century B.C. at Syracuse, the most advanced community in Sicily, the cow still continued to be the unit of assessment, à fortiori, at an earlier period that animal must have been the monetary unit of the whole island.
From the Italians we pass on to their close kinsmen the Kelts. We are told by Polybius32 that when the Gauls entered Italy, their wealth consisted of their cattle and gold ornaments, but although an argument will be offered below to show that the cow was the monetary unit of both Gauls and Germans, we have no definite evidence respecting the barter system. But fortunately the Ancient Laws of Wales and Ireland afford us ample insight into the Keltic system. Irish tradition goes back far beyond the date at which the Brehon Laws were compiled, and from it we get a glimpse of a system almost Homeric: thus we read in the Annals of the Four Masters under the year 106 A.D. that the tribute (Boroimhe, literally cow-tax) paid by the King of Leinster consisted in 150 cows, 150 swine, 150 couples of men and women in servitude, 150 girls and the king’s daughter in like servitude, 150 caldrons, with two passing large ones of the breadth and depth of five fists33. As this tradition makes no mention of payment in metals, but only of slaves, cattle and caldrons, which doubtless stood to one another in well defined relations, we need have no hesitation in assuming that the cow formed the chief unit of the earlier, as it did of the later Kelts.
The Welsh naturally adopted the monetary system which sprang up after the reign of Constantine the Great in the Later Empire. Accordingly we find in certain of their Ancient Laws tables giving in denarii , solidi or librae the values of various kinds of property. From these we can learn with accuracy the relations in value which existed between various kinds of property. Thus the calf from March (when the cows calved) to November was worth 6 denarii , to the following February 8 den. , till May 10 den. , till August of the second year 12, till November 14 den. , till February 15 den. , till February of the third year 28 den. The heifer is then