Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/71

 wives and concubines. It is evident then that the number of such attendants will depend on the inclination and wealth of the house-master. But here again the problem is simplified, for inasmuch as his wealth consisted in cattle, a man's power to purchase handmaidens depended on the amount of his kine. Thus at the present day the number of women owned by a Zulu depends entirely on the number of cattle he possesses. Hence there was likely to be a fairly universal ratio in value between female slaves and oxen, over such a region as we have sketched above. The facility too in transporting human chattels from one place to another would be an important element in keeping the price almost the same over all parts of the area. It is a very ancient principle with the slave captor and slave dealer to sell their captives far away from their original home. Among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers the slave from beyond the sea was always worth more than a captive from close at hand. The explanation of this fact was suggested by Dr Cunningham, and the proof of it was found by Mr Frazer in Further India; for there the slave brought from a great distance is always more valuable than one who comes only a short way from his native land, as the possibility of the former's running away and succeeding in escaping is so much less than that of the latter. This too seems to be the true explanation of the fact that in Homer we regularly find persons sold into slavery beyond the sea. Achilles sold the son of Priam to Euneos the son of Jason of Lesbos, the nurse Eurycleia had been brought from the mainland, Eumaeus the swineherd had been sold to Laertes by the Phoenicians who had captured him with his nurse in his distant home. This constant tendency to sell in one country the captives taken from another would do much to equalize prices everywhere, and the price being paid in oxen the ratio in value between oxen and female as well as male slaves would tend to be constant.

We have now reviewed the ordinary kinds of wealth amongst primitive pastoral people, but we have touched but lightly as yet on the subject of the metals.