THE ORIGIN OF
METALLIC CURRENCY AND
WEIGHT STANDARDS.

London: C. J. CLAY and SONS,
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,
Ave Maria Lane.

Cambridge: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.
Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS.
New York: MACMILLAN AND CO.

THE ORIGIN OF
METALLIC CURRENCY AND
WEIGHT STANDARDS

BY
WILLIAM RIDGEWAY, M.A.,
PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN QUEEN’S COLLEGE, CORK,
LATE FELLOW OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

ἌΝΘΡΩΠΟϹ Ἢ <ΒΟὟϹ Ἢ> ὟϹ ἊΝ ΕἼΗ ΜΈΤΡΟΝ ἉΠΆΝΤΩΝ.

CAMBRIDGE:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1892

[All Rights reserved.]

Cambridge:
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PREFACE.

The following pages are an attempt to arrive at a knowledge of the origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards by the Comparative Method. As both these institutions played a not inconsiderable part in the development of civilization, it seemed worth while to approach the subject from a different point of view from that from which it had been previously studied. Hitherto Numismatists when studying the Origins of Coinage had confined themselves to the materials presented to them in the earliest money of Lydia, Greece and Italy, and on the other hand the Metrologists had almost completely limited their range of observation to the systems of Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome. As the Comparative Method has yielded such excellent results in the study of other human institutions, I have endeavoured by its aid to get some new principles which may throw some fresh light on the first beginnings of monetary and weight systems.

The leading principle which I have here endeavoured to establish by the Inductive Method, I had already put forward in a short paper, but there are various other doctrines now published for the first time, such as the origin of the earliest Greek coin types, the origin of the earliest Greek silver coins, of the Greek Obolos, the Sicilian Litra, and Roman As, of the Mina, and its sixty-fold the Talent.

In treating of the Distribution of gold and the priority of its discovery to that of the other metals, I have been led to criticise the principles of the science of Linguistic Palaeontology, which have gained such currency in this country from Schrader’s Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryans, and from Dr Isaac Taylor’s popular little book, The Origin of the Aryans. I have been led to conclude that Comparative Philology taken alone is a misleading guide in the study of Anthropology.

From the nature of this work, a certain amount of polemic was inevitable; but I trust that not a line will be found which contains anything which could be offensive to the living, or is disrespectful to great scholars now no more. I owe so much to the works of distinguished men, from whose principles I am obliged to dissent, that I feel myself almost an ingrate who assails his benefactors with the very means provided for him by their labours.

It now only remains for me to thank many friends, who have aided me and taken an interest in this work.

To Mr J. G. Frazer, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, I am under obligations which I cannot adequately express in words. He has read through the proofs of the whole of this work, and there is scarcely a page which has not benefited from his most careful and acute criticism. Besides this his vast knowledge of the manners and customs of barbarous peoples has furnished me with many most valuable references, and his fine Ethnological Library has been ungrudgingly placed at my disposal. Professor W. Robertson Smith has read the proofs of those pages which deal with Semitic systems, and Prof. J. H. Middleton those treating of the Greek.

By their kind sacrifice of time and labour which have been robbed from important works of their own, the many shortcomings of this book have been rendered far less numerous than they otherwise would be, but of course I alone am responsible for the manifold ones which remain.

I must also express my gratitude to Mr Head, Mr Wroth and Mr Grueber of the Coin Department of the British Museum for their kindness and courtesy in affording me every facility for studying the coins under their charge.

I have to thank the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for having undertaken the publication of this work.

Queen’s College, Cork,
Christmas Eve, 1891.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER I.
The Ox and the Talent in Homer.

ἮΜΟϹ Δ’ ΟΎΤ’ ἌΡ ΠΩ ἨῺϹ, ἜΤΙ Δ’ ἈΜΦΙΛΎΚΗ ΝΎΞ.

The object of this essay is to enquire into the origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards. Since August Boeckh in his metrological enquiries[1] put forth the idea that the weight standards of antiquity had been obtained scientifically, all subsequent writers with scarcely an exception have followed in the same path. This theory was undoubtedly suggested by the fact that the French Republic had established a new scientific metric system. Yet reflection might have shown scholars that even the French system was not a wholly independent outcome of science, for beyond doubt the mètre and litre and hectare were only varieties of older measures of length, capacity and surface, then for the first time scientifically adjusted. The discovery of certain weights of bronze and stone in the ruins of Nineveh, Khorsabad and Babylon lent force to the theory of Boeckh; the imaginations of scholars were excited by the marvellous remains of Chaldaean and Assyrian civilization which had just been brought to light by Sir A. H. Layard, and they hastened to conclude that in the mathematical science of Mesopotamia the source of all weight-standards was to be found. Egypt however put in her claim to priority, and standards based on the measurements of the Great Pyramid, or on the weight of a given quantity of Nile-water, have entered the lists against the astrologers of Chaldaea. This battle still rages hotly, Assyriologists and Egyptologists hurling at each other statements drawn from tablets and papyri, as regards the translation of which no two of these savants are agreed. In spite of this all modern works on metrology start with the systems of Babylon and Egypt and from these they derive the systems of Greece and Italy. It would at least be more scientific to move backwards from the known to the unknown, but beguiled by the glamour of a “scientific” metrological system, scholars have turned their backs upon scientific method. Whilst our knowledge of the Assyrian and Egyptian weight systems is most imperfect, being derived from literary monuments, or from inscriptions on weights not half understood, the systems of Greece and Rome are known to us not simply from the vast literatures written in languages thoroughly intelligible, but likewise from the evidence of immense numbers of coins struck in gold and silver, by the weights of which we are enabled to check off and substantiate the literary sources.

As Greece coined money several centuries before Italy, and as its literature reaches much further back than that of Rome, it is plain that any sound enquiry into the origin of weight standards must commence with Greece. We shall therefore without further preface proceed to investigate the evidence afforded to us by the oldest Greek records.

The Homeric Talent.

In the Homeric Poems, which cannot be dated later than the eighth century B.C., there is as yet no trace of coined money. We find nevertheless in those Poems two units of value; the one is the cow (or ox), or the value of a cow, the other is the Talent (τάλαντον). The former is the one which has prevailed, and does still prevail, in barbaric communities, such as the Zulus of South Africa, where the sole or principal wealth consists in herds and flocks. For several reasons we may assign to it priority in age as compared with the Talent. In the first place it represents the most primitive form of exchange, the barter of one article of value for another, before the employment of the precious metals as a medium of currency; consequently the estimation of values by the cow is older than that by means of a Talent or “weight” of gold, or silver or copper. Again, in Homer, all values are expressed in so many oxen, as “golden arms for brazen, those worth one hundred beeves, for those worth nine beeves[2]” (Il. VI. 236).

The Talent on the other hand is only mentioned in Homer in relation to gold (for we never find any mention of a Talent of silver) and we never find the value of any other article expressed in Talents. But the names of monetary units hold their ground long after they themselves have ceased to be in actual use as we observe in such common expressions as “bet a guinea,” or worth a “groat,” although these coins themselves are no longer in circulation, and so the French sou has survived for a century in popular parlance, and the Thaler has lived into the new German monetary system. Accordingly we may infer that the method of expressing the value of commodities in kine, which we find side by side with the Talent, is the elder of the twain.

Was there any immediate connection between the two systems or were they as Hultsch (Metrologie², p. 165) maintains entirely independent? It is difficult to conceive any people, however primitive, employing two standards at the same time which are completely independent of each other. For instance when we find in the Iliad[3] that in a list of three prizes appointed for the foot-race, the second is a cow, the third is a half-talent of gold, it is impossible to believe that Achilles or rather the poet had not some clear idea concerning the relative value of an ox and a talent. Now it is noteworthy that, as already remarked, nowhere in the Poems is the value of any commodity expressed in Talents; yet who can doubt that Talents of gold passed freely as media of exchange? A simple solution of this difficulty would be that the Talent of gold represented the older ox-unit. This would account for the fact that all values are expressed in oxen, and not in Talents, the older name prevailing in a fashion resembling the usage of pecunia in Latin.

A complete parallel for such a practice can be still found at the present moment among some of the Samoyede tribes of Siberia. Thus we read in the account of a recent traveller: “He finally came to the conclusion that for the consideration of five hundred reindeer, he would undertake the contract. This I regarded as a very facetious sally on his part. The reindeer however I found was the recognised unit of value, as amongst some tribes of the Ostiaks the Siberian squirrel. For this purpose the reindeer is generally considered to be worth five roubles[4].” Again forty years ago Haxthausen[5] tells us that the Ossetes, a Caucasian tribe dwelling not very far from Tiflis, although long accustomed to stamped money, especially on the border of Georgia, kept their accounts in cows, five roubles being reckoned to the cow. Here then in Siberia and in the Caucasus, in spite of a long experience not merely of a metallic unit, but of actual coined money, we still find values estimated in reindeer, and in cows, the older units, just as in Homer they are stated in oxen.

We shall likewise find that when the ancient Irish borrowed a ready made silver unit (the uncia) from the Romans, they had to equate this unit to their old barter-unit the cow, just as in modern times the wild tribes of Annam when borrowing the bar of silver from their more civilized neighbours have had to equate it to their native standard, the buffalo; facts in close accord with the well known derivation of Latin pecunia, money from pecus, English fee from feoh, which still meant cattle, as does the German Vieh, and rupee (according to some) from Sanskrit rupa, also meaning cattle.

Let us now see if we have any data to support this hypothesis. That most trustworthy writer, Julius Pollux, says in his Onomasticon (IX. 60): “Now in old times the Athenians had this (i.e. the didrachm) as a coin and it was called an ox, because it had an ox stamped on it, but they think that Homer also was acquainted with it when he spoke of (arms) ‘worth an hundred kine for those worth nine[6].’ Moreover in the laws of Draco there is the expression, to pay back the price of twenty kine: and at the time when the Delians hold their sacred festival, they say that the herald makes proclamation whenever a gift is given by any one, that so many oxen will be given by him, and that for each ox two Attic drachms are offered: whence some are of opinion that the ox is a coin peculiar to the Delians, but not to the Athenians; and that from this likewise has been started the proverb, an ox stands on his tongue, in case any man holds his tongue for money[7].”

According to Pollux then the Attic didrachm, or at least a coin employed by the Athenians (perhaps certain coins of Euboea), was called an ‘ox.’ Plutarch (Theseus, c. 25) goes further and asserts that Theseus struck money stamped with the figure of an ox (ἔκοψε δὲ νὸμισμα βοῦν ἐγχαράξας), and the Scholiast on the Birds of Aristophanes (1106) quotes from Philochorus, an Athenian antiquary of the third century B.C.[8], the same account of the Attic didrachms being marked with an ox.

On the other hand the highest authorities on numismatics assert that the Athenians never struck any such coins. Yet after making due allowance for the additions made by Plutarch to the more crude statement of Pollux and Philochorus, it is hard to conceive that such a belief could have arisen without some foundation, and a probable solution may be found in the fact that certain uninscribed coins, bearing the type of an ox-head, which in recent years have been assigned to Euboea, are for the most part found in Attica. We know that Eretria, and Chalcis, the great cities of Euboea, were amongst the earliest places in Greece to strike money, and it is quite possible, nay probable, that these Euboic coins formed (along with the Aeginetan didrachms) the currency in use at Athens before the time of Solon (B.C. 596). Why the name ox was especially recollected in after years as that of the earliest currency, we can readily understand; the name derived from the old unit of barter would at once attach itself to the coin which bore the image of the ox, and in the course of time two traditions, one that the ancient unit was the ox, the other that the first coins current at Athens bore the symbol of an ox, would merge into one, and finally patriotic feeling would ascribe the first coinage to Theseus, who was regarded as the father of so many Athenian institutions.

That, at all events, the name might be applied to a certain sum, or coin, is rendered highly probable by the fact that Draco, with true legal conservatism, retained in his code the primitive method of expressing values in oxen. Now it is evident that the term, ‘price of twenty oxen’ (εἰκοσάβοιον), must have been capable of being translated into the ordinary metallic currency, whether that consisted of bullion in ingots or coined money. The “cow” therefore must have had a recognized traditional and conventional value as a monetary unit, and this is completely demonstrated by the practice at Delos. Religious ritual is even more conservative than legal formula, so we need not be surprised to find the ancient unit, the ox, still retained in that great centre of Hellenic worship. The value likewise is expressed in the more modern currency. But we are not yet certain whether the two Attic drachms, which are the equivalent of the ox, are silver or gold. Now Herodotus (VI. 97) tells us that Datis, the Persian general (B.C. 490), offered at Delos three hundred talents of frankincense. Hultsch (Metrol. p. 129) has made it clear that the talent here indicated must be the gold Daric, that is the light Babylonian shekel. For if they were either Babylonian or Attic talents, the amount would be incredible. Frankincense was of enormous value in antiquity; wherefore Hultsch is probably right in assuming that in the opinion of the Persian who made the offering, the three hundred “weights” of frankincense, each of which weighed a Daric, were equal in value likewise to 300 Darics. We shall see in a moment that there was a distinct tradition that the Daric was a Talent, and that the Homeric one. Now the gold Daric = two Attic gold drachms; but as the cow at Delos also = two Attic drachms, and the offering of frankincense at Delos is made in Talent, each of which is equivalent to two gold Attic drachms, there is a strong presumption that this Talent is the equivalent of the ox, and that the Attic drachms mentioned by Pollux are gold. Besides, it is absurd to suppose that at any time two silver drachms could have represented the value of an ox. Even at Athens, in a time of extreme scarcity of coin, Solon, when commuting penalties in cattle for money in reference to certain ancient ordinances, put the value of the ox at five silver drachms[9]. Moreover it is not at all likely that the substitution of silver coin for gold of equal weight would have been permitted by the temple authorities. But we get some more positive evidence of great interest from the fragment of an anonymous Alexandrine writer on Metrology, who says[10], “the talent in Homer was equal in amount to the later Daric. Accordingly the gold talent weighs two Attic drachms.” Here we can have no doubt that Attic drachms mean gold drachms. Are we wrong then in supposing that at Delos still survived the same dual system which we found in Homer, the Ox and the Talent? But that at Delos both were of equal value we can have little doubt. For the ox = 2 Attic drachms = 1 Daric = 1 Talent = (130 grains Troy). Who can doubt that at Delos was preserved an unbroken tradition from the earliest days of Hellenic settlements in the Aegean? Modern discovery comes likewise to our support, and we shall find that it is probable that the gold rings found by Dr Schliemann in the tombs at Mycenae were made on a standard of about 135 grs.

This identification of the ox and the Homeric Talent is of importance: for it gives a simple and natural origin for the earliest Greek metallic unit of which we read. It likewise incidentally explains the proverb, βοῦς ἐπὶ γλώσσῃ which dates from a time long before money was yet coined, or even the precious metals were in any form whatever employed for currency; it possibly explains why the ox was such a favourite type on coins, without having to call to our aid recondite mythological allusions; and it clears up once for all some interesting points in Homer. In the passage of the Iliad (XXIII. 750 sq.) already referred to the ox is second prize, whilst an half-talent of gold is the third. The relation between them is now plain; the ox = 1 talent, and the half-talent = a half-ox.

