Now it is worth observing that all through the classical period of Greek history the term stater is generally confined in use to gold pieces. Thus silver coins, unless they weighed 135 grs., are not described as silver staters, but are regularly termed didrachms. So general evidently was this practice that the adjective chrysous (χρυσοῦς) was regularly employed to express the gold unit, the masculine gender showing that the noun understood is stater (στατήρ). Thus Pollux says: “Some were termed staters of Darius, some Philippeans, other Alexandrians, all being of gold, and if you say gold piece, stater is understood: but if you should say stater, gold is not absolutely to be understood[370].” From the fact that Pollux draws attention to the exceptional use of stater to express a silver coin, on the principle that exceptio probat regulam, it is evident that stater regularly represents a gold piece of two Attic drachms. The familiar practice in Attic Greek, when speaking of a considerable sum of silver without employing either the term mina or talent, is to say 1000 drachms, 2000 drachms and the like, but not 1000 staters or 2000 staters, etc., whilst on the other hand, under like conditions, the practice is to enumerate gold not by drachms, but by staters. Thus in a fragment from the Demi of Eupolis quoted by Pollux[371] a man is described as possessing 3000 staters of gold. We certainly hear of an Aeginean stater and a Corinthian[372] stater (both of silver), but both are found in writers of comparatively late date, when usage was getting less exact, and besides, as the Aeginetic system had a separate individuality of its own, its unit being perfectly different from the Euboic Attic, might with justice be termed a stater. We are thus justified in considering the gold stater the legitimate descendant of the Homeric Talanton, the stater or weigher representing the Talanton or weight of the older time. As long as no other unit than the ox-unit or Talanton was employed, the Talanton or weight par excellence was sufficient to describe it, but when under Asiatic influences the higher unit of the mina (μνᾶ) and talent were introduced, a term was substituted which indicates clearly that the gold unit of 130 grs. was the weigher or basis of the whole system. Starting then with our ox-unit, we find already in Homer definite traces of a decimal, but nothing to indicate the existence of a sexagesimal system. Ten talents of gold are mentioned in several passages.
Starting then with the ox-unit of 130 grs. we can thus arrive at the fully elaborated Greek systems. The term mina (μνᾶ) is beyond doubt a borrowing from the East. How far it was ever much employed in the reckoning of gold it is hard to say, but it is at least remarkable that, when we hear so frequently of minae of silver in the Attic writers, no instance of a mina of gold is quoted in our books of reference. From this one is led to infer that it was for the purpose of measuring the less precious metal, silver, that the term mina was brought into use in Greece. In fact, as stater is essentially a term which clings to gold, so mina is especially a term used of silver. With the mina the Greeks borrowed likewise the highest Asiatic unit (the kikkar of the Hebrews), which became the Talanton or talent of historical Greece. But it is remarkable that the Greeks did not borrow its Asiatic name along with the unit itself. They simply gave it their own name weight (literally, ‘that which can be lifted,’ cp. τλάω, tollo, etc.). This fact can be explained readily if we suppose that the Greeks, like all those other primitive peoples whom we have mentioned, had a rough and ready unit for estimating bulky wares, the standard of the load, or as much as a man could conveniently carry on his back. Having already such a unit they would have no difficulty in adopting the load or talent, which had been fixed according to the Sexagesimal system, and which had permeated all Western Asia. In fact their position towards the Asiatic load, which had been accurately fixed by the mathematical skill of the Babylonians, would be exactly analagous to that of the Malays of Java and Sumatra towards the accurately adjusted Chinese picul. Because the Malays themselves were accustomed to use loads of various weights as their rough highest unit of bulk, they have with all the more readiness received the form of the same unit, which the clever Chinese have incorporated into their commercial weight system by making it equal to 100 chings (catties, or pounds). But it is doubtful if at any time in Greece Proper the talent of gold was ever considered as a monetary unit. We have found Eupolis speaking of “3000 staters of gold” instead of simply saying a talent of gold, and when we do find mention made of talents of gold, as in a famous passage of Thucydides, where he describes the amount of gold employed by Pheidias in the making of the world-renowned chryselephantine statue of Athena for the Parthenon, whilst the computations in silver are expressed simply by talents, the gold is enumerated as talents in weight. We may assume that gold was weighed throughout Greece in historical times on the following system:
| 1 | stater | = | 130 | grs. | ||
| 50 | staters | = | 1 | mina | = | 6500 grs. |
| 3000 | ” | = | 60 | minae | = | 1 talent = 390,000 grs. |
When silver came into use it was probably weighed all through Hellas, as in Asia and Egypt, on the same standard as gold. This continued always to be the practice amongst the great trading communities of Euboea, Chalcis and Eretria, and their colonies, and also with Corinth and her daughter states. Hence the system was commonly known as the Euboic, sometimes as the Corinthian, and in later times, for a reason to be presently given, the Attic. But in this silver system it is no longer the stater which represents the smaller unit, but rather the drachm (δραχμή). Furthermore we find in most constant use a subdivision of the drachm called the obol (ὀβολός nail or spike), six of which made a drachm. There can be no doubt that this silver obolos represented the value in silver of the ancient copper unit from which it took its name, which itself was not estimated by weight but probably, as we saw above, was simply appraised by measure, as is done by all primitive peoples in the estimation of copper and iron, nay even in the very earliest stage of gold itself ([p. 43]). As six of these nails or obols made a handful (δραχμή) in the ancient copper system, so when each of them was equated to a certain amount of silver, the equivalence in silver was called an obol, and the six silver obols obtained the old name of handful or drachm. In the ordinary Greek system of reckoning silver it is 100 drachms, not 50 staters, of silver which form the mina. But of course at the earlier stages of the use of silver we may with some boldness assume that silver was simply weighed by the stater (or Homeric Talanton).
It is important then to note that among the smaller weight denominations silver has virtually no term peculiarly its own: for we have seen that stater belongs essentially to gold, whilst drachm and obol have originated in the use of copper. This is in complete harmony with what we know of the history of the metals themselves, gold and copper being known and employed long before men had learned to utilize silver; and so too, we find the late-introduced term mina in especially close connection with the latest employed of the three metals. This Euboic-Attic silver system may be stated as follows:
| 6 | obols | = | 1 drachm |
| 100 | drachms | = | 1 mina |
| 60 | minae | = | 1 talent. |
The Corinthians, whilst making the obol of the same weight as the Euboic, made a different division of the silver stater; for as Corinth occupied the very portals of Peloponnesus where the Aeginetic system was universal, she found it convenient for purposes of exchange to divide her silver stater of 135 grs. into three drachms of 45 grs. each, one of which was for practical purposes identical with the Aeginetan half drachm. Thus two Corinthian drachms of 45 grs. each were equal to one Aeginetan drachm of 90 grs.