The origin of metallic currency and weight standards

Front matter

I

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND*

Part II. Chapter X

PAGE

CHAPTER XI.

The Lydian and Persian Systems 293

CHAPTER XII.

The Greek, Sicilian, Italian and Roman Systems. Conclusion . . 304

Appendix A 389

Appendix B 391

Index 407

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Fia

PAGE

Cowrie Shell . .

Al-li-ko-cliik ...

Bunnese silver shell money . ....

Chinese hoe money

Fish-hook money

Siamese silver bullet money . . ...

Silvered brass bars

Eings found in the tombs of Mycenae ....

Gold rings found in Ireland

West African axe money

Old Calabar copper-wire formerly used as money

Irish bronze fibulae and West African manillas

Ancient British Coins

Barbarous imitation of Drachm of Massaha

Gold Stater of Philip of Macedon . ...

Persian Daric

Gold Stater of Diodotus of Bactria

Egyptian wall painting showing the weighing of gold rings

Eegenbogenschiissel ....

Chinese knife money . .

Egyptian Five-Kat weight ... ...

Lion weight

Assyrian Duck weight

Weights in the form of Sheep

Coin of Salamis in Cyprus .

Bull's-head Five-shekel Weight

Lydian Electrum Coin

Coin of Croesus .

Coin of Eretria .

Coin of Cyrene with Silphium plant .

Coin of Cyzicus with tunny fish ...

Coins of Olbia in the form of tui my fish ....

XII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PIG. PAGE

34. Coin of Tenedos with double-headed axe 318

35. Coin of Phanes, earUest known inscribed coin .... 320

36. Archaic Coin of Samos 321

37. CoinofCnidus 321

38. CoinofThurii 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. CoinofCroton 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 1 385

CHAPTER I. The Ox and the Talent in Homer

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 metre 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 Nilewater, have entered the lists against the astrologers of Chaldaea. This battle still rages hotly, Assyriologists and Egyptologists

2 THE OX AND THE TALENT IN HOMEE.

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 (rdXavrov). 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'" {II. 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 (Metrologie^, 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 oi pecunia in Latin.

A complete parallel for such a practice can be still found at the present moment among some of the Samoyede tribes

1—2 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.

We shall likewise find that when the ancient Irish borrowed a ready made silver unit (the undo) from the Romans, they had to equate this unit to their old barter-unit the cow, just as v^n modern times the wild tribes of Annam when borrowing the bar of silver from their more civilized neighbours have had to equate it to their native standard, the buffalo ; facts in close accord with the well known derivation of Latin pecunia, money from peous, English fee from feoh, which still meant cattle, as does the German Vieh, and rupee (according to some) from Sanskrit rupa, also meaning cattle.

Let us now see if we have any data to support this hypothesis. That most trustworthy writer, Julius Pollux, says in his Onomasticon (ix. 60): "Now in old times the Athenians had this {i.e. the didrachm) as a coin and it was called an ox, because it had an ox stamped on it, but they think that Homer also was acquainted with it when he spoke of (arms) 'worth an hundred kine for those worth nine'.' Moreover in

1 Victor A. L. Morier, Murray's Magazine, August, 1889, p. 181.

2 Tram-Caucasia, p. 410 (Engl, trans. 1854).

" Pollux, IX. 73, rb iraXaibv bk tout' ^x 'A8r)vaioi.i vi/utr/ia Kal iKoXeiTO Sous 6'n ^ouv etx^'' ivreTviria^vov. elShai 5' a.i>ro Kal "O^rjpov vojil^ovtjw dirbpra e/carbix^oC ivvea^olwv.

the laws of Draco there is the expression, to pay back the price of twenty kine : and at the time when the Delians hold their sacred festival, they say that the herald makes proclamation whenever a gift is given by any one, that so many oxen will be given by him, and that for each ox two Attic drachms are offered : whence some are of opinion that the ox is a coin peculiar to the Delians, but not to the Athenians; and that from this likewise has been started the proverb, an ox stands on his tongue, in case any man holds his tongue for money \"

According to Pollux then the Attic didrachm, or at least a coin employed by the Athenians (perhaps certain coins of Euboea), was called an 'ox.' Plutarch (Theseus, c. 25) goes further and asserts that Theseus struck money stamped with the figure of an ox (eKo^Jre Se vofjuiafMa ^ovv eyx^apd^w;), and the Scholiast on the Birds of Aristophanes (1106) quotes from Philochorus, an Athenian antiquary of the third century B.C.'', the same account of the Attic didrachms being marked with an ox.

