CHAPTER XII. The Greek System.

native of Tenedos. This is hardly enough to account for the dedication of the axes at Delphi. Two explanations suggest themselves. It was the custom of kings or communities to send offerings to Delphi of the best products of their land. Thus Croesus sent vast quantities of his Lydian electrum, and, still more to the point, the people of Metapontum in South Italy, whose land was famous for its wheat, after an especially favourable harvest sent to Delphi a wheat-ear (υέρος) of gold. Were the double axes in like fashion an especial product of Tenedos? Or was this dedication analogous to that of Pheidon when he hung up in the temple of the Argive Here the ancient nails and bars? The first explanation is the more probable, for there was no reason why the Tenedians should not have dedicated their cast off currency of axes in some temple at home. I have already mentioned the hoe currency of ancient China, and the axes used as such in Africa. I shall now show that such double-axes as those stamped on the coins of Tenedos formed part of the earliest Greek system of currency. I have already enumerated the various articles used in barter in the Homeric poems. The prizes offered in the Funeral games of Patroclus are of course merely the usual objects of barter and currency, slavewomen, oxen, lebetes, tripods, talents of gold and the like. “But he (Achilles) set for the archers dark iron, and he set down ten axes (πελέκεας), and ten half-axes (ἡμιπέλεκκα)¹⁹.” The axe is undoubtedly of the same kind as that on the coins of Tenedos, the name (pelekys) being the same in each case, and the Homeric one beyond doubt is double-headed like the Tenedian, since the half-axe (hemi-pelekkon) must obviously mean a single-headed axe²⁰. The double-axes formed the first prize, the ten half-axes the second, for “Meriones took up all the ten axes, and Teucer bore the ten half-axes to the hollow ships²¹.” These axes and half-axes then seem to go in groups of ten as units of value, the half-axes representing half the value of the double-headed. If then the kettle and tripod of Homeric times are found as symbols on the coins of Crete, why may not the axe on those of Tenedos represent the local unit of an earlier epoch? and that such axes were evidently an important article in Tenedos is proved by the dedication at Delphi.