or Moru tribe of
Central Africa, a pure negro race, according to that admirable observer
Mr Felkin, the _load_ is about 50 lbs. in weight, whilst according to
Major Barttelot, the _load_ carried by the Zanzibaris on the Emin Pacha
Relief expedition was 65 lbs. (besides the man’s own rations for several
days). We have already had occasion to refer to the _picul_ of Eastern
Asia, which we found was simply the Malay word for a _load_; and we also
found that the load varied in different places. Finally, we found that
the Chinese had introduced the _picul_ into their system of commercial
weight, fixing it at 100 _chings_ (catties), but at the same time
excluded it from their silver and gold system, where the _tael_ (ounce)
has remained always the highest unit. Yet in Cambodia we find that the
further step has been made, and that the commercial system of the catty
and _picul_ has been called into service for the weighing of silver. In
Java, whilst gold and silver are weighed by units of small size, copper
is sold by the _picul_.
It seems to me not unreasonable to suppose that the origin of the talent
has been analogous to that of the _picul_. There is certainly nothing
in either the Hebrew _kikkar_ or the Greek _talanton_ to imply in the
slightest degree that they represented a numerical multiple of the mina.
The Greek word means simply a _weight_, whilst the Hebrew seems to mean
nothing more than a _round mass_ or _cake_ of anything, whether applied
to a tract of country, as the region round the Jordan (as in Nehemiah
vii. 28), or a loaf of bread (Exodus xxix. 23; 1 Samuel ii. 36). For as
the talent was only introduced into the Hebrew system at a late period
the term was probably applied to a _cake_ or _pig_ of copper or iron
the weight of the ordinary _load_. That there was a direct connection
between the kikkar and a man’s _load_ seems implied by the fact that
Naaman “bound _two_ talents of silver in _two_ bags, with two changes
of garments, and laid _them_ upon _two_ of his servants; and they bare
_them_ before him” (2 Kings v. 23). As we find Naaman asking Elisha for
“two mules’ burden of earth” (v. 17) it is at least certain that the
Semites regularly estimated bulky weights by some kind of _load_. We
saw above that in Assyrian the same ideogram stands for _tribute_ and
_talent_. If a _load_ of corn was the regular unit for tribute, the use
of a single ideogram may be explained. In the case of _talanton_ we have
no difficulty in directly regarding it as a _load_, whilst with _kikkar_
it is not difficult to see how easy it was for the meaning of a _load_ of
a certain weight to spring from the earlier meaning of the word. Its use
as a loaf is interesting in connection with the fact noted on p. 159 that
in Annam the largest unit in use for gold and silver is called a _loaf_.
When under a strong central government a metric system more or less
scientific was introduced at Babylon, it was natural that an accurate
adjustment of the old empirical unit of merchandise, the _load_, to the
mina and shekel should be carefully carried out, just as in China the
Mathematical Board have fixed the _picul_ of commerce as the hundred
fold of the _ching_ (_catty_), giving it a value equal to 133⅓ lbs.
avoirdupois. Such scientific adjustments take place in all countries
with the advance of civilization and commerce, and above all under the
influence of a strong central government. Let us reflect how long it
has taken for the English Statute Acre to conquer the local ancient
acres in use in various parts of the United Kingdom, such as the Irish,
the Scotch or the Winchester acre. In like fashion, although the
standards of weight and capacity were regulated by Act of Parliament
in 1824, local usage still held on, and units of weight unknown to the
Statute still survive in the usage of provincial places. Now it is not
unreasonable to suppose that the name _royal_ or _king’s weight_ was
given to the Babylonian commercial system, which was constructed on
purely sexagesimal lines, because it was enforced by royal proclamation
and power throughout the whole of the empire, and that in like manner
the _royal cubit_ mentioned by Herodotus (I. 178) owes its origin to the
establishment of one uniform standard for the dominions of the Great
King. In fact no better illustration of what took place can be found than
that afforded by our own terms such as _imperial pint_, or _imperial_
gallon, or in a less degree by the _statute_ acre, as contrasted with
the older customary pints, or gallons, or acres. The mistake made by
metrologists, in regarding the scientifically constructed Babylonian
system as the first beginning of the art of weighing, is just as great
as if a person writing a manual of English Metrology were to start with
the metric legislation of 1824 as the first beginning of our metrology,
and were to try and explain all traces of an earlier system or systems by
forcing the facts into some sort of conformity with our modern standards.
Undoubtedly in such an effort great facility would be found inasmuch
as the present scientific standards are simply the ancient units of
the realm accurately defined. But the reader will best understand the
relations which probably existed between the Babylonian _royal_ standard
(both single and double) by having a short account of the adjustment of
our standards laid before him. Great inconvenience having been felt in
the United Kingdom for a long time from the want of uniformity in the
system of weights and measures, which were in use in different parts
of it, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1824 and came into force on
January the 1st 1826, by which certain measures and weights therein
specified were declared to be the only lawful ones in this realm under
the name of _imperial weights and measures_. It was settled by this Act
(1) that a certain yard-measure, made by an order of Parliament in 1760
by a comparison of the yards then in common use, should henceforward
be the _imperial yard_ and the standard of _length_ for the kingdom:
and that, in case this standard should be lost or injured, it might be
recovered from a knowledge of the fact that the length of a pendulum,
oscillating in a second _in vacuo_ in the latitude of London and at the
level of the sea (which can always be accurately obtained by certain
scientific processes), was 39·13929 inches of this yard: (2) that the
half of a double pound Troy, made at the same time (1760), should be
the _Imperial Pound Troy_ and the standard of _weight_; and that of the
5760 grains which this pound contains, the pound _Avoirdupois_ should
contain 7000; and that, in case this standard should be lost or injured,
it might be recovered from the knowledge of the fact that a _cubic inch_
of distilled water at the temperature of 62° Fahrenheit, and when the
barometer is at 30 in., weighs 252·458 grains: (3) that the _imperial
gallon_ and standard of _capacity_ should contain 277·274 _cubic inches_
(the _inch_ being above defined), which size was selected from its being
nearly that of the gallons already, in use, and from the fact that 10
lbs. Avoirdupois of distilled water weighed in air at a temperature
of 62° Fahrenheit, and when the barometer stands at 30 in., will just
fill this space. On p. 180 we saw that the standard gallon in the Tudor
period ultimately depended on the pennyweight, which was, as we found,
fixed by being the weight of 32 grains of wheat, dry and taken from the
midst of the ear of wheat after the ancient laws of the realm. It was
from the descendants of this gallon that the _imperial gallon_ of 1824
was fixed, with a slight modification so as to make it contain 10 lbs.
of distilled water weighed in air at a temperature of 62° and when the
barometer stands at 30 in. The double pound Troy made in 1760 depended
in like fashion for its ultimate origin on the wheat-grains, and it also
affords us an interesting illustration of the doubling of the original
single unit, such as we find in the heavy _royal_ Babylonian system.
We may find further analogies between our own system and that of the
Babylonians. Whilst at the Mint gold and silver are weighed for coinage
by Troy weight, the copper coinage on the other hand is regulated by the
lb. Avoirdupois, the ordinary commercial standard. As already remarked,
it is almost certain from the method of elimination that copper was the
principal article for which the _royal_ Babylonian system was employed,
as gold and silver had separate standards of their own, and corn was sold
by measure and not by weight.
To sum up then the results of our enquiry into the Assyrio-Babylonian
system, we started with the so-called light shekel or ox-unit as the
basis of the system; and found that gold and silver were weighed by it
and by its fifty-fold, the _maneh_, which may have been itself a natural
measure of capacity, such as the catty used in Eastern Asia, where we
know for certain that this weight was originally a measure of capacity
obtained from the joints of bamboos or the cocoanut; that in a certain
part of the empire a need was felt for a slightly heavier unit for the
weighing of silver and precious commodities such as gums and spices, and
that accordingly the great trading Aramaic peoples used the two-fold
of the ox-unit (260 grains Troy); that at the earliest period copper
would not be sold by weight but would be sold by bars or plates of fixed
dimensions, as is still the practice with iron and copper among the
barbarous peoples of Further Asia and Africa; that with the advance of
culture the art of weighing was extended to copper and other articles
of small value in proportion to their bulk, and that, as the maneh, or
contents of a gourd, and the _load_ or amount that a man could carry
on his back, had been most probably in general use as units for common
merchandise, the time came when under the all-mastering authority of
the Great King a standard based on the ancient ox-unit, but framed on
the new scientific sexagesimal system, was established for copper and
certain other kinds of merchandise; that in this system 60 shekels made
the maneh, and the _load_ (the _kikkar_ or talent) was adjusted to the
new system as the sixty-fold of the maneh; and that in the course of time
this higher unit of the _kikkar_ or talent was added to the gold and
silver systems, sixty manehs in each case making the _kikkar_ as in the
case of the royal or commercial system; that in the case of silver, which
on its first discovery and employment was as valuable as gold, and was
therefore weighed on the same standard, when in course of time it became
about thirteen times less valuable than gold, and there was a difficulty
experienced in exchanging the units of gold and silver; a separate
standard was created by dividing into ten new parts or shekels the
amount of silver which was the equivalent of the gold shekel (ox-unit);
that this was probably developed before the royal commercial mina of
60 shekels had been formed, as in that case the silver mina would have
contained 60 shekels likewise; we were able to give an explanation of the
name _royal_ as applied to the commercial standard by regarding it as of
late origin, created by a supreme central authority for the regulation of
the commerce of a great empire made up of a heterogeneous mass of races,
just as in the present century our own _imperial_ standards have been
fixed for the whole kingdom, being based, as was the Babylonian, on an
ancient unit empirically obtained; and just as the royal arms are stamped
on our imperial standards, so the weights of the Assyrian _royal_ system
were shaped in the form of a lion, the symbol of royalty throughout
the East. Finally we found that at the base of the Assyrio-Babylonian
system lay, as the determinant of the ox-unit or shekel, the grain
of wheat, which we have already traced all across Europe into Asia.
We can therefore now come to a very reasonable conclusion that the
Assyrio-Babylonian weight system was in its origin empirical, and that it
was only at a comparatively late date in its history, just as in the case
of our own standards, that a certain uniformity between the standards of
measures and weights was brought about by the (not complete) application
of the sexagesimal system of numeration, the invention of which is their
eternal glory.
Having now dealt with Egypt, and the systems which prevailed in the
Assyrio-Babylonian empire, it will be best to treat of the region which
lay between them. In both the former countries we found the light
shekel or ox-unit in use from the earliest times; and it will also
be remembered that at an earlier stage we found that Abraham was able
to traverse all the wide country that lay between Mesopotamia and the
ancient kingdom of the Nile with his flocks and herds, and that he dwelt
in the land of Canaan in close neighbourhood and on friendly terms with
the sons of Heth, or Hittites, who were then the possessors of that land;
and that furthermore monetary transactions were then carried on by means
of certain small ingots of silver, as we see from the purchase of the
Cave of Machpelah. These ingots, translated _shekels_ in the English
version and called _didrachms_ in the Septuagint, are termed in Hebrew
_Keseph_ (כֶּסֶף), simply _pieces of silver_, or _silverlings_. In the
old Hebrew literature values in silver and gold are expressed either in
_shekels_ or by a simple numeral with the words “of silver,” “of gold”
added (where the latter method is followed the English version supplies
_pieces_ or substitutes “a thousand silverlings” for “a thousand of
silver” (Isa. vii. 23). The Septuagint renders the shekel by the Greek
_didrachm_). There are several inferences to be drawn from this. It is
evident that pieces of silver (and no doubt of gold also) of a certain
quality and weight were employed as currency in Palestine, and we may
likewise suppose with some probability that these pieces of silver were
according to the standard in common use in Egypt and Chaldaea. Again,
since we have already shown that gold in the form of rings and other
articles for personal adornment was exchanged according to the ox-unit
of 130-5 grs., as evidenced by the story of the ring given to Rebekah,
it follows that there was but one and the same standard for gold from
the Euphrates to the Nile. This is confirmed by the story of the sale
of Joseph by his brethren to the company of Ishmaelites “who came from
Gilead with their camels bearing spices and balm and myrrh going to carry
it down to Egypt”; to these Ishmaelites or Midianites Joseph was sold
for twenty pieces of silver[319]. Here we have evidence that the same
silver unit was current from Gilead to Egypt. There are various other
large sums of silver mentioned both in Genesis and also in the Book of
Judges and in Joshua. Thus Abimelech, King of Gerar, is said to have
given Abraham a thousand [pieces] of silver[320], whilst the lords of
the Philistines persuaded Delilah to beguile Samson into telling her
wherein lay his great strength by the promise of eleven hundred [pieces]
of silver, which money she afterwards received[321]. Abimelech the son
of Jerubbaal (Gideon) was enabled to form his conspiracy by hiring ‘vain
and light persons’[322] with the three-score and ten [pieces] of silver
taken by his mother’s brother from the house of Baal-berith. Finally, we
have a sum of eleven hundred [pieces] of silver which were stolen by that
“man of Mount Ephraim whose name was Micah” from his mother, of which his
mother took (when he had restored the money) two hundred [shekels] and
gave them to the founder, who “made thereof a graven image and a molten
image[323].” Now although all these are considerable sums, all exceeding
a _mina_, yet there is no mention whatever made of the latter unit of
account in any of these passages. The story of another theft shows that
gold as well as silver was reckoned originally only by the shekel and not
by the mina. Thus Achan “saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment
and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels
weight[324].” As fifty shekels were a mina, here if anywhere we ought to
have found the latter term. From this we infer without hesitation that
the shekel was the original unit.
But there is another word besides _keseph_ which is translated _piece
of money_ or piece of silver. This is the term _qesitah_ (קְשׂׅיטָה)
which occurs in three passages of the Old Testament. Thus Jacob bought
the parcel of ground where he had spread his tent at the hand of the
children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, “for an hundred pieces of money”
(Gen. xxxiii. 19); and the same word is used in the parallel passage in
Joshua (xxiv. 32) where the children of Israel buried Joseph’s bones
in Shechem in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought for an hundred
pieces of money. Lastly, Job’s kinsfolk and acquaintances gave him every
man a _piece of money_, and every one a ring of gold (xlii. 11). It has
been always a matter of doubt what this piece of money really was. The
Septuagint translates _qesitah_ in these three passages by ἑκατὸν ἀμνῶν,
ἑκατὸν ἀμνάδων, and ἀμνάδα μίαν, thus in every case regarding it as a
_lamb_. The most ancient interpreters all agree in this, whilst some of
the later Rabbis regarded it as signifying a coin stamped with the form
of a lamb: one of them says that he found such a coin in Africa[325].
[Illustration: FIG. 25. Weights in the form of Sheep[326].]
