Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/140

 CHAPTER VI.

We have now proved four things: (1) the general distribution of the ox throughout our area, (2) its universal employment as the unit of value throughout the same region, (3) the equable distribution of gold throughout the same countries, and (4) that gold is the first of all commodities to be weighed. Our next step will be to show that gold was weighed universally by the same standard, and that this standard unit in all cases where we can find record was regarded as the equivalent of the ox or the cow.

We have already seen that the gold talent of the Homeric Poems, which was in use among the Greeks before the art of stamping money had yet become known, weighed about 130 grains troy (8·4 grammes). In historical times gold was always weighed on what was called the Euboic (or Euboic-Attic) standard. Thus when Thasos began to strike gold coins in 411 after her revolt from Athens they weighed 135 grs. Unless this had been the time-honoured unit employed for gold in that island so famous for its mines the Thasians would hardly have employed it. Certainly they would not adopt it simply because it was the standard of the hated Athenians, especially as they had a different standard for silver.

The gold coins of Athens struck a few years later are on the same standard of 135 grs, and when Rhodes at the beginning of the fourth century began to coin gold, she used the same unit, although she employed for silver the unit of 240 grs. Cyzicus also, although coining her well-known electrum