Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/21

 the laws of Draco there is the expression, to pay back the price of twenty kine: and at the time when the Delians hold their sacred festival, they say that the herald makes proclamation whenever a gift is given by any one, that so many oxen will be given by him, and that for each ox two Attic drachms are offered: whence some are of opinion that the ox is a coin peculiar to the Delians, but not to the Athenians; and that from this likewise has been started the proverb, an ox stands on his tongue, in case any man holds his tongue for money ."

According to Pollux then the Attic didrachm, or at least a coin employed by the Athenians (perhaps certain coins of Euboea), was called an 'ox.' Plutarch (Theseus, c. 25) goes further and asserts that Theseus struck money stamped with the figure of an ox ([Greek: ekopse de nomisma boun encharaxas]), and the Scholiast on the Birds of Aristophanes (1106) quotes from Philochorus, an Athenian antiquary of the third century , the same account of the Attic didrachms being marked with an ox.

On the other hand the highest authorities on numismatics assert that the Athenians never struck any such coins. Yet after making due allowance for the additions made by Plutarch to the more crude statement of Pollux and Philochorus, it is hard to conceive that such a belief could have arisen without some foundation, and a probable solution may be found in the fact that certain uninscribed coins, bearing the type of an ox-head, which in recent years have been assigned to Euboea, are for the most part found in Attica. We know that Eretria, and Chalcis, the great cities of Euboea, were amongst the earliest places in Greece to strike money, and it is quite possible, nay probable, that these Euboic coins formed (along with the Aeginetan didrachms) the currency in use at Athens before, a proverb (given by Pollux 74) alluding to the Tortoise coins of Aegina; and Menander (Al. 1), [Greek: pachys gar hys ekeit' epi stoma].]glaux; ên gar hê glaux episêmon kai prosôpon Athênas, tôn proterôn didrachmôn ontôn, episêmon de boun echontôn.]]