On the other hand the highest authorities on numismatics assert that the Athenians never struck any such coins. Yet after making due allowance for the additions made by Plutarch to the more crude statement of Pollux and Philochorus, it is hard to conceive that such a belief could have arisen without some foundation, and a probable solution may be found in the fact that certain uninscribed coins, bearing the type of an ox-head, which in recent years have been assigned to Euboea, are for the most part found in Attica. We know that Eretria, and Chalcis, the great cities of Euboea, were amongst the earliest places in Greece to strike money, and it is quite possible, nay probable, that these Euboic coins formed (along with the Aeginetan didrachms) the currency in use at Athens before

1 Cf. Aeseh. Agam. 36 ; Theognis 815. Cp. rav Aper&v Kal ran ffoiptav vikcLvti XeXuKoi, a proverb (given by Pollux ix. 74) alluding to the Tortoise coins of Aegina; and Menander (Al, 1), iraxis yap 5s heir' iirl <rT6)j,a.

the time of Solon (b.c. 596). Why the name ox was especially recollected in after years as that of the earliest currency, we can readily understand; the name derived from the old unit of barter would at once attach itself to the coin which bore the image of the ox, and in the course of time two traditions, one that the ancient unit was the ox, the other that the first coins current at Athens bore the symbol of an ox, would merge into one, and finally patriotic feeling would ascribe the first coinage to Theseus, who was regarded as the father of so many Athenian institutions.

That, at all events, the name might be applied to a certain sum, or coin, is rendered highly probable by the fact that Draco, with true legal conservatism, retained in his code the primitive method of expressing values in oxen. Now it is evident that the term, 'price of twenty oxen' (elKocrd^oiov), must have been capable of being translated into the ordinary metallic currency, whether that consisted of bullion in ingots or coined money. The "cow" therefore must have had a recognized traditional and conventional value as a monetary unit, and this is completely demonstrated by the practice at Delos. Religious ritual is even more conservative than legal formula, so we need not be surprised to find the ancient unit, the ox, still retained in that great centre of Hellenic worship. The value likewise is expressed in the more modern currency. But we are not yet certain whether the two Attic drachms, which are the equivalent of the ox, are silver or gold. Now Herodotus (vi. 97) tells us that Datis, the Persian general (B.C. 490), offered at Delos three hundred talents of frankincense. Hultsch (Metrol. p. 129) has made it clear that the talent here indicated must be the gold Daric, that is the light Babylonian shekel. For if they were either Babylonian or Attic talents, the amount would be incredible. Frankincense was of enormous value in antiquity; wherefore Hultsch is probably right in assuming that in the opinion of the Persian who made the offering, the three hundred "weights" of frankincense, each of which weighed a Daric, were equal in value likewise to 300 Darics.

We shall see in a moment that there was a distinct tradition that the Daric was a Talent, and that the Homeric one. Now the. gold Daric = two Attic gold drachms ; but as the cow at Delos also = two Attic drachms, and the offering of frankincense at Delos is made in Talent, each of which is equivalent to two gold Attic drachms, there is a strong presumption that this Talent is the equivalent of the ox, and that the Attic drachms mentioned by Pollux are gold. Besides, it is absurd to suppose that at any time two silver drachms could have represented the value of an ox. Even at Athens, in a time of extreme scarcity of coin, Solon, when commuting penalties in cattle for money in reference to certain ancient ordinances, put the value of the ox at five silver drachms \- Moreover it is not at all likely that the substitiition of silver coin, for gold of equal weight would have been permitted by the temple authorities. But we get some more positive evidence of great interest from the fragment of an anonymous Alexandrine writer on Metrology, who says", "the talent in Homer was equal in amount to the later Daric. Accordingly the gold talent weighs two Attic drachms.'' Here we can have no doubt that Attic drachms mean gold drachms. Are we wrong then in supposing that at Delos still survived the same dual system which we found in Homer, the Ox and the Talent ?" But that at Delos both were of equal value we can have little doubt. For the ox = 2 Attic drachms = 1 Daric = 1 Talent = (130 grains Troy). Who can doubt that at Delos was preserved an unbroken tradition from the earliest days of Hellenic settlements in the Aegean ? Modern discovery comes likewise to our support, and we shall find that it is probable that the gold rings found by Dr Schliemann in the tombs at Mycenae were made on a standard of about 135 grs.