Long ago Prof. R. S. Poole, speaking of this word, said: “The sanction
of the LXX, and the use of weights bearing the forms of lions, bulls,
and geese by the Egyptians, Assyrians, and probably Persians, must make
us hesitate before we abandon a rendering [lamb] so singularly confirmed
by the relation of the Latin _pecunia_ and _pecus_[327].” The connection
between weights and units of currency is especially close at a time
when coined money is as yet unknown, and hence when we find weights in
the form of sheep coming from Syria, and also recollect that sheep were
employed as a regular unit in Palestine for the paying of tribute, and
with the light obtained from primitive systems of currency, we may well
conclude that the _qesitah_ was an old unit of barter, like the Homeric
ox, and as the latter was transformed into a gold unit, so the former
was superseded by an equivalent of silver. We read (2 Kings iii. 4) that
Mesha, king of Moab (now so famous from the inscription which bears his
name), was a sheep-master, and he rendered unto the king of Israel one
hundred thousand lambs, and one hundred thousand rams with the wool.
When payment in metal came more and more into use silver served as the
sub-multiple of gold, just as sheep formed that of the ox, and it is not
surprising that in later times when coins were struck by the Phoenicians,
as at Salamis in Cyprus and many other places, bearing a sheep or a
sheep’s head, there arose some doubt as to whether the _qesitah_ was a
_sheep_, a piece of uncoined silver, or a coin stamped with a sheep. The
very fact of the Phoenicians having such a predilection for this type is
in itself an indication that the silver coin in its origin represented
the value of a sheep. At a later stage, when we come to deal with the
early Greek coin types, we shall develop this principle more completely.
The mere fact that the sheep on the Phoenician coins is sometimes found
accompanying a divinity does not militate against our doctrine, as I
shall explain when I deal with the coins of Messana and Thasos.
[Illustration: FIG. 26. Coin of Salamis in Cyprus.]
But then comes the question, which was the shekel employed by the
Hebrews? It must have been either (1) the ox-unit of 130 grs., used alike
for gold and silver in early days both in Egypt and Mesopotamia and
Greece, or (2) the double of this, or heavy shekel of 260 grs., used for
gold only in parts of Asia Minor, or (3) the Phoenician shekel of 225
grs., used only for silver and electrum along the coast of Asia Minor,
and never employed for gold, or (4) the Babylonian or Persic standard
of 172 grs., used only for _silver_. In later times the silver shekel
in use amongst the Jews was most undoubtedly the Phoenician shekel,
obtained, as we saw above, by dividing the amount of silver equivalent to
the double gold shekel into 15 parts. But it may be reasonably doubted
whether the silver piece or shekel (called always a _didrachmon_ in the
Septuagint) mentioned in Genesis and Judges is the Phoenician shekel. It
is used without any distinctive epithet, as if it were the weight _par
excellence_, and is employed for _gold_ as well as silver. But when we
turn to certain other passages we find mention made of a shekel called
the _Shekel of the Sanctuary_[328]. This shekel is frequently mentioned,
generally in connection with silver, and in reference to such things as
the contribution of the half-shekel to the Tabernacle, the redemption of
the firstborn, the sacrifice of animals, and the payment of the seer. Yet
we find this shekel likewise employed in the estimation of _gold_, a fact
which at once shews that it is neither the Phoenician shekel of 220 grs.
nor the Persic of 172 grs., both of which were confined to _silver_. It
must then have been either the ox-unit of 130 grs. or the heavy shekel of
260 grs. As the latter was confined in use to _gold_ it follows that the
ox-unit of 130 grs. alone fits the conditions required. If then we can
discover what in the case of either silver or gold was the weight of this
shekel, we shall have determined it for both metals, for it will hardly
be maintained that there was one shekel of the Sanctuary for gold and one
of different weight for silver.
Now we read in Exodus (xxxviii. 24 _seqq._) that “all the gold that was
occupied for the work in all the work of the holy [place], even the gold
of the offering, was twenty and nine talents and seven hundred and thirty
shekels, after the shekel of the Sanctuary. And the silver of them that
were numbered of the congregation was an hundred talents and a thousand
seven hundred and three-score and fifteen shekels, after the shekel of
the Sanctuary; a bekah for every man, that is, half a shekel after the
shekel of the Sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered from
twenty years old and upward, for six hundred thousand and three thousand
and five hundred and fifty men. And the brass of the offering was
seventy talents and two thousand and four hundred shekels.” From this
passage we learn that, whilst the gold and silver were estimated on the
shekel of the Sanctuary (or Holy Shekel), the brass was probably reckoned
by some other standard.
It is also of importance to note that it is the shekel which is regarded
as the _unit_ of the system, for we never hear of a talent or mina of the
Sanctuary. From this passage likewise we readily discover that the talent
of silver contained 3000 shekels (603,550 ÷ 2 = 301,775 shekels - 1775 =
300,000 ÷ 100 = 3000 shekels).
Now when king Solomon made three hundred shields of beaten gold, three
minas (translated _pounds_ in the Authorized Version) went to one shield
(1 Kings x. 17). But in the parallel passage (1 Chron. ix. 1) we read
that “three hundred shields made he of beaten gold, three hundred shekels
went to one shield,” from which it is evident that a maneh of gold
contained 100 shekels[329]. A very important conclusion follows from
these facts, for it is plain that when the Hebrews adopted the heavy
or double maneh from the Phoenicians they did not adopt for _gold_ and
silver at the same time the double shekel, of which that maneh was the
fifty-fold, but on the contrary they retained their own old unit of the
light shekel, and made one hundred of them equivalent to the Phoenician
or heavy Assyrian mina. Since this light shekel was employed in the
estimation of the gold and silver dedicated by King Solomon for the
adornment of the Temple, this shekel can hardly be any other than the
Holy Shekel of the Sanctuary.
We are thus led to conclude that the shekel was the same both for gold
and silver, and was simply the time-honoured immemorial unit of 130-5 grs.
It is natural on other grounds that this should be the unit employed by
the Israelites for the precious metals, since it was the unit employed
both for silver and gold in Egypt, the land of their bondage.
The question next suggests itself, Why was the shekel called by a
distinctive name? It is only when there are two or more examples or
individuals of the same kind that any need arises for a distinctive
appellation: again, as we have already observed, in such cases the older
institution continues to prevail in all matters religious or legal. It
is important to note that in Exodus xxi. 32, a passage which the best
critics consider of great antiquity, the penalties are expressed in
shekels simply without any distinctive appellation. At that period there
was probably only one shekel (the ox-unit of 130-5 grs.) as yet in use,
and so there was no need to distinguish the shekel in which fines were
paid. This shekel was then described in the later part of Exodus, where
there was a second standard in use, as the holy shekel. As a matter
of fact we have another weight mentioned in 2 Samuel (xiv. 26), where
it is related of Absalom that “when he polled his head (for it was at
every year’s end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him,
therefore he polled it) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred
shekels after the king’s weight[330].”
Now it will be observed that in the passage from Exodus quoted above,
whilst the shekel of the Sanctuary is carefully mentioned when amounts
of gold and silver are enumerated, no such addition is made in reference
to the “seventy talents and two thousand and four hundred shekels of
brass.” If then the heavy or double shekel and its corresponding mina
and talent, known to us hitherto as the royal Assyrio-Babylonian heavy
standard, had already been introduced among the Hebrews (and we have just
seen that according to the First Book of Kings it was in use, at least
a mina of 50 double shekels (100 light) was employed for gold), nothing
is more likely than that this standard would bear a title similar to
that which it enjoyed in Babylonia and Syria, and be known as the king’s
weight or _stone_. As I have observed in the case of the royal Assyrian
standards that they were employed for copper, lead, and commodities
sufficiently costly to be sold by weight, so we may with considerable
probability conjecture that this king’s weight was employed regularly
among the Semites for the weighing of the less precious metals, and other
merchandise. Hence it is that there was no need to add any explanation of
the nature of the standard by which the 70 talents of brass were weighed,
and it was only because in the case of Absalom’s hair we have an article
not commonly weighed, that it was thought necessary by the writer to make
clear to us by which of the two standards usually employed the estimate
of the weight of the year’s growth of hair was made. We may therefore
conclude with probability that “the king’s shekel” was no other than the
double shekel (260 grains). It will have been noted that in Genesis and
Judges, admittedly two of the oldest books, there is mention made of only
one kind of shekel, and that it is only in Exodus, Numbers and Leviticus,
all of late date, that we find the shekel distinguished as that of the
Sanctuary, and that it is only in Samuel that we find reference made to
the _royal shekel_. It is also worthy of notice that neither in Genesis
nor Judges is there any mention made of a maneh or talent, although there
was full opportunity for the appearance of the former if it had been then
in use, as we find such sums as 400 shekels (4 manehs), 1100 shekels
(11 manehs) and 1700 shekels (17 manehs), whilst in the other series of
books named we find both the maneh and the talent. It is not unreasonable
therefore to suppose, that with the advent of the _maneh_ and _kikkar_ or
talent from their powerful kinsfolk and neighbours came also the practice
of employing the double shekel, the fiftieth part of the mina of gold and
mina of silver, which was employed in that part of the Assyrio-Babylonian
empire, where the use of the heavy Assyrian shekel was in vogue. Besides
gold and silver, spices were likewise weighed according to the shekel
of the Sanctuary. “Take thee also unto thee principal spices, of pure
myrrh five hundred [shekels], and of sweet cinnamon half as much [even]
two hundred and fifty [shekels], and of sweet calamus two hundred and
fifty [shekels], and of cassia five hundred [shekels], after the shekel
of the Sanctuary[331].” If we had any doubt as to whether it was not
possible that there were two separate shekels of the Sanctuary, one for
gold, and one of different standard for silver, our misgivings are at
once dispelled by finding spices weighed after the holy shekel. It is
certainly incredible that there could have been a separate standard of
the Sanctuary for the weighing of spices. There seems then no reasonable
doubt that there was only one shekel of the Sanctuary, and that the
unit of 130 grains. In support of this we may adduce Josephus[332],
who made the Jewish gold shekel a Daric (which as we have already seen
is our unit of 130 grains). This in turn derives support from the fact
that the Septuagint, which regularly renders the Hebrew _sheqel_ (which
like the Greek _Talanton_ means simply _weight_) by both _siklos_ and
_didrachmon_, not unfrequently renders _shekel of gold_ by chrysûs[333],
which means of course nothing more than gold _stater_, that is a didrachm
of gold, such as those struck by the Athenians, by Philip of Macedon,
Alexander and the successors of the latter, including the Ptolemies of
Egypt, under whom was made the Septuagint Version. We have thus found
the earliest Hebrew weight unit to be that standard which we have found
universally diffused, and which we have called the ox-unit.
Next let us see how from this unit grew their system. In several passages
the shekel of the Sanctuary is said to consist of 20 _gerahs_[334], a
word rendered simply by _obolos_ in the Septuagint. As before observed,
the Hebrew metric system was essentially decimal, like that of Egypt;
in fact had Tacitus been a metrologist he might have quoted this as
an additional proof that the Jews were Egyptian outcasts, expelled by
their countrymen because they were afflicted with a plague, perhaps
the _scabies_[335], which so frequently affects swine. The measures of
capacity, both dry and liquid, are decimal, and so accordingly we find
a decimal division applied to the shekel. The latter is divided into
two _bekahs_ (בֶּקַע, “a division,” “a half”), and each _bekah_ is
divided into 10 _gerahs_ (גֵּרָה). The latter signifies “a grain”
or “bean.” The Hebrew literature does not state what kind of seed or
grain it was, although it is defined by Rabbinical writers as equal to
16 barleycorns. But the fact is that, as we see from the Septuagint
rendering, the name in the course of time came to be considered simply as
that of one-twentieth of the shekel, whether that shekel was the shekel
of the Sanctuary, the Phoenician silver shekel of 220 grains, or the
kings shekel of 260 grains used for copper and lead. The _gerah_ of the
gold shekel or shekel of the Sanctuary was probably the most ancient and
came closest to the natural seed from which it derived its name; this
_gerah_ would be about 6½ grains (130 ÷ 20 = 6·5). On an earlier page
(p. 194) we gave the weights of a number of grains and seeds of plants,
and amongst them that of the lupin, called by the Greeks _thermos_.
According to the ancient tables the _thermos_ is equal to two _keratia_,
or _siliquae_ (the seeds of the carob tree); but since each _siliqua_ = 4
wheat grains, the _thermos_ = 8 wheat grains, or 6 barleycorns, or 6 Troy
grains. If the wheat grain in Palestine was as heavy as that of Egypt or
Africa (·051 gram, instead of ·047 gram.), the 8 wheat grains, would =
6·4 grains troy. Again, the Roman metrologists estimated the _lupin_ as
the third part of the _scripulum_, which weighed 24 grains of wheat[336];
thus the Roman _lupin_ also = 8 wheat grains. We may therefore have
little doubt that the _gerah_ was simply the _lupin_[337]. But what
about the Rabbinical _gerah_ of 16 barleycorns? In the first place let
us recall the confusion which exists in the Arab metrologists respecting
the _habba_, some making three habbas, some four equal to the _karat_.
This arose, as we saw, from confounding the wheat and barley grain. If
the 16 grains assigned to the _gerah_ by the Rabbis are really wheat
grains, all is at once clear. The _gerah_ to which they refer is that of
the royal or double shekel (260 grs.), or in other words it is a double
_gerah_. We have just found the _gerah_ of the Sanctuary shekel to be the
lupin, and equal to 8 wheat grains, accordingly its double will contain
16 wheat grains. Nothing is more common than a change in the value of a
natural weight unit, when in the course of time its real origin has been
forgotten, and it has been adjusted to meet the requirements of newer
systems. Thus the value of the Greek _thermos_ and its Roman equivalent
the _lupin_ both suffered in later days, and were regarded as only equal
to 6 wheat grains instead of the original 8 owing to a like confusion
between wheat grains and barleycorns. Finally there is a further reason
why the authors of the Septuagint Version would translate _gerah_ by
_obolos_. Writing at Alexandria under Ptolemaic rule, at a time when the
Ptolemaic silver stater of 220 grains contained exactly 20 obols of the
Attic or ordinary Greek standard of 11 grains, they would all the more
readily adopt a rendering, which harmonized so well with the monetary
system of their own day; at the same time the Greek habit of dividing
all staters into 12 _obols_, no matter on what standard the stater was
struck, naturally would incline them all the more to regard the _gerah_
not as an actual weight, but simply as the twentieth of the shekel, be
the shekel what it might.
The Hebrew gold standard accordingly consisted of a shekel of 130 grains,
subdivided into 2 _bekahs_ or _halves_; each of which in turn contained
10 _gerahs_ or lupins: 100 such shekels made a maneh, and according to
Josephus[338] 100 manehs made a _kikkar_ or talent. It would thus appear
that, just as in the time of Solomon the heavy mina had been introduced
which was equal to 100 shekels of the Sanctuary, so the Hebrews carried
out consistently this principle by making 100 minae go to the talent.
