Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/306

 this standard is considerably higher than the Phoenician silver standard found along the coasts of Asia Minor. It may thus have been found convenient to raise by a few grains the weight of the gold unit so as to harmonize the relations between the three metals. Further speculation is vain, as we do not know the proportion of gold contained in the electrum coins. From what we shall shortly learn about the electrum of Cyzicus, it is not impossible that the gold piece of 73 grs. was worth an electrum stater of 118 grs.

Coming to the Phoenicians of Spain we find that Gades, which did not begin her coinage until about 250, employed a standard for her silver of 78 grains, and that the island of Ebusus (Iviza) struck didrachms of 154 grs., a half-drachm of 39 grs. and a quarter-drachm. This coincides closely with the 78 grain drachm of Gades. It is palpable that there is no connection between this standard and the Phoenician standard of 220 grs. As the same system is found in the cities of Emporiae and Rhoda (Ampurias and Rosas) in the north-east of Spain, and in the earliest drachms of Massilia (Marseilles) , it is far more reasonable to suppose that the relations between gold and silver throughout Spain were such that, in order to make a certain fixed number of silver pieces equivalent to the gold ox-unit, it was found necessary to make the silver didrachm of about 156 grs. and the drachm of 78 grs.

It would thus seem that the principle which we shall seek to establish for the Greek silver standards held true of the Phoenician likewise,—that whilst the gold unit, the basis of all weight, remains unchanged or was but very slightly modified even at a late period (when the idea of the original ox-unit must have become dimmed by time), in order to effect a more complete harmonizing of a threefold system of gold, electrum and silver, the silver units shew every kind of variety, which can only be accounted for by supposing that owing to the different relations between gold and silver in various regions