Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/147

 didrachms of about 120 grains troy, with various subdivisions. This is usually described as the Phoenician standard, or rather the Phoenician gold standard of 260 grains considerably reduced. But the full unit of 240 is never found in the coins, and although we get coins of 2-1/2 drachms (= 147 grains), it is more natural to regard the didrachm of about 120 grains as the real unit, in other words the slightly lowered common unit, which we already found fixed at about 127 grains in the Egyptian rings. In Sicily and Magna Graecia we are fairly certain that the unit was in early times that of 130 grains. But whether this was native or brought in by the Greek colonists, it is impossible to prove. All that we know for certain is that there was in Sicily and Magna Graecia, a small talent used only for gold; which was equivalent to three Attic gold staters, or in other words the threefold of our Homeric ox-unit. Thus an ancient writer says "the Sicilian talent had a very small weight; the ancient one, as Aristotle says, 24 nummi, the later 12 nummi. But the nummus weighs three half obols ." From this it is plain that the ancient form of this talent weighed 36 obols, that is, six drachms, or three staters.

Lastly, let us glance at those peoples who lay between Northern Italy and the Bay of Biscay. Although we have no direct evidence as to the unit by which the Gauls reckoned that gold of which, as we saw above, they had great store, before they came under the influence of either Phoenician, Greek, or Italian, we can perhaps make a justifiable inference from the fact that when the Gauls proceeded to strike gold coins in imitation of the gold stater of Philip of Macedon, they did not, as might have been expected, follow also the weight unit (135 grs.) of that coin. For as a matter of fact scarcely any of the Gaulish imitations exceed 120 grains troy. It would appear then that the Gauls had already at that time a gold unit in use, somewhat lighter than the usual weight of our "ox-unit," although we cannot of course ignore the possibility of its being(Hultsch, Reliq. Metrol. Scrip. 300.)]