It is however most probable that before that time they had employed a
maneh of their own of 50 light shekels, for we have seen above that the
talent of silver mentioned in Exodus consisted of only 3000 shekels, just
as in all the other gold and silver systems of Asia Minor and Greece:
and since we have proved that the silver shekel of the Sanctuary was
the ordinary light shekel of 130 grains, it is evident that the silver
talent is not made up of 3000 double shekels, but is really nothing more
than the sixty-fold of a mina which contained 50 shekels of the ox-unit
standard. If gold was weighed at all by any higher standard than the
shekel, it is almost certain that it must have been weighed by this mina
and talent[339]. However, by the time of the monarchy it is most probable
that the double or heavy mina had been introduced for silver as well
as for gold. In fact the probabilities are that it was applied for the
weighing of silver before that of gold. Thus when Naaman the leper set
out to go to the Hebrew prophet, “he took with him ten talents of silver,
and six thousand [pieces] of gold, and ten changes of raiment[340].”
Here the 6000 gold pieces are perhaps the 6000 light shekels which
would make a talent of the heavy Assyrian standard after the ordinary
Phoenician system of 50 shekels = 1 mina, and 60 minae = 1 talent: and
doubtless Naaman counted these 6000 gold pieces as a talent of gold; but
inasmuch as the Hebrews had a peculiar system of their own, by which
100 minae, and 10,000 light shekels went to the _kikkar_, these 6000
are not described as a talent by the Hebrew writer. We may thus regard
the silver talent as consisting of 3000 light shekels, at the earliest
period, and later on as of 3000 heavy shekels: finally, when coinage was
introduced and money was struck under the Maccabees on the Phoenician
silver standard, it consisted of 3000 shekels of 220 grs. each. But there
is one period about which we find great difficulty in coming to any
conclusion. After the return from the Babylonian captivity what standards
were employed for gold and silver? As Judaea formed part of the dominions
of the Great King, we would naturally expect to find in Nehemiah and
Ezra traces of the standard then employed throughout the Persian Empire
for the precious metals. As we have found that the light shekel formed
the unit for gold from first to last, and as it was also the gold unit
of the Babylonians and Assyrians, we may unhesitatingly assume that
it formed the basis of the Jewish system in the days of Nehemiah (446
B.C.). As regards the silver standard we have fortunately one piece of
evidence, which may give us the right solution. We found that in Exodus
each male Israelite contributed a _bekah_, or half a shekel (of the
Sanctuary) to defray the cost of the tabernacle: this half-shekel was a
drachm of about 65 grs. Troy. Now after the Return from Captivity, we
find Nehemiah (x. 32) writing: “We made ordinances for us, to charge
ourselves yearly with the third part of a shekel[341] for the service of
the house of our God.” Why the third of a shekel instead of the half of
earlier days? When we read of the generous and self-sacrificing efforts
made by the Jews to restore the ancient glories of the Temple worship,
we can hardly believe that it was through any desire to reduce the
annual contribution. The solution is not far to seek when we recollect
that the Babylonian silver stater of that age weighed about 172·8 grs.
This formed the standard of the empire, and doubtless the Jews of the
Captivity employed it like the rest of the subjects of the Great King.
The third part of this stater or shekel weighed about 58 grains; so that
practically the third part of the Babylonian silver shekel was the same
as the half of the ancient light shekel, or shekel of the Sanctuary.
From this we may not unreasonably infer that after the Return the Jews
employed the Babylonian silver shekel as their silver unit, and this
probably continued in use until Alexander by the victories of Issus and
Arbela overthrew the Persian Empire, and erected his own on its ruins.
But although the Babylonian shekel was the official standard of the
empire there can be no doubt that the old local standards lingered on,
or rather held their ground stubbornly in not a few cases. We saw above
that the Aramaean peoples had especially preferred the double shekel,
and from it they developed the so-called Phoenician or Graeco-Asiatic
silver standard. Gold being to silver as 13·3:1, one double shekel of 260
grains of gold was equal to fifteen reduced double shekels of silver of
225 grains each. Now it is important to note that the Phoenician shekel
or stater was always considered not as a didrachm but as a tetradrachm; a
fact which is explained by its development from the old double shekel,
which of course was regarded as containing four drachms, and which at the
same time explains why it is that in the New Testament the Temple-tax of
the half shekel is called a _didrachm_, the term applied to the shekel
itself in the Septuagint. When the Jews coined money under the Maccabees,
they struck their silver coins on this Phoenician standard, and their
shekel was always regarded as a tetradrachm. For the ancient half shekel
of the Sanctuary they soon substituted the half of their shekel coins,
that is about 110 instead of 65 grains of silver. This change probably
took place under the Maccabees; silver had then probably become much more
plentiful in Judaea as shown by the fact that they were able to issue a
silver coinage. When those who collected the Temple-tax asked Christ for
his didrachm, he bade Simon Peter go to the sea and catch a fish, in the
mouth of which he would find a _stater_, “that give him, said he, for
both me and thee.” As the stater evidently sufficed to pay a didrachm for
each, there can be no doubt that the shekel or stater was considered by
the Jews to be a tetradrachm.
It is very uncertain whether the Hebrews at any time employed a _maneh_
of 60 shekels. They most certainly did not do so for gold and silver,
and probably not even for copper and other cheap commodities. Very
unfortunately the famous passage in Ezekiel (xlv. 12), which deals with
weights and measures, is so confused in the description of the maneh that
we cannot employ it as evidence. The one element of certainty is that
the gold shekel never varied from first to last. It is likewise probable
that, whilst the heavy maneh was introduced for gold silver and copper
alike, the shekel always remained the same, 100 shekels being counted to
the mina of gold and silver in the royal system, whilst 50 shekels always
continued to be regarded as composing the maneh of the Sanctuary, such
as we found it in the Book of Exodus. To confirm this view of the shekel
we can cite the Bull’s-head weight (fig. 27), which came from Jerusalem,
and weighs 36·800 grammes, which represents the amount of 5 light shekels
(making allowance for a small fracture), the light shekel being 8·4
grams. (130 grs.). It is plain that this is a multiple of the light and
not of the heavy shekel, for it is not likely that such a multiple as 2½
would be employed. On the other hand, we found the five-fold multiple of
the light shekel appearing in the Assyrian system, and also the Egyptian.
[Illustration: FIG. 27. Bull’s-head Five-shekel Weight.]
The Hebrew systems, as we have tentatively set them forth, may be seen in
the following tables.
I. Earliest period. Shekel of 130-5 grs. alone employed for gold and
probably silver.
II. Mosaic period. _Gold and Silver._ (The old light shekel or ox-unit is
now called shekel of the Sanctuary to distinguish it from its double.)
50 light Shekels = 1 Maneh
3000 light Shekels = 60 Manehs = 1 Kikkar (_talent_).
III. Regal period. _Gold._
100 light (= 50 double) shekels = 1 heavy Maneh
5000 heavy (= 10,000 light) ” = 100 heavy Manehs = 1 talent.
The same system was probably employed for _silver and copper_, but
instead of counting 100 light shekels to the Maneh as in the case of
gold, they reckoned silver and copper by the double shekel, probably
called the king’s shekel in contradistinction to that of the Sanctuary.
IV. After the Return. The light shekel still retained for _gold_, and the
Babylonian, or Phoenician silver standard, employed for _silver_.
V. Maccabean Period. _Gold_ on the old standard, and _silver_ (now first
coined) struck on the Phoenician silver standard of 220 grains.
_Copper_ was estimated most probably on the old double shekel system; and
most likely the royal Assyrian heavy system of 60 shekels to the maneh
and 60 manehs to the talent was adopted in its entirety for copper and
other articles of no great value in proportion to their bulk[342].
PHOENICIAN STANDARD.
The total loss of the literature and records of the Phoenicians, and
the fact that neither in their own country nor in the greatest of their
colonies, Carthage, did they employ coined money until a comparatively
late period, make the task of restoring their weight system very
difficult if not hopeless. The _silver_ standard called Phoenician or
Graeco-Asiatic is the sole evidence to show that they employed as their
unit for gold the heavy Babylonian shekel of 260 grs. On the other hand
we have just seen that their close neighbours, the Hebrews, from first to
last, and the ancient people of the Nile with whom the Phoenicians were
in the closest trade relations (having large trading communities settled
in the Delta, and from whom they had borrowed the hieroglyphic syllabic
symbols, which with them became the Alphabet), had employed the light
shekel, the only _gold_ unit that likewise from first to last prevailed
throughout the vast regions of Central Asia Minor, and as we have seen,
was the unit of Greece even in the early days when the great cities of
Mycenae and Tiryns were in direct contact with, and deriving their arts
and civilization from Asia or from Egypt.
The derivation of the Phoenician _silver_ standard of about 225 grs.
(14·58 gram.) according to the hitherto received doctrine is as follows.
As the Babylonians formed their silver standard by making into _ten_
pieces the amount of silver equivalent to the “light gold shekel,” so
the Phoenicians and Syrians are supposed to have divided the amount of
silver equivalent to “the heavy shekel” into _fifteen_ pieces, gold being
to silver in each case as 13·3:1. But we ask why did the Phoenicians
adopt so awkward a scale as the quindecimal when it was possible for them
to employ the decimal or duodecimal? In the next place by the supposed
system 7½ silver shekels were equal to one light shekel, that is the
gold unit which was universally employed amongst all the peoples with
whom they traded: and what number could be more awkward for purposes of
exchange than 7½? If therefore we can show that it is probable that at
one period silver was exceedingly abundant in Phoenicia compared with
gold, and that consequently gold was worth considerably more than 13
times its weight in silver, the sole support for the heavy shekel being
the Phoenician unit is removed, and the theory of the _fifteen stater_
system falls to the ground. It is well known that the Phoenicians had
much of the trade of Cilicia and the other coast regions of Asia Minor in
their hands. It was Cilicia that produced the chief supplies of silver
for Western Asia[343]. From this land therefore the Phoenicians obtained
vast quantities of silver, and it was from them almost certainly the
Egyptians, who had no native silver, obtained a supply of that metal. But
this was not all. About 1000 B.C. the Phoenicians, in their quest after
new and unexhausted regions, made their way westward and reached Spain.
I have already related the ancient stories which embody the account of
the marvellous amount of silver which the first bold explorers brought
back. We need not wonder then if in the days of king Solomon, “silver
was nothing accounted of” in Syria and Palestine. We also saw that the
relative value of gold and silver was just as liable to fluctuate in
ancient, as in modern times, according to the supply of either metal, and
when we come to deal with the Greek system we shall find many instances
of this. If we then suppose that gold was to silver as 17:1 in Phoenicia,
the gold shekel of 130 grs. would be worth ten silver pieces of 220 grs.
each. (130 × 17 = 2210; 2210 ÷ 10 = 221). This is in reality far closer
to the actual weight of the coins than the result obtained by the old
hypothesis: 260 × 13·3 = 3466 ÷ 15 = 231 grs. Troy, which is about 10
grs. higher than the actual coin weights.
The approximation gained by our conjectural relation of 17:1, is far
closer than that obtained by that of 13·3:1. The conclusion is probable
that silver was far cheaper in Phoenicia and the contiguous coasts than
elsewhere in Asia Minor, and that it was natural that the weight of the
silver unit was increased in order to preserve the relation in value
between one gold unit, and ten silver units. Lastly we may point out
that at no place on the coast of Phoenicia or Asia Minor, the region
especially in contact with the Phoenicians, do we find _gold_ pieces
struck on the heavy shekel. _Electrum_ certainly was coined on this foot;
but of this we shall be able to give a satisfactory explanation. We have
(with the exception of some Lydian pieces) to go as far north as Thasos
or Thrace before we find a gold coin of such a nature, which is of course
nothing more than a double stater.
The Phoenician gold mina was probably like the Hebrew, which was most
likely borrowed from it, the fifty-fold of the heavy shekel, 100
gold shekels and 100 silver shekels constituting a maneh, as amongst
the Hebrews in the time of Solomon. But we can conjecture with some
probability that at an earlier stage they weighed their gold and silver
according to the old common ox-unit, which we found in use among the
Hebrews under the name of the Holy Shekel or shekel of the Sanctuary. No
doubt the mina for gold always contained 100 light or 50 heavy shekels,
and when their own peculiar shekel of 220 grs. came into vogue for
silver, 50 such shekels made a mina. Finally, there can be little doubt
that 60 minas invariably went to the talent.
In the case of commercial weights, it is most probable that 60 heavy
shekels made a mina: this is rendered almost perfectly certain by the
Lion weights with Phoenician as well as cuneiform inscriptions found at
Nineveh, 60 heavy minas forming a heavy talent.
THE PHOENICIAN COLONIES.
It is worth while before going further to enquire whether we can gain any
light from the systems of weight employed by the famous daughter-cities
of Phoenicia, such as Gades and Carthage. A weight bearing in Punic
characters the name of the Agoranomos and the numeral 100 has been
found at Jol (Julia Caesarea) in North Africa, but unfortunately it has
suffered so much by corrosion from water and the loss of its handle that
it is impossible to make any tolerable approximation to its original
weight. Hultsch[344] conjectures with some probability that, making
allowance for its loss, it represents 100 _drachms_, and deduces from
this that the Carthaginians treated the drachm as their _shekel_, but
for this latter hypothesis there seems no sufficient evidence. If this
supposition were true, the weight would represent a half-mina of the
Phoenician _silver_ standard. But there is one thing which this weight
does prove, and that is that, whether it be a mina or half-mina, it is
the drachm or shekel, which was evidently regarded as the unit of the
system, not the mina. Thus once more we get a confirmation of our general
thesis that the mina and talent are the multiples, and that it is the
shekel or stater which is the basis. Nor does the coinage of Carthage
furnish us with all the information that could be desired, for it was
only after 410 B.C. that that great “mart of merchants” began to strike
coins, and even then it was only in her Sicilian possessions that she
did so, no doubt induced to adopt the practice by constant contact with
her Greek enemies: for not only the type (of Persephone) was borrowed
from Syracusan coins, but the very dies were engraved by the hands of
Greek artists. The gold coins are struck on a standard of about 120 grs.
Troy, whilst the silver issue consists of tetradrachms of the so-called
Attic (or more simply light shekel or ox-unit) standard of 130-135 grs.
Since during the same period (405-347 B.C.) Syracuse[345] was issuing
gold pieces on the Attic standard, it is most probable that it is only
through the want of heavier specimens that we are compelled to set the
Siculo-Punic coins issued at Panormus (Palermo) and other places in Italy
so low as 120 grs. It was not until about the time of Timoleon (340
B.C.) that money was coined at Carthage itself. This coinage consists
wholly of gold, electrum and bronze, down to the time of the acquisition
of the rich silver mines of Spain, and the foundation of New Carthage
in that country by Hasdrubal, the son-in-law of Hamilkar Barca and
brother-in-law of Hannibal, in the interval between the First and Second
Punic wars (241-218 B.C.), when large silver coins both Carthaginian and
Hispano-Carthaginian seem to have been first struck[346].
