Cicero and Dionysius are probably right (as Niebuhr thinks) in saying that Tarpeius and Aternius fixed the number of animals. C. Julius and P. Papinius, who were Consuls in 429 B.C., to whose reckoning of fines (aestimatio multarum) Livy refers (IV. 30), probably changed the penalties in cattle into money equivalents. Festus and Gellius have evidently muddled their authorities, having interchanged the words sheep (ovium) and cows (bovum). But the important thing is that both are agreed in giving the value of the cow at 100 asses.
Now Dr Hultsch (Metrologie², 19. 3), following Mommsen, shows that gold being to silver as 12½:1, the small talent, called the Sicilian, of which we have just spoken, confined exclusively to gold, would be exactly equivalent to a Roman pound of silver (135 × 3 × 12½ = 5062 grains of silver; whilst the Roman lb. = 5040 grs.). Since at Rome, previous to the reduction of the As in 268 B.C., a Scripulum of silver was equivalent to a pound of copper or as libralis, and there are 288 Scripula or scruples in the pound, it follows that the pound of silver or its equivalent the Sicilian gold talent was worth 288 asses librales. This gold talent = 3 Attic staters (or ox-units), therefore 1 Attic stater = 96 asses librales. But we learned from Festus and Gellius that the value of the cow fixed in 429 B.C. was 100 asses. From this it appears that the value of the ox on Italian soil at this period was almost exactly the same as the traditional value which it had in the Homeric Poems, and which it continued to have in the Delian sacrifices in later times. The mere difference between 96 and 100 asses calls for no elaborate comment. It is enough to remark after Hultsch, that the further we go back the cheaper copper appears to be in relation to silver. This fact will easily explain any discrepancy. Thus Mommsen’s view that silver was to copper as 288:1 gives us a most interesting result.
Let us now turn to Mr Soutzo’s view on the same subject. He maintains that at no time was the relation between silver and copper greater than 120:1, basing his argument on the assumption (which we shall find to be against the statements of the ancient writers) that when the first silver denarius or 10-as piece was coined in 268 B.C., as the as at that time weighed only two unciae, or one-sixth of a pound, silver was to copper as 120:1. He also argues from the fact that in Egypt, under the Ptolemies, the same relations existed between silver and bronze. He likewise maintains that the relation between gold and silver in Italy and Sicily at this period was as 16:1, from which it follows that gold was to copper as 1920:1. This of course gives us as the value of a cow about 390 grains of gold, that is about three gold staters, or ox-units. We would certainly be able to prove that at no time or place in the ancient world was a cow of so great a value in gold.
I shall refrain from any discussion of the merits of either view for the present. I will only add one observation: Mr Soutzo (p. 17) regards the Italian weight standards as borrowed from the East, and starts with bronze as the earliest stage in the history of the weights. The only clearly defined unit of Roman growth according to him is the Centupondium, which he says is the same as the Assyrian talent. From this the Romans obtained their own libra or pound by dividing their talents into 100 parts instead of 60. We shall find hereafter that this is an untenable position, but meantime it is interesting to find the Centupondium, or sum of 100 asses taken by an unprejudiced writer as the basis of the Roman system in the light of the fact that the ancient Roman value of the cow is likewise 100 asses. If Mr Soutzo was right, our thesis finds complete support, as it would plainly appear in that case that, although the Italians received their weight-unit ready made, they found it nevertheless necessary to equate the new metallic unit so obtained to the cow, the older unit of barter.
In Sicily we have an opportunity not merely of finding the approximate value of a cow in gold without having to deal with the disturbing question of the relative value of copper and silver, but also of showing that Soutzo’s relation of 120:1 as that between silver and copper in early Italy must certainly be wrong, and that Mommsen’s view is in the main correct. The famous Sicilian poet Epicharmus has left us a line: “Buy me straightway a nice heifer calf for ten nomoi[188].” As regards the value of the nomos, or nummus (νόμος or νοῦμμος), Pollux supplies us with some definite information.
