Having said so much by way of preliminary, we can now adduce testimony in support of our thesis. Once more let us start with the Homeric Poems. The weighing of gold is already in vogue, but the highest unit known is the small talent, the value of an ox, weighing 130-5 grs, or 10-15 grs more than a sovereign. Silver is not yet estimated by weight, although large and handsome vessels of that metal are described and have their value appraised. But it is not by their weight that their value is estimated, but by their capacity. Thus as first prize for the footrace Achilles gave “a wine-mixer of silver, wrought, and it held six measures, but it surpassed by far in beauty all others upon earth, since cunning craftsmen, the Sidonians, had carefully worked it, and Phoenician men brought it over the misty deep.” (Iliad, XXIII. 741 sqq.) Here we have a vessel wrought in silver evidently of considerable size, but it is simply by its content that its size and value are expressed. Among the lists of prizes in the same book we find the size of vessels made of copper or bronze similarly indicated. Thus the first prize for the chariot race consisted of a woman skilled in goodly tasks; and a tripod with ears, which held two and twenty measures; whilst the third prize was a lebes or kettle which had never yet been blackened by the fire, still with all the glitter of newness, which held four measures. So, too, in the case of iron. As the prize for the Hurling of the Quoit, Achilles set down a mass of pig iron, which he had taken from Eetion. It is a piece of metal as yet unwrought, so that here if anywhere its size and value ought to be reckoned by weight, since no account has to be taken of workmanship. But Achilles, instead of saying that it weighs so many talents or minae, describes its value in a far more primitive fashion. “Even if his fat lands be very far remote, it will last him five revolving seasons. For not through want of iron will his shepherd or ploughman go to the town, but it (the mass) will supply him[165].”
Thus of the four chief metals mentioned in the Homeric Poems, gold alone is subjected to weight. But the scales are used for another purpose still. In the Twelfth Book of the Iliad there is a curious simile wherein a fight between the Trojans and Achaeans is likened to the weighing of wool: “So they held on as an honest, hardworking woman holds the scales, who holding a weight and wool apart lifts them up, making them equal, in order that she may win a humble pittance for her children: thus their fight and war hung evenly until what time Zeus gave masterful glory to Hector, Priam’s son[166].”
Without doubt one of the first uses to which the art of weighing was applied was that of testing the amount of wool given to female slaves[167], or in this case perhaps to a freed woman, to make sure that they would return all the wool when spun into yarn, and not purloin any portion for themselves. Thus in the older Latin writers we constantly find allusions to the pensum (pendo = to weigh), the portion of wool weighed out to the slave. It is quite possible that in the sale of wool the more ancient conventional fashion of estimating the fleece as worth so much in other familiar commodities long continued for mercantile purposes, the weighing of the wool in small portions being only used as a check on the dishonesty of the spinners. At all events we have found wool estimated by the fleece in mediaeval Ireland, at a time when weights are in common use for the metals.
Such then is the condition of things in the Homeric Poems. Gold is transferred by weight and by weight wool is apportioned out for spinning.
Let us now turn to the Old Testament and find what are the objects which are dealt in by weight. All transactions in money are thus carried on, as for instance the purchase by Abraham of the Cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite when “Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant” (Gen. xxiii. 16). So likewise in Achan’s confession: “I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight” (Joshua vii. 21). And so too in the Book of Judges (viii. 26) the weight of the rings taken from the Midianites and given to Gideon was “a thousand and seven hundred shekels of gold; beside ornaments, and collars, and purple raiment that was on the kings of Midian, and beside the chains that were about their camels’ necks.” And again David bought the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite for six hundred shekels of gold by weight (1 Chron. xxi. 25), although the same purchase is described in 2 Samuel (xxiv. 24) as being effected for fifty shekels of silver. In Solomon’s time gold has become exceedingly abundant, and we find it reckoned by talents and minae (pounds). For “king Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to king Solomon” (1 Kings ix. 26-8). And after the story of the Queen of Sheba’s visit and her gift to the king of “an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones,” we read that “the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six talents of gold, beside that he had of the merchantmen, and of the traffick of the spice merchants, and of all the kings of Arabia, and of the governors of the country. And king Solomon made two hundred targets of beaten gold: six hundred shekels of gold went to one target.” Spices such as myrrh, cinnamon, calamus and cassia (Exod. xxx. 23) were sold by weight, being as costly as gold. The familiar description of Goliath of Gath, the weight of whose coat of mail “was five thousand shekels of brass,” and whose “spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron,” will serve to show that articles in the inferior metals were at that time estimated according to weight by the Hebrews and their neighbours, the Philistines. Of the weighing of wool we find no instance, but it is quite possible that it was from the practice of weighing wool that Absalom when he “polled his head, (for it was at every year’s end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king’s weight” (2 Sam, xiv. 26). But it is perhaps more probable that the habit of weighing a child’s hair against gold or silver to fulfil a vow (which was almost certainly Absalom’s motive) may have suggested the employment of the scales for wool[168].
Finally, once in the prophet Ezekiel do we find food weighed, but evidently under special circumstances: “And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it. Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink” (iv. 10, 11). In any case we should expect to find traces of later usage in the writers of the age of the prophets, but from the directions regarding the amount of water, it is evident that we cannot take this passage as a proof of the ordinary practice of the time.
Unfortunately our oldest records of Roman life and habits go back but a short way before the Christian era, and hence we cannot get much direct information as regards the first objects which were sold by weight. We have already seen that in the time of Plautus (flor. 200 B.C.) the habit prevailed of weighing wool out to the women slaves.