Chapter IX (2)

Passing by for the moment Mr Head’s view, let us next deal with that of Dr Hultsch. This theory has the great merit of granting that the Greeks were capable of evolving a _silver_ standard for themselves from a knowledge of the relative value of gold and silver, whilst the other theories assume that they borrowed blindly ready-made standards, which they for some unknown reason either raised according to Brandis, or degraded according to Head. But Dr Hultsch is met by two crucial difficulties. (1) Why should the Aeginetans have taken six light Babylonian shekels of gold and arbitrarily made them the basis of their new silver standard? (2) But the fatal objection is that whereas Hultsch’s theory depends on gold being to silver in the same relation (13·3:1) in Greece Proper as it was in Asia Minor, as a matter of fact it can be proved that the precious metals there stood in a very different relation to each other. In the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, 1887, I gave some reasons for believing that in early times gold was to silver in Greece in the relation of 15:1. For whilst gold was plentiful in Asia, at no place in Greece Proper were there auriferous deposits. Hence it is probable that gold had to silver a higher relative value in Greece than it had in Asia. Certain archaeological discoveries recently made at Athens add great strength to the view which I then put forward. At a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Science in 1889 Dr Ulrich Köhler discussed certain fragments of inscriptions which refer to the famous statue of Athena, wrought in gold and ivory by Pheidias for the Parthenon. By combining with a fragment published by M. Foucart (_Bullet. de Corresp. Hell._ 1889, p. 171), another fragment previously copied by himself, Dr Köhler arrived at the result that the fragments relate to the purchase of materials for the construction of the statue, that is of gold and ivory. The gold purchased is described both according to its weight and according to the price (τιμή) paid for it in Attic silver currency (whilst the ivory is only described by the value or price). The sum paid for gold amounted to 526·652 drachms, 5 obols, the weight of the gold being 37·618 drachms: from this we learn that the relative value of gold to silver at that time was as 14:1. According to Thucydides (II. 13), forty talents of gold were used in the making of the statue, whilst according to the more explicit statement of Philochorus the amount was forty-four. The image was dedicated at the great Panathenaic festival of the year 438 B.C. As not more than 10 to 11 talents of gold were used in the three years to which the fragments refer, Köhler draws the inference that the construction of the statue commenced in the same year as that of the Parthenon (447 B.C.), and that Pheidias was engaged on his great work for fully nine years.

We thus know now the relative value of silver and gold in Attica about 450 B.C. But we must not regard this as the relation which existed at earlier times. It was only after the Persian wars that Athens had got possession of the island of Thasos with its rich gold mines, and the equally rich districts on the Thracian coast. The fact of her coming into the possession of such wealthy gold-producing regions must have materially lowered the price of gold in Athens. We know how the development of the mines of Pangaeum by Philip of Macedon in the following century lowered the value of gold throughout Greece, for by the time of Alexander the relative value of the two precious metals was as 10:1. In the sixth century B.C. gold was so scarce in Greece that when the Spartans wanted to make a dedication in gold they had to send to Asia to obtain a sufficient supply of the metal[278]. Hence if we conclude that in earlier times the relative value of gold to silver in Greece proper was as 15:1, we shall not be far from the truth. At all events it is put beyond doubt that the relation was higher than that of 13·3:1, and accordingly Dr Hultsch’s theory of the origin of the Aeginetic silver standard, which is based on that relation falls at once to the ground, unless he can shew that such a standard, based on six light gold Babylonian shekels had been previously fixed in Asia or Egypt, and thence adopted by the Greeks without any regard to the relative value existing in Greece itself between the precious metals. But as a matter of fact Dr Hultsch does not make any such attempt. Thus this essay at a solution breaks down.

On the other hand if we make the very slight and very probable assumption that the early Greeks had formed a definite idea of the relative value of gold and silver, which they would have determined exactly on the same principle as they would arrive at a notion of the relative value of any other two commodities, which they were in the habit of giving and taking in exchange, that is by the simple principle of supply and demand, we shall find a ready solution without having to resort to either Egypt or Babylon. If gold was to silver as 15:1 in Greece, it follows that the Homeric talent, the earliest Greek standard, being about 135 grains, ten silver pieces of 202 grains each would be equivalent to _one_ gold unit.

135 × 15 = 2025 grs. of silver.

2025 ÷ 10 = 202·5 grs. of silver.