The vexed question of the Trial Scene[11] can now be put beyond doubt. In the Journal of Philology (Vol. X. p. 30) the present writer argued that the two talents represented a sum too small to form the blood-price (ποινή) of a murdered man, and consequently must represent the sacramentum (or payment made to the Court for its time and trouble, as in the Roman Legis actio sacramenti described by Gaius, Bk. IV. 16), as proposed by that most distinguished scholar and jurist, the late Sir H. S. Maine[12]. We know that the two talents are equal to two oxen, but in the Iliad, XXIII. 705, the second prize for the wrestlers was a slave woman “whom they valued at four oxen[13].” Now if an ordinary female slave was worth four oxen (= four talents) it is impossible that two talents (= two oxen) could have formed the bloodgelt or eric of a freeman. Probably four oxen was not far from the price of an ordinary female slave. Of course women of superior personal charms would fetch more, for instance, Euryclea,

“Whom once on a time Laertes had bought with his possessions,

When she was still in youthful prime, and he gave the price of twenty kine[14].”

The poet evidently refers to this as an exceptional piece of extravagance on the part of Laertes. We can likewise now get a common measure for the ten talents of gold and the seven slave women who formed part of the requital gifts proffered by Agamemnon to Achilles[15], and can form some notion of the comparative value of the prizes for the chariot race and other contests[16].

The wider question of Weight-standards in general.

But results far more important than merely the determination of the value of Homeric commodities may be obtained as regards the weight-standards of Europe and their congeners in Asia. For by taking as our primitive unit the cow or ox, we may be able to give a much more simple account of the genesis of those standards than that which hitherto has been the received one.

We have found the Homeric ox and talent identical with the didrachm or stater of the Euboic-Attic standard. All the silver coinage of Greece proper was struck either on this standard or the Aeginetic, and what is still more important for us it was on the Euboic-Attic standard alone that gold was estimated in every part of Greece. Practically the stater of this system was of the same weight as the famous Persian daric which in historical times formed the chief coin-unit of all Asia from India to the Aegean shores.

CHAPTER II.
Primitive Systems of Currency.

ἘΞ ἈΝΆΓΚΗϹ Ἠ ΤΟΫ ΝΟΜΊϹΜΑΤΟϹ ἘΠΟΡΊϹΘΗ ΧΡΗϹΙϹ.

Aristotle.

Let us here propound the doctrine which seeks to obtain an explanation of the origin for weight-standards more in accordance with the facts of history and the process of development as exemplified both in ancient and modern times.

In early communities[17] all commodities alike are exchanged by bartering the one against the other. The man who possesses sheep exchanges them for oxen with the man who possesses oxen, the owner of corn exchanges his commodity for some implement or ornament of metal with the owner of the latter. The metals are only regarded as merchandise, not yet being in any degree set apart to serve as a medium of exchange in the terms of which all other commodities are valued. This is the practice which prevails in so civilized a country as China down to our own days. The only coinage which the Chinese possess is copper cash. According to M. le Comte Rochechouart (Journal des Économistes, Vol. XV. p. 103) both gold and silver are treated simply as merchandise, and there is not even a recognized stamp or government guarantee of the fineness of the metal. The traveller must carry these metals with him, as a sufficient quantity of strings of cash would require a waggon for their conveyance. Yet in exchanging silver or gold he is sure to suffer loss both from the falsity of balances and of weights and the uncertain fineness of the metal.

When in a certain community one particular kind of commodity is of general use and generally available, this comes to form the unit in terms of which all values are expressed. The nature of this barter-unit will depend upon the nature of the climate and geographical position, and likewise upon the stage of culture to which the people have attained. In the hunting stage, all the property of each individual consists in his weapons and implements of war and the chase, and the skins of wild beasts which form his clothing, and sometimes the cover of his hut or wigwam. At a later stage, when he has succeeded in taming the ox, the sheep, or the goat, or the horse, he is the owner of property in domestic animals, whose flesh and milk sustain him and his family, and whose skins and wool provide his clothing.

By this time too he has found out that it is better to make the captive whom he has taken in war into a hewer of wood and drawer of water than merely to obtain some transient pleasure from eating him after putting him to death by torture, or by wearing his skull or scalp as personal decorations.

This is now the pastoral or nomad stage.

Next comes the more settled form of life, when the cultivation of land and the production of the various kinds of cereals renders a permanent dwelling-place more or less necessary.

Property now consists not merely in slaves and domestic animals, but likewise in houses of improved construction, and large stores of grain. Man now possesses certain of the metals, gold and copper being the first to be known. How does he appraise these metals when he exchanges them with his neighbour? We shall find that he estimates them in terms of cattle, and that he at first barters them all by measures based on the parts of the human body, a method which continues to be employed for copper and iron long after the art of weighing has been invented; next he estimates his gold by certain natural units of capacity such as a goosequill, and finally fixes the amount of gold which is equivalent to a cow, by setting it in a rude balance against a certain number of natural seeds of plants. Such is the process which history tells us has taken place in the temperate regions of Asia and Europe, Africa and America. Just as it is impossible to learn the history of the growth of the earth’s crust by confining our observations to one locality, and as the geologist only succeeds in gaining a true insight into the relations between the various strata by a study of the phenomena of many regions, so we shall only be able to comprehend properly the various stages in the growth of metallic currency and the origin of weight-standards by observing the facts revealed to us in various countries. Whilst in some places we shall meet with but one or two steps, in others we shall find traces of many, though often, broken strata. Like advance, however, seems impossible under the extremes of heat and cold. Hence in the latter regions the conditions of life remain almost unaltered. In the extreme north the rigour of an arctic winter forbids the keeping and rearing of domestic animals, or the cultivation of corn and vegetables. Hence the hunter form of existence remains almost unaltered. The sole or chief wealth of the people consists of the skins of the fur-bearing animals such as the seal, the beaver, the marten, or the fox, or stores of dried fish, which they exchange with traders for a few scant luxuries, or which form their own sustenance and protection against the pitiless frosts and snows.

In these regions therefore we find the skins of certain animals serving as units of account, in spite of the difference in value between those of different quality and rarity. In the Territory of the Hudson’s Bay Company, even after the use of coined money had been introduced among the Indians, the skin was still in common use as the money of account. A gun nominally worth forty shillings brought twenty ‘skins.’ This term is the old one used by the Company. One skin (beaver) is supposed to be worth two shillings, and it represents two martens and so on. “You heard a great deal about skins at Fort Yukon, as the workmen were also charged for clothing, etc., in this way[18].” Similarly in the extreme north of Asia we find some Ostiak tribes using the skin of the Siberian squirrel as their unit of account.

The name of a small coin equal to a quarter kopeck indicates that originally the Slavs had a like form of currency. It is called polooshka. Ooshka (properly little ears) means a hare-skin, and polooshka means half a hare-skin[19].

Fig. 1. Cowrie Shell (Cypraea moneta).

When we turn to the torrid zone, where clothes are only an incumbrance and Nature lavishly supplies plenteous stores of fruits and vegetables, the chief objects of desire will not be food and clothing but ornaments, implements and weapons. Hence we find amongst the inhabitants of such regions in especial strength that passion for personal adornment, which is one of the most powerful and primitive instincts of the human race. Shells have from very remote times formed one of the most simple forms of adornment in all parts of the world. Shells which once perhaps formed the necklace of some beauty of the neolithic age are found with the remains of the cave men of Auvergne. Strings of cowries under their various names of changos, zimbis, bonges or porcelain shells are both durable, universally esteemed, and portable, and therefore suited to form a medium of exchange, and as such they are employed in the East Indies, Siam, and on the East and West Coasts of Africa; on the tropical coasts they serve the purposes of small change, being collected on the shores of the Maldive and Laccadive islands and exported for that object. The relative value varies slightly according to their abundance or scarcity. In India the usual ratio was about 5000 to the rupee. Marco Polo found the cowry in use in the province of Yunnam. He says (II. p. 62, Yule’s Transl.): “In Carajan gold is so abundant that they give one Saggio of gold for six of the same weight of silver. And for small change they use the porcelain shell. These are not found in the country but are brought from India.” How ancient is their use in Asia is shown by the fact that Layard found cowries in the ruins of Nineveh.

Fig. 2. Wampum (made from the Venus mercenaria).

Beyond all doubt the wampum belts of the North American Indians served the purpose of currency. They consisted of black and white shells rubbed down, polished and made into beads, and then strung into belts or necklaces, which were valued according to their length, colour and lustre, the black beads being the most valuable. Thus one foot of black peag was worth two feet of white peag. It was so well established as a currency among the natives that in 1649 the Court of Massachusetts ordered that it should be received as legal tender among the settlers in the payment of debts up to forty shillings[20].

Fig. 3. Al-li-ko-chik.

Nor has this employment of strings of shells as money even yet disappeared from North America. Thus Powers writes[21] of the Karoks and other tribes of California: “For money they make use of the red scalps of woodpeckers, which rate at $2.50 to $5.0 a piece, and of the dentalium shell, of which they grind off the tip, and string it on strings, the shortest pieces are worth 25 cents, and the longest about two dollars, the value rising rapidly with the length. The strings are usually about as long as a man’s arm. It is called al-li-ko-chik (in Yarok this signifies literally Indian money) not only on the Klamath but from Crescent city to Eel river, though the tribes using it speak several different languages. When the Americans first arrived in the country an Indian would give 40 or 50 dollars gold for a string, but now the abundance of the supply has depreciated its value and it is principally the old Indians who esteem it.” Again he writes, “Some of the young bloods array their Dulcineas for the dance with lavish adornments, hanging on their dress 30, 40 or 50 dollars worth of dimes, quarter dollars and half dollars arranged in strings.” This shows that the new currency of silver is treated by them in exactly the same way as the old shell strings, both of them deriving their value as media of exchange from the fact that they are the objects most universally prized as ornaments for the person.

Elsewhere the same writer observes: “Immense quantities of it (shell money) were formerly in circulation among the Californian Indians, and the manufacture of it was large and constant to replace the continual wastage caused by the sacrifice of so much on the death of wealthy men, and by the propitiatory sacrifices performed by many tribes, especially those of the coast range. From my own observations, which have not been limited, and from the statements of pioneers and of the Indians themselves, I hesitate little to express the belief that every Indian in the state in early days possessed an average of at least 100 dollars worth of shell money. This would represent the value of almost two women (though the Nishinam never actually bought their wives), or two grizzly bear skins, or 25 cinnamon bear skins or about three average ponies. The young English-speaking Indians hardly use it at all except in a few dealings with their elders or for gambling. One sometimes lays away a few strings of it for he knows he cannot squander it at the stores. It is singular how old Indians cling to this currency when they know it will purchase nothing for them at the stores; but then their wants are few, and mostly supplied from the sources of nature, and besides that the money has a certain religious value in their eyes, as being alone worthy to be offered up on the funeral pile of departed friends or famous chiefs of their tribes[22].”

Here we see how amongst the Indian tribes there was a fully developed system of inter-relations between the various objects which formed their wealth.

The horse was but a new comer into America, but he had his place soon allotted in the scale of values, being little less valuable than a squaw. We cannot doubt that if the Indian had succeeded in domesticating the buffalo before the advent of the white man, it would have formed the most general unit in use, as we shall find its congeners being employed in all parts of the old world. But before the coming of the Spaniards at least one race of North America had advanced a stage beyond shell money. The Aztecs[23] of Mexico were employing a currency of gold and cacao seeds. The former in the shape of dust was placed in goose quills, which formed a natural unit of capacity, for weights were as yet unknown to the Aztecs; whilst the cacao seeds were placed in bags, each containing a specified number.

In Queen Charlotte Islands the dentalium shell was recognized as a medium of exchange by most of the coast tribes, but not so much as a medium of exchange for themselves as for barter with the Indians of the interior. With the Haidas it is still sometimes worn as an ornament though it has disappeared as a medium of exchange. The blanket of the trader has now however supplanted the skin as the principal unit. Not only among the Haidas but all along the coast it takes the place of the beaver-skin currency of the interior of British Columbia and of the North West Territory. The blankets used in trade are distinguished by the points or marks on the edge, woven into their texture, the best being four-point, the smallest and poorest one-point. The acknowledged unit of trade is a single two and a half-point blanket, now worth a little over $1.50. Everything is referred to this unit, even a large four-point blanket is said to be worth so many blankets. There is also the “Copper,” “an article of purely conventional value and serving as money. This is a piece of native metal beaten out into a flat sheet and made to take a peculiar shape. These are not made by the Haidas—nor indeed is the native metal known to exist in the islands, but are imported as articles of great worth from the Chilcat country north of Sitka. Much attention is paid to the size and make of the copper, which should be of uniform but not too great thickness, and should give forth a good sound when struck with the hand. At the present time spurious coppers have come into circulation, and although these are easily detected by an expert, the value of the copper is somewhat reduced and is often more nominal than real. Formerly ten slaves were paid for a good copper as a usual price, now they are valued at from forty to eighty blankets”.[24] It is obvious that such costly imported articles, though now used as occasional higher units of account—much as we employ fifty-pound notes—must have had some definite use, owing to which they were so highly prized. The attention paid to their tone would lead us to conjecture that they were employed as a kind of gong, and further on we shall find certain peoples of Further Asia paying a large price in buffaloes for gongs.

Before we quit finally the northern latitudes, it is worth our while to observe the method of currency employed by the Icelanders. As metals and other products of the land were scarce in their bleak home, the stockfish (dried cod) formed naturally their chief commodity, and hence it appears on the arms of Denmark as the emblem of Iceland. There is still extant a proclamation for the regulation of English trade with Iceland issued sometime between 1413 and 1426. As, mutatis mutandis, it affords admirable insight into the methods by which trade was carried on between men of different nations in the emporia of the Mediterranean, and in fact everywhere else, it is worth giving it in extenso[25].

“I, N. M. do proclaim here to-day a general market between the English and the Icelandic men, who have come here with peace and fair dealing, and between the Icelandic men and the men of the islands who wish to carry on their trade here.

“First I proclaim this market on conditions of peace and lawful security between one and the other, so that each can entirely dispose of his own if he buy or if he sell. Price list in stockfish: of fish 2, 2½, or 1¾ lbs., 80 lbs. must be the equivalent of a hundred (of cloth, i.e. 129 alens of vadme, a cloth formerly used as a medium of exchange), provided the persons concerned cannot agree as to the price.

“I charge all, not only the people from the country, but also the inhabitants of these islands, that ye do in no way compass any disorder or disturbance to the strangers, from the moment the guard flag is hoisted, unless they themselves allow it.

“They, who here are annoyed by word or deed, have a right to demand double indemnity therefor.

“Also I charge, and the merchants in no way the least, that they use aright the “alen” and other lawful measure for everything, as the law demands, especially as regards butter, wine and beer, flour or malt, honey or tar, so that no one deals false or with deceit with another.

“He who does so intentionally shall have sinned as greatly against the state as if he had stolen goods of like value, whereas the bargain becomes void, and damages moreover must be given to him who was deceived.

“Let us now, Ye good men, eschew all malice and trickery, riot or disturbance, quarrels and careless words: but let every man be the other’s friend, without deceit.

“Prizing unity

And old custom,

And abiding in God’s peace.”

Some such proclamations were probably often made in the marts of the Aegean, such as Aegina, when Greek, Phoenician and Etruscan met for traffic under the control of some local potentate, and the protection of the god of some neighbouring shrine.