In passage (IX. 87) already quoted he says: “Yet the Sicilian talent was the least in amount, the ancient one, as Aristotle says, weighed four and twenty nummi, but the later one twelve; now the nummus is worth three half obols.” These three half obols plainly mean the ordinary half obols of the Attic standard. As the Attic drachm is 67½ grains (normal), 65 grains in actual coins, the ⅙ or obol = 11 grains roughly speaking; three half obols therefore weigh 16½ to 17 grains. Accordingly, if we take the weight of the nummus or litra at 16 to 17 grains of silver, we shall not be wide of the mark. The price then of a good heifer calf was 10 nummi or 160 to 170 grains of silver. The term moschos (calf) is used rather vaguely by various Greek writers, but fortunately by the aid of the Sicilian poet Theocritus, we are certain that it means a calf of the first year not yet weaned; for he speaks[189] of putting the moschos to the cows to suck. From what we have seen ([p. 32]) of the relative values of cattle of different ages, it is tolerably certain that no full-grown cow would be worth less than six or more than ten calves of the first year. Hence the Sicilian cow, at the end of the sixth century B.C., must have been worth from 960-1020 to 1600-1700 grains of silver. We cannot tell exactly what was the ratio between gold and silver in Sicily or Italy at this time, but as we find it was 14 to 1 in Attica in 440 B.C., the probability is that it was not very far from that in Sicily. It certainly must have been at some point between 15:1 and 12:1. Taking it at 12:1, the value of the cow would range from 80 to 141¾ grains of gold, whilst in the ratio of 15:1 the range is from 64 to 113 grains of gold. It is thus absolutely certain that the value of a cow in Sicily in the sixth century B.C. must lie within the limits of 64 to 141 grains, and if the calf of Epicharmus is a suckling, the range in the value of the cow must be from 113 to 140 grains. This is all we require for practical purposes, and it will be admitted that the value of a cow in Sicily comes very close to our Homeric ox-unit of 130-5 grains.
We are now in a position to test the truth of Mr Soutzo’s hypothesis. It will be conceded that at the beginning of the fifth century B.C., the cow must have had about the same value both in Italy and Sicily. The cow in Italy was worth 100 Roman pounds of copper, in Sicily about 1650 grains of silver. If Soutzo is right in saying that silver was to copper as 120:1 on multiplying 1650 by 120 we ought to get a result in copper corresponding to 100 Roman pounds: 1650 × 120 = 198000. Taking the Roman pound before it was raised at about 5000 grs. the Sicilian cow was worth 39 pounds of copper (198000 ÷ 5000 = 39). It is absurd to suppose that even at any time the Italian cow could have been worth 2½ times the Sicilian. Let us now apply the same test to Mommsen’s doctrine, and multiply 1650 grs. of silver by 300. (I take this as being more likely than 288 to have been the relation between copper and silver in the fifth century B.C.). 1650 × 300 = 495000 ÷ 5000 = 99 pounds of copper. The result is too striking to admit of our coming to any other conclusion than that Mommsen is right.
Next let us examine his doctrine that in ancient Italy gold was to silver as 16:1. Mr Soutzo[190] supports this view by three arguments: (1) that when Rome in the course of the Second Punic War issued gold coins for the first time, gold was to silver as 16:1; (2) Mr Head[191] has shown that at Syracuse under the despot Dionysius (405-345 B.C.) gold was to silver as 15:1; (3) that certain symbols on the gold coins of Etruria when interpreted as referring to silver litrae give the proportion between the metals as 16:1. The same answer can dispose of the first two arguments. The state of affairs both at Rome in B.C. 207, and at Syracuse under Dionysius, was quite exceptional. Rome was in a state of bankruptcy, her subjects largely in revolt, the Lex Oppia (215 B.C.) prevented women from wearing more than half an ounce of gold ornaments[192]. It is therefore irrational to treat as normal the relation found to exist between the metals at such a crisis.
Similarly at Syracuse the relations between the metals were completely upset by the wild conduct of Dionysius, who forced his subjects to take coins of tin at the same rate as though they were silver. Moreover any evidence to be drawn with reference to the ratio between silver and gold at Syracuse in the time of Dionysius is completely nullified by the fact that in the reign of Agathocles (B.C. 307) gold was to silver as 12:1[193]. It is evident therefore that if in 207 B.C. gold was to silver all over Italy as 16:1, there must have been a great appreciation of gold. Are we not then justified in regarding the ratio of 16:1 as exceptional, and that of 12:1 as the more regular? That great fluctuations in the relations of the metals did take place in Italy, we know from a statement of Polybius that in his own time in consequence of the great output of gold from a mine in Noricum gold went down one-third in value. Silver was scarce in Central Italy, for it was only after the conquest of Magna Graecia that Rome found herself in a position to issue a silver currency. On the other hand there must have been a large and constant supply of gold coming down from the gold-fields of the Alps in exchange for the bronze wares of Etruria. Now as at Athens, where silver was so plenty and gold in earlier days scarce, the ratio was never higher than 15:1, it is impossible to suppose that in Northern and Central Italy, where the conditions were contrariwise, the ratio can ever have been in ordinary times higher than 12:1.