The gold and electrum coins of the first period are of the following
weights: _gold_ 145 and 73 grs.; _electrum_ 118, 58 and 27 grains. The
gold unit is thus some 10 grains higher than the normal value of the
ox-unit. If these coins belonged to an earlier period we might with
some confidence affirm that the variation was due to the plentiful
supply of gold derived by the Carthaginians from the still unexhausted
gold deposits of Western Africa. This is perhaps the true explanation
even at the late period when the coins were issued, but there may have
been a desire to adjust the three metals, gold, electrum and silver, so
that they might be conveniently exchanged. It will be observed that the
electrum coins are struck on a unit of 118 grs., and it is not at all
improbable that silver was reckoned by the same unit, even though not yet
coined; for when the silver coins appear they are struck on a standard
of 118 or 236 grs. It will be at once noticed that this standard is
considerably higher than the Phoenician silver standard found along the
coasts of Asia Minor. It may thus have been found convenient to raise by
a few grains the weight of the gold unit so as to harmonize the relations
between the three metals. Further speculation is vain, as we do not know
the proportion of gold contained in the electrum coins[347]. From what we
shall shortly learn about the electrum of Cyzicus, it is not impossible
that the gold piece of 73 grs. was worth an electrum stater of 118 grs.
Coming to the Phoenicians of Spain we find that Gades, which did not
begin her coinage until about 250 B.C., employed a standard for her
silver of 78 grains, and that the island of Ebusus (_Iviza_) struck
didrachms of 154 grs., a half-drachm of 39 grs. and a quarter-drachm.
This coincides closely with the 78 grain drachm of Gades. It is palpable
that there is no connection between this standard and the Phoenician
standard of 220 grs. As the same system is found in the cities of
Emporiae and Rhoda (_Ampurias_ and _Rosas_) in the north-east of Spain,
and in the earliest drachms of Massilia (_Marseilles_)[348], it is far
more reasonable to suppose that the relations between gold and silver
throughout Spain were such that, in order to make a certain fixed number
of silver pieces equivalent to the gold ox-unit, it was found necessary
to make the silver didrachm of about 156 grs. and the drachm of 78 grs.
It would thus seem that the principle which we shall seek to establish
for the Greek silver standards held true of the Phoenician likewise,—that
whilst the gold unit, the basis of all weight, remains unchanged or was
but very slightly modified even at a late period (when the idea of the
original ox-unit must have become dimmed by time), in order to effect a
more complete harmonizing of a threefold system of gold, electrum and
silver, the silver units shew every kind of variety, which can only be
accounted for by supposing that owing to the different relations between
gold and silver in various regions and at various periods in the same
regions, it was found necessary from time to time to increase or diminish
the weight of the silver unit. Thus if gold was to silver as 12:1 in
the 3rd century B.C., we find a ready explanation for the standard of
Gades and Emporiae. The gold unit of 130 grs. would be worth ten silver
units of 156 grs. each (130 × 12 = 1560 ÷ 10 = 156). So too the 118
gr. standard of Carthage may be explained by supposing that gold was
to silver as 11:1; for then 1 gold unit of 130 grs. = 12 silver of 118
grs. each (130 × 11 = 1430 ÷ 12 = 119 grs.), duodecimal division perhaps
being preferred to the decimal owing to the relations between electrum
and silver, the former perhaps being as in Lydia[349] counted at 10 times
the value of the latter. If gold was to silver as 12:1, and electrum to
silver as 8:1, electrum being thus nearly two-thirds gold, one gold piece
of 75 grs. = 1 piece of electrum of 118 grains, and 8 pieces of silver
of 116 grs. each (75 × 12 = 900; 116 × 8 = 928), and 1 piece of electrum
of 118 was worth 8 pieces of silver of 116 grs. each. All this is, be
it remembered, purely conjectural, as we know nothing of the actual
relations existing between any pair of the metals.
However, when we come to deal with the electrum of Cyzicus we shall be
able to produce some data, which will at least show that our suggested
explanation of the relations existing between gold, electrum and silver
at Carthage is not purely chimerical.
Lastly comes the question of the commercial weight-system. We have
already spoken of the badly preserved weight from Jol, but we could
not say whether it was used for the precious metals, or more ordinary
merchandize. However, the great Phoenician inscription of Marseilles,
already referred to, makes it plain that even in the weighing of meat
they reckoned by the shekel and not by the mina; for we find in it
mention of 300 [shekels] and 150 [shekels] of flesh from the victims.
This completely accords with the 20 shekels of food mentioned by Ezekiel
(iv. 10), and clearly indicates that even in what we may well believe
to be the heavy commercial shekel, the ancient decimal system had not
been superseded by the sexagesimal; and, further, that the mina had
not succeeded in supplanting the more ancient fashion of counting by
shekels; for had such been the case, the weight of the meat would have
been expressed in 6 manehs, or 3 manehs. This piece of evidence confirms
the results which we arrived at in the case of the Hebrews—that it was
only at a later period that reckoning by manehs came into use. The
Phoenician colonies of the West, including Carthage herself, had probably
been planted before the influences of the Chaldaean system had obtained
a solid footing in Palestine. We may however not unreasonably believe
that the Carthaginians employed some such form of talent as we find in
the Book of Exodus, 3000 shekels (50 × 60 = 3000) going to the talent,
though as yet no record has revealed to us the actual existence of either
_talent_ or _mina_.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LYDIAN AND PERSIAN SYSTEMS.
“The Lydians,” says Herodotus, “were the first of all nations we know
who struck gold and silver coin[350],” a tradition also attested
by Xenophanes of Colophon, according to Julius Pollux[351]. These
statements of the ancient writers are confirmed by an examination of the
earliest essays made in Asia in the art of coining; from which the best
numismatists have been led to ascribe it to the seventh century B.C.
and probably to the reign of Gyges, who from being a shepherd, by means
of the “virtuous ring” became the founder of the great dynasty of the
Mermnadae, and of the new Lydian empire as distinguished from the Lydia
of a more remote antiquity. The first issues of the Lydian mint were
rudely executed coins of electrum, being staters and smaller coins of the
standards usually known as the Babylonian and Phoenician, of which the
earliest staters weigh about 167 and 220 grs. respectively[352]. It is
most likely that the Babylonian standard was intended for commerce with
the interior of Asia Minor, and the Phoenician for transactions with the
cities of the western seaboard, to coincide with the silver standards
in use in these respective regions. The proportion of gold and silver
in electrum is exceedingly variable: according to Pliny[353] any gold
alloyed with one-fifth of silver (and by implication any containing any
higher proportion of silver) was called electrum. We shall soon find that
the electrum staters of Cyzicus contained about an equal amount of either
metal; but the analysis of Lydian electrum gives a proportion of 73 per
cent. of gold to 27 per cent. of silver, or practically 3 to 1. As gold
in the central parts of Asia Minor stood to silver as 13·3:1 in the reign
of Darius and probably long before, we may not unreasonably assume that
such also was the relation between them in the reign of Gyges, at least
in the interior. In this case electrum would stand to silver as 10:1,
a proportion exceedingly convenient for exchange, as a single standard
served for both metals, one electrum ingot of 168 grs. being equal to 10
silver ingots of like weight. We have already seen that one gold unit
of 130 grs. was equivalent to 10 silver units of 168 grs., therefore
the gold ox-unit was exactly represented in value by the electrum ingot
of 168 grs., for, according to our statement of the composition of the
Lydian electrum, 168 grs. of that alloy would contain 126 grs. of pure
gold. If we were certain that on the coast of Asia Minor the relation
between gold and silver was 13·3:1, we should be compelled to follow
Brandis and the rest in making the double gold shekel of 260 grs. equal
to 15 silver shekels of 220 grs. each; again, if we accept as universal
the relation of gold to electrum as 4:3, and accordingly make one piece
of electrum of 220 grs. equal to 10 silver pieces of the same standard,
we shall find it impossible to obtain any convenient relation between the
gold stater of 130 grs. and the electrum stater of 220 grs. But from this
difficulty it is not hard to find an escape: 224 grs. of electrum = 168
grs. of gold; that is exactly 1⅓ gold shekels (129 ÷ 3 = 43 × 4 = 172).
The division into thirds and sixths is of course a well-known feature in
the coinage of the Asiatic coast-towns. Thus there would be no practical
difficulty in the ordinary monetary transactions, for three Phoenician
drachms of electrum (= 168 grs.) would = 1 gold shekel; and 4 gold Thirds
(_Tritae_), or 8 gold Sixths (_Hectae_), would equal one electrum stater
of 224-220 grs.
If on the other hand silver held a lower value in relation to gold on
the coasts of the Aegean, and the electrum employed in that quarter was
alloyed to a greater extent with silver, two disturbing elements are
introduced. The probabilities are in favour of silver being cheaper in
Cilicia and the contiguous region, and most certainly at Cyzicus the
electrum was half silver, whilst the Phocaic electrum had a bad name
in antiquity, since according to Hesychius Phocaic gold was synonymous
with bad gold. Is it then possible that 220 grains of electrum were
equivalent to 130 grs. of pure gold? This gives about 60 per cent. of
gold. If gold was to silver as 13·3:1, the gold unit of 130 grs. is equal
to 8 silver pieces of 220 grs. (130 × 13·3 = 1765 ÷ 8 = 220·6). In our
present state of knowledge it is impossible to decide in favour of either
view, but it is at least evident that some such relation and adjustment
must have existed between the three metals. In fact the problem which
the Lydians tried to solve was not merely that of _Bimetallism_, but of
_Trimetallism_.
[Illustration: FIG. 28. Lydian electrum coin.]
These early electrum coins are simply bullet-shaped lumps of metal, like
the so-called _bean_ money formerly employed by the Japanese, having
what is termed the obverse plain or rather striated, as a series of
lines in relief run across the coin, whilst the reverse has three incuse
depressions, that in the centre oblong, the others square. The coin here
figured (from the British Museum specimen) is on the Babylonian silver
standard (166·8 grs.), but it is on the staters of Phoenician standard
that we first find any attempt at types or symbols. The idea of engraving
some symbol on the punches used for stamping the incuse depressions was
in truth the grand step towards the creation of a real coin. Thus a
stater of 219 grs. which bears in the central incuse a running fox, in
the upper square a stag’s head, and the lower an X-like device, may be
regarded as the first complete coin as yet known. It would seem from
this, therefore, that it was on the coast-region, where the Lydians came
into contact with the artistic genius of the Greeks, that the real start
in the art of striking money took place. Electrum was employed because
it was found native in great quantities in the whole district which lay
around Sardis, in the valleys of Tmolus, and the sands of Pactolus. The
ancients found considerable difficulty in freeing the gold from the
associated silver (p. 97).
Once known, Miletus and other important Ionian cities were not long in
improving on the Lydian invention. The advantages of a metallic currency
were so obvious that an intelligent and progressive race hastened to
avail themselves of it. “Only those,” says Captain Gill (speaking of the
borders of Thibet and China), “who have gone through the weary process of
cutting up and weighing out lumps of silver, disputing over the scale,
and asserting the quality of the metal, can appreciate our feelings of
satisfaction at being once more able to make payments in coin[354].” No
sooner had the Ionians commenced coining than they appear to have adorned
the face of the ingot with a symbol, probably both as a guarantee of
weight and purity, and perhaps as a preventive of fraudulent abrasion.
During this period it is not improbable that the arts of Ionia had made
their influence felt in Lydia, and hence “it is impossible to distinguish
with absolute certainty the Lydian issues from those of the Greek towns,
but there is one type which seems to be especially characteristic of
Lydia as it occurs in a modified form on the coinage attributed to the
Sardian mint and to the reign of Croesus; this is the Lion and the Bull.
These coins have on the obverse the forefronts of a lion and a bull
turned away from one another and joined by their necks[355],” whilst the
reverse shows three incuse depressions. This is Phoenician in weight
(215·4 grs.). There are other coins, often attributed to Miletus, which
may be assigned to Lydia; some with a recumbent lion on the obverse, and
a reverse exhibiting the fox, stag’s head, and X of the coin already
described. To these may be added a series of coins bearing a lion’s head
with open mouth, and with what is commonly regarded as a star above it,
but which is more probably part of the lion’s hair, and on the reverse
incuse sinkings, in some cases containing an ornamental star[356]. These
coins have now with great probability been assigned by the eminent
numismatist, Mr J. P. Six, to the Lydian king, Alyattes, the father of
Croesus.
When Croesus ascended the throne in 568 B.C., one of his earliest acts
seems to have been an attempt to propitiate the Greeks both of Asia
and Hellas proper by sending offerings of equal value to the two most
famous shrines of Apollo, Delphi and Branchidae. In the course of some
fourteen years he reduced under the sway of Lydia all the regions that
lay between the river Halys and the sea. “It seems probable (says Mr
Head) that the introduction of a double currency of pure gold and silver,
in place of the primitive electrum, may have been due to the commercial
genius of Croesus.” If this be so, the monarch seems to have acted with
thrift in his offerings, for according to Herodotus his dedications at
Delphi were all of _white gold_, _i.e._ electrum. Perhaps then he got no
more than he deserved when, induced by the declaration of the Delphic
prophetess that he would destroy a mighty kingdom, he made war upon Cyrus
with disastrous issue. There however can be no doubt that Croesus made
some important monetary change, for in after years there still remained
a clear tradition of Croesus’ stater (Κροίσειος στατήρ), just as the
famous gold stater of Philip of Macedon was known as the _Philippean_ or
_Philippus_[357]. In his monetary reform Croesus seems to have had regard
to the weights of the two old electrum staters, each of which was now
represented by an equal value, though not of course by an equal weight,
of pure gold.
[Illustration: FIG. 29. Coin of Croesus.]
Thus the old Phoenician electrum stater of 220 grs. was replaced by a
pure gold coin of 168 grs., equivalent like its predecessor in electrum
to 10 silver staters of 220 grs. each, and the old Babylonian electrum
stater of 168 grs. was replaced by a new pure gold stater of 126 grs.,
equal in value like it to 10 silver staters of 168 grs. each, “as now for
the first time coined.” These gold coins bear as obverse the foreparts of
a lion and a bull facing each other, and on the reverse an oblong incuse
divided into two parts (Fig. 29). Of the Babylonian standard we find:
Stater 168 grs.
Trite 56 ”
Hecte 28 ”
Hemihecton 14 ”
And of the light shekel:
Stater 126 grs.
Trite 42 ”
Hecte 21 ”
Hemihecton 11 ”
Of Babylonian standard _silver_:
Stater 168 grs.
