FOOTNOTES
[1] Origin of Currency and Weight Standards, Camb. U. Press, 1892.
[2] For convenience I adhere throughout to reckoning in wheat-grains. Professor Ridgeway informs me that three barleycorns were equated with four wheat-grains, and that a passage in Theophrastus shows that in the fourth century B.C. 12 barleycorns = obol and 12 obols = the stater. The Greek diobol = therefore 24 barleycorns, i.e. 32 wheat-grains, and the stater = 144 barleycorns, i.e. 192 wheat-grains. The reader will understand that as Romans, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans reckoned in wheat-grains, there will be great convenience in adhering throughout to wheat-grains in this inquiry. And further the theoretic building up of weights in wheat-grains was preserved traditionally more easily than the actual standards of weight.
[3] The range of the variation in the actual weight of the stater as a coin (without necessarily implying variation in the theoretic weight in wheat-grains) is given by metrologists as follows:
| Grammes | |
|---|---|
| Babylonian | 8·18 |
| Crœsus | 8·18 |
| Darius | 8·36 to 8·41 |
| Attic | 8·64 to 8·73 |
| Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great | 8·73 |
| The Greek cities on the Black Sea | 9·06 |
[4] Kinship &c. in Arabia, p. 53.
[5] Ordinances of Manu, xi. pp. 128-131.
[6] Sections 8 and 11.