Passing to the islands of the Pacific we shall find shell money playing an important part among the primitive peoples, such as those who inhabit New Ireland, New Britain, the Pelew and the Caroline groups. It will suffice for our purpose to describe the form in which it is employed in New Britain. Mr Powell[26] tells us that the native money in New Britain consists of small cowrie shells strung on strips of cane, in Duke of York Island it is called Dewarra. It is measured in lengths, the first length being from hand to hand across the chest with arms extended, second length from the centre of the breast to the hand of one arm extended, the third from the shoulder to the tip of the fingers along the arm, fourth from the elbow to the tip of the fingers, fifth from the wrist to the tip of the fingers, sixth finger lengths. Fish are generally bought by the length in Dewarra unless they are too small. A large pig will cost from 30 to 40 lengths of the first measure (fathom) and a small one ten. The Dewarra is made up for convenience in coils of 100 fathoms or first lengths; sometimes as many as 600 fathoms are coiled together, but not often, as it would be too bulky to remove quickly in case of invasion or war, when the women carry it away to hide. These coils are very neatly covered with wickerwork like the bottom of our cane chairs.... At Moko and Utuan they use another kind of money as well as this, the other being a little bivalve shell, through which they bore a hole and string it on pieces of native made twine[27]. It is also chipped all round until it is a quarter of an inch in diameter and then smoothed down into even discs with sand and pumice. Here we find strings of shells, which undoubtedly in the first instance were used for personal adornment, converted into a true currency. The simple savages whose possessions were exceedingly few and scanty, equated their fish to strings of shells which formed their only ornament, and when they got a more valuable possession in the pig, they quickly learned to appraise that animal in shell worth, just as the North American Indians learned to estimate the horse in Wampum. Instead of shells the natives of Fiji are said to have employed whales’ teeth as currency, red teeth (which are still highly prized) standing to white ones somewhat in the ratio of sovereigns to shillings with us[28]. Passing on to the mainland of Asia we shall find that the Chinese, who in the course of ages have developed a bronze coinage of their own apart from the influences of the Mediterranean people, had in early times an elaborate system of shell money. Cowries appear in the Ya-King, the oldest Chinese book, 100,000 dead shell fishes being an equivalent for riches. Tortoise shell currency is also mentioned in the same book. The tortoise of various kinds and sizes was used for the greater values which would have required too many cowries. Tortoise shell is still elegantly used to express coin. Several kinds of Cypraea were used, including the purple shell, two or three inches long; all the shells except the small ones were employed in pairs. A writer of the second century B.C.[29] speaks of the purple shell as ranking next after the sea tortoise shells, measuring one foot six inches, which could only be procured in Cochin China and Annam, where they were used to make pots, basins and other valuable objects. So attached were the Chinese to these primitive coins that the usurper Wangmang restored a shell currency of five kinds, tortoise shell being the highest. From this time we hear no more of cowries in China Proper, but they left traces of themselves in the small copper coins shaped like a small Cypraea, called Dragon’s eye or Ant coins[30]. It is doubtless to a similar survival that we owe those curious silver coins made in the shape of shells which come from the north of Burmah and of which there are several specimens in the British Museum. They are about the size of a cowrie, and doubtless served as a higher unit in a currency, of which the lower units were formed by real shells.

Fig. 4. Burmese silver shell money.

In 685 B.C. in parts of China pearls and gems, gold, knives and cloth were the money, and under the Shou dynasty (1100 B.C.) we understand from ancient Commentaries that the gold circulated in little cubes of a square inch, and the copper in round, tongue-like plates by the tchin tchu, while the silk cloth 2 feet 2 inches wide in rolls of 40 feet formed a piece.

In the Shu King, when in 947 B.C. commutation for punishment was enacted, the culprit according to the offence was to pay 100, 200, 500 or 1000 hwars, or rings of copper weighing 6 ounces. The Chinese likewise used hoes as money, just as we shall find the wild people of Annam doing at the present hour. But in the course of time the hoe became a true currency and little hoes, such as that here figured, were employed as coins in some parts of China (tsin, agricultural implements). The copper knives which played so important a part in the development of Chinese coinage will be dealt with more particularly in a later chapter. In Marco Polo’s time cowries were in full use, as in the province of Yunnan[31].

Fig. 5. Chinese hoe money.

On the borders of China and Tibet we may still find a state of things not far removed from that existing in the China of 2000 years ago[32]. The Tibetans, who in recent years employ Indian rupees, for purposes of small change cut up these coins into little pieces, which are weighed by the careful Chinese, but the Tibetans do not seem to use the scale, and roughly judge of the value of a piece of silver. Tea, moreover, and beads of turquoise are largely used as a means of payment instead of metal.

Speaking of this same region (called by him Kandu), Polo says[33]: “The money-matters of the people are conducted in this way: they have gold in rods which they weigh, and they reckon its value by its weight in saggi, but they have no coined money. Their small change again is made in this way: they have salt which they boil and set in a mould, and every piece from the mould weighs half-a-pound. Now eighty moulds of this salt are worth one saggio of fine gold.” Tea seems to have taken the place of salt in modern times.

Turning next to the southern frontier of China, we shall find among the tribes of Annam a system of currency which strongly reminds us of that found in the Homeric Poems.

Among the Bahnars of Annam who border on Laos, “everything,” says that excellent observer M. Aymonier, “is by barter, hence all objects of general use have a known relationship: if we know the unit, all the rest is easy. Here is the key: a head, that is to say, a male slave is worth six or seven buffaloes, or the same number of pots (marmites; so in Homer, Il. XXXIII. 885, an ox is estimated at a kettle); the buffalo and the pot have the same value, which naturally varies with the size and age of the animal and the size and quality of the pot.

“A full-grown buffalo or a large pot is worth seven earthenware jars of a grey glaze, after the Chinese shape, and with a capacity of fifteen litres. One jar = 4 muk. (The muk[34] is an unit of account, but originally meant some special article.) 1 muk = 10 mats, that is to say ten of these hoes, which are manufactured by the Cédans, and which are employed by all the savages of this region as their agricultural implement. The hoe is the smallest amount used by the Bahnars. It is worth 10 centimes in European goods, and is made of iron[35].” Thus the buffalo is worth 280 hoes, or a little more than an English sovereign, since each hoe is worth a penny (10 centimes). The Bahnars have sheet tin ½ millim. thick cut into pieces 11 centim. square, to be used to ornament sword-belts or to make earrings (iv. p. 390). A stick of virgin wax the size of an ordinary candle = 1 hoe, a pretty little cane hat = 2 hoes; a large bamboo hat = 2 hoes; a Bahnar knife = 2 hoes; a fine sword and sheath = 1 jar, 1 muk, 3 hoes; a crossbow and string = 3 hoes; ordinary arrows are sold at 30 for 1 hoe; arrows with movable heads, 20 for 1 hoe, and poisoned arrows 5 for 1 hoe; a lance-head = 3 hoes; a lance with palm handle = 4 hoes; a horse = 3 or 4 pots or buffaloes; a large elephant = 10 to 15 heads (slaves).

The same method of using the buffalo as the chief unit is employed by the Moïs, among whom a slave is reckoned at 10 buffaloes. Again, among tribes such as the Tjams, with whom the string of copper cash (or sapecs) borrowed from the Chinese, is employed as their lowest unit, a full-grown buffalo = 100 strings;[36] the Mexican piastre or dollar circulates freely as in China, a small pig costs 10 strings, pork by retail costs two strings per lb. (livre), ducks cost 1½ to 2 strings. A large caldron costs 3 buffaloes; a handsome gong = 2 buffaloes; a small gong = 1 buffalo; 6 copper platters = 1 buffalo; two swords = 1 buffalo; 2 lances = 1 buffalo; a rhinoceros’ horn = 8 buffaloes; a pair of large elephants’ tusks = 6 buffaloes; a small pair = 3 buffaloes. When the wild people have dealings with the more civilized peoples of the plain, who employ the Chinese cash and silver dollars, a large buffalo = 100 strings of cash, a small one = 50 strings; a fine horse = 100 strings; a she goat = a piece of cloth. The Orang Glaï have often to buy elephants’ tusks, at the rate of 8 buffaloes for a pair, or 8 bars of silver (640 francs). The Szins of Kharang have often to pay a tax of a buffalo per hut, or for the whole village 10 buffaloes, the horns of which must be at least as long as their ears[37]. In Cambodia iron ingots[38] form a special kind of money. These ingots are not weighed, but they are as long as from the base of the thumb to the tip of the forefinger; they are in breadth two fingers, and one finger in thickness in the middle, tapering off to either end.

Cowries and other shells seem to have gone out of use altogether among these tribes, but we may recognize in the practice of reckoning the cash by the string a distinct survival of the olden time when shells were so employed. It is of great importance to note that where silver has come into use, its unit, the bar, is equated to the buffalo, the unit of barter, just as we find the Homeric gold Talent equal to the ox.

Next let us turn to India, and to the Aryans of the Rig Veda, who dwelt in the north-west of the Punjaub at the time when we first meet them. From their prayers and invocations it is easy to learn in what the wealth of this simple folk consisted. One or two examples will serve for our purpose: “The potent ones who bestow on us good fortune by means of cows, horses, goods, gold, O Indra and Vaya, may they, blessed with fortune, ever be successful by means of horses and heroes in battle[39].” Again, “O Indra bring us rice cake, a thousand soma drinks, and an hundred cows, O hero. Bring us apparel, cows, horses and jewels, along with a mana of gold.” Yet once more: “Ten horses, ten caskets, ten garments, ten gold nuggets (hiranya pindas) I received from Divodāsa. Ten chariots equipped with side horses, and an hundred cows gave the Açvatha to the Atharvans and to the Pāyu.” Even without further evidence than that which we have already drawn from the wild people of Annam, we might well assume that there were definitely fixed relations in value between the cows, horses, gold, rice, and cloth of the Vedic people. But absolute proof is at hand, for their close kinsmen, the ancient Persians, have left us in the Zend Avesta ample means of observing their monetary system. Thus we read in the ordinances which fix the payment of the physician that “he shall heal the priest for the holy blessing; he shall heal the master of an house for the value of an ox of low value; he shall heal the lord of a borough for the value of an ox of average value; he shall heal the lord of a town for the value of an ox of high value; he shall heal the lord of a province for the value of a chariot and four; he shall heal the wife of the master of a house for the value of a she ass; he shall heal the wife of the master of a borough for the value of a cow; he shall heal the wife of the lord of a town for the value of a mare; he shall heal the wife of the lord of a province for the value of a she camel; he shall heal the son of the lord of a borough for the value of an ox of high value: he shall heal an ox of high value for the value of an ox of average value; he shall heal an ox of average value for the value of an ox of low value; he shall heal an ox of low value for the value of a sheep; and he shall heal a sheep for the value of a meal of meat[40].” So too in the fees of the Cleanser we read: “Thou shalt cleanse a priest for a blessing; the lord of a province for the value of a camel of high value; the lord of a town for the value of a stallion; the lord of a borough for the value of a bull; the master of an house for the value of a cow three years old; the wife of the master of an house for the value of a ploughing cow; a menial for the value of a draught cow; a young child for the value of a lamb[41].” Again in the chapter on Contracts: “The third is the contract to the amount of a sheep, the fourth is the contract to the amount of an ox, the fifth is the contract to the amount of a man (human being), the sixth is the contract to the amount of a field, a field in good land, a fruitful one in good bearing[42].”

From these extracts it is plain that the ancient Persians had a system of clearly defined relations in value between all their worldly gear, whether the object was a slave or an ox, or a lamb or a field, precisely like that existing at the present moment among the hill tribes of Annam. But not simply was it between one kind of animal and another, but they had evidently strict notions as regards the inter-relations in value of different animals of the same kind; thus the ox of high value, the ox of low value, the cow of three years old, or the bull all stood to one another in a fixed relationship. We may without hesitation conclude that the same system of conventional values prevailed among the ancient Hindus. Nor can we doubt that articles of every kind, such as arrows, spears, axes, and articles of personal use and adornment all had their regularly recognized prices, and that the less valuable of them were used as small change. Gold, no doubt, occupied an important place in relation to the other forms of property in portions of fixed size or weight, as in the days of Marco Polo. In mediaeval times in parts of India money consisted of pieces of iron worked into the form of large needles, and in some parts stones which we call cat’s eyes, and in others pieces of gold worked to a certain weight were used for moneys, as we are told by Nicolo Conti, who travelled in India in the 15th century[43]. If iron was so employed at this late date we may well infer that bronze and afterwards iron were probably so used by the ancient Indo-Iranian people.

Fig. 6. Fish-hook money (Larina).

Fig. 7. Siamese silver bullet money: A. B. Early form as simple piece of wire. C. Last stage of degradation.

Among the fishermen who dwelt along the shores of the Indian Ocean, from the Persian Gulf to the southern shores of Hindustan, Ceylon and the Maldive islands, it would appear that the fish-hook, to them the most important of all implements, passed as currency. In the course of time it became a true money, just as did the hoe in China. It still for a time retained its ancient form, but gradually became degraded into a simple piece of double wire, as seen in Nos. 3 and 4 of our illustration. In its conventional form it is known as a larin or lari, a name doubtless derived from Lari on the Persian Gulf. These larins made both of silver and bronze were in use until the beginning of the last century, and bear legends in Arabic character. Had the process of degradation gone on without check, in course of time the double wire would probably have shrunk up into a bullet-shaped mass of metal, just as the Siamese silver coins are the outcome of a process of degradation from a piece of silver wire twisted into the form of a ring and doubled up, which probably originally formed some kind of ornament. The bullet-shaped tical is now struck as a coin of European form. Just as perhaps the silver shells of Burmah became the multiple unit of a large number of real cowries, so the fish-hook made of silver came into use as a multiple unit, when the bronze fish-hook had already become conventionalized into a true coin. The silver larins of Ceylon weigh about 170 grs. troy, and those of Southern India are said by Professor Wilson to weigh the same, although some of them weigh only 76 grs. or less than half. As the rupee weighs about 180 grs. the silver fish-hook may represent the usual unit employed for silver, strong national conservatism requiring that the silver currency should take the same form as the ancient fish-hook currency of bronze[44]. There are still in circulation in Nejd in Arabia small bars of silvered brass, which bear on the back Arabic inscriptions. It is hardly possible to doubt that in these little pieces of metal we have the last surviving descendants of the old fish-hook. In the Maldive Isles a silver larin was worth 12,000 cowries.

Fig. 8. Silvered brass bars used as money in Nejd[45].

Advancing westward we find the Ossetes of the Caucasus at the present moment employ the cow as their unit of value, the prices of all commodities being stated as one, two, three or four cows, or even at one-tenth or one-hundredth of the value of a cow. The ox is worth two cows, and the cow is worth ten sheep. This people regulate compensation for wounds thus: they measure the length of the wound in barley corns, and for every barley corn which it measures a cow has to be paid[46]. We can have little doubt that over all Hither Asia the same method of employing the cow as the principal unit of value obtained. It is that which we found among the Greeks of the Homeric Poems, who were in full contact with Northern Asia Minor, and was almost certainly that of the Semites who dwelt in the South. Just as we find the buffalo, and the pots, bronze platters, arrows, lances and hoes standing side by side in well defined mutual relation among the Bahnars of Cochin China, so we find in Homer that whilst the cow is the principal unit, the slave is employed as an occasional higher unit, and the kettle (lebes), the pot (tripous), the axe and the half axe, hides, raw copper and pig iron stand beside the cow as multiples or sub-multiples. When Ajax and Idomeneus make a bet on the issue of the chariot race, the proposed wager is a pot or a kettle[47], whilst from another passage we learn that the usual prizes given at the funeral games of a chieftain were female slaves and pots (Tripods).