½ stater 84 ”
⅓ stater 56 ”
⅟₁₂ stater 14 ”
This double standard for gold is at first sight somewhat strange until
we observe that the two systems are in complete harmony. For the gold
piece of 168 grs. is nothing more than 1⅓ of the light shekel (168 ÷ ⁴⁄₃
= 126 grs.). The third of the light shekel (42 grs.) is the fourth of the
Babylonian of 168 grs. There can be no doubt that the coins of 168 grs.
were simply an experiment suggested by the coincidence that the number of
grains (168) in the Babylonian silver shekel was exactly one-quarter more
than those in the _light_ gold shekel, in the hope doubtless of obtaining
a single standard for gold electrum and silver. The division of the
silver stater into thirds would facilitate the process of exchange, as 13
silver staters and one-third would be equivalent to the gold piece of the
same Babylonian standard, whilst 10 silver staters would be equivalent to
one of the old electrum pieces of 168 grs. It is at all events certain
that the standard of 168 grs. was not a regular gold unit, for it simply
makes its appearance for a brief space, there being no trace of it at any
earlier period, nor does it afterwards appear save in its own legitimate
province of silver. A perfectly analogous case is that of the gold pieces
struck by the Ptolemaic kings, who, starting with the gold stater of
Philip and Alexander and the Phoenician standard for silver (after the
founder of the dynasty had for a short time used the so-called Rhodian
standard), presently struck gold pieces on the same standard as their
silver. But the experiment of Croesus, if such it was, did not succeed.
For the eastern mind was still too much impressed with the necessity of
cleaving fast to the original weight unit obtained from the ancient unit
of barter. For whether the attempt had failed before the reign of Croesus
was brought to a sudden end by the conquests of the great Cyrus, or
whether he continued up to the very hour of the Persian conquest to coin,
at least for one part of his dominions, the gold pieces of the Babylonian
silver standard, it matters little. As we have no evidence on the point,
we cannot say whether there were two gold minae and two gold talents in
use, one being of course the ordinary gold talent (called Euboic) of 3000
light shekels of 130 grs., the other containing 3000 shekels of 168 grs.
each. The probability I think is that only the former existed. As 50
of the latter shekels made 1⅓ minae, there was no practical difficulty
in making any calculations; on the other hand, if there had been two
separate minae, and two separate talents, it would have led to great
complications. The fact that we hear nothing about any such second gold
system existing in Asia, and that when Darius fixed the tribute from
each region he did not make it the basis of his payment, which he would
probably have done as he would thus have made a considerable gain, by
causing the payments in gold as well as those in silver to be made on the
Babylonian standard, seems to put beyond all doubt that the 168 grain
gold piece was not a real unit, but was simply regarded as 1⅓ shekels,
and was nothing more than a temporary effort to simplify the trimetallic
monetary system of Lydia.
What system the Lydians employed for commercial purposes we have no means
of knowing, but we may conjecture plausibly that the light royal mina of
60 shekels was the standard employed.
THE PERSIAN STANDARD.
We may adopt the generally received belief that the Persians, like the
Medes and Babylonians, did not coin money (although they were probably
acquainted with the Lydian stater) until after the conquest of Asia Minor
and Egypt by Cyrus and Cambyses, and the reorganization of the empire
by Darius the son of Hystaspes (522-485 B.C.). For although the learned
_savants_ MM. Oppert and Révillout[358] hold that Daric (Δαρεικός) is
unconnected with the name Darius (Δαρεῖος), an opinion supported by Dr
Hoffmann[359], and rather regard it as derived from the Assyrian _darag
mana_, “degree (i.e. ⅟₆₀) of a mina,” and although Mr G. Bertin has read
the word _dariku_ on a Babylonian contract, dated in the twelfth year
of Nabonidas, five years before the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus[360],
it does not at all follow that either _darag_ or _dariku_ refers to a
_coin_. That the unit was employed for gold ages before the Persians
ever descended from the mountains there can be little doubt. But whether
we adopt or reject the Greek tradition that the Daric (Δαρεικός) was
named from Darius, as the Philippean and Croesean staters were called
after the sovereigns who first struck them, it is perfectly certain
that Darius organized the whole numbering system of the great empire
to which he had succeeded, and that he coined gold pieces of the first
quality: for Herodotus tells us that Darius, having refined gold to
the greatest extent possible, had coin struck[361]. This would be very
analogous to the course pursued by Croesus and Philip; gold in some form
was current in the dominions of both these princes before their reigns,
but it was owing to certain reforms introduced and to the issue of a
gold coin of a certain pattern, that the names of both became associated
with particular kinds of gold coins. By the time of Xerxes the son of
Darius vast quantities of these Darics were circulating through Asia
Minor, for Herodotus relates that the Lydian Pythius had in his own
possession as many as 3,993,000 of them, a sum afterwards increased by
Xerxes to 4,000,000. They became the gold currency of all the Greek
towns not only of Asia Minor, but also of the islands, and made their
way in considerable quantities into the great cities of the mainland of
Hellas, and wrought as much harm in disuniting the various states of
Greece as did the gold staters of Philip at a period a little later.
Darics formed a regular part of the wealth of a well-to-do Athenian at
the time of the Peloponnesian war. Thus Lysias[362] relates that when his
house was entered and plundered by the minions of the Thirty, his money
chest contained 100 Darics, 400 Cyzicenes, and 3 talents of silver. It is
only necessary to enumerate some of the passages in the Greek authors,
where mention is made of their coins, to show how wide an influence they
exercised in the eastern Mediterranean. Besides Herodotus and Lysias
already mentioned, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Demosthenes,
Arrian, Diodorus and many others all make mention of these famous
coins[363]. No classification of them according to the reigns of the
monarchs by whom they were issued is possible, for this is precluded by
the absence of all inscriptions, and the great uniformity of style. They
bear on the obverse the king of Persia bearded crowned and clad in a long
robe; he kneels towards the right on one knee; on his back is a quiver,
in his right hand is a long spear, and in his outstretched left a bow
(from which came the familiar Greek name of Archers for these pieces).
The reverse is simply marked by an oblong incuse.
Their weight may be set at 130 grs., which of course is the light shekel
or ox-unit. We have no difficulty in fixing the gold mina or talent. In
fact we have already seen on p. 260 that the Persian talent of gold was
the same as the Euboic-Attic talent. Hence
1 Daric = 130 grs.
50 Darics = 1 mina = 6,500 grs.
3000 Darics = 60 minas = 1 talent = 390,000 grs.
For silver currency the Persians employed half of the Babylonian silver
stater of 168 grs., its usual weight being about 84 grs. This coin was
in every way similar to the Daric and in fact is sometimes called by the
same name by writers of a later age[364], but the more usual appellation
in the classical writers was the _Median_ siglos (Μηδικός σίγλος) or
simply _siglos_. Twenty of these sigli were equivalent to one gold
Daric, for Xenophon appears to count 3000 Darics as equal to 10 talents
of silver, or in other words to 60,000 sigli (6000 × 10 = 60,000). The
siglos may therefore be regarded as the Persian drachm or half-stater. As
130 grains of gold are thus made equal to 1680 grs. of silver (84 × 20),
gold held to silver the old ratio of 13:1.
The Persian silver standard was formed thus:
1 siglos = 84 grs.
100 sigli = 50 staters = 1 mina = 8400 grs.
6000 sigli = 3000 staters = 60 minae = 1 talent = 504,000 grs.
As regards commercial weight we may fairly assume that the old light and
heavy _royal_ systems continued in use in the respective regions where
they had been employed in early days.
CHAPTER XII.
THE GREEK SYSTEM.
We are now come to the most important portion of our task, the
development of the Greek and Italic systems. In the Homeric Poems we
found the Talanton (or value of a cow in gold) the sole unit of weight,
and that only employed for gold. This Talanton has been shown to be the
same in weight as the light gold shekel of Asia Minor, which, under the
form of coin, we have just been discussing as the Croesean stater and
Persian Daric. It was therefore nothing else than the Euboic or Attic
stater of historical times, which at all periods and at all places that
fall within our knowledge formed the sole unit for the weighing of gold.
Besides the Talanton based on the ox, there was in all probability
another higher unit in occasional use in Greece Proper. This was the
threefold of the ox-unit. We have already had occasion to notice the
small gold talent, called by some writers the Macedonian, which was equal
to three Attic staters. The same weight under the name of the Sicilian
talent was employed likewise for gold only in the Greek colonies of
Sicily and Southern Italy. The conservatism of colonists is too well
known to need illustration, and we may with high probability infer that
the Greek settlers in Magna Graecia brought the small talent from their
original homes. What was the origin of this weight? We have seen that
everywhere all over our area the slave is the occasional higher unit.
Thus the Irish slave (_cumhal_) was a unit of account equal to three
cows. The slave in the Welsh Laws is equal to 4 cows, whilst in Homer we
found a slave woman valued at 4 cows also. From the way in which this
notice of her price occurs, it is probable that Achilles did not give a
woman of the most ordinary kind as a prize, for had she been the ordinary
slave-woman of account, there would have been no need to mention the
price, as any one would have known how many cows exactly she was worth.
It is then not improbable that three cows were commonly reckoned as the
value of a slave, and accordingly the small gold talent, which is the
multiple of the ox-unit, is simply the metallic representative of the
slave, just as the Homeric Talanton itself is that of the cow.
What the exact weight of this unit was on Greek soil we are now enabled
to ascertain by the aid of the treatise on the Constitution of the
Athenians known to the ancients as the work of Aristotle, and the
brilliant discovery and identification of which by the officials of the
British Museum reflects much credit on British scholarship.
We had previously known from Plutarch (who ascribed the first coinage
of Athens to Theseus[365]) that amongst his other reforms Solon caused
drachms to be coined of lighter weight than those previously in currency,
so that 100 of the new ones would be equal in value to 73 old ones. Some
scholars have inferred that this was an expedient for relieving debtors,
who would be allowed to pay in the new coin debts contracted in the older
currency. The newly discovered Constitution dispels this assumption, and
also affords us some most valuable additional matter[366]: “In his Laws
then he appears to have made these enactments in favour of the people,
but before his legislation he appears to have wrought the cancelling of
debts, and afterwards the augmentation of the measures and weights, and
the augmentation of the currency. For in his day the measures likewise
were made larger than those of Pheidon, and the mina, which previously
had almost seventy drachms, was filled up by a hundred drachms[367].
But the ancient type was the didrachm[368], and he also made as a
standard[369] for his coinage 63 minas weighing the talent, and the minae
were apportioned out by the stater, and the other weights.”
[Illustration: FIG. 30. Coin of Eretria.]
The first point to engage our attention is the formation of a new
standard for the _silver_ coin (for no gold was coined for nearly two
centuries): sixty-three old minas were taken to form a new talent, which
of course was divided henceforward into 60 new minas. As the weight of
the Attic talent in post-Solonian times is most accurately known, we can
at once discover the weight of the ancient mina by dividing the ordinary
weight of the talent (405,000 grs.) by 63: 405,000 ÷ 63 = 6428 grs., that
is 322 grs. less than the post-Solonian mina of 6750 grs. As there are 50
staters in the mina, the ancient stater weighed 128·56 grs., or just a
grain lighter than the Daric (129·6 grs.). The old mina of 6428 grs. had
been equal to 70 drachms; each of these then must have weighed 92 grs.
nearly, that is, the ordinary weight of an Aeginetic drachm. There can be
no doubt that the coins of Aegina were used as currency at Athens before
Solon’s time, where they circulated side by side in all probability
with the coins of Euboea which bore the bull’s head, whence arose the
tradition of the earliest coinage of Athens consisting of didrachms
stamped with an ox. The old mina (63 of which went to the new _silver_
talent) was of course the ancient standard used for weighing _gold_ and
_silver_ before coined money was employed. It was that known as the
Euboic, based on the ox-unit. The Aeginetic standard was only used for
_silver_, _gold_ at all times being weighed by the Euboic standard even
where the Aeginetic was in use for silver. This standard was of course
in full use for gold and evidently likewise for silver in prae-Solonian
times, even though the Aeginetic drachms passed as currency at Athens.
For if they had adopted the Aeginetic _standard_, 100 Aeginetic drachms
would have been reckoned to the mina, but as only 70 drachms went to
the mina it is evident that the old ox-unit (so-called Euboic) standard
of unit 130 grs. with its corresponding mina was always the national
Athenian standard.
We showed at an earlier stage that in the age when the art of coining was
first introduced into Greece by Pheidon of Argos, it was probable that
gold stood to silver in the proportion of 15:1. For convenience, then,
in Peloponnesus and in Central Greece a system was adopted by which 10
pieces of silver were equivalent to one piece or ingot of gold. This
system, known as the Aeginetic, was thus obtained.
Gold being to silver as 15:1,
1 gold ingot (Talanton) of 130 grs. × 15 = 1950 grs. of silver,
1950 grs. ÷ 10 = 195 grs.
Therefore 1 gold Talanton of 130 grs. = 10 pieces of silver of
195 grs. each.
It is possible that this method of making 10 silver pieces equal to one
gold unit was developed at the time of the introduction of coined money,
but it is more likely that it may have been in use even before that time.
Now it is worth observing that all through the classical period of Greek
history the term stater is generally confined in use to gold pieces. Thus
silver coins, unless they weighed 135 grs., are not described as silver
_staters_, but are regularly termed didrachms. So general evidently was
this practice that the adjective _chrysous_ (χρυσοῦς) was regularly
employed to express the gold unit, the masculine gender showing that
the noun understood is _stater_ (στατήρ). Thus Pollux says: “Some were
termed staters of Darius, some Philippeans, other Alexandrians, all
being of gold, and if you say _gold piece_, _stater_ is understood: but if
you should say _stater_, _gold_ is not absolutely to be understood[370].”
From the fact that Pollux draws attention to the exceptional use of
_stater_ to express a silver coin, on the principle that _exceptio
probat regulam_, it is evident that stater regularly represents a gold
piece of two Attic drachms. The familiar practice in Attic Greek, when
speaking of a considerable sum of silver without employing either the
term mina or talent, is to say 1000 drachms, 2000 drachms and the
like, but not 1000 staters or 2000 staters, etc., whilst on the other
hand, under like conditions, the practice is to enumerate gold not by
drachms, but by _staters_. Thus in a fragment from the _Demi_ of Eupolis
quoted by Pollux[371] a man is described as possessing 3000 _staters_
of gold. We certainly hear of an Aeginean stater and a Corinthian[372]
stater (both of silver), but both are found in writers of comparatively
late date, when usage was getting less exact, and besides, as the
Aeginetic system had a separate individuality of its own, its unit being
perfectly different from the Euboic Attic, might with justice be termed
a stater. We are thus justified in considering the gold stater the
legitimate descendant of the Homeric Talanton, the stater or _weigher_
representing the Talanton or _weight_ of the older time. As long as no
other unit than the ox-unit or Talanton was employed, the Talanton or
weight _par excellence_ was sufficient to describe it, but when under
Asiatic influences the higher unit of the _mina_ (μνᾶ) and _talent_ were
introduced, a term was substituted which indicates clearly that the gold
unit of 130 grs. was _the weigher_ or basis of the whole system. Starting
then with our ox-unit, we find already in Homer definite traces of a
decimal, but nothing to indicate the existence of a sexagesimal system.
