CHAPTER XII. The Greek System.

produced in that region, and it is perfectly in accordance with all analogy that certain quantities of this plant and of the juice extracted from it should be employed as money. We saw above that at the present moment tea is so employed on the borders of Tibet and China, and raw cotton in Darfur. But there is also some positive evidence in favour of this assumption, for Strabo³² tells us that a traffic was carried on at the port of Charax between the Carthaginians and Cyrenaeans, the former bringing wine wherewith to purchase the silphium of the latter. There must have been a wine-unit, and also an unit for the silphium, or otherwise the barter could not have been carried on; and just as in Gaul³³ a jar of wine purchased a boy fit to serve as a cupbearer, a certain measure of wine being equated to a slave-boy, so we may conclude that some such wine-unit was equated to a packet or bale of silphium, the latter in turn having a certain amount of silver equated to it, which when coinage was introduced was stamped with the silphium device. That the silphium was packed in bales of a fixed weight is proved by a now famous vase-painting which represents the weighing (on ship board?) of the bales of silphium in the presence of Arcesilas the king of Cyrene³⁴. The figure who points to the scales is marked silphiomachos (σλιφιομαχος) which is taken to mean silphium-weigher (σλιφιο- being either a mis-spelling of the artist, or the local form of the word, whilst the latter part is connected with the Egyptian mach = to weigh). Close to the silphium packets is the word ΜΑΕΝ, which has not been explained, but which may be simply a form of the word mina (manah, meneh) and denotes that each packet weighed that amount.