This identification of the ox and the Homeric Talent is of importance : for it gives a simple and natural origin for the earliest Greek metallic unit of which we read. It likewise incidentally explains the proverb, ^ov<; eirl yXwa-a-r) which dates

' Plutarch, Solon, c. 15.

from a time long before money was yet coined, or even the precious metals were in any form whatever employed for currency ; it possibly explains why the ox was such a favourite type on coins, without having to call to our aid recondite mythological allusions; and it clears up once for all some interesting points in Homer. In the passage of the Iliad (xxill. 750 sq.) already referred to the ox is second prize, whilst an half-talent of gold is the third. The relation between them is now plain ; the ox = 1 talent, and the half-talent = a half-ox. The vexed question of the Trial Scene' can now be put beyond doubt. In the Journal of Philology (Vol. x. p. 30) the present writer argued that the two talents represented a sum too small to form the blood-price {iroivr]) of a murdered man, and consequently must represent the sacramentum (or payment made to the Court for its time and trouble, as in the Roman Legis actio sacramenti described by Gains, Bk. iv. 16), as proposed by that most distinguished scholar and jurist, the late Sir H. S. Maine^. We know that the two talents are equal to two oxen, but in the Iliad, XXIII. 705, the second prize for the wrestlers was a slave woman " whom they valued at four oxen'." Now if an ordinary female slave was worth four oxen (= four talents) it is impossible that two talents (= two oxen) could have formed the bloodgelt or eric of a freeman. Probably four oxen was not far from the price of an ordinary female slave. Of course women of superior personal charms would fetch more, for instance, Euryclea,

"Whom once on a time Laertes had bought with his possessions, When she was still in youthful prime, and he gave the price of twenty kine*." ^

The poet evidently refers to this as an exceptional piece of extravagance on the part of Laertes. We can likewise now 1 Iliad, xvm. 507, 8,

Ty Sofiev, 8s /xerct rottrt dUriP idivTara etwa. See Appendix A for a linguistic proof that the two talents were for the Judge. " Ancient Law, p. 375. 3 &.v5pi 5^ viKTiBivTi •yvvaiK' h fiiffuov ^dTjKev,

THE OX AND THE TALENT IN HOMEE. 9

get a common measure for the ten talents of gold and the seven slave women who formed part of the requital gifts proffered by Agamemnon to Achilles', and can form some- notion of the comparative value of the prizes for the chariot race and other contests'.

The wider question of Weight-standards in general.

But results far more important than merely the determination of the value of Homeric commodities may be obtained as regards the weight-standards of Europe and their congeners in Asia. For by taking as our primitive unit the cow or ox, we may be able to give a much more simple account of the genesis of those standards than that which hitherto has been the received one.

We have .found the Homeric ox and talent identical with the didractonor statef . oTTihe Euboic- Attic standard. All the silver coinage of Greece proper was struck either on this standard or the Aeginetic, and what is still more important for us it was on the Euboic-Attic standard alone that gold was estimated in every part of Greece. Practically the stater of this system was of the same weight as the famous Persian daric which in historical times formed the chief coinunit of all Asia from India to the Aegean shores-

' Iliad, IX. 12 seqq.

" II. XXIII. 262 seqq.

CHAPTER II. Primitive Systems of Cubrency

Abistotle.

Let us here propound the doctrine which seeks to obtain an explanation of the origin for weight-standards more in accordance with the facts of history and the process of development as exemplified both in ancient and modern times.

In early communities^ all commodities alike are exchanged by bartering the one against the other. The man who possesses sheep exchanges them for oxen with the man who possesses oxen, the owner of corn exchanges his commodity for some implement or ornament of metal with the owner pf the latter. The metals are only regarded as merchandise, not yet being in any degree set apart to serve as a- medium of exchange in the terms of which all other commodities are valued. This is the practice which prevails in so civilized a country as China down to our own days. The only coinage which the Chinese possess is copper cash. According to M. le Comte Rochechouart {Journal des jSccmomistes, Vol. xv. p. 103) both gold and silver are treated simply as merchandise, and there is not even a recognized stamp or government guarantee of the fineness of the metal. The traveller must caiTy these metals with him, as a sufficient quantity of strings

1 Of course amongst the lowest races of savages such as the aborigines of Australia, even barter is almost unknown. Each man makes his own stone implements from the greenstone which is everywhere in abundance, his own clubs and boomerangs, whilst Nature supplies all his other wants.

PRIMITIVE SYSTEMS OF CUHRENCY. 11

of cash would require a waggon for their conveyance. Yet in exchanging silver or gold he is sure to suffer loss both from the falsity of balances and of weights and the uncertain fineness of the metal.

When in a certain community one particular kind of commodity is of general use and generally available, this comes to form the unit in terms of which all values are expressed. The nature of this barter-unit will depend upon the nature of the climate and geographical position, and likewise upon the stage of culture to which the people have attained. In the hunting stage, all the property of each individual consists in his weapons and implements of war and the chase, and the skins of wild beasts which form his clothing, and sometimes the cover of his hut or wigwam. At a later stage, when he has succeeded in taming the ox, the sheep, or the goat, or the horse, he is the owner of property in domestic animals, whose flesh and milk sustain him and his family, and whose skins and wool provide his clothing.

By this time too he has found out that it is better to make the captive whom he has taken in war into a hewer of wood and drawer of water than merely to obtain some transient pleasure from eating him after putting him to death by torture, or by wearing his skull or scalp as personal decorations.