_Ten_ talents of gold are mentioned in several passages.
Starting then with the ox-unit of 130 grs. we can thus arrive at the
fully elaborated Greek systems. The term mina (μνᾶ) is beyond doubt
a borrowing from the East. How far it was ever much employed in the
reckoning of gold it is hard to say, but it is at least remarkable that,
when we hear so frequently of _minae_ of silver in the Attic writers,
no instance of a mina of gold is quoted in our books of reference. From
this one is led to infer that it was for the purpose of measuring the
less precious metal, silver, that the term _mina_ was brought into use
in Greece. In fact, as stater is essentially a term which clings to
gold, so _mina_ is especially a term used of silver. With the mina the
Greeks borrowed likewise the highest Asiatic unit (the _kikkar_ of the
Hebrews), which became the Talanton or talent of historical Greece.
But it is remarkable that the Greeks did not borrow its Asiatic name
along with the unit itself. They simply gave it their own name _weight_
(literally, ‘_that which can be lifted_,’ cp. τλάω, _tollo_, etc.). This
fact can be explained readily if we suppose that the Greeks, like all
those other primitive peoples whom we have mentioned, had a rough and
ready unit for estimating bulky wares, the standard of _the load_, or
as much as a man could conveniently carry on his back. Having already
such a unit they would have no difficulty in adopting the _load_ or
talent, which had been fixed according to the Sexagesimal system, and
which had permeated all Western Asia. In fact their position towards
the Asiatic _load_, which had been accurately fixed by the mathematical
skill of the Babylonians, would be exactly analagous to that of the
Malays of Java and Sumatra towards the accurately adjusted Chinese
_picul_. Because the Malays themselves were accustomed to use _loads_ of
various weights as their rough highest unit of bulk, they have with all
the more readiness received the form of the same unit, which the clever
Chinese have incorporated into their commercial weight system by making
it equal to 100 _chings_ (catties, or pounds). But it is doubtful if at
any time in Greece Proper the talent of gold was ever considered as a
monetary unit. We have found Eupolis speaking of “3000 staters of gold”
instead of simply saying a talent of gold, and when we do find mention
made of talents of gold, as in a famous passage of Thucydides, where
he describes the amount of gold employed by Pheidias in the making of
the world-renowned chryselephantine statue of Athena for the Parthenon,
whilst the computations in silver are expressed simply by talents, the
gold is enumerated as talents _in weight_. We may assume that gold was
weighed throughout Greece in historical times on the following system:
1 stater = 130 grs.
50 staters = 1 mina = 6500 grs.
3000 ” = 60 minae = 1 talent = 390,000 grs.
When silver came into use it was probably weighed all through Hellas, as
in Asia and Egypt, on the same standard as gold. This continued always
to be the practice amongst the great trading communities of Euboea,
Chalcis and Eretria, and their colonies, and also with Corinth and her
daughter states. Hence the system was commonly known as the Euboic,
sometimes as the Corinthian, and in later times, for a reason to be
presently given, the _Attic_. But in this silver system it is no longer
the stater which represents the smaller unit, but rather the _drachm_
(δραχμή). Furthermore we find in most constant use a subdivision of the
_drachm_ called the _obol_ (ὀβολός _nail_ or _spike_), six of which made
a drachm. There can be no doubt that this silver obolos represented the
value in silver of the ancient copper unit from which it took its name,
which itself was not estimated by weight but probably, as we saw above,
was simply appraised by measure, as is done by all primitive peoples in
the estimation of copper and iron, nay even in the very earliest stage of
gold itself (p. 43). As six of these _nails_ or _obols_ made a handful
(δραχμή) in the ancient copper system, so when each of them was equated
to a certain amount of silver, the equivalence in silver was called an
_obol_, and the six silver _obols_ obtained the old name of _handful_
or _drachm_. In the ordinary Greek system of reckoning silver it is 100
drachms, not 50 staters, of silver which form the mina. But of course at
the earlier stages of the use of silver we may with some boldness assume
that silver was simply weighed by the stater (or Homeric Talanton).
It is important then to note that among the smaller weight denominations
silver has virtually no term peculiarly its own: for we have seen that
_stater_ belongs essentially to gold, whilst _drachm_ and _obol_ have
originated in the use of copper. This is in complete harmony with what we
know of the history of the metals themselves, gold and copper being known
and employed long before men had learned to utilize silver; and so too,
we find the late-introduced term _mina_ in especially close connection
with the latest employed of the three metals. This Euboic-Attic _silver_
system may be stated as follows:
6 obols = 1 drachm
100 drachms = 1 mina
60 minae = 1 talent.
The Corinthians, whilst making the _obol_ of the same weight as the
Euboic, made a different division of the silver stater; for as Corinth
occupied the very portals of Peloponnesus where the Aeginetic system was
universal, she found it convenient for purposes of exchange to divide
her silver stater of 135 grs. into _three_ drachms of 45 grs. each, one
of which was for practical purposes identical with the Aeginetan _half
drachm_. Thus two Corinthian drachms of 45 grs. each were equal to one
Aeginetan drachm of 90 grs.
_The Aeginetan Standard._
The desire to obtain 10 silver pieces equivalent in value to the gold
ox-unit induced the Aeginetans, who were famous merchantmen, to make a
silver system distinct from that of gold. Gold being to silver as 15:1,
130 × 15 = 1950 grs. of silver.
1950 ÷ 10 = 195 grs.
With the Aeginetans as with the Euboeans in their silver system, the
ancient copper units of the _nail_ and _handful_ played an important
part. The story of Pheidon[373] having hung up in the temple of Hera at
Argos the ancient currency of nails of copper and iron as soon as he
struck his first issue of silver coins, if not absolutely true in all
details, at least contains a most probable statement of what did actually
take place when a real silver currency was first introduced. We have seen
how the Chinese, starting with a barter currency of real hoes and knives,
the objects of most general demand, gradually replaced those larger and
more cumbrous articles by hoes and knives of a more diminutive size,
until finally they became a real currency when they had been so reduced
in size as to be utterly unfit for practical use. We saw likewise how
that at the present moment the real hoe is the lowest unit of barter
among the wild tribes of Annam, and that small bars of iron of given
size are used in Laos, and that plates of metal ready to be made into
hoes, and hoes themselves, are employed by the negroes of Central Africa,
whilst on the west coast axes of a size too diminutive for actual use are
employed as a real currency. As the day came when the Chinese finally
replaced the archaic knife by the full developed copper coin called the
cash, so the Aeginetans and Argives of the days of Pheidon superseded by
a real coin ancient monetary-units consisting either of real implements
of iron and copper, or bars of those metals of certain definite
dimensions, or possibly mere Lilliputian representatives of such, which
had previously served them as a true currency. On the whole however
it is safest to assume from the names _nail_ (_Obol_) and _Handful_
(drachme) that the form in which copper or iron served as currency in
Peloponnesus and the mainland of Hellas in general was that of rods of
a certain length and thickness. We have cited already many analogous
forms from modern Asia and Africa, and from the ancient Kelts, to which
we shall presently add the ancient Italians. But just as we found that
in the Soudan, whilst the slave and ox were universally the higher units
of value, each particular district had its own distinctive lower unit
according to the nature of its products and requirements, so it is most
likely that there were many different units of value (but all alike
sub-multiples of the cow) in use among the various Greek communities. It
is also probable that they must have exercised a certain effect in the
formation of the units of silver currency. Nor is evidence wanting for
this. I have already maintained (p. 5) that the fact of the occurrence
of the type of the cow, or cow’s head, on early Greek coins is evidence
that the original monetary unit was the ox. Thus we find the forepart of
an ox on the early electrum staters of Samos of the Phoenician standard
(217 grs.), which was probably equivalent to a pure gold ox-unit of
130 grs. The bull’s head also appears on the electrum coins of Eretria
and of other places in Euboea. But it is with the silver currency that
we are now especially concerned. Whilst it was extremely likely that
silver coins might in process of time bear the impress of an ox, the
general unit of currency, it was still more natural that, as pieces of
silver supplanted as units not the ox but its sub-multiples, that is
the particular series of articles of barter in use in any particular
district, so these silver coins should bear some traces in their types
of the ancient units thus supplanted. That eminent scholar Colonel
Leake many years ago remarked that the types of Greek coins generally
related “to the local mythology and fortunes of the place, with _symbols
referring to the principal productions_ or to the protecting numina.”
[Illustration: FIG. 31. Coin of Cyrene with Silphium plant.]
Modern scholars have more and more lost sight of the doctrine contained
in the words which I have italicized, and directed all their efforts to
giving a religious signification to everything[374]. The forepart of the
Lion and the Bull on the coins of Lydia become symbols of the Sun and
Moon, the Tortoise on the didrachm of Aegina is regarded as a symbol of
Aphrodite, the Ashtaroth of the Phoenicians, in her capacity of patron
divinity of traders; even the silphium plant of Cyrene, which yielded a
salubrious but somewhat unpleasant medicine, is regarded not as holding
its place on the coins of Cyrene and its sister towns because it formed
the chief staple of trade, but because forsooth it may have been the
symbol of Aristaeus, “the protector of the corn-field and the vine and
all growing crops, and bees and flocks and shepherds, and the averter
of the scorching blasts of the Sahara.” There is probably just as much
evidence for this as there is for believing that the beaver on some
Canadian coins and stamps is symbolical of St Lawrence, after whom the
great Canadian river is named, the warm skin of the beaver indicating
that the saint of the red-hot gridiron is the averter of the cruel and
biting blasts that sweep down from the icy North. I do not for a moment
mean that mythological and religious subjects do not play their proper
part in Greek coin types. But it is just as wrong to reduce all coin
types to this category as it would be to regard them all as merely
symbolic of the natural and manufactured products of the various states.
If however we can show that certain coins, even in historical times,
were regarded as the representations of the objects of barter of more
primitive times, we shall have established a firm basis from which to
make further advances.
In those now famous Cretan inscriptions found at Gortyn[375] certain
sums are counted by kettles (_lebetes_, λέβητες) and pots (_tripods_,
τρίποδες). Some have thought that these are the same objects which are
called staters in later forms of the same documents. But recently M.
Svoronos[376] has advanced a very plausible hypothesis that the _lebetes_
and _tripods_ of the inscriptions really refer not to an actual currency
in the kettles and pots of the old Homeric times, but to certain Cretan
coins which are countermarked with a stamp, which he recognizes in many
examples as a _lebes_, and in at least one case as a _tripod_. Whether
the first hypothesis, that actual kettles and pots were indicated in
the earlier inscriptions and that they had been replaced afterwards by
coins, or the hypothesis of M. Svoronos, be true, is immaterial for us.
In either case there is evidence of a direct and unbroken succession
which connects the silver currency of Crete with an earlier currency of
manufactured articles. The very fact that a lebes or a tripod stamped
upon a coin gave it currency, not merely in the town of issue but among
neighbouring states, indicates that in a previous age the common unit of
currency corresponding in value to the coin so marked was an actual lebes
or tripod. Such is the evidence preserved for us in this remote corner of
Hellas where life moved slowly, and where the archaic style of writing
known as _boustrophedon_ (the lines going from right to left and left
to right alternately, as the plough turns up and down the field) still
lingered on long after it had disappeared from every spot on the mainland
of Greece. If then amongst the symbols which appear on the earliest
coins of Greek communities, which began very early to strike money, we
can find some which have not been identified as religious, and which we
can show represent objects which actually did or may well have formed a
monetary unit in such places, we shall have advanced a step further; and
if we succeed in making good this fresh position, we may in turn find a
nonreligious explanation for certain types, which at present are regarded
as mythological symbols.
The types with which we shall deal must be those found on the most
archaic coins, and which therefore date from a time when barter was just
being replaced by a monetary currency. Thus in the case of cities like
Athens and Corinth, which began to coin at a comparatively late period
and which had been long accustomed to use the issues of other states
before they struck money of their own, we should hardly expect to find
any trace of the old local barter-unit in their coin types, as such a
unit had long since been replaced by the foreign coins.
[Illustration: FIG. 32. Coin of Cyzicus with tunny fish.]
Let us first turn to the well-known type of the tunny fish (πηλαμύς,
θύννος), vast shoals of which were continually passing through the sea
of Marmora (Propontis) from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean[377].
This type appears invariably upon the electrum coins of Cyzicus, and
a tunny’s head is found upon some very archaic silver coins from the
Santorin ‘find’ which Mr Head places at the top of the whole Cyzicene
series, but no one has, as far as I am aware, yet hitherto attempted to
mythologize it[378], although the fecundity of this fish would make it
just as suitable an emblem for Aphrodite as the “lascivious turtle,” and
the traders of Cyzicus might quite as well wear the badge of the goddess
of the sea as the merchants of Aegina, for there is just as much or just
as little evidence for Phoenician influences at Cyzicus as there is at
Aegina. From what we have learned in an earlier chapter we know that the
articles which form the staple commodities of a community in the age of
barter virtually form its money. In a city like Cyzicus whose citizens
depended for their wealth on their fisheries and trade, rather than on
flocks or herds and agriculture, the tunny fish singly or in certain
defined numbers, as by the score or hundred and the like, would naturally
form a chief monetary unit, just as we found the stock fish employed in
mediaeval Iceland. Are we not then justified in considering the tunny
fish, which forms the invariable adjunct of the coins of Cyzicus, as an
indication that these coins superseded a primitive system in which the
tunny formed a monetary unit, just as the Kettle and Pot counter-marks
on the coins of Crete point back to the days when real kettles formed
the chief medium of exchange? But far stronger evidence is at hand to
show that the tunny fish was used as a monetary unit in some parts of
Hellas. We have had occasion to refer to the city of Olbia which lay on
the north shore of the Black Sea. It was a Milesian colony, and was the
chief Greek emporium in this region. There are bronze coins of this city
made in the shape of fishes, and inscribed ΘΥ, which has been identified
as the abbreviation θύννος, _tunny_. Others are inscribed ΑΡΙΧΟ, which
Koehler read as τάριχος, salt fish, but which the distinguished German
numismatist Von Sallet[379] regards as meaning a basket (ἄρριχος). He
holds those marked ΘΥ as the legal price of a tunny fish, those marked
ΑΡΙΧΟ as that of a basket of fish[380]. When we recall the Chinese
bronze cowries, the Burmese silver shells, the silver fish-hooks of the
Indian Ocean, the little hoes and knives of China, and the miniature
axes from Africa, we are constrained to believe that in those coins of
Olbia, shaped like a fish, we have a distinct proof of the influence on
the Greek mind of the same principle which has impelled other peoples
to imitate in metal the older object of barter which a metal currency
is replacing. The inhabitants of Olbia were largely intermixed with the
surrounding barbarians, and may therefore have felt some difficulty in
replacing their barter unit by a round piece of metal bearing merely
the imprint of a fish, while the pure-blooded Greek of Cyzicus had no
hesitation in mentally bridging the gulf between a real fish and a piece
of metal merely stamped with a fish, and did not require the intermediate
step of first shaping his metal unit into the form of a tunny. We shall
find that this tendency to shape metal into the form of the object which
it supplants may perhaps be traced in the coins of Aegina and Boeotia.
