Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/320

 CHAPTER XII.

We are now come to the most important portion of our task, the development of the Greek and Italic systems. In the Homeric Poems we found the Talanton (or value of a cow in gold) the sole unit of weight, and that only employed for gold. This Talanton has been shown to be the same in weight as the light gold shekel of Asia Minor, which, under the form of coin, we have just been discussing as the Croesean stater and Persian Daric. It was therefore nothing else than the Euboic or Attic stater of historical times, which at all periods and at all places that fall within our knowledge formed the sole unit for the weighing of gold.

Besides the Talanton based on the ox, there was in all probability another higher unit in occasional use in Greece Proper. This was the threefold of the ox-unit. We have already had occasion to notice the small gold talent, called by some writers the Macedonian, which was equal to three Attic staters. The same weight under the name of the Sicilian talent was employed likewise for gold only in the Greek colonies of Sicily and Southern Italy. The conservatism of colonists is too well known to need illustration, and we may with high probability infer that the Greek settlers in Magna Graecia brought the small talent from their original homes. What was the origin of this weight? We have seen that everywhere all over our area the slave is the occasional higher unit. Thus the Irish slave (cumhal) was a unit of account equal to three cows. The slave in the Welsh Laws is equal to 4 cows, whilst in Homer we found a slave woman