Coming now to Central Greece, we find on the coins of all the Boeotian towns (with the exception of Orchomenus in her earliest issues) the well-known device of the Boeotian shield. This has been confidently pronounced to be a sacred emblem, symbolic of a common worship, conjectured to be that of Athena Itonia, whose temple near Coronea was the meeting-place of the Boeotians40, whilst at Coronea golden shields were preserved in the Acropolis41. This may be so, but it is equally possible that the shield represented a common monetary unit in ancient times. The shield of early Hellas was a simple ox-hide buckler, described in Homeric language simply as an ox-hide42. Amongst barbarous peoples, as we saw above, weapons form one of the regular commodities commonly employed as currency; the Achaeans bought wine with hides as well as with oxen from the ships that came from Lemnos, and as there can be no doubt that the hide was a regular sub-multiple of the cow, it is very probable that the ox-hide shield stood in a similar relation to the cow, the chief or most universal unit; and as we find axes and half-axes among the prizes offered by Achilles as well as kettles and caldrons, so we learn from a famous passage43 that shields were amongst the most usual articles offered as prizes and therefore were regular units of currency: “For they strove neither for an ox to be sacrificed nor yet for an ox-hide shield which are wont to be the prizes for the feet of men, but they strove for the life of the horse-taming Hector.”