This gives a singularly close approximation to the weight of the existing coins of the Aeginetic standard of the earliest and heaviest kind. Taking the Homeric talent at 130 grains of gold, by the same process we obtain 10 silver pieces each of the weight of 195 grains (130 × 15 = 1950; 1950 ÷ 10 = 195 grs.)

The second standard which we find in Greece at the beginning of the historical epoch was the Euboic. This standard was used for both _silver_ and _gold_. The ordinary account of its origin is as follows: “From Ionia possibly through Samos the Euboeans imported the standard by which they weighed their silver. This standard was the light Assyrio-Babylonian gold mina with its shekel or stater of about 130 grains. The Euboeans having little or no gold transferred the weight used in Asia for gold to their own silver, raising it slightly at the same time to a maximum of 135 grains, and from Euboea it soon spread over a large part of the Greek world by means of the widely extended commercial relations of the enterprising Euboean cities. This may have taken place towards the close of the eighth century and before the war which broke out at the end of that century between Chalcis and Eretria, nominally for the possession of the fields of Lelantum, which lay between the two rival cities”[279].

This Euboic standard of 135-130 grains is seen at once to be identical in weight with the Homeric talent.

Several difficulties (irrespective of the fact that there was no need for the Greeks to borrow from Asia a standard which they themselves already possessed from very early times) meet this theory.

(1) If the Euboeans derived their standard from Ionia why did they not rather adopt the Phoenician standards, on which we have already seen the great Ionian cities based their coinages of gold, silver, and electrum? Some very early electrum coins found at Samos (Head, _op. cit._ XLI.), have suggested that that island formed the link. “The theory,” says Mr Head, “that Samos was the port whence the Euboeans derived the gold standard subsequently used by them for silver, rests upon the weight of some very early electrum coins (about 44 grs.) which have been found in the island of Samos, and of the earliest Euboean coins, Euboea and Samos having been two of the greatest colonizing and maritime powers of the Aegean Sea. Thus I think we may account for the fact that the towns of Euboea, when they began to strike silver money of their own, naturally made use of the standard which had become from of old habitual in the island, precisely in the same way as Pheidon in Peloponnesus struck his first silver money on the reduced Phoenician standard which was prevalent at the time in his dominions.” But as a matter of fact the recognized Samian coins are of the Phoenician standard (220 grs.) in its slightly reduced state as found at Miletus (Head, _op. cit._ 515). This being so it would indeed be strange if the Euboeans from occasionally coming in contact with Lydian coins at Samos would have adopted that standard in preference to that in use in the great cities of Ionia with which their commerce directly lay.

(2) Why did the Euboeans take the Lydian _gold_ standard of 130 grs. for their own electrum and silver instead of the Lydian _silver_ standard of 172·9 grs.? According to Mr Head’s view, as we have seen above, the early Lydian electrum was struck on the standard of 172 grs. (the so-called Babylonian silver) when meant for circulation in the interior of Asia Minor, but on the Phoenician standard for circulation in trade with the Greeks of the coast of Ionia.

(3) We may ask the question, why did the Euboeans if they were taking over a ready-made standard which had no relation to any standard which they themselves already possessed, adopt the _gold_ standard of 130 grs. instead of the electrum and silver standard which was in use among all the Greek cities with which they traded?

