Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/238

 gold, by the same process we obtain 10 silver pieces each of the weight of 195 grains (130 × 15 = 1950; 1950 ÷ 10 = 195 grs.

The second standard which we find in Greece at the beginning of the historical epoch was the Euboic. This standard was used for both silver and gold. The ordinary account of its origin is as follows: "From Ionia possibly through Samos the Euboeans imported the standard by which they weighed their silver. This standard was the light Assyrio-Babylonian gold mina with its shekel or stater of about 130 grains. The Euboeans having little or no gold transferred the weight used in Asia for gold to their own silver, raising it slightly at the same time to a maximum of 135 grains, and from Euboea it soon spread over a large part of the Greek world by means of the widely extended commercial relations of the enterprising Euboean cities. This may have taken place towards the close of the eighth century and before the war which broke out at the end of that century between Chalcis and Eretria, nominally for the possession of the fields of Lelantum, which lay between the two rival cities.

This Euboic standard of 135-130 grains is seen at once to be identical in weight with the Homeric talent.

Several difficulties (irrespective of the fact that there was no need for the Greeks to borrow from Asia a standard which they themselves already possessed from very early times) meet this theory.

(1) If the Euboeans derived their standard from Ionia why did they not rather adopt the Phoenician standards, on which we have already seen the great Ionian cities based their coinages of gold, silver, and electrum? Some very early electrum coins found at Samos (Head, op. cit. ), have suggested that that island formed the link. "The theory," says Mr Head, "that Samos was the port whence the Euboeans derived the gold standard subsequently used by them for silver,