This is now the pastoral or nomad stage.

Next comes the more settled form of life, when the cultivation of land and the production of the various kinds of cereals renders a permanent dwelling-place more or less necessary.

Property now consists not merely in slaves and domestic animals, but likewise in houses of improved construction, and large stores of grain. Man now possesses certain of the metals, gold and copper being the first to be known. How does he appraise these metals when he exchanges them with his neighbour ? We shall find that he estimates them in terms of cattle, and that he at first barters them all by measures based on the parts of the human body, a method which continues to be employed for copper and iron long after the art of

12 PRIMITIVE SYSTEMS OP CURKENCY.

weighing has been invented; next he estimates his gold by certain natural units of capacity such as a goosequill, and finally fixes the amount of gold which is equivalent to a cow, by setting it in a rude balance against a certain number of natural seeds of plants. Such is the process which history tells us has taken place in the temperate regions of Asia and Europe, Africa and America. Just as it is impossible to learn the history of the growth of the earth's crust by confining our observations to one locality, and as the geologist only succeeds in gaining a true insight into the relations between the various strata by a study of the phenomena of ■ many regions, so we shall only be able to comprehend properly the various stages in the growth of metallic currency and the origin of weight-standards by observing the facts revealed to us in various countries. Whilst in some places we shall meet with but one or two steps, in others we shall find traces of many, though often, broken strata. Like advance, however, seems impossible under the extremes of heat and cold. Hence in the latter regions the conditions of life remain almost unaltered. In the extreme north the rigour of an arctic winter forbids the keeping and rearing of domestic animals, or the cultivation of corn and vegetables. Hence the hunter form of existence remains almost unaltered. The sole or chief wealth of the people consists of the skins of the fur-bearing animals such as the seal, the beaver, the marten, or the fox, or stores of dried fish, which they exchange with traders for a few scant luxuries, or which form their own sustenance and protection against the pitiless frosts and snows.

In these regions therefore we find the skins of certain animals serving as units of account, in spite of the difference in value between those of different quality and rarity. In the Territory of the Hudson's Bay Company, even after the use of coined money had been introduced among the Indians, the skin was still in common use as the money of account. A gun nominally worth forty shillings brought twenty ' skins.' This term is the old one used by the Company. One skin (beaver) is supposed to be worth two shillings, and it represents two martens and so on. " You heard a great deal about skins at Fort Yukon, as the workmen were also charged for clothing, etc., in this way'." Similarly in the extreme north of Asia we find some Ostiak tribes using the skin of the Siberian squirrel as their unit of account.

The name of a small coin equal to a quarter kopeck indicates that originally the Slavs had a like form of currency. It is called polooshka. Ooshka (properly little ears) means a hare-skin, and polooshka means half a hare-skin\

When we turn to the torrid zone, where clothes are only an incumbrance and Nature lavishly supplies plenteous stores of fruits and vegetables, the chief objects of desire will not be food and clothing but ornaments, implements and weapons. Hence we find amongst the inhabitants of such regions in especial strength that passion for personal adornment, which is one of the most powerful and primitive instincts of the human race. Shells have from very remote times formed one of the most simple forms of adornment in all parts of the world. Shells which once perhaps formed the necklace of some beauty of the neolithic age are found with the remains of the cave men of Auvergne. Strings of cowries under their various names of changos, zimhis, honges or porcelain

Fig. 1. Cowrie Shell (Cypraea moneta).

shells are both durable, universally esteemed, and portable, and therefore suited to form a medium of exchange, and as such they are employed in the East Indies, Siam, and on the East and West Coasts of Africa; on the tropical coasts they serve the purposes of small change, being collected on the shores of the Maldive and Laccadive islands and exported for that object. The relative value varies slightly according to their abundance or scarcity. In India the usual ratio w;as about 5000 to the rupee. Marco Polo found the cowry

1 Whymper'a Alaska, p. 225.

y

PRIMITIVE SYSTEMS OP CUREENCY.

in use in the province of Yunnam. He says (ii. p. 62, Yule's Transl.) : " In Carajan gold is so abundant that they give one Saggio of gold for six of the same weight of silver. And for small change they use the porcelain shell. These are not found in the country but are brought from India." How ancient is their use in Asia is shown by the fact that Layard found cowries in the ruins of Nineveh.

Beyond all doubt the wampum belts of the North American Indians served the purpose of currency. They consisted of black and white shells rubbed down, polished and made into beads, and then strung into belts or necklaces, which were

Fig. 2. Wampum (made from the Venus mercenaria).

valued according to their length, colour and lustre, the black beads being the most valuable. Thus one foot of black peag was worth two feet of white peag. It was so well established as a currency among the natives that in 1649 the Court of Massachusetts ordered that it should be received as legal tender among the settlers in the payment of debts up to forty shillings'.