We can now conveniently revert to the theory that the Aeginetan _silver_ standard was a reduced Phoenician. Much has been written about _degradation of coin weights_ and _reduced standards_. It may be therefore well to clear our notions on the subject by asking ourselves what do we mean by such terms. Both the terms and the process are equally familiar to those at all acquainted with the history of mediaeval coinage. The king then controlled, as for instance in England, the mintage. If the sovereign thought fit to reduce the amount of silver in the groat from 80 to 72 grains his subjects had no alternative but to take the new and lighter pieces as equivalent to four pennies sterling. The sovereign thus was able to relieve an exhausted treasury, making a considerable profit off every groat and penny put into circulation. Again, the impecunious monarch might resort to another method of making a profit, by debasing the coinage, and might issue one such as the fourth of Henry VIII., of exceeding base silver, and again his subjects could simply grumble and take the new money. These groats and pennies passed as such within the realm, but when the question of foreign exchange came, the matter assumed an entirely new complexion. Would a shrewd Flemish merchant from Antwerp accept a base or a reduced English groat at the same rate for which it passed current in England? Of course he did no such thing, and the scales were at once called into use, and the silver changed hands not by tale, but by _weight_. Now the condition under which such a degradation or debasing of the coinage as we have described can take place is that a state or country shall be of such considerable magnitude that it has room within its own borders to employ a large amount of coin in internal trade without much necessity of external commerce. Did such conditions exist among the Greek states of antiquity? There is another condition, namely, sovereign power vested in the hands of a monarch possessed of unlimited authority, who has a direct personal interest in the profit to be made from the degradation of the coinage, and who has power sufficient to enable him to force his debased coinage on a reluctant people. Did such conditions exist in any of the Greek states of antiquity? Nowhere in Greece Proper do we find them fulfilled, but if we turn to Sicily we get a good example of the practice so often followed in after centuries by the mediaeval monarchs. The tyrant Dionysius there put an arbitrary value on gold in relation to silver: for although this relation was probably not more than 12:1, this despot raised it perforce to 15:1[280]. He also issued a coinage of tin, according to Aristotle[281], which he perhaps forced his subjects to take as equivalent to silver coins of like size. In later years again when Timoleon liberated Syracuse and the democracy was once more restored, the state issued a coinage of electrum instead of that of pure gold, which had previously been in currency, by this means making a profit of 20 per cent.[282] It is hardly necessary to point out that whilst this coinage of Dionysius might pass for an artificial value within the dominions of Syracuse, the moment a Syracusan came to make payment to a foreign merchant, its factitious value vanished and the transaction took place according to the current value of the metals. So as long as the English penny remained of good weight and quality it found ready currency on the continent, and the potentates of Flanders issued numerous imitations of them known as _esterlings_, but when the English silver penny became debased all foreign imitations ceased[283]. Now the Greek states of Greece Proper were very small in extent, and seldom had a very strong central authority. The area being limited it was absolutely necessary for them to have constant dealings with their neighbours. It would have been difficult for any government in republican times to have forced on its citizens a debased silver currency, and even had this been possible, any benefit derived therefrom would have been counterbalanced by the great drawback arising to trade. If Athens had reduced her famous “Owls” or as they were otherwise called “Maidens” (from the head of Pallas Athena), by five grains, her credit would have suffered and her merchants have gained nothing by it, as the balance would have been at once resorted to, and allowance would have had to be made on each coin of the new debased standard. We who live in modern times are too apt to forget the readiness with which men in older days had resort to the scales, although at this moment large transactions in gold between bankers and financiers are carried out by weight. Only so late as the beginning of this century, when the gold coinage of the country was in a wretched state, every farmer and trader went to fairs in Ireland equipped with a pocket balance (which was adjusted for the guinea, half-guinea, sovereign, half-sovereign, and gold seven-shilling-piece).

It is difficult then to see what it would have availed the Aeginetans to have reduced the standard which they are supposed to have got from the Phoenicians.

Their island state was of diminutive proportions; they devoted themselves almost entirely to traffick by sea, their island was an emporium where strangers resorted. In all dealings with the Phoenicians they would have to pay a drawback on their debased coin; for the cunning Phoenician or Ionian was not likely to be beguiled into taking staters of 200 grs. as equivalent to 230 grs. It is plain therefore that when we find divergencies of standard these are not due to mere _degradation_, but to some far more practical consideration, and this will be seen all the more clearly when we shall find that whilst we have divergencies in _silver_ standards, the gold standard which was in use in Greece from Homeric times down to the Roman Conquest remains almost absolutely without variation. But there are other and stronger objections against the Phoenician origin of the Aeginetic standard.

Now if we accept the doctrine that the Greeks received their coin-standards across the sea from Asia, the _Aeginetic_ from the Phoenician traders whose commerce lay with Aegina and Peloponnesus, the _Euboic_ on the other hand from Lydia by way of the great Ionian cities on the coast of Asia Minor, we become involved in a serious difficulty. At the time represented in the Homeric Poems, there is not as yet a single Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor[284]. Miletus, destined to be in after years the Queen of Ionia, and to be one of the greatest centres of Hellenic commerce and culture, is as yet known only as the city of the barbarous-speaking Carians[285]. Yet we find the Greeks represented in these self-same poems as already in possession of a standard for gold identical with the light Babylonian or Lydian gold shekel (130 grs.). But again we find from the same source that the Greeks were already in full commercial intercourse with one Asiatic people, but not a people who could serve as a bridge between Lydia and Euboea. Everywhere in the Homeric Poems we meet the shipmen of Tyre, who are represented as bringing the products of the skilled artists of Sidon, beautiful cloths, and cunningly wrought vessels of silver, articles of jewellery, necklaces[286] set with amber (perhaps brought from the coasts of the Baltic), and now and then as chance arose, kidnapping women and children to sell as slaves in the marts of the Mediterranean[287].

