CHAPTER I. The Ox and the Talent in Homer.

conservatism, retained in his code the primitive method of expressing values in oxen. Now it is evident that the term, ‘price of twenty oxen’ (εἰκοσάβοιον), must have been capable of being translated into the ordinary metallic currency, whether that consisted of bullion in ingots or coined money. The “cow” therefore must have had a recognized traditional and conventional value as a monetary unit, and this is completely demonstrated by the practice at Delos. Religious ritual is even more conservative than legal formula, so we need not be surprised to find the ancient unit, the ox, still retained in that great centre of Hellenic worship. The value likewise is expressed in the more modern currency. But we are not yet certain whether the two Attic drachms, which are the equivalent of the ox, are silver or gold. Now Herodotus (VI. 97) tells us that Datis, the Persian general (B.C. 490), offered at Delos three hundred talents of frankincense. Hultsch (Metrol. p. 129) has made it clear that the talent here indicated must be the gold Daric, that is the light Babylonian shekel. For if they were either Babylonian or Attic talents, the amount would be incredible. Frankincense was of enormous value in antiquity; wherefore Hultsch is probably right in assuming that in the opinion of the Persian who made the offering, the three hundred “weights” of frankincense, each of which weighed a Daric, were equal in value likewise to 300 Darics. We shall see in a moment that there was a distinct tradition that the Daric was a Talent, and that the Homeric one. Now the gold Daric = two Attic gold drachms; but as the cow at Delos also = two Attic drachms, and the offering of frankincense at Delos is made in Talent, each of which is equivalent to two gold Attic drachms, there is a strong presumption that this Talent is the equivalent of the ox, and that the Attic drachms mentioned by Pollux are gold. Besides, it is absurd to suppose that at any time two silver drachms could have represented the value of an ox. Even at Athens, in a time of extreme scarcity of coin, Solon, when commuting penalties in cattle for money in reference to certain ancient ordinances, put the value of the ox at five silver drachms⁹. Moreover it is not at all likely that the substitution of silver coin for gold