Passing from Greece into Italy we have no difficulty in proving that the cow was the regular unit of value in that peninsula and the adjacent island of Sicily. Down to 451 B.C. all fines at Rome were paid in cows and sheep. By the Tarpeian Law these were commuted for payments in copper, each cow being set at 100 asses, each sheep at 10 asses. As I shall deal with the whole question of the Roman As at considerable length later on I shall here simply note that the Italian tribes had evidently the same system of adjusting the relations between their cattle and sheep and their metals which we found among the Persians and modern Ossetes. In Sicily it is clear that the cow had played the same part as elsewhere, for we learn from Aristotle[48] that when the tyrant Dionysius burdened the Syracusans by excessive taxation, they ceased in a great degree to keep cattle, inasmuch as the unit of assessment was the cow. If then in the 4th 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 Polybius[49] 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 fists[50]. 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[51] 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 in calf, her milk is worth 16 den. Thus the milch cow is worth 46 den., and up to August she is worth 48 den., up to November 50 den., and up to May of the fourth year is worth 60 den. A month’s milk is worth 4 den.; a bull calf 6 den., the young ox when put to the plough is worth 28 den., when he can plough, 48 den., that is the same as the young milch cow of the same age; a gelding is worth 80 den., a farmer’s mare 60 den., a trained horse is worth half a libra; a bow with twelve arrows is worth 7 denarii and an obolus; a queen bee (modred af) is worth 24 den., the first swarm 16 den., the second 12, the third 8; a foal is worth 18 den. to 24 den., a two year old 48 den., a three year old 96 den. A young male slave (iuvenis captivus) is worth 1 libra, a slave both young and of large stature (captivus iuvenis et magnus) is worth 1½ libra. It would appear that the Welsh, when taking over the Roman system, had adjusted their own highest barter-unit, the slave (probably female as well as male), to the libra or pound, the highest unit in the Roman system. Of course slaves of exceptional strength or beauty would always command a higher price. But the regulations for the value of cattle are especially of interest, as shewing the extraordinary minuteness with which pastoral peoples discriminate the values of animals of different ages, and estimate the milk of a cow in proportion to her actual value. The full-grown cow is worth exactly ten times the newborn calf, an estimate which holds good just as much in 1890 as it did 1000 years ago, for it is not a mere convention but is based upon a natural law. At the present moment a calf is worth from 30 to 35 shillings, a cow from £15 to £17. 10s. The yearling calf was worth one-sixth of the full-grown cow, a relation which still holds good.

The Irish Kelts borrowed their silver system from Rome at a period probably before Constantine, as they seem never to have employed the libra and solidus, but simply the uncia (unga) and scripulus (screapall), adding thereto a subdivision called the pinginn or penny, borrowed doubtless from the Saxon invader at a later period. Thus 1 unga = 24 screapalls; 1 screapall = 3 pinginns. They equated the principal silver unit, the uncia, to the old chief barter-unit, the cow (bo). As elsewhere, however, the slave formed occasionally the highest unit, and was reckoned nominally at three cows. The slave woman (cumhal, ancilla in Latin writers) was in course of time used as a mere unit of account.

Here again the yearling is worth one-sixth of the cow. Gold was abundant among the ancient Irish, (almost certainly obtained in large quantities from the Wicklow mountains,) and passed from hand to hand in the form of rings, which were weighed on a system different from and probably far older than that employed for silver (see [Appendix A]).

Passing to the Teutonic peoples we find traces of the same ancient practice. For according to one system a mancus of silver (a mere unit of account) corresponded with the value of an ox. Similarly the pound (libra) was generally regarded as the silver equivalent of the worth of a man[53]. But the strongest proof is that Charlemagne in his dealings with the Saxons found it necessary to define the value of his solidus of 12 pence (denarii) by equating it to the value of an ox of a year old of either sex in the autumn season, just as it is sent to the stall. In the same law we find a list of regulation prices for other commodities, such as oats, honey, rye, similar to those already quoted from the Welsh laws[54]. The English word fee, which originally meant an ox, as is shown not only by the German Vieh, which still retains its original meaning, and by such expressions in Anglo-Saxon as gangende feoh, is in itself a proof that cattle served as the most generally recognized form of money. It might be expected that much the same state of things existed among the Scandinavian peoples. Their chief media of exchange were cows, and woollen cloths, slaves, and gold ornaments. By the laws of Hakon the Good penalties could be paid in cows, provided that they were not too old, in slaves, provided they were not under fifteen years of age, in cloths, and in weapons[55].

Gold and silver were employed by the northern peoples in the form of rings.

This has led people to talk much about ring money as if it was a true currency, circulating like the stamped money of later times. The truer view seems to be that these rings, whether employed by the ancient Egyptians or the prehistoric inhabitants of Mycenae, the Kelts or Teutons, were nothing more than ornaments and passed in the ordinary way of barter, having a recognized distinct relation to other forms of property, such as cattle and slaves. It has been the custom in all countries for the person who desires to have an article of jewellery made to give to the goldsmith a certain weight of gold or silver, out of which the latter manufactures the desired ornament. Such is the practice at the present day in India; you give the goldsmith so many gold mohurs or sovereigns, or rupees, as the case may be; he squats down in your verandah, and with a few primitive tools quickly turns out the article you desire, which of course will weigh as many mohurs or sovereigns as you have given him (provided that you have stood by all the time, keeping a sharp look-out to prevent his abstracting any of the metal). That in like fashion gold ornaments for ordinary wearing purposes were regularly of known weights in ancient times is shown clearly by the account of the presents given to Rebekah by Abraham’s servant, ‘a gold earring of half a shekel weight and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight’ (Genesis xxiv. 22). The same word appears in Job xlii. 11: ‘Then came there unto him all his brethren and all his sisters and all that had been of his acquaintance before ... every man also gave him a piece of money and every one an earring of gold.’ Consequently Rebekah’s golden ring (whether it was to adorn her nose or ear) of half a shekel weighed 65 grains, being half the light shekel or ox-unit. We are not told the weight of the earrings contributed by his sympathetic kinsfolk for the afflicted patriarch, but it is evident that they were of a uniform standard. No doubt such rings had from time immemorial passed in the ordinary course of barter from hand to hand. This is strongly supported by a piece of evidence produced independently of the previous suggestion by Dr Hoffmann of Kiel, who has showed[56] that betzer (‎‏בצר‏‎) the word used for gold in Job xxii. 24-25 (bĕtzĕr) and in Job xxxvi. 19 (b’tzar), from a comparison of its cognates in Hebrew and Arabic means simply a ring, which through the extended meaning ring-gold came finally to be used as a name for the metal simply. To take another example from a very different region, the golden ornaments of the ancient Irish (of which numerous specimens exist in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy) were made according to specified weight. Thus queen Medbh is represented as saying: ‘My spear-brooch of gold, which weighs thirty ungas, and thirty half ungas, and thirty crosachs and thirty quarter [crosachs].’ O’Curry, Manners and Customs of Ancient Irish, iii. 112. But we need not go beyond Greek soil itself for such illustrations. The well-known story of Archimedes and the weight of the golden crown, which led to the discovery of specific gravity, is sufficient to show that the practice in Greece was such as I describe.

Fig. 9. Rings found in the tombs of Mycenae.

The rings seen on Egyptian monuments (of which we give a representation in a later chapter) are of round wire; those found by Schliemann in the tombs of Mycenae[57] ([Fig. 9]) consist both of round wire rings like the Egyptian, and likewise of spirals of quadrangular wire. As finger rings (δακτύλιοι) are not mentioned in Homer, it has been assumed that the Homeric Greeks did not employ rings at all. Hence in a famous passage where the ornaments made by Hephaestus for the goddesses are described, we find mention of brooches, bent spirals (ἕλικες) ear-drops[58], and chains. Helbig[59] explains the helikes as a kind of brooch made of four spirals, such as are worn in parts of Central Europe, but it is difficult to believe that people who were using brooches with pins and necklaces would not have known and employed the far simpler ring. Again, why should we find two distinct words for brooches coming thus together? Is it not far more likely that in the spirals of Mycenae we have the real bent helikes of Homer? These spirals would serve not only for finger rings, but might be used in the hair, or more probably still were used as a means of fastening on the dress, being passed through eyelet holes or loops, on the principle of the modern key ring[60]. On comparing them with the Scandinavian spiral ([Fig. 1]) the reader will see that this primitive form of employing gold was widely diffused over Europe. The Scandinavians used such ornaments of bent wire (O.N. baugr, A.S. beag from root BUG, to bend) very commonly, beside oxen and other property, as media of exchange. Thus both beag in Anglo-Saxon, and baugr in Old Norse became used as general names for treasure. Thus baugbrota (cf. hring brota), literally ring-breaker, was used as an epithet of princes, meaning distributor of treasure[61].

Fig. 10. Nos. 1, 2, found in Tipperary; 3, Scandinavian; 4, 5, found in Co. Mayo; 6, 7, 8, ordinary Irish type.

The same spirals of quadrangular wire were probably employed by the Kelts, as that shown in [Fig. 10], No. 3 was found in Ireland; Nos. 4 and 5 are of quadrangular wire but are simple hoops, whilst in Nos. 6, 7, 8, we get the regular Irish type of a round wire not completely closed[62]. The latter probably represent a more advanced state of art, as their makers must have had considerable metallurgic skill, No. 8 being made of gold plated over a copper core.

As we shall see further on, the Egyptian rings are made on a standard almost identical with the Homeric talent, and I have shown elsewhere that the rings from Mycenae were made on almost the same standard[63]. I shall endeavour to show in an Appendix that the Irish rings also show evidence of being made on a definite standard, whilst it has been long well known that the Scandinavian rings and armlets have likewise a standard of their own.

When occasion arose they cut off a piece of this bent wire (for it was really nothing more), and gave it by weight. Such a piece was called a scillinga, and is the direct ancestor of our own shilling[64]. It is not unlikely also that the ancient inhabitants of Portugal employed similar pieces of wire, as Strabo tells us that the Lusitanians have no money, but that they employ silver wire, from which they cut off a portion when necessary[65].

We now pass on to Africa, where we shall find most varied systems of currency. Thus on the West Coast of Africa the bar is the unit. In fact all merchandise is reckoned by the bar[66], which now at Sierra Leone means 2s. 3d. worth of any kind of commodity, although originally it meant simply an iron bar of fixed dimensions, which formed the chief article of exchange between the natives and the earliest European traders. In other parts of the same region axes serve as currency; these are too small to be really employed as an implement, but are doubtless the survival of a period not long past when real axes served as money. Thus we get a complete analogy to the hoe money of the Chinese and the fish-hook currency of Ceylon and the Maldive Islands. In Calabar they formerly employed bunches of quadrangular copper-wire as currency. Each wire was about 12 inches long, and they were of course meant to be made into necklets and armlets[67].

Fig. 11. Axe Money (West Africa).

In other parts of the West Coast, as in the Bonny River territory, iron rings very closely resembling in shape the bronze fibulae found in Ireland, which probably were armlets, are employed as money. Those which I have seen seem too small to be used as bracelets, and are now probably a true money, retaining the old conventional shape (see [Fig. 12])[68].

Fig. 12. Old Calabar copper-wire formerly used as money.

In the region of the Upper Congo brass rods are employed as currency for articles of small value. This wire, made at Birmingham, about the thickness of ordinary stair-rod, is sent out in coils of 60 lbs., and is then cut into pieces of a foot long[69]. Short brass rods and armlets are also largely exported from Birmingham for the African trade.

Fig. 13. 1. Bronze Irish Fibula found in Co. Cork. 2. Bronze Irish Fibula found in King’s Co. 3. Iron Manilla from W. Africa. 4. Iron Manilla used as money in Bonny River Territory.

There is no absolute standard length—and thus while 36 inches is the one most commonly used, the length varies from 32 to 36 inches.

They go out in boxes containing 100, in straight lengths, and soft to admit of their being wound into armlets, &c.

The diameter of the rod varies from ³⁄₁₆ in. to about ⅜ in.—but a rod weighing about 24 oz. to 3 ft., and ⅜ in. thick, is the one most often made.

Arm rings are made from solid brass rod about ⁷⁄₁₆ in. thick and are usually 2½ in. to 3½ in. in diameter—they are also made in large quantities from brass tubes of ½ in. to ⅝ in. diameter, more frequently from ⁹⁄₁₆ in., the rings being from 2½ in. to 3½ in. in diameter, and weighing from 2½ to 4 oz. each[70].

Slaves and ivory tusks form the chief units in the same region. The slave usually is worth a tusk. In other parts pieces of precious wood of a red colour, each piece being a foot long, were employed as currency[71].

When we come to regions where the ox can live we at once find that animal occupying a foremost place. Thus when the Cape of Good Hope was first colonized, the Hottentots employed cattle and bars of iron of a given size as currency[72], and at the present moment the cow is the regular unit among the Zulus, ten cows being the ordinary price paid for a wife, although as in Homeric Greece fancy prices are paid by the chiefs for ladies of uncommon attractions. But our chief interest must centre in the peoples north of the Equator, who from time immemorial have been in contact with the ancient civilization of the Mediterranean.

Thus among the Madis of Central Africa, a pure negro tribe, cattle form the chief wealth; a rich man may have as many as 200 head, a very poor one only 3 or 4. The average number possessed by one man is from 30 to 40. They keep the milk in gourds.

“A regular system of exchange is carried on in arrows, beads, bead necklaces, teeth necklaces, brass rings for the neck and arms, and bundles of small pieces of iron in flat, round, or oval discs. All these different articles are given in exchange for cattle, corn, salt, arrows, etc. The nearest approach to money is seen in the flat, round pieces of iron which are of different sizes, from three-quarters to two feet in diameter and half an inch thick. They are much employed in exchange. This is the form in which they are kept and used as money, but they are intended to be divided into two, heated and made into hoes. They are also fashioned into other implements, such as knives, arrow-heads, etc. and into little bells hung round the waist for ornament or round wandering cows’ necks. Ready-made hoes are not often used in barter. Iron as above-mentioned is preferred and is taken to the blacksmith to be fashioned according to the owner’s requirements. Any tools may be obtained ready made from a smith, and can be used in barter when new.

“Compensation for killing a woman or any serious crime must be paid for in cattle. No cowries are used as coins in this district, no measure of weight, quantity or length is used. The payment for a wife must be made in cows of a year old, or in bulls of two or three years[73].”

But it is in Darfour and Wadai that we find the primitive system in its fullest form. Wives are bought with cows, 20 of which with a male and female slave are the usual price of a wife, hence the Darfouris prefer daughters to sons. Hence the proverb that girls fill the stable, but boys empty it, which recalls the cow-winning maidens of Homer (παρθένοι ἀλφεσίβοιαι). There is absolutely no metal of any kind in Darfour, except that which is imported. Having no money, they accept certain articles as having a certain monetary value.

