II. THE SAME EQUATION REPEATED BETWEEN THE WERGELDS OF WESTERN TRIBES AND 200 GOLD SOLIDI OF CONSTANTINE.

The gold solidus of Constantine a half-stater.

Following the same thread of suggestion and turning from the Eastern to the Western world, we pass at a leap from the Eastern gold stater of 192 wheat-grains to the gold solidus of Constantine, of exactly half that number.

Up to the time of Constantine there had been confusion in the currency of the Roman Empire. It had been mainly a silver currency. Few gold coins were in general circulation, and these were of various standards. But at last the gold solidus of Constantine placed the world in possession of a fixed gold standard acknowledged all over Europe and remaining unchanged till the fall of the Eastern Empire.

The importance of this fact is obvious. For our knowledge of most of the wergelds of the tribes conquered by the Merovingian Franks and later on by Charlemagne is dependent upon it, inasmuch as the laws in which the customs of these tribes were in some sense codified, almost always describe the wergelds in gold solidi.

The gold solidus of Constantine was fixed by him at 1/72 of the Roman pound or ⅙ of the Roman ounce.

The Roman pound (originally used for copper) was built up from the scripulum according to the duodecimal system of the As, thus:

Scripulum24wheat-grains=1·135grammes
Uncia (of 24)576”=27·25”
Libra (of 288)6912”=327·”

Gold tremisses of 32 wheat-grains.

The solidus of Constantine therefore contained 96 wheat-grains of gold, exactly the same number as the Eastern drachma, and half that of the stater or didrachma. At the same time smaller coins—thirds of the solidus, called trientes or tremisses—were issued in great numbers, and these tremisses contained 32 wheat-grains of gold, exactly the same number as the Greek diobol.

The normal wergeld of 200 gold solidi = gold mina.

So that, in wheat-grains, the very prevalent statement of the wergeld of the full freeman in the laws of various tribes as 200 gold solidi was in fact the same thing as a statement that the wergeld was a heavy gold mina, for 200 solidi of 96 wheat-grains contained exactly the same number of wheat-grains as did the heavy mina of ancient Eastern usage—viz. 19,200. In other words, so persistent seems to have been the traditional connection of the wergeld with the gold mina that Roman monetary usage was overruled, and instead of reckoning in Roman drachmas, ounces, and pounds, the wergelds were reckoned once more, or perhaps we should say continued to be reckoned, in what was really the heavy gold mina of 200 solidi.

And was often the equivalent of 100 oxen.

Further than this, in the laws of some of the tribes, as we shall find, the double solidus or stater still retained its position as the gold equivalent of the ox, so that the typical wergeld of 200 gold solidi in these cases was actually, like the mina, the gold equivalent of 100 oxen.

Even where variations are found from this prevalent equation we shall still sometimes find the principle preserved, some other animal being substituted for the ox, and sometimes the long hundred of 120 being substituted for the decimal hundred.

The standard weight of the wheat-grain varied.

If this had been the whole truth the matter would be simple. But the fact is that, although the wergeld of 200 solidi of Constantine was the exact equivalent of the heavy gold mina reckoned in wheat-grains, there were differences in the standard weight of the wheat-grain. As already mentioned, the actual weights of Eastern and Greek staters were not exactly alike, and the Roman standard, in actual weight, was higher than the Eastern and Greek standards.

The latest authorities, Hultsch and Lehmann,[8] on the evidence of inscribed weights, describe what may for convenience be called the Eastern gold mina—i.e. the heavy gold mina of Assyrian and Babylonian metrology—as weighing 818 grammes, or 100 staters of 8·18 grammes. They tell us also that there was a commercial mina of 120 of the same staters. This commercial mina therefore weighed 982 grammes, and metrologists have inferred that the Roman pound was derived from this commercial mina being in fact exactly one third of its weight, or 327 grammes.

Now, as the commercial mina contained 120 staters of 8·18 grammes, it is obvious that the Roman pound, being one third of it, ought to have been divided, had Eastern reckoning been followed, not, as Constantine divided it, into 36 staters of 9·08 grammes, but rather into 40 staters of 8·18 grammes.

In other words, had Constantine, instead of following the Roman system of division, followed the Eastern system and divided the Roman pound into 40 staters of 8·18 grammes in weight, his double solidus, whilst containing 192 Eastern wheat-grains, would have contained only 172·8 Roman wheat-grains. As a matter of fact the Eastern stater of 8·18 grammes, if put in the Roman scales of Constantine, would have weighed only 172·8 wheat-grains of Roman standard, and the tremisses 28·8 wheat-grains. The Roman pound would have contained 240 of such tremisses, and the ounce 20 of them.

The Roman lb. divided into 240 smaller tremisses of 28·8 wheat-grains.

This is not the place to enter more deeply into the metrological question, but its interest in this inquiry lies in the fact that in Western Europe, in spite of Roman conquests and Roman influence, and in spite of the general knowledge and prevalence of the gold solidi and tremisses of the Empire, there seems to have been a remarkable tendency, consciously or unconsciously, to revert to the Eastern standard by dividing the Roman pound into 40 staters, 80 solidi, and 240 tremisses.

The ancient Gallic gold coinage, extending from the valley of the Danube across Gaul into Britain, was apparently of this ancient Eastern standard. And Cæsar himself, after his conquest of Gaul, reverted to it when he issued gold staters of one fortieth of the Roman pound.[9] Finally we shall find, in our next section, the Merovingian Franks, consciously or unconsciously, doing the same.