Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/22

 the time of Solon ( 596). Why the name ox was especially recollected in after years as that of the earliest currency, we can readily understand; the name derived from the old unit of barter would at once attach itself to the coin which bore the image of the ox, and in the course of time two traditions, one that the ancient unit was the ox, the other that the first coins current at Athens bore the symbol of an ox, would merge into one, and finally patriotic feeling would ascribe the first coinage to Theseus, who was regarded as the father of so many Athenian institutions.

That, at all events, the name might be applied to a certain sum, or coin, is rendered highly probable by the fact that Draco, with true legal conservatism, retained in his code the primitive method of expressing values in oxen. Now it is evident that the term, 'price of twenty oxen' ([Greek: eikosaboion], must have been capable of being translated into the ordinary metallic currency, whether that consisted of bullion in ingots or coined money. The "cow" therefore must have had a recognized traditional and conventional value as a monetary unit, and this is completely demonstrated by the practice at Delos. Religious ritual is even more conservative than legal formula, so we need not be surprised to find the ancient unit, the ox, still retained in that great centre of Hellenic worship. The value likewise is expressed in the more modern currency. But we are not yet certain whether the two Attic drachms, which are the equivalent of the ox, are silver or gold. Now Herodotus ( 97) tells us that Datis, the Persian general ( 490), offered at Delos three hundred talents of frankincense. Hultsch (Metrol. p. 129) has made it clear that the talent here indicated must be the gold Daric, that is the light Babylonian shekel. For if they were either Babylonian or Attic talents, the amount would be incredible. Frankincense was of enormous value in antiquity; wherefore Hultsch is probably right in assuming that in the opinion of the Persian who made the offering, the three hundred "weights" of frankincense, each of which weighed a Daric, were equal in value likewise to 300 Darics. We shall see in a moment that there was a distinct tradition that the Daric was a Talent, and