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.