silver coins in Campania before they issued any at Rome affords a curious parallel. A local supply of the metal offers the explanation in each case. “It may be also positively asserted that none of the Aeginetan coins are older than the earliest Lydian electrum money, and that consequently the date of the introduction of coined money into Peloponnesus must be subsequent to circ. 700 B.C. It follows that Pheidon was not the inventor of money, for already before his time all the coasts and islands of the Aegean must have been acquainted with the pale yellow electrum coins of Lydia and Ionia24.”
What then was the standard on which these early coins of Aegina were struck?
The heaviest specimens of these Aeginetan staters or didrachms weigh over 200 grains Troy, but these seem somewhat exceptional. The best numismatic authorities are agreed in setting the normal weight at 196 grains Troy; the drachm consequently weighs 98 grains, and the obol about 16 grains. The origin of this standard has caused much difficulty to metrologists. For it is not the standard of the Babylonian gold shekel of 130 grains, nor of the