| 1 | Daric | = | 130 grs. |
| 50 | Darics | = | 1 mina = 6,500 grs. |
| 3000 | Darics | = | 60 minas = 1 talent = 390,000 grs. |
For silver currency the Persians employed half of the Babylonian silver stater of 168 grs., its usual weight being about 84 grs. This coin was in every way similar to the Daric and in fact is sometimes called by the same name by writers of a later age[364], but the more usual appellation in the classical writers was the Median siglos (Μηδικός σίγλος) or simply siglos. Twenty of these sigli were equivalent to one gold Daric, for Xenophon appears to count 3000 Darics as equal to 10 talents of silver, or in other words to 60,000 sigli (6000 × 10 = 60,000). The siglos may therefore be regarded as the Persian drachm or half-stater. As 130 grains of gold are thus made equal to 1680 grs. of silver (84 × 20), gold held to silver the old ratio of 13:1.
The Persian silver standard was formed thus:
| 1 | siglos | = | 84 grs. | ||||||
| 100 | sigli | = | 50 | staters | = | 1 | mina | = | 8400 grs. |
| 6000 | sigli | = | 3000 | staters | = | 60 | minae | = | 1 talent = 504,000 grs. |
As regards commercial weight we may fairly assume that the old light and heavy royal systems continued in use in the respective regions where they had been employed in early days.
CHAPTER XII.
The Greek System.
We are now come to the most important portion of our task, the development of the Greek and Italic systems. In the Homeric Poems we found the Talanton (or value of a cow in gold) the sole unit of weight, and that only employed for gold. This Talanton has been shown to be the same in weight as the light gold shekel of Asia Minor, which, under the form of coin, we have just been discussing as the Croesean stater and Persian Daric. It was therefore nothing else than the Euboic or Attic stater of historical times, which at all periods and at all places that fall within our knowledge formed the sole unit for the weighing of gold.
Besides the Talanton based on the ox, there was in all probability another higher unit in occasional use in Greece Proper. This was the threefold of the ox-unit. We have already had occasion to notice the small gold talent, called by some writers the Macedonian, which was equal to three Attic staters. The same weight under the name of the Sicilian talent was employed likewise for gold only in the Greek colonies of Sicily and Southern Italy. The conservatism of colonists is too well known to need illustration, and we may with high probability infer that the Greek settlers in Magna Graecia brought the small talent from their original homes. What was the origin of this weight? We have seen that everywhere all over our area the slave is the occasional higher unit. Thus the Irish slave (cumhal) was a unit of account equal to three cows. The slave in the Welsh Laws is equal to 4 cows, whilst in Homer we found a slave woman valued at 4 cows also. From the way in which this notice of her price occurs, it is probable that Achilles did not give a woman of the most ordinary kind as a prize, for had she been the ordinary slave-woman of account, there would have been no need to mention the price, as any one would have known how many cows exactly she was worth. It is then not improbable that three cows were commonly reckoned as the value of a slave, and accordingly the small gold talent, which is the multiple of the ox-unit, is simply the metallic representative of the slave, just as the Homeric Talanton itself is that of the cow.