Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/342

 Vase from Cyrene, shewing the weighing of the Silphium.

as a cupbearer, a certain measure of wine being equated to a slave-boy, so we may conclude that some such wine-unit was equated to a packet or bale of silphium, the latter in turn having a certain amount of silver equated to it, which when coinage was introduced was stamped with the silphium device. That the silphium was packed in bales of a fixed weight is proved by a now famous vase-painting which represents the weighing (on ship board?) of the bales of silphium in the presence of Arcesilas the king of Cyrene. The figure who points to the scales is marked sliphiomachos ([Greek: sliphio-*