Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/245

 when discussing the theory of an Egyptian origin for the Aeginetan standard, because standards of like weight are found in two different regions, it by no means follows that one has borrowed from the other. If we can point out that in both Egypt and Greece there was a standard for gold almost identical in weight, it is at once apparent that there was no need for the Greeks to borrow from the Egyptians the idea of making ten silver ingots or wedges equal to one gold; especially as the decimal idea was next to that of five the simplest and most rudimentary form of calculation known to mankind. It is certainly preposterous to suppose that the Greeks were too barbarous at the time when they had attained a knowledge of silver to devise such a simple process as that of taking the fifteen ingots of silver, which from the natural laws of supply and demand they regarded as the equivalent of one gold ingot of like weight, and redividing them into ten new ingots of silver. This surely will not seem an incredible feat for the early Hellenes to perform when we recall to mind the extraordinary skill in arithmetic which is found among some barbarous peoples. "In West Africa a lively and continual habit of bargaining has developed a great power of arithmetic, and little children already do feats of computation with their heaps of cowries ." To imagine that the Greeks could not perform so simple a feat as that which I propose is to assume that they were in a far lower condition of culture and intelligence than the negroes of West Africa, rather resembling the lowest known tribes of men, such as the aborigines of Australia and the savages of the South American forests. To make such an assumption respecting a race which has shewn such an unrivalled potentiality of progress and development as the Greeks is absurd.

At this point it will be convenient to take a general survey of our results so far. We found in the Homeric Poems a twofold system of currency, the gold Talanton, and the cow or ox, the latter alone being employed to express values: we next found that the Talanton was the equivalent of the cow, the metallic unit being clearly the later in origin, and being based