Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/322

 day the measures likewise were made larger than those of Pheidon, and the mina, which previously had almost seventy drachms, was filled up by a hundred drachms. But the ancient type was the didrachm, and he also made as a standard for his coinage 63 minas weighing the talent, and the minae were apportioned out by the stater, and the other weights."

Coin of Eretria.

The first point to engage our attention is the formation of a new standard for the silver coin (for no gold was coined for nearly two centuries): sixty-three old minas were taken to form a new talent, which of course was divided henceforward into 60 new minas. As the weight of the Attic talent in post-Solonian times is most accurately known, we can at once discover the weight of the ancient mina by dividing the ordinary weight of the talent (405,000 grs.) by 63: 405,000 ÷ 63 = 6428 grs., that is 322 grs. less than the post-Solonian mina of 6750 grs. As there are 50 staters in the mina, the ancient stater weighed 128·56 grs., or just a grain lighter than the Daric (129·6 grs.). The old mina of 6428 grs. had been equal to 70 drachms; each of these then must have weighed 92 grs. nearly, that is, the ordinary weight of an Aeginetic drachm. There can be no doubt that the coins of Aegina were used as currency at Athens before Solon's time, where they circulated side by side in all probability with the coins of Euboea which bore the bull's head, whence arose the tradition of the earliest] of Kaibel and Wilamowitz instead of Kenyon's [Greek: paraplêsion]. According to Plutarch (Solon. 15) the old (silver) mina contained 73 drachms. The apparent discrepancy is easily explained. In the prae-Solonian mina there were 70 drachms of 92 grs. each. Plutarch writing at a later time took the number of drachms of 92 grs. in the post-Solonian mina of 6750, which is just 73. The information supplied by the Polity is evidently older and better.]as an interpolation.]instead of [Greek: stathmon].]