Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/317

 coin. That the unit was employed for gold ages before the Persians ever descended from the mountains there can be little doubt. But whether we adopt or reject the Greek tradition that the Daric ([Greek: Dareikos]) was named from Darius, as the Philippean and Croesean staters were called after the sovereigns who first struck them, it is perfectly certain that Darius organized the whole numbering system of the great empire to which he had succeeded, and that he coined gold pieces of the first quality: for Herodotus tells us that Darius, having refined gold to the greatest extent possible, had coin struck. This would be very analogous to the course pursued by Croesus and Philip; gold in some form was current in the dominions of both these princes before their reigns, but it was owing to certain reforms introduced and to the issue of a gold coin of a certain pattern, that the names of both became associated with particular kinds of gold coins. By the time of Xerxes the son of Darius vast quantities of these Darics were circulating through Asia Minor, for Herodotus relates that the Lydian Pythius had in his own possession as many as 3,993,000 of them, a sum afterwards increased by Xerxes to 4,000,000. They became the gold currency of all the Greek towns not only of Asia Minor, but also of the islands, and made their way in considerable quantities into the great cities of the mainland of Hellas, and wrought as much harm in disuniting the various states of Greece as did the gold staters of Philip at a period a little later. Darics formed a regular part of the wealth of a well-to-do Athenian at the time of the Peloponnesian war. Thus Lysias relates that when his house was entered and plundered by the minions of the Thirty, his money chest contained 100 Darics, 400 Cyzicenes, and 3 talents of silver. It is only necessary to enumerate some of the passages in the Greek authors, where mention is made of their coins, to show how wide an influence they exercised in the eastern Mediterranean. Besides Herodotus and Lysias already mentioned, Thucydides, Aristo-*].]