Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/141

 Cyzicenes on the Phoenician standard, used the unit of 130 grs for pure gold.

This standard, as we shall presently see, virtually remained unchanged for gold down to the latest days of Greek independence. It likewise prevailed in Macedonia and Thrace. For when Philip II. coined the gold from the mines of Crenides into staters on the so-called Attic standard of 135 grains, he did nothing else than employ for the first gold coinage of his country the unit which had there, as in Greece Proper, prevailed for many ages for the weighing of gold. For since gold was first coined in that region about 350, and yet silver coins had been current in Thrace and Macedon since about 500, it would be absurd to suppose that there was no unit by which gold in ingots or rings could be appraised.

I have shown elsewhere that the rings found by Dr Schliemann at Mycenae were probably made on a standard of 135 grains troy. It is natural to suppose that if within the area of Greece Proper gold rings were fixed according to a definite standard, and that standard the Homeric talent, the Macedonians and Thracians would possess a similar unit in the fifth century But there is a small piece of literary evidence to show that the Macedonians were acquainted with the gold unit, which we already know as the Homeric ox unit. Eustathius tells us that "three gold staters formed the Macedonian talent ." Whether Mommsen is right in thinking that this name was given to the talent in Egypt in consequence of its having been introduced by the Lagidae (themselves Macedonians) or not, it equally indicates that from of old such a talent, confined in use to gold, and the threefold of the Homeric ox-unit,.]