If the Hellenes had got their standard from an Asiatic source, it must have been the heavy gold shekel of 260 grains, which the Phoenicians employed, and consequently the Homeric Talent would have weighed 260 instead of 130 grains, or on the other hand if it be supposed that the Greeks might borrow and use for their own _gold_ a standard used only for _silver_ in Asia, the Homeric Talent ought to have weighed 225 grains, that is the Phoenician silver standard, which, as we have seen, it certainly did not.

A further difficulty arises in reference to the _Euboic_ standard. No one who reflects for a moment could venture to assert that Phoenician trade and influence were limited to Southern Greece. Yet that virtually is the tacit assumption made by those who derive the standard from Asia. There is evidence to shew that the Phoenicians from a very early period frequented Euboea, doubtless attracted by its copper mines (from which perhaps the famous city of Chalcis derived its name)[288]. Round no spot in Hellas do more legends cluster which connect it with Phoenician colonists than Boeotia. It was here that Cadmus settled, and introduced the Phoenician alphabet, it was here according to Greek tradition that Herakles, who is so strongly identified with the Phoenician Melkarth, had his birth. Why then should the Euboeans have been behind the rest of Hellas in receiving the Phoenician standard, which, according to Mr Head, as we saw above, did influence so powerfully the Ionic cities of the Asiatic seaboard, with which their commerce was so largely connected?

From these considerations it follows that before the Greeks came into contact with either Phoenicians or Lydians they had a weight standard of their own, the _Talanton_ of the Homeric Poems, based on the _cow_, which was as yet only employed for the weighing of gold.

This standard we have found to be identical with one of the two chief standards employed in historical times for _silver_, and which from first to last was the _only_ standard employed for gold in all parts of Hellas Proper.

As we have seen that gold was to silver in that region as 15:1, there was not much difficulty in regarding fifteen _weights_ or staters of silver as equivalent to one of gold of like weight. Hence there was not the same need in Greece to devise a separate silver standard as there was in Asia, where the relation of the precious metals stood as 13·3:1, a fact which made simple exchange very difficult. On the other hand we have seen that for the Aeginetans and Greeks, who used the so-called Aeginetic standard, the decimal system, the simplest and most primitive method of reckoning, had a powerful attraction.

Primitive peoples perform all their calculations by means of counters, using for such purposes their fingers and toes or seeds or pebbles.

Nature herself has supplied man with the simplest and most convenient of counters in his ten fingers. Hence naturally arises a preference amongst primitive peoples for counting by tens, and this method, although it has at times been supplanted partially (seldom altogether) by the duodecimal and sexagesimal systems, which are superior by possessing a greater number of submultiples than the decimal (_e.g._ 12 = 6 × 2, 4 × 3, whilst 10 = 5 × 2 only), was adhered to by the Egyptians all through their history down to the latest Pharaohs. It may then perhaps be argued that it was through Egyptian influence with Greece that a large part of Greece adopted for their silver a standard based on the decimal system, especially as certain traces of Egyptian influence in very early times have been discovered of late. But as I have already pointed out above when discussing the theory of an Egyptian origin for the Aeginetan standard, because standards of like weight are found in two different regions, it by no means follows that one has borrowed from the other. If we can point out that in both Egypt and Greece there was a standard for gold almost identical in weight, it is at once apparent that there was no need for the Greeks to borrow from the Egyptians the idea of making ten silver ingots or wedges equal to one gold; especially as the decimal idea was next to that of five the simplest and most rudimentary form of calculation known to mankind. It is certainly preposterous to suppose that the Greeks were too barbarous at the time when they had attained a knowledge of silver to devise such a simple process as that of taking the fifteen ingots of silver, which from the natural laws of supply and demand they regarded as the equivalent of one gold ingot of like weight, and redividing them into ten new ingots of silver. This surely will not seem an incredible feat for the early Hellenes to perform when we recall to mind the extraordinary skill in arithmetic which is found among some barbarous peoples. “In West Africa a lively and continual habit of bargaining has developed a great power of arithmetic, and little children already do feats of computation with their heaps of cowries[289].” To imagine that the Greeks could not perform so simple a feat as that which I propose is to assume that they were in a far lower condition of culture and intelligence than the negroes of West Africa, rather resembling the lowest known tribes of men, such as the aborigines of Australia and the savages of the South American forests. To make such an assumption respecting a race which has shewn such an unrivalled potentiality of progress and development as the Greeks is absurd.

