Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/326

 of Thucydides, where he describes the amount of gold employed by Pheidias in the making of the world-renowned chryselephantine statue of Athena for the Parthenon, whilst the computations in silver are expressed simply by talents, the gold is enumerated as talents in weight. We may assume that gold was weighed throughout Greece in historical times on the following system:

1 stater = 130 grs. 50 staters =  1 mina  = 6500 grs. 3000   "    =  60 minae =  1 talent = 390,000 grs.

When silver came into use it was probably weighed all through Hellas, as in Asia and Egypt, on the same standard as gold. This continued always to be the practice amongst the great trading communities of Euboea, Chalcis and Eretria, and their colonies, and also with Corinth and her daughter states. Hence the system was commonly known as the Euboic, sometimes as the Corinthian, and in later times, for a reason to be presently given, the Attic. But in this silver system it is no longer the stater which represents the smaller unit, but rather the drachm ([Greek: drachmê]). Furthermore we find in most constant use a subdivision of the drachm called the obol ([Greek: obolos] nail or spike), six of which made a drachm. There can be no doubt that this silver obolos represented the value in silver of the ancient copper unit from which it took its name, which itself was not estimated by weight but probably, as we saw above, was simply appraised by measure, as is done by all primitive peoples in the estimation of copper and iron, nay even in the very earliest stage of gold itself (p. 43). As six of these nails or obols made a handful ([Greek: drachmê]) in the ancient copper system, so when each of them was equated to a certain amount of silver, the equivalence in silver was called an obol, and the six silver obols obtained the old name of handful or drachm. In the ordinary Greek system of reckoning silver it is 100 drachms, not 50 staters, of silver which form the mina. But of course at the earlier stages of the use of silver we may with some boldness assume that silver was simply weighed by the stater (or Homeric Talanton).