Several difficulties (irrespective of the fact that there was no need for the Greeks to borrow from Asia a standard which they themselves already possessed from very early times) meet this theory.
(1) If the Euboeans derived their standard from Ionia why did they not rather adopt the Phoenician standards, on which we have already seen the great Ionian cities based their coinages of gold, silver, and electrum? Some very early electrum coins found at Samos (Head, op. cit. XLI.), have suggested that that island formed the link. “The theory,” says Mr Head, “that Samos was the port whence the Euboeans derived the gold standard subsequently used by them for silver, rests upon the weight of some very early electrum coins (about 44 grs.) which have been found in the island of Samos, and of the earliest Euboean coins, Euboea and Samos having been two of the greatest colonizing and maritime powers of the Aegean Sea. Thus I think we may account for the fact that the towns of Euboea, when they began to strike silver money of their own, naturally made use of the standard which had become from of old habitual in the island, precisely in the same way as Pheidon in Peloponnesus struck his first silver money on the reduced Phoenician standard which was prevalent at the time in his dominions.” But as a matter of fact the recognized Samian coins are of the Phoenician standard (220 grs.) in its slightly reduced state as found at Miletus (Head, op. cit. 515). This being so it would indeed be strange if the Euboeans from occasionally coming in contact with Lydian coins at Samos would have adopted that standard in preference to that in use in the great cities of Ionia with which their commerce directly lay.
(2) Why did the Euboeans take the Lydian gold standard of 130 grs. for their own electrum and silver instead of the Lydian silver standard of 172·9 grs.? According to Mr Head’s view, as we have seen above, the early Lydian electrum was struck on the standard of 172 grs. (the so-called Babylonian silver) when meant for circulation in the interior of Asia Minor, but on the Phoenician standard for circulation in trade with the Greeks of the coast of Ionia.
(3) We may ask the question, why did the Euboeans if they were taking over a ready-made standard which had no relation to any standard which they themselves already possessed, adopt the gold standard of 130 grs. instead of the electrum and silver standard which was in use among all the Greek cities with which they traded?
We can now conveniently revert to the theory that the Aeginetan silver standard was a reduced Phoenician. Much has been written about degradation of coin weights and reduced standards. It may be therefore well to clear our notions on the subject by asking ourselves what do we mean by such terms. Both the terms and the process are equally familiar to those at all acquainted with the history of mediaeval coinage. The king then controlled, as for instance in England, the mintage. If the sovereign thought fit to reduce the amount of silver in the groat from 80 to 72 grains his subjects had no alternative but to take the new and lighter pieces as equivalent to four pennies sterling. The sovereign thus was able to relieve an exhausted treasury, making a considerable profit off every groat and penny put into circulation. Again, the impecunious monarch might resort to another method of making a profit, by debasing the coinage, and might issue one such as the fourth of Henry VIII., of exceeding base silver, and again his subjects could simply grumble and take the new money. These groats and pennies passed as such within the realm, but when the question of foreign exchange came, the matter assumed an entirely new complexion. Would a shrewd Flemish merchant from Antwerp accept a base or a reduced English groat at the same rate for which it passed current in England? Of course he did no such thing, and the scales were at once called into use, and the silver changed hands not by tale, but by weight. Now the condition under which such a degradation or debasing of the coinage as we have described can take place is that a state or country shall be of such considerable magnitude that it has room within its own borders to employ a large amount of coin in internal trade without much necessity of external commerce. Did such conditions exist among the Greek states of antiquity? There is another condition, namely, sovereign power vested in the hands of a monarch possessed of unlimited authority, who has a direct personal interest in the profit to be made from the degradation of the coinage, and who has power sufficient to enable him to force his debased coinage on a reluctant people. Did such conditions exist in any of the Greek states of antiquity? Nowhere in Greece Proper do we find them fulfilled, but if we turn to Sicily we get a good example of the practice so often followed in after centuries by the mediaeval monarchs. The tyrant Dionysius there put an arbitrary value on gold in relation to silver: for although this relation was probably not more than 12:1, this despot raised it perforce to 15:1[280]. He also issued a coinage of tin, according to Aristotle[281], which he perhaps forced his subjects to take as equivalent to silver coins of like size. In later years again when Timoleon liberated Syracuse and the democracy was once more restored, the state issued a coinage of electrum instead of that of pure gold, which had previously been in currency, by this means making a profit of 20 per cent.[282] It is hardly necessary to point out that whilst this coinage of Dionysius might pass for an artificial value within the dominions of Syracuse, the moment a Syracusan came to make payment to a foreign merchant, its factitious value vanished and the transaction took place according to the current value of the metals. So as long as the English penny remained of good weight and quality it found ready currency on the continent, and the potentates of Flanders issued numerous imitations of them known as esterlings, but when the English silver penny became debased all foreign imitations ceased[283]. Now the Greek states of Greece Proper were very small in extent, and seldom had a very strong central authority. The area being limited it was absolutely necessary for them to have constant dealings with their neighbours. It would have been difficult for any government in republican times to have forced on its citizens a debased silver currency, and even had this been possible, any benefit derived therefrom would have been counterbalanced by the great drawback arising to trade. If Athens had reduced her famous “Owls” or as they were otherwise called “Maidens” (from the head of Pallas Athena), by five grains, her credit would have suffered and her merchants have gained nothing by it, as the balance would have been at once resorted to, and allowance would have had to be made on each coin of the new debased standard. We who live in modern times are too apt to forget the readiness with which men in older days had resort to the scales, although at this moment large transactions in gold between bankers and financiers are carried out by weight. Only so late as the beginning of this century, when the gold coinage of the country was in a wretched state, every farmer and trader went to fairs in Ireland equipped with a pocket balance (which was adjusted for the guinea, half-guinea, sovereign, half-sovereign, and gold seven-shilling-piece).