At this point it will be convenient to take a general survey of our results so far. We found in the Homeric Poems a twofold system of currency, the gold Talanton, and the cow or ox, the latter alone being employed to express values: we next found that the _Talanton_ was the equivalent of the cow, the metallic unit being clearly the later in origin, and being based on or equated to the older unit of barter. Through the sacerdotal tradition of Delos we were enabled to fix the value of the Homeric Talanton at 2 gold Attic drachms, or a Daric (135-130 grains Troy). Next came the standards used in historical Greece. (1) The Euboic (135 grains Troy) used for _silver_ in the great Euboic towns, in Corinth, in Athens from the time of Solon, and as a matter of course in the Chalcidian and Corinthian colonies, and employed as the _sole_ unit for _gold_ in all parts of Greece Proper at all periods; (2) the Aeginetic (200-195 grains) employed in Peloponnesus, in Boeotia and Central Greece. We learned that the Euboic standard coincided with the Homeric _Talanton_, thus finding the Greeks of historical times using the same standard universally for _gold_ which they had employed long before the introduction of the art of coining from Asia, and partly using this same standard for silver, whilst in other states they employed a standard for the latter metal, which was based on the gold unit, simply dividing the amount of silver equivalent to it into ten parts instead of fifteen.

We then put the question, “Is it rational to suppose that the Greeks borrowed in the 7th century B.C. along with the art of coining from Asia a standard which they themselves already long since possessed?”

At the time when I first put this view forward, I was unable to offer any concrete proof of the existence of such a standard on Greek soil before the introduction of coined money, although the literary evidence was of the strongest kind. Since then I have been enabled to obtain some data of considerable importance. I have already (Chap. II.) described the rings and spirals of gold and silver found at Mycenae, and shewn that they were not improbably made on a standard of 135 grs. We have thus found some definite evidence of the existence of a gold and possibly a silver standard, corresponding to the standard used for both metals in after ages under the name of the Euboic or Attic. It may of course be argued that though found on Greek soil, they are not really Greek in origin. For instance there may be certain indications of Egyptian art and influence in these pre-historic remains, such as the frieze discovered in the Palace at Tiryns of alabaster inlaid with blue glass which according to Lepsius and Helbig[290] is the mock _lapis lazuli_ which the Egyptians were so fond of making in imitation of the rare and costly real stone which had to be brought from Tartary. Granting then for the sake of argument that the Homeric _Talent_ was a standard introduced into Greece from Egypt at a very early period, it by no means follows that this standard has had a scientific origin. The Greeks it will be noticed found it necessary in taking over this standard to equate it to their primitive barter system. If then the process of human development is such that the Greeks, who above all people shewed the most extraordinary power of acquiring civilization, found it necessary even when presented with a ready made standard for metallic currency, to bring it into harmony with their immemorial system of appraising values by means of the cow, there is certainly a strong presumption that the people from whom they derived that metallic standard had not themselves obtained it by any mathematical process.

We can hardly doubt that mankind first obtained empirically the art of weighing, and that it was only at a later period that mathematics were called in to fix scientifically the standards obtained by the older and cruder method. Such is the function of mathematics still. Thus Professor Cayley observed (in his address at Stockport), “I said I would speak to you not of the utility of mathematics in any of the questions of common life or of physical science, but rather of the obligations of mathematics to these different subjects. The consideration which thus presents itself is in a great measure that of the history of the development of the different branches of mathematical science in connection with the older physical sciences, Astronomy and Mechanics. The mathematical theory is in the first instance suggested by some question of common life or of physical science, is pursued and studied quite independently thereof, and perhaps after a long interval comes in contact with it or with quite a different question[291].”

If such then is the part played by mathematics in an age when even the mathematician has come to the aid of the hangman, and the wretch meets a well-deserved doom in strict accordance with a mathematical formula, _a fortiori_ must empirical discovery have preceded mathematical theory in the second millennium before the Christian era. Just as countless malefactors were successfully executed by empirical Jack Ketches before ever the mathematician turned executioner, so we may be certain that untold sums of gold had been weighed by means of natural seeds and according to a standard empirically obtained before ever the sages of Thebes or Chaldaea had dreamed of applying to metrology the results of their first gropings in Geometry or Astronomy.