Facher was the first place in Darfour which had anything like a currency; it consisted of rings made of tin, which were employed in the purchase of every-day necessaries of life. These rings are called tarneih in Darfouris. There are two kinds, the heavy ring and the light ring; the light serves for buying the most trivial articles. For purchasing articles of value they have the toukkiyeh, a piece of cotton cloth six cubits long by one broad. There are two kinds of this stuff, chykeh and katkât. Four pieces of the former and 4½ pieces of the latter are worth a Spanish dollar. Buying and selling is also carried on by means of slaves: thus one says, “this horse is worth 2 or 3 sedâcy (a name given to a negro slave, who measures six spans from his ankle to the lower part of his ear)[74].” A sedaciyeh is a female negro slave of the same height. A sedâcy is worth 30 toukkiyeh, or six blue chauter, or 8 white chauter or six oxen, or 10 Spanish pillar dollars, the only coined money known in Darfour, where it is called abou medfa, i.e. cannon piece, the pillars being taken for cannons. The inhabitants of Kobeih employ beads for money, which are called harich. They are green and blue and circulate in strings of 100 each. This bead takes the place of the tin ring (tarneih) used at Facher in the purchase of cheap commodities. The harich as money is employed in numbers of from 5 to 100 beads (the string), from one string to ten and indefinitely further[75].

The toukkiyeh is worth in the markets mentioned 8 strings of harich. Thus a sedâcy is worth 240 strings. At Guerly and its environments the falgo or stick of salt almost as big as one’s finger is employed. This salt is obtained artificially, and when liquid is poured into little moulds of baked clay. This salt is sold by the falgo, not by weight, and one buys by 1, 2 or 3 falgo according to the value of the article.

At Conca tobacco is used as money. At Kergo, Ryl, and Chaigriyeh articles of moderate value are bought with hanks of cotton thread. These threads are ten ells long, and there are only 20 threads in each hank. For common articles raw cotton with the pods attached is given; it is not weighed but simply estimated by guess. At Noumleh onions are employed as money for common articles, and the rubat or hank of thread, and toukkiyeh for the more valuable, whilst the chauter and dollar are unknown.

At Ras-el-Fyk[76] the hoe (hachâchah) serves as currency. It is simply a plate of iron fitted with a socket. A handle is fitted into this socket, and one has an implement suited for chopping the weeds in the corn fields. Purchases of small value are made with the hoe from 1 to 20: above that amount the toukkiyeh is employed and likewise the chauter.

At Temourkeh they use as moneys cylindrical pieces of copper (called damleg) for articles of some value, whilst a kind of glass bead called chaddour is used for small articles. Near Ganz, the eastern part of Darfour, the principal article of exchange is the doukha for articles of moderate value. They give it by the handful, or by the double handful up to the amount of half a moda; whilst as elsewhere articles of value are bought by the toukkiyeh or dollar. In a very great number of places merchandise is exchanged against oxen; thus the horse is worth 10 to 20 oxen.

Accordingly while each district of Darfour has some peculiar form of currency for small change the higher currency is the same everywhere, the piece of cloth, the ox, the slave[77].

In the region of Wadai the same shrewd Arab tells us that cattle are kept by even the most barbarous tribes[78]. Thus the Fertyt tribe, who go in a state of almost complete nudity, and thus have no need of cloth, possess large herds of cattle, which are not branded, but each owner distinguishes his cattle by giving a peculiar shape to their horns as soon as they begin to grow. In the less barbarous communities of Wadai slaves and beads are employed as currency as well as cattle. The bead used is called the mansous. It is of yellow amber and of different sizes. Number 1 is so called because one string (containing 100 beads) weighs one rotl (pound) of 12 ounces; Number 2 because two strings weigh a rotl; Number 3 because 3 strings make a rotl and so on. The first is the most costly of all beads. Often a single bead of this sort (soumyt) is worth two slaves; if it is abundant each bead is worth a slave.

CHAPTER III.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE OX AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF GOLD.

And round about him lay on every side

Great heapes of gold that never could be spent,

Of which some were rude owre not purified

Of Mulciber’s devouring element.

Some others were new driven and distent

Into great Ingowes and to wedges square,

Some in round plates with outen ornament,

But most were stampt and in their metal bare

The antique Shapes of Kings and Kesars straunge and rare.

Spenser, Faerie Queen, II. vii.

Let us now take a general survey of the results of our observations. First of all it is apparent that the doctrine of a primal convention with regard to the use of any one particular article as a medium of exchange is just as false as the old belief in an original convention at the first beginning of Language or Law. Every medium of exchange either has an actual marketable value, or represents something which either has or formerly had such a value, just as a five-pound note represents five sovereigns, and the piece of stamped walrus skin formerly employed by Russians in Alaska in paying the native trappers represented roubles or blankets[79].

To employ once more the language of geology, we have found evidence pointing to certain general laws of stratification. In Further Asia we have found a section which presents us with an almost complete series of strata, whilst in other places where we have been only able to observe two or three layers, we have nevertheless found that certain strata are invariably found superimposed upon others, just as regularly as the coal seams are found lying over the carboniferous limestone. As soon as the primitive savage has conceived the idea of obtaining some article which he desires but does not possess by giving in exchange to its owner something which the latter desires, the principle of money has been conceived. Shells or necklaces of shells are found everywhere to be employed in the earliest stages. When some men began to make weapons of superior material, as for instance axes of jade instead of common stone, such weapons naturally soon became media of exchange; when the ox and the sheep, the swine and the goat are tamed, large additions are made to the circulating media of the more advanced communities; then come the metals; the older ornaments of shells and implements of stone are replaced by those of gold (and much later by silver) and by weapons of bronze as in Asia and Europe, and by those of iron in Africa. Copper and iron circulate either in the form of implements and weapons, such as the axes of West Africa, the hoes of the early Chinese and modern Bahnars, and the ancient Chinese knives, all of which remind us of the axes and half-axes in Homer; or in the form of rings and bracelets, like the manillas of West Africa and the ancient Irish fibulae; or else in the form of plates or bars of metal, ready to be employed for the manufacture of such articles, as we saw in the case of the iron bars of Laos, the iron discs of the Madis, and the brass rods of the Congo. Again we are reminded of the mass of pig-iron, which Achilles offered as a prize[80].

It is of the highest importance to observe that such pieces of copper and iron are not weighed, but are appraised by measurement. We shall find that it is only at a period long subsequent to the weighing of gold that the inferior metals are estimated by weight. The custom of capturing wives which prevails among the lowest savages is succeeded by the custom of purchasing wives. The woman is only a chattel on the same footing as the cow or the sheep, and she is accordingly appraised in terms of the ordinary media of exchange employed in her community, whether it be in cows, horses, beads, skins or blankets. Presently male captives are found useful both to tend flocks and, as in the East and in the modern Soudan, to guard the harem. With the discovery of gold, ornaments made at first out of the rough nuggets supersede other ornaments, and presently either such ornaments or portions of gold in plates or lumps are added to the list of media, and the same follows with the discovery of silver. Such ornaments or pieces of gold and silver are estimated in terms of cattle, and the standard unit of the bars or ingots naturally is adjusted to the unit by which it is appraised. Thus we found the Homeric talent, the silver bar of Annam, the Irish unga all equated to the cow, and the Welsh libra, Anglo-Saxon libra, similarly equated to the slave. With the discovery of the art of weaving, cloths of a definite size everywhere become a medium, as the silk cloth of ancient China, the woollen cloths of the old Norsemen, the toukkiyeh of the Soudan, and the blanket of North America. This fact once more recalls Homer and makes us believe that the robes and blankets and coverlets which Priam brought along with the talents of gold to be the ransom of Hector’s body all had a definite place in the Homeric monetary system[81].

We have seen the Siamese piece of twisted silver wire passing into a coin of European style, and we shall find that the Chinese bronze knife has finally ended by becoming a cash, just as we have already found the Homeric talent of gold appearing, in weight at least, as the gold stater of historical times. Thus in every point the analogy between what we find in the Homeric Poems and in modern barbarous communities seems complete. We may therefore with some confidence assume that we are at liberty to fill up the gaps in the strata of Greek monetary history which lie between Homer and the beginning of coined money on the analogy of the corresponding strata in other regions. This assumption, resting on a broad basis of induction and confirmed, as we shall see, by a good deal of evidence special to Greece and Italy, will be found to explain the origin, not only of weight standards in those countries, but also of the Greek obol and Roman as, as well as of the types on the oldest coins, such as the cow’s head of Samos, the tunny fish of Olbia and Cyzicus, the axe of Tenedos, the tortoise of Aegina, the shield of Boeotia, and the silphium of Cyrene.

Let us now turn to the races who both in modern and in ancient times have dwelt around the basin of the Mediterranean and Black Sea, whether in Asia Minor, Central Asia, Europe or Africa. In what did their wealth consist? When we first meet in history the various branches of the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic races, they are all alike possessed of flocks and herds. To deal first with the Aryans; we have already had ample evidence that such was the case with the early Greeks. The ox plays a foremost part, and they likewise possessed sheep, goats and swine, whilst slaves formed also an important commodity. Further east again, in the Zend-Avesta the cow is found playing the principal part in every phase of the primitive life there unfolded, both as the chief article of value and in reference to their religious ceremonies. Still further to the east we find from the Rig-Veda that among the ancient Hindus the same important rôle was assigned to the cow. Turning now to Mesopotamia we find that in the time of Abraham the keeping of herds and flocks was the chief pursuit of the Semites. Passing on to Egypt, the hoary mother of civilization, we find evidence that although “every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians,” yet the worship of their great divinity Apis (Hapi) under the form of a bull and the worship of the sacred ram indicate that at a period preceding the invasion of the Hyksos the Egyptians regarded the ox and the sheep with love and veneration. Whether the Egyptians came from Asia into the valley of the Nile, or whether they came from some region of Africa more to the south, one thing at least is certain, and that is that in either case they came from a country eminently fitted for the rearing and keeping of cattle. The functions of the ox became limited under altered conditions, and their ancient esteem for the cow as one of their chief means of subsistence survived only in religious observances. So too in modern India the reverence for the sacred cow amongst a people who regard as an abomination the eating of beef is a survival from the time when in a more northern clime cattle formed the principal wealth of their forefathers.

In the Soudan, as we have seen to this day, slaves and oxen are the chief kinds of property. Crossing back to Europe we find the Italian tribes represented in the earliest records as a cattle-keeping people. The story of their invasion of Italy took the form of their driving before them a steer and following obediently to whatever new home it might lead them[82].

The same holds of the more northern peoples. When the Gauls entered the plains of Northern Italy they drove before them vast herds of cattle. Caesar found the Britons keeping large numbers of cattle, and especially those in the interior of the island subsisting almost entirely on their produce[83]. Strabo writing about A.D. 1, mentions hides as among the articles exported from Britain to the Continent[84].

The linguistic argument fully supports the literary evidence. All the Aryan or Indo-European peoples possess a common name for the cow. The Sanskrit gaus, Greek βοῦς, Lat. bos, Irish bo, German kuh, Eng. cow, taken together indicate that before the dispersion of the various stocks (whether the original home of the Aryans was in Northern Europe, as Latham first suggested, or in the Hindu Kush, as Prof. Max Müller maintains) they all possessed the cow. This is further supported by the name for the bull which is found amongst various stocks, the Greek ταῦρος, Lat. taurus, Irish tarb, and the name of the ox, which corresponds to the Sanskrit uksha, and finally the name of steer[85]. Here then we have undoubted evidence of the universal possession of cattle by the Aryans at a very early period.

Archaeology lends its support likewise. We have already found in the case of the Greeks the cow used as a unit of currency side by side with gold. This leads us to the question of the precious metals, which in course of time have come to be almost the sole medium of exchange. In the case of the Greeks we saw reason to believe that the barter-unit was older than the metallic. Is this the case universally? The evidence, I think, which I shall adduce will lead us to this belief.

First of all it is certain that man must have been acquainted with the ox long before he ever gathered a grain of gold from the brook. When primaeval man first stood on the plains of Europe and Asia vast herds of wild cattle met his eye on every side. The process of domestication was long and slow, but yet in all the ancient refuse heaps of Scandinavia and Germany, whilst the remains of the ox are found in plenty there is yet no trace of gold.

At this point it will be well to remind the reader that the area occupied by the cattle-keeping races whom we have enumerated was continuous. There was no insuperable barrier between Indian and Persian, Persian and Mede, Mede and the dweller in Mesopotamia, or again, between Persian and Armenian, Armenian and the Scythian who lived in his ox-waggon on the plains of what is now Southern Russia: the Scythian was in contact with the tribes of the Balkan Peninsula, who in turn were in contact with the Greeks and the dwellers along the valley of the Danube, who in their turn joined hands with the peoples of Italy, Helvetia and Gaul. Hence the value of cattle would be more or less constant from one end of this entire region to the other. The purchasing power of the cow might be greater in some parts than in others, just as with ourselves a sovereign has the same value from Land’s End to John o’Groats, although the purchasing power of the sovereign as regards the necessaries of life may differ widely in different places within the limits of Great Britain.

It is only when some impassable natural barrier intervenes that there will be a difference in the value of the unit of barter. Thus, in the case of Britain we cannot suppose that the value of oxen was necessarily the same there as it was on the Continent. If it was it would be merely a coincidence. The difficulty of transporting live cattle in such ships as the Gauls or Britons possessed would have been too great to permit of such a free circulation of the unit as would have kept its value exactly even on both sides of the Straits. In fact it was only with the invention of steam that facilities for transmarine cattle-trading came in which could tend to level the value on both sides of an arm of the sea. In the earlier half of this century cattle were extraordinarily cheap in Ireland in proportion to the prices which they fetched in England, but yet the difficulty and expense entailed in sending them across in sailing ships effectually prevented the export. When the first steamers began to convey cattle from Ireland to England the profits were enormous, although the freight of a single cow cost, I believe, several pounds. Steam-power has done much to equalize prices, but still there is a considerable difference in the value of cattle on both sides of the Irish Sea. But where no impassable barrier of sea or forest intervened, we may fairly assume the ox carried much the same value from Northern India to the Atlantic Ocean.

