Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/323

 coinage of Athens consisting of didrachms stamped with an ox. The old mina (63 of which went to the new silver talent) was of course the ancient standard used for weighing gold and silver before coined money was employed. It was that known as the Euboic, based on the ox-unit. The Aeginetic standard was only used for silver, gold at all times being weighed by the Euboic standard even where the Aeginetic was in use for silver. This standard was of course in full use for gold and evidently likewise for silver in prae-Solonian times, even though the Aeginetic drachms passed as currency at Athens. For if they had adopted the Aeginetic standard, 100 Aeginetic drachms would have been reckoned to the mina, but as only 70 drachms went to the mina it is evident that the old ox-unit (so-called Euboic) standard of unit 130 grs. with its corresponding mina was always the national Athenian standard.

We showed at an earlier stage that in the age when the art of coining was first introduced into Greece by Pheidon of Argos, it was probable that gold stood to silver in the proportion of 15 : 1. For convenience, then, in Peloponnesus and in Central Greece a system was adopted by which 10 pieces of silver were equivalent to one piece or ingot of gold. This system, known as the Aeginetic, was thus otained.

Gold being to silver as 15 : 1,

1 gold ingot (Talanton) of 130 grs. × 15 = 1950 grs. of silver, 1950 grs. ÷ 10 = 195 grs.

Therefore 1 gold Talanton of 130 grs. = 10 pieces of silver of 195 grs. each.

It is possible that this method of making 10 silver pieces equal to one gold unit was developed at the time of the introduction of coined money, but it is more likely that it may have been in use even before that time.

Now it is worth observing that all through the classical period of Greek history the term stater is generally confined in use to gold pieces. Thus silver coins, unless they weighed 135 grs., are not described as silver staters, but are regularly termed didrachms. So general evidently was this practice that the adjective chrysous ([Greek: chrysous]) was regularly employed to express the gold unit, the masculine gender showing that