The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards

Appendix C 394

Index 407

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FIG. PAGE

1. Cowrie Shell 13

2. Wampum 14

3. Al-li-ko-chik 15

4. Burmese silver shell money 22

5. Chinese hoe money 23

6. Fish-hook money 28

7. Siamese silver bullet money 29

8. Silvered brass bars 30

9. Rings found in the tombs of Mycenae 37

10. Gold rings found in Ireland 38

11. West African axe money 40

12. Old Calabar copper-wire formerly used as money 41

13. Irish bronze fibulae and West African manillas 42

14. Ancient British Coins 93

15. Barbarous imitation of Drachm of Massalia 111

16. Gold Stater of Philip of Macedon 125

17. Persian Daric 126

18. Gold Stater of Diodotus of Bactria 126

19. Egyptian wall painting showing the weighing of gold rings 128

20. Regenbogenschüssel 140

21. Chinese knife money 157

22. Egyptian Five-Kat weight 240

23. Lion weight 245

24. Assyrian Duck weight 245

25. Weights in the form of Sheep 271

26. Coin of Salamis in Cyprus 272

27. Bull’s-head Five-shekel Weight 283

28. Lydian Electrum Coin 295

29. Coin of Croesus 298

30. Coin of Eretria 306

31. Coin of Cyrene with Silphium plant 313

32. Coin of Cyzicus with tunny fish 316

33. Coins of Olbia in the form of tunny fish 317

34. Coin of Tenedos with double-headed axe 318

35. Coin of Phanes, earliest known inscribed coin 320

36. Archaic Coin of Samos 321

37. Coin of Cnidus 321

38. Coin of Thurii 322

39. Coin of Rhoda in Spain 322

40. Tetradrachm of Athens 325

41. Vase from Cyrene, showing the weighing of the Silphium 326

42. Coin of Metapontum 327

43. Coin of Croton 328

44. Tortoise of Aegina 328

45. Coin of Boeotia with Shield 331

46. Coin of Lycia 332

47. Coin of Messana 336

48. Aes Rude 355

49. Bronze Decussis, with figure of Cow 356

50. As (Aes grave) 361

51. As (semi-uncial) 362

52. As, 3rd Cent. A.D. (Third Brass) 362

53. Didrachm of Corinth 362

54. Sesterce of First Roman Silver coinage 363

55. Didrachm of Tarentum 364

56. Romano-Campanian coin 377

57. Victoriatus 377

58. Sextans (aes grave) 379

59. Gold Solidus of Julian the Apostate 384

60. Tremissis of Leo I. 385

CHAPTER I.. The Ox and the Talent in Homer.

THE OX AND THE TALENT IN HOMER.

ἮΜΟϹ Δ’ ΟΎΤ’ ἌΡ ΠΩ ἨῺϹ, ἜΤΙ Δ’ ἈΜΦΙΛΎΚΗ ΝΎΞ.

The object of this essay is to enquire into the origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards. Since August Boeckh in his metrological enquiries put forth the idea that the weight standards of antiquity had been obtained scientifically, all subsequent writers with scarcely an exception have followed in the same path. This theory was undoubtedly suggested by the fact that the French Republic had established a new scientific metric system. Yet reflection might have shown scholars that even the French system was not a wholly independent outcome of science, for beyond doubt the mètre and litre and hectare were only varieties of older measures of length, capacity and surface, then for the first time scientifically adjusted. The discovery of certain weights of bronze and stone in the ruins of Nineveh, Khorsabad and Babylon lent force to the theory of Boeckh; the imaginations of scholars were excited by the marvellous remains of Chaldaean and Assyrian civilization which had just been brought to light by Sir A. H. Layard, and they hastened to conclude that in the mathematical science of Mesopotamia the source of all weight-standards was to be found. Egypt however put in her claim to priority, and standards based on the measurements of the Great Pyramid, or on the weight of a given quantity of Nile-water, have entered the lists against the astrologers of Chaldaea. This battle still rages hotly, Assyriologists and Egyptologists hurling at each other statements drawn from tablets and papyri, as regards the translation of which no two of these savants are agreed. In spite of this all modern works on metrology start with the systems of Babylon and Egypt and from these they derive the systems of Greece and Italy. It would at least be more scientific to move backwards from the known to the unknown, but beguiled by the glamour of a “scientific” metrological system, scholars have turned their backs upon scientific method. Whilst our knowledge of the Assyrian and Egyptian weight systems is most imperfect, being derived from literary monuments, or from inscriptions on weights not half understood, the systems of Greece and Rome are known to us not simply from the vast literatures written in languages thoroughly intelligible, but likewise from the evidence of immense numbers of coins struck in gold and silver, by the weights of which we are enabled to check off and substantiate the literary sources.