We have already proved in the case of most of the peoples with which we have to deal that the ox was the unit of value. We have likewise found that these primitive peoples, whilst employing a cow or ox of a certain age as their standard of value, had adjusted accurately to this unit their other possessions: for instance, the heifer of the second year bore a distinct value relatively to the cow of the third year, so likewise the calf of the first year and the milk of a cow for a certain period. These thus acted as submultiples of the standard unit, and as they were the same in kind and only differed in degree, the various sub-units of the cow remained in constant proportion to the chief unit and to one another. On the other hand, when there was a distinction in kind between animals, as between oxen and sheep, the relative value would probably differ according to the scarcity or abundance of either kind of animal, which difference would probably arise from a difference in the nature of the pastures and climate. Thus we have found in some places ten sheep regarded as the equivalent of an ox, in others again eight. The same holds good of goats. In the case of these smaller animals we have seen the same fixed scale of values according to age, and the same method of rating the value of the milk of an ewe or the goat as we find in the case of the cow. Amongst people who possessed horses, camels and asses, the same principle holds good, horses and camels on account of their great value being treated as higher units for occasional use, just as the elephant is regarded at present in parts of Further India. The slave, as we have before remarked, played an important part as a higher unit or multiple of the ox, the average slave having a fixed value, whilst of course in the case of female captives of unusual beauty a fancy price would be paid. As climate and pasture would not affect the keeping of slaves, and as human beings were fairly universally spread over the area of the ox, the probabilities are that it was almost as easy proportionally to get slaves as oxen, and to keep the one as to keep the other from being stolen. Thus there would be more or less of a constant ratio between slaves and oxen. There would be a tendency likewise to regulate the number of slaves by the amount of work to be done, and as this work in the pastoral stage is almost entirely that of the neatherd, the shepherd, the swineherd and the goatherd, the number of male slaves at least would be to a certain extent conditioned by the extent of the flocks and herds. Such we may infer from the picture of the household of Ulysses in the Odyssey was the practice in early Greece. The faithful swineherd Eumaeus, and his fellow the good neatherd, with the rascally goatherd Melanthius, and their underlings, seem, with the addition perhaps of a few house slaves who would assist in tilling the chieftain’s demesne (temenos), to have comprised all the menservants. The master of the house worked hard himself in his field and at various handicrafts, as we find Ulysses boasting of his expertness both as a ploughman and mower; he was also a skilled carpenter, having with his own hands built the chamber of Penelope and constructed a cunningly wrought bedstead[86]. Hence the amount of help to be required from male slaves, exclusive of their duties as herdsmen, would be but insignificant. When we come to deal with the question of female slaves, the conditions of their number seem at first sight entirely different. The question of polygamy here comes in, and we must bear in mind that they were acquired not merely as servants to perform menial duties, but likewise to be wives and concubines. It is evident then that the number of such attendants will depend on the inclination and wealth of the house-master. But here again the problem is simplified, for inasmuch as his wealth consisted in cattle, a man’s power to purchase handmaidens depended on the amount of his kine. Thus at the present day the number of women owned by a Zulu depends entirely on the number of cattle he possesses. Hence there was likely to be a fairly universal ratio in value between female slaves and oxen, over such a region as we have sketched above. The facility too in transporting human chattels from one place to another would be an important element in keeping the price almost the same over all parts of the area. It is a very ancient principle with the slave captor and slave dealer to sell their captives far away from their original home. Among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers the slave from beyond the sea was always worth more than a captive from close at hand[87]. The explanation of this fact was suggested by Dr Cunningham, and the proof of it was found by Mr Frazer in Further India; for there the slave brought from a great distance is always more valuable than one who comes only a short way from his native land, as the possibility of the former’s running away and succeeding in escaping is so much less than that of the latter. This too seems to be the true explanation of the fact that in Homer we regularly find persons sold into slavery beyond the sea. Achilles sold the son of Priam to Euneos the son of Jason of Lesbos[88], the nurse Eurycleia had been brought from the mainland, Eumaeus the swineherd had been sold to Laertes by the Phoenicians who had captured him with his nurse in his distant home[89]. This constant tendency to sell in one country the captives taken from another would do much to equalize prices everywhere, and the price being paid in oxen the ratio in value between oxen and female as well as male slaves would tend to be constant.

We have now reviewed the ordinary kinds of wealth amongst primitive pastoral people, but we have touched but lightly as yet on the subject of the metals.

We saw above that the two earliest kinds of currency consisted either of some article of absolute necessity, such as the skins of animals in the colder climates, or of some form of personal ornament, which being both universally esteemed as well as durable and portable will be readily accepted by all members of the community. It is of pre-eminent importance that it be universally esteemed. Travellers who have ignored this principle have found out its truth to their cost in Central Africa in modern times. As the chief currency consists of glass and porcelain beads, which the traveller must carry with him or starve, the European is too apt to assume that provided the beads are bright and gaudy in colour all sorts will be taken with like readiness by the natives. Sir Richard Burton in a valuable appendix to his Lake Regions of Central Africa warns travellers against this dangerous error. The African has his own firmly rooted canons of aesthetics, and will take as payment only those sorts of beads which he considers suitable and becoming. Again, some explorers brought supplies of cheap Birmingham trinkets, thinking that they would captivate the negro eye, but they proved a complete commercial failure, for the natives much prefer trinkets and jewellery of their own manufacture, and which are more in keeping with their standard of good taste. Again, the Arabs of the Soudan will not take gold as payment, in consequence of which our army in the late expedition had to take with them large and inconvenient supplies of silver dollars, coined for the purpose. The Maria Theresa dollar is the recognised currency in that region, not because of any notions as regards currency properly speaking, but because the Arab’s taste lies in silver ornaments for himself, his weapons and his horse. He values then the silver because of its utility as an ornament, whilst gold he cannot employ to the same advantage.

I have thus digressed in order that it may be clearly seen that mankind were not seized with the sacra fames auri from the very first moment when the eye of some wild hunter or nomad first lighted on a gold nugget as it glistened under the sunlight in the stream.

A considerable period may have elapsed after mankind became acquainted with gold or silver before man cast away his necklets or bracelets of shells such as have been found along with the most ancient remains of the human race yet discovered in Europe, and put on his person in their stead similar ornaments beaten out of the gold from the brook. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that the primitive Aryan or primitive Semite, who wore ornaments of shells, used these as instruments of barter, or even currency, in the same way as we have found the peoples of Asia and Africa using their strings of cowries, the aborigines of North America their wampum belts, and the Fijians their whales’ teeth.

In what particular region mankind first employed the precious metals to adorn his person, it is of course impossible for us to say. But beyond all doubt already in Egypt at the very dawn of history gold was playing an important part. The question of the relative dates at which the metals were first employed by man is one of great interest and importance in studying the history of human development. Of the four chief metals, gold, silver, copper and iron, we have no difficulty in deciding that iron is most certainly the latest to come into use. It is only within historical time that implements and weapons of iron have superseded those of copper and bronze, at least within the area occupied by the great civilized races. The reason for this is obvious: iron is not found native, but must be obtained by a difficult process of smelting, and even when obtained requires great skill to make it available for use. The Greeks of the Homeric Poems were still in the later bronze age, although iron was known and employed for weapons and implements. But as we have no immediate need to discuss the date of the introduction of iron, we may pass on to the three remaining metals.

It is obvious that if a metal is found naturally in such a condition that it can be immediately wrought into various forms for ornament or utility, such a metal is likely to have been employed at a much earlier period than one which is rarely if ever found in a native condition. Now silver is a metal which is rarely found pure, and considerable metallurgical skill is needed to render it fit for use. On the other hand gold and copper are both found in a pure state. We may then on this ground alone infer that mankind was acquainted with gold and copper before they as yet had learned the art of working silver ore. It next comes to be a question of the priority of gold or copper. The probabilities will undoubtedly be in favour of that metal which is most universally found native, and which is the most likely by its hue to attract the eye, and which is the most easily worked. On all these counts gold can claim priority over copper. Still copper is found native in various countries, Hungary, Saxony, Sweden, Norway, Spain and Cornwall.

It is of course quite possible that in a region where gold is not native and copper is, the latter may have been the first metal known to the aboriginal inhabitants. This can be well illustrated from the case of iron and copper in Central Africa. The negroes never had a copper or bronze age, but passed directly into the iron age, for the very sufficient reason that no native copper was found in their country, and consequently they had no metal suited for implements until they had learned to smelt iron. Gold of course on the other hand was known to them from the most remote period. Finally, from a famous modern occurrence we may come to the general conclusion that wherever gold is a natural product of the soil there it has been the first metal to come under the observation of man. The great gold-field of California was first discovered on a memorable Sunday morning, when the eye of a lounger who was smoking his pipe by the side of Captain Sutter’s millrace happened to light on some glittering body in the sandy bottom of the stream. This was the first scrap of gold found in California, and whilst that fertile land has produced many natural treasures besides gold within the scarcely more than forty years which have since elapsed, its gold it will be observed was the earliest of its metals, both from the nature of its deposit and from the brilliancy of its colour, to attract the attention of man. In certain parts of Southern Europe, notably parts of Southern Italy and Southern Greece, where copper is found but not gold, copper perhaps may have been known before gold, and certainly before silver. It will be important to bear this in mind with reference to a stage in our future arguments.

That silver came under men’s notice at a later time than either gold or copper can be put beyond doubt by historical evidence. In the Rig Veda, where gold (heranya) is already well known and likewise copper (for there can be no doubt that the ayas of the Veda, Lat. aes, means copper), silver is entirely unknown; the word rayatam, which in later Sanskrit means silver, does indeed occur, but only as an adjective applied to a horse and meaning bright. Again, we know as a matter of fact that it was only at a comparatively late period that the famous silver mines of Laurium in Attica were developed. At least Plutarch (Solon, ch. 16) tells us that, owing to the scarcity of silver coin, Solon reduced the amount of the fines levied and also of the rewards for killing a wolf or wolf-cub, the former to five drachms, the latter to one drachm, the rewards representing the value of a cow and a sheep respectively. If they had already learned to work that “well of silver, the treasure-house of their land,” in the time of Solon (596 B.C.), there certainly could have been no such dearth of silver. Finally let us take a comparatively modern case, that of the Aztecs of Mexico. When the Spanish conquerors reckoned up their great tale of treasures found in the royal palace, whilst the gold amounted to the large sum of pesos de oro 162000 lbs., the silver and silver vessels only weighed the small sum of 500 marks[90]. Yet this was in the country that is now known as the richest silver-producing region that the world has ever seen.

We thus find a people in a highly advanced state of civilization, who had invented a calendar, had devised a system of picture-writing, who had actually a currency in gold-dust, as we have found, and who were skilled and artistic craftsmen in gold, and yet who were scarcely able to make the slightest use of the silver, with which almost every crevice in their native hills was charged.

We may thus with safety rest in the conclusion that silver only comes into use at a stage always and probably much later than gold.

We have been thus led to the conclusion that gold is known to man at a far earlier stage than silver; furthermore that copper is also prior in discovery and use to silver owing to its natural form of deposit, and that, although in a region where gold does not exist, copper may have been the first of the metals to come under human notice, yet wherever gold-bearing strata are found, there is a great probability that gold was the first metal known. Schrader (op. cit. p. 174) has discussed the evidence from the Linguistic Palaeontological point of view, and whilst much of what he says is interesting, there are some points in his conclusions which shake one’s faith in the infallibility of the Linguistic method for determining disputed points in archaeology. Gold he considers was known to the Egyptians from the remotest times, and so also to the Semites of Asia. As gold is found in abundance in the tombs of Mycenae (circ. B.C. 1400) he considers that just about that time the Greeks had acquired a knowledge of gold from the Phoenicians. The Greek Chrysos (χρυσος), gold, is derived, according to many scholars, from the Phoenician equivalent for charutz, the Hebrew name for the same metal.

There is plainly no relationship between the Egyptian name Nub and the Semitic appellation. The question, however, may arise as to whether, even granting that chrysos is derived from chârûz, it follows that the Greeks had no knowledge of gold prior to their contact with the Phoenicians. It is the skilful manufacture of a metal into beautiful and useful articles which gives it its real value. Hence arises the high esteem in which the cunning workman is held in early times. In Homer he is ranked along with the prophet, a sufficient proof in itself of the great importance attached to his functions. Again, in the Homeric Poems all articles of gold and silver of especially fine workmanship, if they are not the work of the divine smith Hephaestus himself, are the productions of the Sidonian craftsmen. The priest Maron gave Odysseus, amongst other presents, seven talents of well-wrought gold. Whether this took the form simply of rings we cannot tell, but plainly the value of the gift is enhanced by the epithet. From these considerations it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the Greeks, although possessing a name of their own for gold, may have adopted a Phoenician name, because they obtained the fine-wrought ornaments of that metal which they prized so highly from the Semite traders.

If any one thinks that this is a mere suggestion unsupported by analogy, my answer is not far to seek. The Albanian word for gold is φλjορι[91], so called because the first coined gold moneys of the middle ages with which they became acquainted were those of Florence. Now I think Dr Schrader will hardly maintain that the Albanians were unacquainted with gold as a metal until sometime in the mediaeval period they first obtained it from the Florentines. What took place in the case of the Albanians may have taken place again and again at earlier periods. A rude nation already acquainted with a certain metal receives by trade from a more advanced people the same metal wrought into various shapes and forms for personal decoration or use, and along with the superior articles it takes over the name by which the makers of those objects of metal described them.

These considerations well serve to show how unsafe is the basis afforded by Linguistic Palaeontology alone on which to build any theory of ethnical development. Let us now take another case where Schrader and his followers dogmatize without the slightest suspicion that the facts of recorded history may step in and rudely upset their conclusions. Schrader[92] holds that the Kelts were not acquainted with gold until their invasion of Italy in the beginning of the 4th cent. B.C. His argument is that the Celtic word for gold (Irish or, Cymric awr) is a loan-word from the Latin aurum. As the Sabine form of the latter is ausum, and the change of s to r did not take place in Latin until the fifth century B.C., and as the change of primitive s into r does not take place in the Keltic languages, he infers that it was only after the change in the form of the word had taken place in Latin that the Gauls became acquainted with the metal. Yet who will, on reflection, maintain that the Gauls had not already learned the use of gold from the Etruscans with whom they had been in contact long before they ever reached the Allia or sacked Rome? The Italian dialects were still employing the form of the word with s. Why should the Gauls have taken the form of the word with which they must have come least in contact in their invasion of Italy in preference to that used amongst the other Italians? Finally comes the irresistible evidence of Polybius that when the Gauls invaded Italy their only possessions consisted of their cattle and an abundance of gold ornaments, both of which could be easily transported from place to place[93].

Again, we can argue forcibly that it is contrary to all experience for primitive peoples to suddenly exhibit so strong a predilection for metals, or objects of which they have not had previous knowledge, as the Gauls showed in their rapacious demands that the ransom of Rome should be in gold. The legend that Brennus threw his sword into the scales, and ordered them to make up its weight in addition to the stipulated sum, shows, if it is true, that the Gauls were well acquainted with the art of weighing, which would be only gained from a long knowledge of the precious metals. The solution of the difficulty involved in the Keltic or can be readily found. The Iberians in Spain had long been skilled in the working and use of the precious metals. Tradition told how Colaeus of Samos, the first of the Greeks who ever sailed to Spain, brought back a fabulous amount of precious metal, and that the Phoenicians when they first traded in that region found silver so plentiful that in their greed for gain, when the ship could hold no more, they replaced their anchors by others made of that metal. The Phocaeans had traded with Iberia and Gaul from the end of the 7th century, Massalia had been founded by this bold people about 600 B.C. Are we to suppose that in all those centuries when the Kelts are in constant contact with the Iberians, and when already all Keltike, Helvetia, Northern Italy and even perhaps ‘the remote Britanni,’ were in constant touch with the traders of Massalia, the Kelts waited to learn the use of gold and silver until B.C. 400? The Basque name for gold is urrea. It is quite possible that the Keltic name was obtained from the Iberians, whom they found already in possession of Western Europe. But there is another alternative which is probably to be preferred. As we found the Albanians calling gold by a name derived from the gold coins of Florence, so the Kelts may have adopted the Latin names for gold used by their Roman conquerors. This is made almost certain by the fact that aura, in old Norse, derived from Latin aurum, became the regular word for treasure, although no one will deny that the Teutonic peoples had already gold and its cognates as terms of their own for the metal. Everyone is familiar with the influence exercised by the Roman coinage even in the countries of the East, where Rome met with a civilization hoary in age before Romulus founded Rome, and from which Rome herself had ultimately derived the art of coining. Yet by the time of Christ the Roman denarius, the penny of our Authorized Version, had already asserted itself in the Greek-speaking provinces of the East, and became in later days, when the rule of Rome and Constantinople fell before the Arab conquerors, under the form of dinar, the standard coin of the great Mahomedan Empires. Did then in like fashion the Roman form of the name for gold, which in all probability varied but little from the cognate Gaulish word, supplant at a comparatively early period that native form?

