Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/157

 *manni the best ox is estimated at five tremisses, that is 1-2/3 solidi, or in other words 120grs. of gold, the medium ox = 4 tremisses = 96 grs. The coincidence that the value of the ox in gold is the actual weight of the coins of the Alamanni is too striking to admit of any other explanation than that the gold coins of this people were struck on the native standard, the ox-unit. The Keltic and Teutonic tribes were so intermixed that we may plausibly infer that the Gauls had reduced the weight of the Philippus to 120 grs. because owing to gold being less plentiful and cattle more abundant to the north of the Alps, from a very remote time the ox-unit throughout Gaul and Germany was slightly lower than along the Mediterranean.

In the Laws of the Burgundians the value of an ox is set at 2 solidi = 144 grs. of gold. This of course is considerably more than that of the Alamannic ox, but when we consider the late period at which the laws of the Barbarians were compiled, and the various recensions which they underwent, the strange fact is that the ox should have varied so little in its relation to gold from the Homeric ox-unit of at least 1000

Passing into Scandinavia we once more, even so late as the eighth century, find the same strange agreement in value. In the ancient Norse documents (where the cow is the unit of value as we have already seen) it is reckoned at 2-1/2 ores (ounces) of silver = 1078 grains. But we likewise know from the same sources that gold stood to silver as 8 : 1; accordingly the cow was worth 134 grs. of gold.

Besides the Hellenes and Italians there was another people who strove for the mastery of all the Western Mediterranean. The ancient city of Tyre had sent out many colonies into the far West, when the nascent power of Hellas had already begun to assert its superiority in the Aegean. Trade grew and flourished between the colonies and the mother city in Phoenicia; thus there was unbroken intercourse between remote Gades and her Eastern mother until after the destruction of the latter