As Greece coined money several centuries before Italy, and as its literature reaches much further back than that of Rome, it is plain that any sound enquiry into the origin of weight standards must commence with Greece. We shall therefore without further preface proceed to investigate the evidence afforded to us by the oldest Greek records.

The Homeric Talent.

In the Homeric Poems, which cannot be dated later than the eighth century B.C., there is as yet no trace of coined money. We find nevertheless in those Poems two units of value; the one is the cow (or ox), or the value of a cow, the other is the Talent (τάλαντον). The former is the one which has prevailed, and does still prevail, in barbaric communities, such as the Zulus of South Africa, where the sole or principal wealth consists in herds and flocks. For several reasons we may assign to it priority in age as compared with the Talent. In the first place it represents the most primitive form of exchange, the barter of one article of value for another, before the employment of the precious metals as a medium of currency; consequently the estimation of values by the cow is older than that by means of a Talent or “weight” of gold, or silver or copper. Again, in Homer, all values are expressed in so many oxen, as “golden arms for brazen, those worth one hundred beeves, for those worth nine beeves” (Il. VI. 236).

The Talent on the other hand is only mentioned in Homer in relation to gold (for we never find any mention of a Talent of silver) and we never find the value of any other article expressed in Talents. But the names of monetary units hold their ground long after they themselves have ceased to be in actual use as we observe in such common expressions as “bet a guinea,” or worth a “groat,” although these coins themselves are no longer in circulation, and so the French sou has survived for a century in popular parlance, and the Thaler has lived into the new German monetary system. Accordingly we may infer that the method of expressing the value of commodities in kine, which we find side by side with the Talent, is the elder of the twain.

Was there any immediate connection between the two systems or were they as Hultsch (Metrologie², p. 165) maintains entirely independent? It is difficult to conceive any people, however primitive, employing two standards at the same time which are completely independent of each other. For instance when we find in the Iliad that in a list of three prizes appointed for the foot-race, the second is a cow, the third is a half-talent of gold, it is impossible to believe that Achilles or rather the poet had not some clear idea concerning the relative value of an ox and a talent. Now it is noteworthy that, as already remarked, nowhere in the Poems is the value of any commodity expressed in Talents; yet who can doubt that Talents of gold passed freely as media of exchange? A simple solution of this difficulty would be that the Talent of gold represented the older ox-unit. This would account for the fact that all values are expressed in oxen, and not in Talents, the older name prevailing in a fashion resembling the usage of pecunia in Latin.

A complete parallel for such a practice can be still found at the present moment among some of the Samoyede tribes of Siberia. Thus we read in the account of a recent traveller: “He finally came to the conclusion that for the consideration of five hundred reindeer, he would undertake the contract. This I regarded as a very facetious sally on his part. The reindeer however I found was the recognised unit of value, as amongst some tribes of the Ostiaks the Siberian squirrel. For this purpose the reindeer is generally considered to be worth five roubles.” Again forty years ago Haxthausen tells us that the Ossetes, a Caucasian tribe dwelling not very far from Tiflis, although long accustomed to stamped money, especially on the border of Georgia, kept their accounts in cows, five roubles being reckoned to the cow. Here then in Siberia and in the Caucasus, in spite of a long experience not merely of a metallic unit, but of actual coined money, we still find values estimated in reindeer, and in cows, the older units, just as in Homer they are stated in oxen.

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