Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/363

 On the Italian Peninsula and in Sicily we find a series of weight and monetary terms totally distinct from any found in Greece Proper. From this alone we may infer that, even before the settlement of any Greek Colonies in Magna Graecia and Sicily, there existed a well defined system, if not of weight, at least for the exchange of copper by fixed standards of measurement. In various Sicilian cities we find small silver coins called litrae; these beyond all question are simply the representatives in silver of an ancient copper unit employed by the Sicels, and which they had brought with them into the island. These Sicels were a tribe of the great Italian stock (itself a branch of the Aryan family) closely related to the Umbrians, Latins, and Oscans, had probably formed the van of the Aryan advance into the Peninsula, and had finally crossed the straits and overcome the Sicanians, an Iberic race, who were the earliest inhabitants of the island of whom any historical record exists. The word litra is merely a dialectic form of the same original lidhra, from which the Latin libra itself is sprung. But whilst we shall have little difficulty in finding out the weight at which the Latin libra was fixed, we have just as great difficulty in discovering that of the Sicilian litra, as we have lately found in the case of the ancient Greek copper obol. As copper was only coined at a late period, and the copper coins are merely tokens, or money of account, we are unable to arrive at any conclusion as to the original full weight of the litra from any data afforded by the copper coins of the various Sicilian states, although, from the circumstance that many of these coins bear marks of value, at first sight it might seem far otherwise. Thus at Agrigentum in the period preceding 415 the copper litra weighed about 750 grs., between 415 and 406  613 grs., and from 340  to 287 it was about 536 grs. only. At Himera between 472 and 415 it was about 990 grs., but within the same period it fell to 200 grs., whilst at Camarina between 415 and 405 it was about 221 grs. Not only therefore is it futile to attempt any statement of the reduction of the litra in Sicily in general, but also to arrive at any sound approximation to its