[Illustration: FIG. 33. Coins of Olbia in the form of tunny fish.]
[Illustration: FIG. 34. Coin of Tenedos with double-headed axe.]
In the same quarter of Hellas we find another instance of a coin type
which may be regarded as evidence that the silver coin which bears it
was the representative of an older barter unit. The island of Tenedos,
lying off the Troad, struck at a very early date silver coins bearing for
device a double-headed axe (the Latin _bipennis_). This “Axe of Tenedos”
(Τενέδιος πέλεκυς) was explained by Aristotle[381] as a reference to a
decree of a king of Tenedos which enacted that all who were convicted
of adultery should be put to death. This explanation is probably a
bit of mere aetiology to explain the existence of an emblem, the true
origin of which had been forgotten. However, it yields one important
result, for it shows that the emblem was not religious. Had that been
its nature, priestly conservatism would have kept an unbroken tradition
of its origin. But from another source some light may be obtained:
Pausanias[382] in the 2nd century A.D. saw at Delphi axes dedicated
according to tradition by Periclytus of Tenedos, and then proceeds to
relate the following tale: Tennes, an old King of Tenedos about the time
of the Trojan War, cut with an axe the ropes with which his father Cycnus
had moored his ship to the shore, when he came to ask pardon of Tennes
for having cast him and his sister in a chest into the sea, in a fit
of anger caused by the false accusation of a stepmother. We may gather
that according to this form of the legend the Janiform head, male and
female, on the obverse of the coins of Tenedos alludes to the brother and
sister. But Pausanias makes no attempt to connect Periclytus in any way
with Tennes except as being a native of Tenedos. This is hardly enough
to account for the dedication of the axes at Delphi. Two explanations
suggest themselves. It was the custom of kings or communities to send
offerings to Delphi of the best products of their land. Thus Croesus sent
vast quantities of his Lydian electrum, and, still more to the point,
the people of Metapontum in South Italy, whose land was famous for its
wheat, after an especially favourable harvest sent to Delphi a wheat-ear
(υέρος) of gold. Were the double axes in like fashion an especial product
of Tenedos? Or was this dedication analogous to that of Pheidon when he
hung up in the temple of the Argive Here the ancient nails and bars? The
first explanation is the more probable, for there was no reason why the
Tenedians should not have dedicated their cast off currency of axes in
some temple at home. I have already mentioned the hoe currency of ancient
China, and the axes used as such in Africa. I shall now show that such
double-axes as those stamped on the coins of Tenedos formed part of the
earliest Greek system of currency. I have already enumerated the various
articles used in barter in the Homeric poems. The prizes offered in the
Funeral games of Patroclus are of course merely the usual objects of
barter and currency, slavewomen, oxen, lebetes, tripods, talents of gold
and the like. “But he (Achilles) set for the archers dark iron, and he
set down ten axes (πελέκεας), and ten half-axes (ἡμιπέλεκκα)[383].” The
axe is undoubtedly of the same kind as that on the coins of Tenedos,
the name (_pelekys_) being the same in each case, and the Homeric one
beyond doubt is double-headed like the Tenedian, since the half-axe
(_hemi-pelekkon_) must obviously mean a single-headed axe[384]. The
double-axes formed the first prize, the ten half-axes the second, for
“Meriones took up all the ten axes, and Teucer bore the ten half-axes
to the hollow ships[385].” These axes and half-axes then seem to go in
groups of ten as units of value, the half-axes representing half the
value of the double-headed. If then the kettle and tripod of Homeric
times are found as symbols on the coins of Crete, why may not the axe on
those of Tenedos represent the local unit of an earlier epoch? and that
such axes were evidently an important article in Tenedos is proved by the
dedication at Delphi.
[Illustration: FIG. 35. Coin of Phanes (earliest known inscribed coin).]
[Illustration: FIG. 36. Archaic coin of Samos.]
[Illustration: FIG. 37. Coin of Cnidus.]
But could we only find a contemporary description of the type on one of
the earliest coins of Asia Minor, the cradle of the art of coining, we
might get our ideas on the nature of the coin types greatly cleared.
Fortunately such an opportunity is afforded to us by an unique coin in
the British Museum, the oldest as yet known which bears an inscription.
It is an oblong electrum coin (Fig. 35), the reverse having the usual
incuse, but on its obverse it bears a stag feeding, and over it runs
(retrograde) in archaic letters I AM THE MARK OF PHANES (Φανος εμι σεμα
= Φάνους εἰμὶ σῆμα). There can be no doubt that the _mark_ of Phanes
is the stag. If there was no inscription it would have been at once
asserted that the stag was the symbol of the goddess Artemis, and who
could deny it? But as it stands it is plain that the stag is nothing
more than the particular badge adopted by the potentate Phanes, when and
where he may have reigned, as a guarantee of the weight of the coin and
perhaps the purity of the metal. The Daric itself needs no inscription
to tell us that its type is not religious. The figure of the Great
King with his spear and bow and quiver can hardly be allegorized even
by an Origen[386]. Emboldened by these instances we may even hold up
our hands against the host of Heaven, and raise doubts as to whether
the foreparts of the lion and bull upon the coins of Lydia represent
the Sun-god and the Moon-goddess. May not the lion simply be the royal
emblem? I have already suggested this explanation for the lion weights of
Assyria. Undoubtedly from the earliest times the king of beasts (as in
_Aesop’s Fables_) was regarded in the East as the true badge of royalty.
“The Lion of the tribe of Judah” is familiar to us all, and it is more
rational to regard the lions which guarded the steps of Solomon’s throne
as emblems of kingship rather than as symbols of the Sun. Is then the
Lion on the coins of Lydia nothing more than the kings badge, just as
the stag is the badge of Phanes? But what about the bull or cow? Shall
I go too far if I regard it as indicating that the coin is the ox-unit?
When the Greeks borrowed the art of coining from Lydia it is easy to
understand that they would likewise borrow the type either in a complete
or modified form, and hence it is that we find the lion or lion’s head
on the coins of Miletus[387], the lion’s scalp on those of Samos (on
which the cow’s head also is found), the lion’s head on the coins of
Cnidus, of Gortyn in Crete, at Rhodes, at Miletus, and at the Phocaean
towns of Velia in Lucania, and Massalia in Gaul, and put by the Samian
exiles on their coins at Zancle. If the Greeks had been barbarians they
would have slavishly copied the lion coins of Lydia, just as the Gauls
copied the lion of Massalia, and at a later time the stater of Philip,
and as the Himyarites of South Arabia, the “owls” of Athens[388], and
as in mediaeval times the Danes of Dublin copied the coins of the Saxon
kings[389]. But the artistic genius of the Greeks could submit to no such
trammels, and the lion type was varied and diversified according to the
fancy of each community. The same holds good of the type of the cow and
cow’s head. The Greek genius gave us these beautiful types such as the
cow suckling her calf (Dyrrachium), the cow with the bird on her back
(Eretria), the cow scratching herself (Eretria), the two calves’ heads
seen on the coins of Mytilene, and the magnificent charging bull on the
coins of Thurii. The cow or bull’s head on the early gold and electrum
coins was the indication of the value. In later times when the connection
between ox and coin was only traditional, the ox was put on coins simply
as symbolical of money.
[Illustration: FIG. 38. Coin of Thurii.]
[Illustration: FIG. 39. Coin of Rhoda in Spain.]
Again Phocaea, one of the very earliest Greek towns to issue coins,
employed a symbol which cannot be termed religious. Her coins bear a
seal (_phoca_) a _type parlant_ referring to the name of the town. Many
examples of the same kind can be quoted, the rose (ῥόδον) on the coins of
Rhodes (Ῥόδος) and also on those of Rhoda in Spain, the bee (_melitta_)
on those of Melitaea, perhaps even the owl (χαλκίς) on coins ascribed to
Chalcis in Euboea. These considerations will serve to show that we may
expect many things on coins besides religious symbols. Thasos was famous
for its wine, and accordingly the wine-cup is a regular adjunct of its
coins, either standing alone, or held in the hands of old Silenus, who
quaffs therefrom a “draught of vintage that hath been cooled a long age
in the deep-delved earth.” All who have read Horace remember the fame of
the wines of Chios, and accordingly the wine-jar is a regular adjunct of
the mintage of that island. Now there is proof that the trade in wine
was of extreme antiquity, if not in the islands just mentioned, at least
in Lemnos, and that that trade was carried on by barter, for we read in
Homer how “many ships stood in from Lemnos bringing wine, which Euneos
the son of Jason had sent forward, whom Hypsipyle had borne to Jason
shepherd of the folk, but separately for the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon
and Menelaus, the son of Jason gave wine to be fetched, a thousand
measures. From thence used the flowing-haired Achaeans to buy their wine,
some with copper, some with glittering iron, some with hides, others with
the kine themselves, others again with slaves[390].” From what we have
seen in an earlier chapter it is clear that a measure of wine would have
a known value in relation to the various articles here enumerated. Thus
in North America where the beaver skin was the unit, a gallon of brandy =
6 skins, a brass kettle = 1 skin, an ounce of vermilion = 1 skin and so
on[391]. In other words, the ordinary currency with which the Lemnians
would purchase wares from other people who had no wine of their own would
be wine, the unit of which was the _measure_ (which elsewhere I have
tried to show was the cup δέπας, Smith’s _Dict. Antiq._ _s.v._ Mensura).
This measure would be the size of the vessel ordinarily employed for
wine, probably much the same as the two-handled vase out of which Silenus
is seen drinking on coins of Thasos.
With the introduction of silver currency nothing is more likely than that
an effort would be made to equate the new silver unit to that which
had formed the principal unit of barter. That the earliest types should
indicate the object (or its value) which the coin replaced is in complete
accord with the statement of Aristotle (quoted on an earlier page) that
“the stamp was put on the coin as an indication of value[392].” As no
numerals appear on the early Greek coins, it is evident that Aristotle
regarded the symbol, whether ox-head, or tunny, or shield, as the index
of the value. If it be said that the putting of a cow, or axe, or tunny
on a coin was simply a picturesque way of indicating a single unit,
we may reply that it is far easier to understand why a certain people
chose a particular symbol, if in their minds the object symbolized was
identified with the value of the silver or gold coin. It is at all
events certain that Aristotle did not regard the type as religious in
origin. But we are not without actual evidence that such an equating of
the silver unit to the barter-unit really took place in Greece. It is
held by the best numismatists that Solon was the first to coin money at
Athens. It is also well known that the highest class in his constitution,
called Pentacosiomedimni (_Five-hundred-measure-men_), were rated at 500
drachms. Thus the Olympic victor received 500 drachms to qualify him to
be a Five-hundred-measure-man[393]. Furthermore Plutarch distinctly tells
us that Solon reckoned a drachm as equivalent to a measure[394] or a
sheep. It is hardly possible to doubt that the first Attic coined silver
drachm was equated to the old barter unit of a measure (either of corn or
oil). The same may be said in reference to the olive sprig which from the
earliest issue is found on the coins of Athens. The sacred olive-trees
(μορίαι) which belonged to the state, and for the care of which special
officials were appointed, and even the very stumps of which, and the
spot on which they had grown, were under a taboo[395], were a source
of considerable revenue to the state in the 6th century B.C. The fact
that they were all supposed to be scions of the sacred olive-tree on the
Acropolis, which was itself supposed to be the gift of Athena, and the
religious care bestowed on them, puts it beyond doubt that the olive
at an early date formed one of the most important products of Attica.
The instances given already of the employment of various kinds of food
as money are sufficient to show that there is nothing far-fetched in
supposing that olives and olive-oil may have been so employed at Athens.
[Illustration: FIG. 40. Tetradrachm of Athens.]
We have already spoken of the silphium or laserpitium plant on the
coins of Cyrene, Barca, Euesperides and Teuchira, and mentioned the
interpretation which makes it the symbol of the hero Aristaeus. It seems
however far more reasonable to treat it on the same principle as the
others just discussed. The silphium formed the most important article
produced in that region, and it is perfectly in accordance with all
analogy that certain quantities of this plant and of the juice extracted
from it should be employed as money. We saw above that at the present
moment tea is so employed on the borders of Tibet and China, and raw
cotton in Darfur. But there is also some positive evidence in favour of
this assumption, for Strabo[396] tells us that a traffic was carried
on at the port of Charax between the Carthaginians and Cyrenaeans, the
former bringing wine wherewith to purchase the silphium of the latter.
There must have been a wine-unit, and also an unit for the silphium,
or otherwise the barter could not have been carried on; and just as in
Gaul[397] a jar of wine purchased a boy fit to serve as a cupbearer,
a certain measure of wine being equated to a slave-boy, so we may
conclude that some such wine-unit was equated to a packet or bale of
silphium, the latter in turn having a certain amount of silver equated
to it, which when coinage was introduced was stamped with the silphium
device. That the silphium was packed in bales of a fixed weight is
proved by a now famous vase-painting which represents the weighing (on
ship board?) of the bales of silphium in the presence of Arcesilas the
king of Cyrene[398]. The figure who points to the scales is marked
_silphiomachos_ (σλιφιομαχος) which is taken to mean _silphium-weigher_
(σλιφιο- being either a mis-spelling of the artist, or the local form of
the word, whilst the latter part is connected with the Egyptian _mach_ =
to _weigh_). Close to the silphium packets is the word ΜΑΕΝ, which has
not been explained, but which may be simply a form of the word _mina_
(_manah_, _meneh_) and denotes that each packet weighed that amount.
[Illustration: FIG. 41. Vase from Cyrene, shewing the weighing of the
Silphium.]
[Illustration: FIG. 42. Coin of Metapontum.]
The ear of corn (wheat) on the coins of Metapontum[399], an old Achaean
colony in Magna Graecia, is explained by modern writers as a symbol of
Demeter: but the story told by Strabo of how the early settlers dedicated
a golden ear at Delphi because they had amassed such great wealth from
agriculture, indicates a far simpler solution, that the chief product and
chief article of barter of Metapontum was naturally placed on her coins.
As the tunny adorns the coins of Cyzicus, so we find the cuttle-fish
on the coins of Croton and Eretria. As this creature was devoured with
great gusto by the ancients, as it is at the present day at Naples and in
Palestine, there is no necessity to regard it as a symbol of Poseidon,
or of treating it in any way different from the tunny.