It is difficult then to see what it would have availed the Aeginetans to have reduced the standard which they are supposed to have got from the Phoenicians.
Their island state was of diminutive proportions; they devoted themselves almost entirely to traffick by sea, their island was an emporium where strangers resorted. In all dealings with the Phoenicians they would have to pay a drawback on their debased coin; for the cunning Phoenician or Ionian was not likely to be beguiled into taking staters of 200 grs. as equivalent to 230 grs. It is plain therefore that when we find divergencies of standard these are not due to mere degradation, but to some far more practical consideration, and this will be seen all the more clearly when we shall find that whilst we have divergencies in silver standards, the gold standard which was in use in Greece from Homeric times down to the Roman Conquest remains almost absolutely without variation. But there are other and stronger objections against the Phoenician origin of the Aeginetic standard.
Now if we accept the doctrine that the Greeks received their coin-standards across the sea from Asia, the Aeginetic from the Phoenician traders whose commerce lay with Aegina and Peloponnesus, the Euboic on the other hand from Lydia by way of the great Ionian cities on the coast of Asia Minor, we become involved in a serious difficulty. At the time represented in the Homeric Poems, there is not as yet a single Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor[284]. Miletus, destined to be in after years the Queen of Ionia, and to be one of the greatest centres of Hellenic commerce and culture, is as yet known only as the city of the barbarous-speaking Carians[285]. Yet we find the Greeks represented in these self-same poems as already in possession of a standard for gold identical with the light Babylonian or Lydian gold shekel (130 grs.). But again we find from the same source that the Greeks were already in full commercial intercourse with one Asiatic people, but not a people who could serve as a bridge between Lydia and Euboea. Everywhere in the Homeric Poems we meet the shipmen of Tyre, who are represented as bringing the products of the skilled artists of Sidon, beautiful cloths, and cunningly wrought vessels of silver, articles of jewellery, necklaces[286] set with amber (perhaps brought from the coasts of the Baltic), and now and then as chance arose, kidnapping women and children to sell as slaves in the marts of the Mediterranean[287].
If the Hellenes had got their standard from an Asiatic source, it must have been the heavy gold shekel of 260 grains, which the Phoenicians employed, and consequently the Homeric Talent would have weighed 260 instead of 130 grains, or on the other hand if it be supposed that the Greeks might borrow and use for their own gold a standard used only for silver in Asia, the Homeric Talent ought to have weighed 225 grains, that is the Phoenician silver standard, which, as we have seen, it certainly did not.
A further difficulty arises in reference to the Euboic standard. No one who reflects for a moment could venture to assert that Phoenician trade and influence were limited to Southern Greece. Yet that virtually is the tacit assumption made by those who derive the standard from Asia. There is evidence to shew that the Phoenicians from a very early period frequented Euboea, doubtless attracted by its copper mines (from which perhaps the famous city of Chalcis derived its name)[288]. Round no spot in Hellas do more legends cluster which connect it with Phoenician colonists than Boeotia. It was here that Cadmus settled, and introduced the Phoenician alphabet, it was here according to Greek tradition that Herakles, who is so strongly identified with the Phoenician Melkarth, had his birth. Why then should the Euboeans have been behind the rest of Hellas in receiving the Phoenician standard, which, according to Mr Head, as we saw above, did influence so powerfully the Ionic cities of the Asiatic seaboard, with which their commerce was so largely connected?