The same argument may be urged in reference to the silver. The Irish form is airgid, according to some a loan-word, being simply the Latin argentum. We have already seen that it is not possible that the Kelts, in constant contact with the Iberians who were so rich in silver, could have remained in ignorance of that metal. The Gaulish form of the name for silver was plainly in Roman times almost the same as the Latin, as is shown by Argentoratum, the ancient name of Strasburg. It is plain then that before the Roman Conquest the Gauls had a town called by the name for silver, whilst the Irish form has no nasal, the Gaulish coincides completely with the Latin. Is it not possible, that in this case too a native Keltic name, a close cognate of Latin argentum, whose lineal descendant is seen in the Irish form, may have been assimilated to the Latin form? But there is plenty of evidence from other quarters to show that the mere existence of a foreign name for a particular object in any language is no proof that the object in question came into use for the first time along with the borrowing of the name. When the Franks conquered that portion of the Roman empire to which they gave their name, they must have had Teutonic words of their own for silver and gold, closely related to our own forms of the words. Yet whilst many Teutonic words lingered and became absorbed into what became in process of time the French language, their names for the metals disappeared and the Latin derivatives remained in possession.

Again, we get another instance of such borrowing in the case of our own penny, old English pendinga, penning, German Pfennig. The philologists seem agreed in recognizing this as a loan-word from the Latin pecunia. Yet money was familiar to the northern peoples long before they ever came into contact with even the advanced posts of the Empire. The use of rings and spirals of gold as a form of currency in Scandinavia is well known; our word shilling seems to mean no more than portions of such a coil of gold or silver wire cut off, to be used as small change. But as the first coined money with which they became familiar was the currency of Rome, they seem to have taken the generic Roman name for money as their own expression for the Roman silver coins with which they became familiar, just as the Latin aurum under the form of aura (eyrir) became in old Norse the general term for coined money or treasure in money.

We may ask why did the Kelts especially choose the Roman form of the name for gold, if they were then for the first time getting a name for the substance then (according to Schrader) first known to them? Before they ever reached Latium they had been in contact with peoples in Northern Italy who undoubtedly were well acquainted with gold. The Etruscans were a wealthy people, who coined gold pieces before Rome had struck coins of any kind[94]. The Umbrians on the east side, the ancient Italic race who had in the days before the Etruscan Conquest held all Northern Italy up to the Alps, which was hence known to the earliest Greek geographers by the name of Ombriké[95], were, beyond all doubt, acquainted with the use of gold, and had a name for it probably the same as the Sabine ausum. Why then did the Gauls remain entirely ignorant of gold and of a name for it when they had been in constant contact with those peoples who had most undoubtedly abundance of the metal and names of their own for it? Until some sufficient answer is given to the objections here raised, we must on every logical and scientific ground refuse our assent to an argument, the sole basis of which is philological. It may not be inappropriate also here to remark that it is most desirable in all historical enquiries to rely as little as possible on Etymology. From the days when the Stoics laid such importance on arguments based on the originatio verborum down to the present time reasonings based on such foundations have been as a rule founded on the sand. Comparative Grammar as yet can hardly be described as a science. New principles and laws are brought to light each year, and, although of course the solid residuum of what may now be regarded as more or less positive knowledge is slowly growing in bulk, those laws which were the shibboleth of Philologists a decade ago, are now rudely hurled from their preeminence. The only sound scientific method in historical research is to employ linguistic science as merely ancillary to our enquiries.

We have now seen the importance of the ox over the whole area of Europe, Asia and Northern Africa, in which those ancient peoples dwelt of whom history has preserved for us some knowledge. We have likewise found that over the same area gold was known and played an important part from a very remote antiquity. This proof has depended of course almost entirely on the literary remains and archaeological evidence. Political Economists, when discoursing on the oft-vexed question of monetary standards, lay down as one of the reasons why gold has been found so convenient, that it is universally found. Whether that fact is of much importance in modern times, when the facilities of communication are so great, may perhaps be doubted (especially when we see some of the largest stocks of gold existing in countries like England and France, where there has been no production of gold for many years), but most certainly in early times it was of great importance, as we shall see, that the supplies of gold were not all concentrated in one or two places, but that at many points in all the different countries which came within the area of the ancient world, nature had had her treasure-houses.

To begin in the East, we shall first find that in all Central Asia there are rich auriferous deposits in many places. The stories told of the gold-digging ants and of the Griffins and Arimaspians are familiar to all readers of Herodotus. That historian (III. 102-5) gives an explanation of how the Indians are so rich in gold. To the north of India lies a region desert and waste by reason of sand. Close to this desert dwells an Indian tribe, who border on the city of Kaspaturos, and the land of Paktuiké, dwelling to the north of the other Indians, who live in the same manner as the Bactrians, and are the most valiant of the Indians. These men go on expeditions in search of gold. In this desert and in the sand are ants, which are in size smaller than dogs, but larger than foxes. As these ants make their habitations under ground they carry up the sand just as the ants in Greece do, and they are very like the latter in form. But the sand which is carried up is of gold. The Indians then make expeditions in quest of this sand, each man having yoked three camels. He then relates how the Indians time their arrival at the ant region so as to reach the ant-diggings at the hottest time of the day, which in that region is the early morning. The ants are then not to be seen for they have returned into their burrows to avoid the heat of the sun. The Indians hastily fill the sacks they have brought with the precious sand, and depart with all speed, as the ants from their keen sense of smell quickly detect their presence, and at once give chase. Their speed is such that though the camels are as swift as horses, the Indians would never manage to return in safety, unless they succeed in getting a good start whilst the ants are still assembling from their various habitations.

This story has been very ingeniously explained in modern times by Lassen (Alt-Ind. Leben) and others. Lassen pointed out that a kind of gold brought from a people of Northern India was called pipilika ‘ant’ (Mahābhārata 2, 1860) and that it was probable that the story referred to a kind of marmot which to this very day lives in large communities on the sandy plateaus of Thibet. On the other hand more recent explorations in Thibet show us that there are still communities of gold-diggers, who in the rigour of the Himalayan winter clothe themselves in skins and furs, which are drawn up right over their ears in such a fashion that they present at first sight the appearance of large shaggy dogs[96]. Whichever explanation may be right, it may be inferred that from a very early time the region north of the Panjab afforded vast supplies of gold. The remark of Herodotus (III. 105) that it was from this source that the Indians obtained their wealth, and that there was not much gold mined in their own land, is probably correct. It is beyond all doubt that the gold of Thibet at all times found its way largely into what is now the Panjab. We need have little hesitation in believing that from a very remote epoch the rude tribes of the Himalaya must have been acquainted with the gold-dust, which lay in rich deposits in the various mountain streams.

To come towards the west, the great wealth of the Persian kings seems to have been derived from the basin of the Oxus, which was famous in antiquity for its golden sands. Thus in the Book of Marvels (a work ascribed to Aristotle and largely composed of extracts from his writings) it is stated that the river Oxus in Bactria carries down nuggets of gold many in number[97]. But the region from which Herodotus thought that in his time came the greatest supply of gold was the Oural-Altai region of Central Asia. The Greek Colonies on the northern coast of the Black Sea, the most important of which was Olbia at the mouth of the river Borysthenes, had a large and lucrative trade with the Scythians, who inhabited the wide plains of that bleak region. The Scythians were rich in gold which they obtained from the still remoter country of the Issedones, that people who, though righteous in all other respects, had the singular fashion of devouring their dead fathers. The Issedones again obtained by barter the gold from the Arimaspians, a race who had but one eye, and were hardly human[98]. They in turn, so report went, obtained the precious article not by traffic, but by theft from the gold-guarding griffins, who occupied the land where the gold was found. At least Herodotus says, “How the gold is produced I cannot truly tell, but the story is that the Arimaspians, people with one eye, carry it off from the Grypes[99].” He describes elsewhere (IV. 17) this region, which lay beyond the Scythians, where the cold was so great that the ground was frozen hard for eight months of the year, and that it was even cold in the summer season, that the air was so full of feathers that no one could see, by which, as Herodotus very properly explains, the thick falling feathery flakes of snow were meant, and that the cattle could not grow horns. All this seems to point beyond all doubt to the Ural and Altai ranges. Unquestionably there was a well-established trade route extending from the Black Sea through the country inhabited by the Scythians proper, which Herodotus describes as consisting of plains of rich soil, a true description of the fertile steppes of Southern Russia. Then beyond this lay a large area of rugged, stony land, inhabited by a people called Argippaei, who, males and females alike, were born bald. Their territory formed the lower part of a range of lofty mountains. They were a peaceful and a harmless race, dwelling in tents of white felt in the winter. It was easy to learn about them and their country from the Scythian traders who held intercourse with them, as likewise from the Greeks from the factories of the Borysthenes, and from the other Greek trading ports on the Euxine. No man could say of a truth what lay to the north of the “Baldheads,” as on that side rose the lofty, impassable range of mountains, but Herodotus had heard (but did not believe) that according to the “Baldheads” a race of men having the feet of goats dwelt there[100], a legend which may be plausibly rationalized into a simple statement that a race of mountain-folk, sure-footed as the wild goat, inhabited the mountains. But on their east the existence of the Issedones was an established fact.

It is plain then that from a date lost in the distance of time the gold of the Ural-Altaic region had been worked and exported, and that consequently it was known and prized by all the tribes who came within the influence of this wide district. The Scythians in the fifth century before Christ were engaged in regular trade with this region, and possessed abundant store of the prized substance. This is shown by Herodotus in a very remarkable passage wherein he describes the burial of a Scythian king. After recounting the ceremonials he thus proceeds: “In the open space round the body of the king they bury one of his concubines, first killing her by strangling, and also his cupbearer, his cook, his groom, his lacquey, his messenger, some of his horses, firstlings of all his other possessions and some golden cups; for they use neither silver nor copper[101].” From this passage we learn the interesting fact that the Scythians, although possessing great quantities of gold and being able to work it into articles of use, were yet ignorant of silver and copper, which nevertheless, as we know now, exist in large deposits in the Ural region. This is one of several cases which we shall have to notice which go far to prove that the knowledge and working of gold preceded not only that of silver, but also that of copper.

The remoteness of the age at which some branch of the Turko-Tartar family who dwelt in the Altai region, first discovered the treasures which Nature had stored up there, is evidenced, as Schrader (following Klaproth) rightly points out (p. 253), by the fact that among all the branches of that widespread family of languages, from the Osmanli Turks on the Dardanelles to the remote Samoyedes on the banks of the Lena, the same word for gold is found in slightly varying forms, altun, altyn, iltyn, etc., which can hardly be etymologically separated from Altai, the locality from which it first became known in far-off days. In the ancient graves of the Tschudi in the Altaic districts, have been found abundance of gold and silver utensils which according to Sjögren (Schrader 136), exhibit the representation of the Griffin of Greek fable.

Before passing further west into Europe we shall complete our survey of the gold-fields of Western Asia. One of the most beautiful of Greek stories hangs around the eastern end of the Black Sea, where lay the land of Colchis, the goal which Jason and his fellow Argonauts sought in their quest of the Golden Fleece. In the Homeric poems the voyage of the ship Argo is referred to as an event which had taken place in a past generation. In the time of the geographer Strabo (B.C. 63-A.D. 21) gold was still found in Colchis in a district occupied by a tribe called Soanes, scarcely less famous for their personal uncleanliness than their neighbours the Phtheirophagoi (Lice-eaters) who bore this appellation from the filthiness of their habits. “It is said that in their country the mountain torrents bring down gold, and that the barbarians catch it in troughs perforated with holes, and in skins with the fleece left on, from which circumstance they say arose the fable of the Golden Fleece[102].”

Strabo’s explanation, which seems from his words to have been the current one in his day, is extremely plausible, and it appears highly probable that from the first dawn of history the torrent-swept treasures of the Colchian land were well known to the dwellers in both Asia Minor and Europe. But this was not the only place in Asia Minor where gold was found. We shall have occasion again and again to refer to the Electrum of Sardis, obtained from the sand of the river Pactolus which flowed down from Mount Tmolus. Scholars are familiar with the account which Herodotus gives of these gold deposits, but probably the most convenient thing for our present purpose will be to quote Strabo’s enumeration of the kings and potentates of antiquity in Asia and Europe who were famous for their wealth, as he has added in each case the source from which their wealth was obtained. The current account as given by Callisthenes and others was, “that the wealth of Tantalus and the Pelopidae was derived from the mines of Phrygia and Sipylus, whilst the wealth of Cadmus came from the mines of Thrace and Mount Pangaeum, but that of Priam from the gold-mines at Astyra in the vicinity of Abydus, of which even now there are still scanty remnants. But the quantity of earth cast up is vast, and the diggings are proofs of the ancient mining operations. But the wealth of Midas came from the mines round Mount Bermion, whilst that of Gyges and Alyattes and Croesus came from the mines in Lydia. But in the district between Atarneus and Pergamus there is a deserted city, with places containing worked-out mines[103].” This passage gives a good picture of the gold-fields which in ancient days were worked round the shores of the Aegean.

In the time of Strabo some of them were already worked out and gave but a scanty yield, for he says, “above the territory of the people of Abydus lies in the Troad Astyra, which now belongs to the people of Abydus, a ruined city, but aforetime it was independent, possessing gold-mines, now affording but a scanty yield, as they are exhausted, just like the mines on Mount Tmolus in the neighbourhood of the Pactolus.” The latter district was still productive in the days of Herodotus, who declared that the land of Lydia had few marvels to chronicle except the gold-dust that is borne down from Tmolus[104]. Strabo too, elsewhere[105], when describing the river system of this part of Asia Minor says, “the Pactolus flows from Tmolus, carrying down that ancient gold-dust from which they say that the famous wealth of Croesus and of his ancestors became renowned. But now the gold-dust has failed, as has been stated.”

It is interesting to observe that according to tradition the wealth of Midas, the king of Phrygia, who is perhaps more famous for his ass’s ears than his riches, came from the Bermion Mount in that part of Macedonia, which was occupied in historical times by the powerful tribe of the Bryges. This in itself is an interesting indication of the intimate connection and close communication between the countries and peoples on both sides of the Dardanelles from the earliest epoch. There were on either side lands gifted by nature with stores of wealth, as well as possessing the portals of either continent. Hence the Hellespont and Bosphorus have ever been the seat of rich cities, and have ever been regarded amongst the greatest of prizes in the struggles of the nations.

