"The sacred sickle (or shekel) was equivalent to an Attic tetradrachma, which Budæus estimated at 14 Gallic solidi, or thereabouts; for the didrachma was seven solidi, since the single drachma made three and a half solidi, less a denier Tournois."
Which is as much as to say, that the sickle equalled fourteen solidi, less four deniers; or 13-2/3 solidi.
But owing to the rapid declension in the value of French coin after the tenth century, it is manifestly impossible to assign a value to these solidi unless the precise date of their coinage were known. A writer may, of course, allude to coin indefinitely precedent to his own time. In the present case, however, we may, as a matter of curiosity, analytically approximate to a result in this way:—
The drachma is now known to have contained about 65 grains of pure silver, consequently the tetradrachma contained 260 grains. The present franc contains about 70 grains of pure silver, and consequently the sol, or 20th part, is 3-1/2 grains.
This last, multiplied by 13-2/3, produces about 48 grains. But the weight of the tetradrachma is 260 grains; therefore the sol with which the comparison was made must have contained upwards of fivefold its present value in pure silver.
Now, according to the depreciation tables of M. Dennis, this condition obtained in 1483, under Charles VIII., at which time Budæus was actually living, having been born in 1467; but from other circumstances I am induced to believe that the solidus gallicus mentioned by him was coined by Louis XII. in 1498, at which time the quantity of pure silver was fourfold and a half that of the present day.
So much in answer to C. W. B.'s Query; now for its relation to Shakspeare's text, with which however the "siclus" in question has nothing in common except the name; since the "sickles," so beautifully alluded to by Isabella, in Measure for Measure (Act II. Sc. 2.), were sicli aurei, "of the tested gold."
But I have designedly used the word sickle as the English representative of the Latin siclus (Gallicè cicle), because it is the original word of Shakspeare, which was subsequently, most unwarrantably and unwisely, altered by the commentators to shekels in conformity with the Hebraicised word of our scriptural translation.[2] Hence it is that "sickles" has come to be looked upon as a corruption of the text; and "shekels" as a very clever conjectural emendation!
We retain sickle, Anglicè for sicula, a scythe; but we refuse it to Shakspeare for a word almost identical in sound—siculus, or siclus!
The real corruption has been that of Shakspeare's commentators, not his printers'; and I hope that some future editor of his plays will have the courage to permit him to spell this, and other proper names, in his own way. For how can his text continue to be an example of his language, if his words may be altered to suit the précieuse fashion of subsequent times?