[Illustration: FIG. 43. Coin of Croton with cuttle fish.]
[Illustration: FIG. 44. ‘Tortoise’ of Aegina.]
I now come to two most important types, the Tortoise of Aegina, and the
Shield of Boeotia. I have already mentioned the symbolic interpretation
given by E. Curtius to the former. That various natural productions,
such as gourds, cocoa-nuts, joints of bamboo, served and still serve
as vessels and measures of capacity in various countries we have seen
already, and we likewise found that in the ancient Chinese monetary
system of shells the shell of the tortoise stood at the top as the unit
of highest value, and that down to a comparatively late epoch it was
still highly prized in Cochin China for making bowls of great beauty.
In both Greek and Latin there is abundant evidence to show that the
functions which in a later time were performed by pottery were discharged
by natural shells at an earlier period. Thus, if we do not find any
actual vessel called a _chelône_ (tortoise) in use amongst the Greeks,
we at least find one called a Sea-urchin (Echinus, ἐχῖνος): for not only
was the shell of this creature used as a vessel for containing medicines
and the like, but vessels of artificial construction of the same shape
and name were actually employed; thus the casket in which were deposited
and sealed up the documents produced at the preliminary hearing of an
Athenian lawsuit was called an _Echinus_. There was likewise a small
vessel called _conché_ (κόγχη), after the shell-fish of that name, the
Latin _concha_, whilst a cognate name, _conchylion_, was applied to the
case placed over the seals of wills.
Nay, _ostrakon_, the common word for a potsherd, familiar to us from its
famous derivative Ostracism, or _Voting by Potsherds_, so called because
the people inscribed their votes on pieces of pottery, meant originally
nothing more than an oyster shell. In Latin _testa_, the ordinary
name for an earthenware vessel, means nothing more than the covering
of a shell-fish, and from this word _testudo_, the Latin name for the
tortoise, is simply a derivative. Such instances could be multiplied if
it were necessary, but those mentioned are sufficient to show the high
probability of so valuable a shell as that of the tortoise having been
employed. Owing to its beauty it would probably hold its place in Greece
as the choicest kind of vessel for centuries after the art of pottery
was known, just as it did in Cochin China. It would be only when the art
of glazing and embellishing pottery had made some progress that vessels
of baked clay could compete with the lustrous, many-hued shell. Nor are
we without some direct evidence for the use of tortoise shell among the
Greeks. The famous story of the invention of the lyre by the god Hermes
is not without significance. According to the Hymn to Hermes, “the
precocious divinity on the very day of his birth sallied forth and found
a tortoise feeding on the luxuriant grass in front of the palace, as it
moved with straddling gait.” His eye was caught by the dappled shell
(αἰόλον ὄστρακον), and carrying home his spoil, he made of it a lyre.
The legend which thus explains why the sounding-board of the lyre is so
called points back to a time when the best form of bowl or hollow vessel
for making a sounding board for a musical instrument was that afforded by
the shell which was probably one of the common articles of everyday life.
But, in addition to all this indirect evidence, we are able to point to
actual Greek vessels made of earthenware, fashioned in the shape of a
tortoise. In the second Vase Room of the British Museum (case 48 and 49)
there are two terra cotta vases from the island of Melos, wrought in the
shape of this creature, and with these before us it is hardly possible
to regard as other than wooden bowls carved in the shape of the same
animal _the wooden tortoises_ with which the Thessalian women pounded to
death Lais the famous courtezan, in the temple of Aphrodite, after she
had taken up her residence in their country[400]. We can parallel this
development of artificial vessels of wood and earthenware from the use
of the actual shell in modern times. Lady Brassey saw in the Museum at
Honolulu, amongst the ancient native weapons and swords, “tortoise-shell
cups and spoons, calabashes and bowls[401].” Now in the Cambridge
Ethnological Museum there is a very fine wooden bowl from the South
Seas, carved in the shape of a tortoise, and also earthenware vessels in
the shape of tortoises from Fiji, which shows that the islanders of the
Pacific not only used the real shells for vessels, but likewise imitated
them in wood[402].
On an earlier page I quoted the statement of Ephorus that the Aeginetans
took to commerce on account of the barrenness of their island. But they
must have had something to give in exchange to other people before they
could have developed a carrying trade, and as the island had been the
resort of merchants from very early days, it must have had something to
attract strangers as well as its position. Let us take the case of an
island with barren soil in modern days, and see what it has to export.
Thus Dhalac Island in the Red Sea is frequented by the Banyan merchants
for the sake of its pearls, and at Massowah tortoise-shell forms an
important article of commerce. Just as the Banyans come to Dhalac[403],
so the Phoenicians probably came to Aegina, searching for the murex
(purple fish) and tortoise. No doubt tortoise-shell must have been the
chief article of export from Tortoise Island, described by Strabo (773),
as situated in the Arabian Gulf (Red Sea).
The foregoing considerations make it not at all improbable that the
tortoise on the coins of Aegina simply indicates that the old monetary
unit of that island was the shell of the sea-tortoise (ἡ θαλαττία
χελώνη), which was considerably larger, and therefore more valuable for
making bowls, than that of the land or “mountain” tortoise (ἡ ὀρεινὴ
χελώνη). There was a well-known headland on the Coast of Peloponnesus
called “Tortoise Head” (Chelonates), and this creature must have been
a peculiar feature of the shores of Aegina, or it would not have been
chosen as the type for her coins, whether it be a religious symbol or
not. At all events we know from the story of Sciron the robber, slain
by Theseus, that the sea-tortoise was a familiar feature on the shores
of the Saronic Gulf, as the hapless travellers who were kicked over
the rocks by the caitiff were devoured by a large sea-tortoise which
frequented the strand below. This creature’s picture is handed down on
a well-known vase-painting which commemorates the exploits of Theseus.
Finally, it may well be supposed that had not its connection with the
invention of the lyre attracted to that instrument the name of “Tortoise”
both in Greek and Latin, we should have found the name employed for some
sort of vessel, as is the case with the Echinus.
[Illustration: FIG. 45. Coin of Boeotia with shield.]
Coming now to Central Greece, we find on the coins of all the Boeotian
towns (with the exception of Orchomenus in her earliest issues) the
well-known device of the Boeotian shield. This has been confidently
pronounced to be a sacred emblem, symbolic of a common worship,
conjectured to be that of Athena Itonia, whose temple near Coronea was
the meeting-place of the Boeotians[404], whilst at Coronea golden
shields were preserved in the Acropolis[405]. This may be so, but it is
equally possible that the shield represented a common monetary unit in
ancient times. The shield of early Hellas was a simple ox-hide buckler,
described in Homeric language simply as an _ox-hide_[406]. Amongst
barbarous peoples, as we saw above, weapons form one of the regular
commodities commonly employed as currency; the Achaeans bought wine with
hides as well as with oxen from the ships that came from Lemnos, and
as there can be no doubt that the hide was a regular sub-multiple of
the cow, it is very probable that the ox-hide shield stood in a similar
relation to the cow, the chief or most universal unit; and as we find
axes and half-axes among the prizes offered by Achilles as well as
kettles and caldrons, so we learn from a famous passage[407] that shields
were amongst the most usual articles offered as prizes and therefore
were regular units of currency: “For they strove neither for an ox to be
sacrificed nor yet for an ox-hide shield which are wont to be the prizes
for the feet of men, but they strove for the life of the horse-taming
Hector.”
[Illustration: FIG. 46. Coin of Lycia.]
When silver money was struck, it was natural that the barter-unit which
came nearest in value to the silver didrachm would be equated to it, and
the piece of silver would accordingly be termed _Shield_ or _Tortoise_,
just as the silver equivalent for the old copper rod was called the Obol,
and in due course the corresponding device would be impressed on the
silver coinage. The same explanation may probably be applied in other
cases, such as that of the boar on the coins of Lycia. On the coins of
the Gaulish tribe Sequani who made the best bacon and hams which came
into the Roman market, the swine is found[408]. Doubtless this animal was
their chief source of wealth, and formed a unit of barter, but we have
not space for any more examples.
It is worth noting that it is quite possible that the men who issued
the earliest coins of Boeotia and Aegina were influenced in the shape
they gave these coins by the actual objects which they were replacing.
The coins of Aegina with their high round upper side and flat under
side suggest the general outline of a tortoise. As the people of
Olbia, like the Chinese, Burmese and Ceylonese, had to make coins in
the shape of a fish, so the Aeginetans acting under a like instinct
may have wished to give a conventional representation of the tortoise.
The earliest coins have the incuse on the reverse divided into _eight_
triangular compartments. Are these the _eight_ plates which form
invariably the _plastron_ or under surface of all the tortoise family?
Later on the Aeginetan incuse is always in five compartments, but in
the two well-known triangular depressions we perhaps find an echo of
the tortoise-_plastron_[409]. The earliest coins seem to represent a
sea-tortoise, for the feet are real _flippers_ quite distinct in shape
from the legs shown on the later coins. As the plates of the _carapace_
(upper surface) are not fully represented in the archaic coins, this
omission may not be merely due to rudeness of work, but rather because in
the case of the sea-tortoise the _thirteen_ plates of the _carapace_ are
not so prominent as in the land-tortoise. On the later coins where the
feet are those of the land-tortoise the coins accurately represent the
_thirteen_ plates.
It has to be borne in mind that the shape of the incuse depressions on
the reverse of coins is very constant. Thus on the Aeginetan coins we
never find what is known as the mill-sail incuse which is the peculiar
feature of the reverse of the early Boeotian coins, nor on the other
hand do we even find the eight-fold incuse on the coins of Boeotia. Some
influences must have determined the choice of form, such as I have just
suggested in the case of Aegina. Did the first Boeotian Mintmaster shape
his coins with the real buckler in his mind’s eye? On the reverse of
these coins we find the incuse forming a rude X, which is bounded by a
circle of dots, whilst in the centre of the incuse is the initial letter
of the name of the issuing town, such as 𐌈 for Thebes, 𐌇 for Haliartus.
Does the X-shaped incuse represent conventionally the cross-bars of the
frame of the shield seen at the back, the circle dots indicating the
outline? The letters on these coins are the earliest inscriptions on the
coins of Greece Proper. We can easily see how they came to be placed on
the coins, as soon as we remember that there was a Λ on the Lacedaemonian
shields, a Σ on the Sicyonian, a Μ on the Messenian[410]. Why do not
we find the initial in the coins placed on the front of the shield,
where it must have stood on the real buckler? If as is held by the best
authorities the coins of Boeotia formed a federal currency, we see a
reason for the practice. As the silver shield replaced the real buckler,
the old unit which had been universally employed through Boeotia, no
town would have been permitted to put its initial on the shield engraved
on the obverse. No doubt the old actual shield of currency was plain,
and each purchaser painted the initial of his own country upon it. The
Mintmasters accordingly of each town regarding the whole coin as a shield
placed the letter of these several states on the reverse. Baumeister
(_Denkmäler_, _s.v._ Wappen) gives pictures of the back of two shields.
The frame of the shield consists of a circular rod, with two cross bars.
The idea of making the incuse represent the other side of the object
given in relief on the obverse seems to be just the stage between a
complete representation of the object as in the tunny of Olbia, and that
evinced by the early coins of Magna Graecia, on which the reverse gives
in the incuse exactly the same form as that in relief on the obverse.
At first sight the result of this great variety of local units apparently
places impassable barriers to trade, but a knowledge of the actual facts
of barbarous communities and their monetary systems as they exist in our
time easily dispels this impression. I quoted above (p. 46) the words of
Mohammed Ibn-Omar, wherein he points out that every separate district
in the Soudan has its own lower unit or units, whilst everywhere alike
the ox and the slave are the higher units; these local units are equated
one to the other, so that there is no difficulty in trading. The same
holds true of ancient Greece; the tortoise-shell of Aegina may have been
reckoned equal to a certain amount of Attic olive oil or to a jar of
wine of certain size, which formed the unit of commerce at Thasos and
Chios, whilst in its turn a jar of wine was reckoned as equivalent to
a package of silphion from Cyrene, a kettle from Crete, or an axe, or
certain number of axes, or half-axes from Tenedos, or an ox-hide shield
from Boeotia. All were sub-multiples of the ox, and had a fixed value
in gold, and later in silver, as weighed against grains of corn. This
supposition is in complete accord with the system revealed to us in the
Homeric Poems, and is confirmed by the evidence drawn from barbarous
races in modern times. It is likewise to be borne in mind that the
tendency to place religious and mythological types on Greek coins was
one especially developed in the later but not in the earliest period of
coinage. No doubt aesthetic considerations played a large part in the
adoption of such types, which came especially into prominence when Greek
art was at its height. On the early coins one simple type is the rule,
whilst at a later stage, besides the old national type, many adjuncts and
symbols are added. Contrast the early coins of Athens with the later.
The archaic issues have an olive spray and an owl, the later have not
merely the owl, but an amphora, and a symbol in the field alluding to the
legend of Triptolemus. Again, at Argos the early coins have simply the
wolf or half-wolf or wolf’s head, with a large A on the reverse, but in
the later times the A is accompanied by symbols, such as a crescent and
letters. The hare appears on the coins of Rhegium and Messana, having
been chosen as a type, according to Aristotle, by the tyrant Anaxilas in
commemoration of the introduction of that animal by him into Sicily; but
it also appears on a rare coin of Messana, not as a main type, but as
caressed by Pan. This does not prove that the hare was a symbol of Pan,
but that for artistic purposes the rustic god in the act of caressing
the hare is chosen instead of the more commonplace type of the hare all
alone. So at Thasos the coins with old Silenus quaffing from a wine-cup
do not signify that Silenus was a principal object of worship, but he
is simply added for picturesque effect. We can at all events draw one
conclusion from the historical origin assigned to both this type and
that of the axe of Tenedos, that in the middle of the 4th cent. B.C. the
Greeks did not see any religious significance in them, any more than
they did in the representation of the mule-car which had won at Olympia,
placed on his coins by Anaxilas. If, as has been so emphatically laid
down by the leading modern Greek numismatists, the types on Greek coins
are so essentially religious in origin, it is extremely difficult to
explain the extraordinary rapidity with which all such notions as regards
their origin must have vanished from the minds of the most learned of
the Greeks, at so early a date as the 4th cent. B.C. (hardly more than
two centuries after the introduction of the art of coining). The Greeks
regarded those types from much the same point of view as we regard St
George and the Dragon on sovereigns and crowns, or the Lady Godiva
riding _in puris naturalibus_ on the Coventry tokens. The effort to
turn agonistic into religious types by contending that, as the Olympic
festival was of religious origin, so the successful chariot which had
won at Olympia was a sacred symbol, can only be regarded as an ingenious
effort to attach by even the most slender thread a simple commemorative
type to a religious origin.
[Illustration: FIG. 47. Coin of Messana.]