Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/160

 priests offered all sacrifices at Sparta, always got the skins as their payment. That the sums mentioned are really the prices of the victims is made almost certain by the fact that at the famous Phoenician temple of Aphrodite at Eryx in Sicily the victims were kept ready by the priests to be sold to worshippers who wished to sacrifice, as we know from a curious story told by Aelian.

Whilst it would be of great importance for my purpose to have been able to regard the sums mentioned in the inscription as the actual value set upon the animals, even if we simply regard them as fees they still give us some aid. For as it is most unlikely that the fee for sacrificing would exceed the value of the victim to be sacrificed, we thus can obtain a minimum limit of value. We may then safely assume that the value of the ox was not less than 10 shekels of silver. On the other hand we shall find from Exodus what must have been the maximum value among the Hebrews at a comparatively late date. As the Punic ox cannot have been worth less than 1350 grs. of silver, and the Hebrew not more than 1760 grs., it is almost certain that the value of the ox at Carthage lay between these limits.

The pieces of silver mentioned in the inscription are probably ordinary silver didrachms of the Attic standard. The Carthaginians had coined silver in Sicily on the Attic standard from about 410, but issued no silver coins at Carthage itself until after the acquisition of the Spanish Silver Mines (241 ), although gold, electrum, and bronze coins were minted. In Greece Proper in the 4th century gold was to silver as 10 : 1; we may therefore not be far wrong if we assume a]