Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/382

 Now Mr A. J. Evans, when in Southern Italy, at my request kindly ascertained that vines, when trained on poles on vineyard slopes, are usually about 3 yards apart, whilst when trained on pollard poplars (as is much more usual in Campagna), they stand about 6 yards apart. In the case of the former about 150 vines would go to a schoenus (1600 sq. yards), whilst in the latter case barely 50. We cannot doubt that the distance between the vines must have been much the same in ancient as in modern times.

If now we take the nomos to be a diobol, each vine is worth 4-2/3 nomi, or 14 nomi, according as there are 50 or 150 vines to the schoenus. Now, as the valuable and slow growing olive is only worth 10 nomi, and it is impossible to believe that the relative values of olive and vine could have ever been such as those arrived at on the assumption that the nomos is a diobol, we must turn to the alternative course and take the nomos as a didrachm. The penalty for a schoenus of vines is two minae or 110 didrachms. If 150 vines go to a schoenus, each will be worth about 2/3 didrachm, 15 vines being equal to one olive, or taking 50 vines to the schoenus, each vine will be worth about two didrachms, 5 vines being worth one olive. This result is so rational that we need hesitate no longer to regard the well-known Tarentine didrachm as the nomos (noummos) of Aristotle.

There is such a difference between the nomos of Sicily, identical with the Aeginetan obol, and that of Tarentum that we are forced to conclude that the term nomos is not specially applied to any particular coin unit. In Sicily we found the native unit, the litra, identified in certain cases, at least in earlier times, with the Aeginetan obol as well as with the nomos. Why two names nomas and litra for the same unit? Is one Sicilian and the other Greek? This at least gives a reasonable explanation. The Dorians then in Sicily gave the name to their earliest coins, nomos, with them indicating the unit of currency established by law just as did nomisma among other Greeks. As in Sicily the Aeginetic obol was the ''legal coin (nomos) par excellence'', so at Tarentum, where didrachms were the first coins to be struck, the term (nomos) was applied