The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards

by William Ridgeway

It is quite possible that after the Gauls got possession of Northern Italy, the supply of gold which reached Etruria and Latium may have been considerably reduced, and this would perfectly explain the relation existing at a certain period between gold and silver coins in Etruria, supposing that Soutzo’s interpretation of the symbols is correct. But as we have no literary evidence to check off any deductions drawn from the coins, it is impossible for us to say whether the symbols on the gold pieces refer to units of silver or bronze.

Fig. 20. “Regenbogenschüssel” (ancient German imitation of the Stater of Philip of Macedon).

Returning to the Kelts, the close kinsfolk of the Italians, the reader will recollect that the Gauls struck their imitations of the stater of Philip of Macedon on a standard of 120 grs., 15 grains lower than the weight of the archetype. Now similar but still more barbarous imitations of Philips gold stater are found in Germany. These Rainbow dishes (Regenbogenschüsseln), as they are popularly termed in allusion to the picturesque superstition that a treasure of gold lies at the foot of the rainbow, and also to their scyphate form, are found in especial abundance in Rhenish Bavaria and Bohemia. Like the Gaulish imitations of the Philippus from which they are copied, they follow a standard of 120 grs. (and like the Gauls the Germans struck quarters of this coin, a division wholly unknown to the Greeks)[194]. In the region just indicated dwelt the ancient Alamanni, and there can be no doubt that it was this people who issued the coins found there. Now the Alamanni were among the barbarians who after having overrun the provinces of the Roman Empire, committed to barbarous Latin their immemorial laws and institutions. In the Laws of the Alamanni the best ox is estimated at five tremisses[195], that is 1⅔ solidi, or in other words 120 grs. of gold, the medium ox = 4 tremisses = 96 grs. The coincidence that the value of the ox in gold is the actual weight of the coins of the Alamanni is too striking to admit of any other explanation than that the gold coins of this people were struck on the native standard, the ox-unit. The Keltic and Teutonic tribes were so intermixed that we may plausibly infer that the Gauls had reduced the weight of the Philippus to 120 grs. because owing to gold being less plentiful and cattle more abundant to the north of the Alps, from a very remote time the ox-unit throughout Gaul and Germany was slightly lower than along the Mediterranean.

In the Laws of the Burgundians the value of an ox is set at 2 solidi = 144 grs. of gold[196]. This of course is considerably more than that of the Alamannic ox, but when we consider the late period at which the laws of the Barbarians were compiled, and the various recensions which they underwent, the strange fact is that the ox should have varied so little in its relation to gold from the Homeric ox-unit of at least 1000 B.C.

Passing into Scandinavia we once more, even so late as the eighth century A.D., find the same strange agreement in value. In the ancient Norse documents (where the cow is the unit of value as we have already seen) it is reckoned at 2½ öres (ounces) of silver = 1078 grains. But we likewise know from the same sources that gold stood to silver as 8:1; accordingly the cow was worth 134 grs. of gold[197].

Besides the Hellenes and Italians there was another people who strove for the mastery of all the Western Mediterranean. The ancient city of Tyre had sent out many colonies into the far West, when the nascent power of Hellas had already begun to assert its superiority in the Aegean. Trade grew and flourished between the colonies and the mother city in Phoenicia; thus there was unbroken intercourse between remote Gades and her Eastern mother until after the destruction of the latter (720 B.C.). Henceforward the headship of the Phoenician cities of the West falls into the hands of Carthage, the scene of the last great act and final catastrophe in the drama of Phoenician history. At the very time, nay some say on the very day, when the Greeks of the East were destroying the host of Xerxes in the Strait of Salamis, the Hellenes of the West led by brave Gelon of Syracus were repelling a great army of Carthaginians before the walls of Himera, and during the third and fourth centuries B.C. the Greeks of Sicily lived in constant danger from the Carthaginians, who held the western part of the island with their factories of Lilybaeum, Drepanum and Motyé, until at last they were finally expelled from the island by the resistless might of Rome (241 B.C.).

Could we but learn the estimate put upon the ox by the Phoenicians or Carthaginians, we would get a fair index to its value over a wide extended area. For as in earlier times the Phoenician influence extended from Tyre to Gades, linking both east and west, so in later days Carthage extended her power over all North Africa from the Pillars of Herakles to the confines of Egypt, and over Southern Spain.

Some forty years ago the longest Phoenician inscription yet known was found at Marseilles. The inscription seems to have belonged to a temple of Baal, and contains directions touching sacrifices and certain payments to be made to the officiating priest. Chemical analysis of the stone has demonstrated that it is of a kind not found in France, but known in North Africa. Hence M. Renan thought that it had been brought as ballast in some ship. The names of two Suffetes stand at the head of the inscription, which seems along with other evidence to point to its having been engraved at Carthage. On palaeographical grounds its date is placed in the fourth century B.C., but why it came to Massalia seems still inexplicable. It is possible that in the fourth century B.C. there was a considerable body of Carthaginians resident at Massalia, just as on the other hand we know that there was a large Greek community residing at Carthage. If that were so, the Carthaginians would naturally keep up the worship of Baal at Marseilles, and would regulate the temple worship in accordance with the practice of the mother city. The stone in that case may have been imported to serve as an official declaration of the rules to be observed in sacrifices. Movers and Kenrick regarded the sums of money named in connection with the victims as composition for the animals named, whilst the editors of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (Vol. I. Pt. I. p. 217) regard them as fees to be paid to the priests for the performance of the sacrifices, saying that it is analogous to the directions for the burnt offerings, peace offerings and thank offerings contained in Leviticus i-vii. The few lines of the inscription with which we are concerned I shall translate from the Latin version given in the Corpus.

“Concerning an ox, whether it is a whole burnt offering, or deprecatory offering or a thank offering, there shall be to the priests ten shekels of silver, and if it is a whole burnt offering, in addition to the fees this weight of flesh, three hundred; and if it is a peace offering the first cuts and additions, the appurtenances thereof, and the skin and the entrails, carcase and the feet, and the rest of the flesh shall belong to the giver of the sacrifice.