Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/151

 provided by the Tarpeian Law that an ox should be reckoned at 100 asses, a sheep at 10 asses."

Again Aulus Gellius has a curious notice, too long to quote in full, which ends "on that account afterwards by the Aternian Law ten asses were appointed for each sheep, one hundred for each ox."

Cicero and Dionysius are probably right (as Niebuhr thinks) in saying that Tarpeius and Aternius fixed the number of animals. C. Julius and P. Papinius, who were Consuls in 429, to whose reckoning of fines (aestimatio multarum) Livy refers ( 30), probably changed the penalties in cattle into money equivalents. Festus and Gellius have evidently muddled their authorities, having interchanged the words sheep (ovium) and cows (bovum). But the important thing is that both are agreed in giving the value of the cow at 100 asses.

Now Dr Hultsch (Metrologie^2, 19. 3), following Mommsen, shows that gold being to silver as 12-1/2 : 1, the small talent, called the Sicilian, of which we have just spoken, confined exclusively to gold, would be exactly equivalent to a Roman pound of silver (135 × 3 × 12-1/2 = 5062 grains of silver; whilst the Roman lb. = 5040 grs.). Since at Rome, previous to the reduction of the As in 268, a Scripulum of silver was equivalent to a pound of copper or as libralis, and there are 288 Scripula or scruples in the pound, it follows that the pound of silver or its equivalent the Sicilian gold talent was worth 288 asses librales. This gold talent = 3 Attic staters (or ox-units), therefore 1 Attic stater = 96 asses librales. But we learned from Festus and Gellius that the value of the cow fixed in 429 was 100 asses. From this it appears that the value of the ox on Italian soil at this period was almost exactly the same as the traditional value which it had in the Homeric Poems, and which it continued to have in the Delian sacrifices in later times. The mere difference between 96 and 100 asses calls for no elaborate comment. It is enough to remark after Hultsch, that the further we go back the cheaper copper appears to be in relation to silver. This fact will easily explain any dis-*, a sheep 10 [Greek: oboloi].]