Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/388

 may well infer that with the Sicilians the cow played the same rôle. It may therefore be assumed with considerable probability that the employment of the decalitron and decussis as monetary units was originally due to their connection with the value of the sheep.

As Soutzo has observed, the degradation of the local copper series moved on most unequal lines, and no doubt in some places the decussis did not represent perhaps one half the value of its archetype, the sheep, whilst at the same moment the copper unit in another community stood at almost its original weight and value. Where silver was coined the degradation of copper went on all the quicker; there was a tendency more and more to get rid of the old cumbrous copper coins, and to employ those of a lighter and more portable size. Moreover the inter-relations between copper and silver made the coinages in these metals act and react upon each other. Thus the state after reducing the copper would reduce likewise the silver, so as to make the two series correspond. This was probably facilitated in some cases at least by the change in the relative value of these metals. Italy was not a silver-producing region, whilst it was rich in copper. Naturally with the increase of commerce and the development of silver mines in neighbouring countries such as Spain, silver became more abundant and the price of copper rose accordingly. We have had occasion already to remark that the abundance or scarcity of gold or silver is indicated by its being employed or not for coinage. In the case of gold we know that it is only when the supply of that metal is in excess of its demand for purposes of ornament that it is or can be employed in the form of coined money. The history of the coinage of Persia, Lydia, Macedonia, Rhodes and elsewhere in ancient times, as well as the history of mediæval gold coining, make this evident, whilst modern Hindustan teaches us the same lesson. Of course in times of great financial straits under the pressure of war a gold coinage was sometimes issued, as perhaps at Athens in 407 and asof Aristophanes (Ranae 720) to refer, as the scholiast ad loc. asserts on the authority of Hellanicus and Philochorus, to a gold issue in 407, which was much alloyed. As Mr Head says it is quite]*