CHAPTER IX. Statement and Criticism of the Old Doctrines.

knowledge of the relative value of gold and silver, whilst the other theories assume that they borrowed blindly ready-made standards, which they for some unknown reason either raised according to Brandis, or degraded according to Head. But Dr Hultsch is met by two crucial difficulties. (1) Why should the Aeginetans have taken six light Babylonian shekels of gold and arbitrarily made them the basis of their new silver standard? (2) But the fatal objection is that whereas Hultsch’s theory depends on gold being to silver in the same relation (13·3:1) in Greece Proper as it was in Asia Minor, as a matter of fact it can be proved that the precious metals there stood in a very different relation to each other. In the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1887, I gave some reasons for believing that in early times gold was to silver in Greece in the relation of 15:1. For whilst gold was plentiful in Asia, at no place in Greece Proper were there auriferous deposits. Hence it is probable that gold had to silver a higher relative value in Greece than it had in Asia. Certain archaeological discoveries recently made at Athens add great strength to the view which I then put forward. At a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Science in 1889 Dr Ulrich Köhler discussed certain fragments of inscriptions which refer to the famous statue of Athena, wrought in gold and ivory by Pheidias for the Parthenon. By combining with a fragment published by M. Foucart (Bullet. de Corresp. Hell. 1889, p. 171), another fragment previously copied by himself, Dr Köhler arrived at the result that the fragments relate to the purchase of materials for the construction of the statue, that is of gold and ivory. The gold purchased is described both according to its weight and according to the price (τιμή) paid for it in Attic silver currency (whilst the ivory is only described by the value or price). The sum paid for gold amounted to 526·652 drachms, 5 obols, the weight of the gold being 37·618 drachms: from this we learn that the relative value of gold to silver at that time was as 14:1. According to Thucydides (II. 13), forty talents of gold were used in the making of the statue, whilst according to the more explicit statement of Philochorus the amount was forty-four. The image was dedicated at the great Panathenaic