It is possible that the ancient legend connecting the wealth of Priam of Troy with the mines of Astyra, still worked in Strabo’s days, may serve to explain the real cause of that invasion of the Achaeans, which in all probability did occur, although on what form or at what time we know not, and around which there grew in the mouths of the rhapsodists the tale of Troy Divine. In all our enumeration of gold-mines we do not find a single one allotted to Greece Proper. The wealth of Cadmus, the old Phoenician founder of Thebes, who was said to have introduced the art of writing into Hellas, came, according to Strabo’s tradition, from Thrace and the mines of Pangaeum. As Cadmus is the typical wealthy potentate of Northern Greece, so the line of Pelops are the typical wealthy potentates of Peloponnesus. Their wealth, like that of Cadmus, is adventitious, for it is the product of the mines of Phrygia and Mount Sipylus. This is quite consistent with the statement of Thucydides that “those Peloponnesians who have received the clearest accounts by tradition from the men of former time declare that Pelops first by means of the mass of wealth with which he came from Asia to men who were poor, having acquired for himself power although he was a new-comer, gave occasion for the land to be called after him.”

Of the three cities which are called rich in gold by Homer, two are in Hellas proper, namely Mycenae in Peloponnesus, and the Minyan Orchomenus in Boeotia. Gold has been found in abundance in the prehistoric tombs at Mycenae, thus confirming the ancient tradition. This gold, beyond doubt, was imported from outside Greece, and we may without hesitation accept the view of the Greeks themselves that it came from Asia Minor. The story of the wealth of Cadmus, who came to Boeotia as Pelops did to Peloponnesus is equally in harmony with the Homeric tradition of a great wealthy city in Boeotia. Dr Schliemann excavated the remains of Orchomenus, as he did those of Mycenae, and of the ancient city at Hissarlik, but his labours unfortunately gave no confirmation of the accounts of the ancient wealth of Orchomenus. The reason probably was that he came many centuries too late, as the great prehistoric tomb known as the Treasure-house of the Minyans had long since been repeatedly plundered and ransacked; not even one bronze plate of those that once had probably lined its walls was left. Still less likely was it that any vestige of gold would have escaped the rapacity of the spoiler.

The wealth of Northern Greece, then, by the earliest tradition is connected with the rich gold regions of Thrace, which, if we accept the same tradition, must have been worked from the remotest age. The connection of the Cadmus legend with this region points clearly to very early Phoenician trade in the days when as yet the Phoenicians had undisputed mastery over the Aegean Sea and the Hellenes had not begun to develop maritime enterprize.

As a matter of fact the name of the island of Thasos, which lay off the Thracian shore, was directly ascribed to a Phoenician settler. In the time of Herodotus the Thasians had a large revenue both from the mines on the mainland and from those in their own island. For he tells us that “from the gold-mines of Scapte Hyle they had a revenue on the average of eighty talents, and from those in Thasos itself a lesser one, but yet so good that the Thasians enjoyed exemption from taxation on produce and had a yearly revenue from the mainland and the mines together of two hundred talents on the average, but when the revenue was at its maximum, it was three hundred talents. And I myself likewise saw these mines, and by far the most wonderful were those which the Phoenicians who had colonized the island along with Thasos had opened up, it was this Phoenician leader Thasos who gave his name to the island. These Phoenician mines lie in the part of Thasos between the district of Aenyra and Coenyra; a great mountain has been upturned in the search[106].” But the most famous mines on the mainland of Thrace were those of Mount Pangaeum, Crenides, and Datum. Strabo gives a succinct account of this wealthy district: “There are other cities round the gulf of the Strymon, as for instance Myrcinus, Argilus, Drabescus, Datum. The last-named has very excellent and fruitful land and shipbuilding-yards, and mines of gold, from which comes the proverb a Datum of riches, just like loads of wealth.” And in another passage he says that, “there are very numerous gold-mines at Crenides[107]. The city of Philippi is now seated close to the Pangaeum Mount. And the Pangaeum Mount too has mines of gold and silver, and so has the region both on the other side of and on this side the Strymon as far as Paeonia. And they say likewise that those who plough the Paeonian land find some morsels of gold.”

It was in a struggle with a Thracian tribe, the Edonians, for the possession of the mines at Datum that Sophanes, the son of Eutychides of Decelea, who had distinguished himself above all other Athenians at the battle of Plataea, was killed[108]. The possession of Thasos and the coast of Thrace was not the least important means by which Athens held her supremacy in Greece, and when Philip (360-336 B.C.) finally got supreme control over all this region, and built his new capital of Philippi, his path of conquest was henceforward made easy by the golden Philippi, the regale nomisma of Horace,

Diffidit urbium

Portas uir Macedo, et subruit aemulos

Reges muneribus.

(Carm. III. 16. 13.)

Passing on now to Southern Asia we find that there gold was found in Carmania (the modern Kerman) on the Persian Gulf. Strabo states on the authority of Onesicritus that in Carmania a river carries down gold-dust, and that there is likewise a mine of dug gold and of silver and of copper[109].

That there was gold in Arabia is placed beyond doubt by various notices in antiquity. “He shall live and unto him shall be given of the gold of Sheba (Saba[110]),” says the Psalmist (Ps. lxxii. 13), showing that the inhabitants of Palestine regarded that country as a source from which the gold-supply came.

Strabo and Diodorus give somewhat similar accounts of the gold found along the Red Sea littoral. The former, describing the land of the Nomads who live entirely by their camels, which they employ for warfare and for travelling, and on whose milk and flesh they subsist, says: “a river flows through their land which carries down gold-dust, but they have not skill to work it up. Now they are called Debae[111]; some of them are nomads, others are tillers of the soil. But I do not mention the numerous names of the tribes on account of their uncertainty and outlandish pronunciation. Next to them come more civilized men, who inhabit a more genial soil. For it is well supplied with both river and rain water. And dug gold is produced in their land, not from dust but from nuggets of gold, which do not need much refining. The smallest nuggets are of the size of olive-stones (?) (πυρὴν), the medium-sized are as big as medlars, and the largest are of the size of chestnuts (?) (κάρυον). Having perforated these they pass a thread of flax through them in alternation with transparent stones and make themselves chains, and put them round their necks and wrists. And they offer their gold for sale to their neighbours likewise at a cheap rate, giving thrice as much gold as they get copper in exchange and twice as much gold as they get silver in exchange, for they have not the skill to work the gold, and the metals which they receive in exchange are rare in their country and more necessary for life[112].”

This is a most interesting and important passage, as it brings us face to face with primitive peoples in the very earliest stage of the use of metals. The Nomads do not possess skill enough to work the gold-dust of their river, although evidently aware of its existence. Their neighbours being more favoured by the nature of their gold deposit are able to use the metal in the way in which we may with safety conclude that mankind everywhere first employed it. Accustomed to use ornaments of shells made into rude beads, they had no difficulty in adapting for like use the small lumps of native gold. They readily pierced the soft metal and making the nuggets into beads used them to form their necklets and armlets. But although this people had made some progress in the working of gold, they were incapable of working copper and silver. We shall have to return to this passage hereafter. Let us now hear Diodorus in reference to the same region.

He speaks of it in two separate places in his Collections, first in his Second Book, when giving a brief general statement of Arabia and its natural products, and again in the Third Book, when he is giving a more detailed account of the tribes who dwelt along the shores of the Red Sea or, as he called it, the Arabian Gulf.

The first passage runs thus (he has just been describing certain quarries): “There are mines in Arabia likewise of the gold that is termed ‘fireless.’ It is not refined down from gold-dust as in other countries, but it is obtained straightway on being dug up in size like unto chestnuts, and so fiery in colour that the most precious stones when set in it by the craftsmen make the most lovely of ornaments. And so great abundance of all sorts of cattle is found in the country that many tribes having chosen a pastoral life are able to get a comfortable subsistence, and being completely furnished with the plenteousness derived from their herds, they even have no need of corn in addition[113].” In his second reference, after describing the hill district, where lay the Mount Chabinus, densely clad with forests of all kinds of trees he says: “The land which comes next to the mountain region those Arabs called Debae inhabit. Now these people are camel-keepers and make use of this animal for all the most important affairs in life. For from them, they fight against their enemies and conveying their wares on the backs of these effect successfully all their business, and they subsist by drinking their milk, and they range over the whole region on their fleet camels. Now about midway in their land flows a river which brings down so much shining gold-dust that the alluvial mud deposited at its mouth positively glitters. Now the natives are completely unskilled in the working of the gold, but they are hospitable to strangers, not to all comers, but to those alone who come from Boeotia[114] and Peloponnesus because of a certain ancient affinity of Heracles with their nation, a tradition of which in legendary fashion they relate they have received from their forefathers. The next region is settled by the Alilaean and Gasandan Arabs, not being torrid, like those near it, inasmuch as it is often overcast with soft dense clouds, and from these arise snowstorms and seasonable rains which make the summer season temperate. And the land is capable of producing everything and surpasses in excellence, yet it does not meet with proper attention, owing to the ignorance of the folk. And finding gold in the natural cavities in the earth they collect it in quantities, not that which is obtained by fusion from gold-dust, but that which is native and from the circumstance called ‘fireless.’ And as to size the smallest piece found is similar to an olive-stone, whilst the largest is not much less than a walnut. And they wear it round their wrists and necks when it is perforated, the nuggets alternating with transparent stones. But since this kind of metal is plentiful with them, but copper and iron are scarce, they barter these wares with the traders at an equal rate[115].” Strabo probably got his information from Artemidorus, who is his chief authority for everything connected with the Red Sea. Diodorus, whose authority is Agatharchides, substantially agrees with Strabo in all the main facts, such as the name of the tribe who cannot work up the gold-dust, whilst he adds the names of the Alilaeans and Gasandans, which are not given by Strabo[116].

From Arabia we naturally pass on to Egypt. We have already seen that the archaeologists assign reasons for supposing that the Egyptians were acquainted with gold from the remotest ages. The Egyptian word for gold is nub, from which the name Nubia, i.e. El Dorado, is commonly derived. Having fresh in our minds the interesting fact noticed above ([p. 69]) that the universal word for gold in use amongst the Turko-Tartaric races is probably derived from the Altai, the source from which they first got the metal, we are tempted to reverse the ordinary doctrine, and to derive the Egyptian name for gold from that of the region whence they first obtained it. The principle of naming products after the region or place from which they have been first brought is too well known to need illustration. Instances are familiar in all languages: Cappadocae, the Latin name for lettuce; Persica from which has come our peach, through the French; Indian corn, india-rubber, etc. are sufficient examples. The negroes of Eastern Africa call a certain kind of cloth Merikano, i.e. American. Perhaps, then, the name nub is rather a word of this class, and Nubia is not like Gold Coast, which belongs to the category of names formed by epithets applied in consequence of some article already well known having been found there.

Strabo (p. 821), describing Meroe, that large and fertile island formed by the Nile, says: “the island has many great mountains, and some of its inhabitants are shepherds, some hunters, and some husbandmen. And there are likewise copper-diggings and iron-works, and gold-mines, and varieties of valuable marbles. It is shut off from Libya by great sands, from Arabia by unbroken heights, and from the upper region from the south by the junctions of the rivers, Astaboras, Astapus, and Astasobus. On the north the Nile flows all the way to Egypt in that tortuous fashion which I have described.” This island virtually coincides with the modern province of Atbar. It is probably to this same region that Diodorus refers in his famous description of the Egyptian gold-mining. Although the passage is one of considerable length, it is of such interest and importance that it is perhaps advisable to give it in full: “On the confines of Egypt, Arabia which marches with it, and Ethiopia is a spot possessed of many great mines of gold, where the gold is got together with much suffering and expense. Since the earth is black and has lodes and veins of quartz of surpassing whiteness, and which excel in brilliancy all those natural objects which are noted for their lustre, those who are in charge of the mining works by the numbers of the labourers prepare the gold. For the kings of Egypt collect together and consign to the gold-mines those who have been condemned for crime, and who have been made captive in war, and furthermore those who have been ruined by false slanders, and who owing to an outburst of anger have been cast into prison, sometimes only themselves, but sometimes likewise with all their kindred, at one and the same time both exacting punishment from those who have been condemned, and obtaining great revenues by means of those who are engaged in the labour. Those who have been consigned to the mines, being many in number and all bound with fetters, toil at their tasks continuously both by day and all night long, getting no rest, and jealously kept from all escape. For guards composed of foreign soldiers, and who speak languages which differ from theirs, are set over them, so that no one is able by association or any kindly intercourse to corrupt any one of the warders. The hardest of the earth which contains the gold they burn with a good deal of fire, and make soft, and work it with their hands, but the soft rock and that which can easily yield to stone chisels or iron is worked down by thousands of hapless beings. And the craftsman who distinguishes the stone takes the lead in the whole process, and he gives instructions to the workmen. And of those who have been appointed to this misery those who surpass in bodily strength cut with iron pickaxes the glittering rock, not by bringing skill to bear upon their tasks, but by mere brute force, and they hew out galleries, not in a straight line, but according to the vein of the glittering rock. They then living in darkness owing to the bends and twists in the pits carry about lamps fitted on their foreheads, and changing in many ways the posture of their bodies according to the peculiarity of the rock throw down on the floor the fragments that are being hewn, and this they do unceasingly under the severity and stripes of an overseer. But the boys who have not yet reached manhood going in through the shafts into the excavations in the rock, laboriously cast up the rock that is being thrown down bit by bit, and convey it to the place outside the mouth of the shaft into the light. But the men who are more than thirty years old take a fixed measure of the quarried stone, and pound it in stone mortars with iron pestles until they reduce it to the size of a vetch. From these the women and older men receive the stone now reduced to pieces the size of a vetch, and as there is a considerable number of mills there in a row, they cast the stone upon them, they stand beside them at the handle in threes or twos, they grind until they have reduced the measure given them to the fineness of wheaten flour. And since they are all regardless of their persons, and have not a garment to cover their nakedness, no one who saw them could refrain from pitying the hapless creatures owing to their excessive misery. For there is absolutely no consideration nor relaxation for sick, or maimed, for aged man, or weak woman, but all are forced to toil on at their tasks until, worn out by their miseries, they die amid their toils. Wherefore the unhappy beings regard the future as more to be dreaded than the present owing to the excess of punishment, and expect death as more to be longed for than life.

“But finally the craftsmen get the ground-up stone, and complete the process. For they rub the ground-up quartz on a broad board placed on a slight incline, pouring water on it. Then the earthy part of it, melting away by the action of the liquid, flows down along the sloping board, but the part that contains the gold adheres to the board owing to its weight. Repeating this process frequently at first with their hands they gently rub it, but after this pressing it lightly with delicate sponges they take up by these means the soft and earthy part until the gold-dust is left in a state of purity.

“Finally other craftsmen, taking over the collected gold by measure and weight, put it into earthenware pots, and in proportion to the amount they put in a piece of lead and lumps of salt and furthermore a small quantity of tin, and they add barley bran. Then having made a well-fitted cover and having laboriously smeared it over with mud, they bake it in kilns for five days and as many nights continuously. Then after letting it cool, they find none of the other things in the vessels, but get the gold in a pure state with but a slight reduction in quantity. With so many and so great sufferings is the production of gold at the frontiers of Egypt completed. For Nature herself makes it plain, I think, that gold is produced with toil, is guarded with difficulty, is most eagerly sought for, and is enjoyed with mixed pleasure and pain. The discovery of these mines is of very ancient date, inasmuch as it was made known by the ancient kings[117].”

Such then is the vivid picture drawn by the humane Diodorus of the horrible torments of the unhappy bondsmen who worked these famous mines, sufferings only to be paralleled by the miseries endured by the miners in Spain under Roman rule, by the Indians in the mines of Peru under the yoke of the Spaniard, and by the helpless sufferers under Muscovite cruelty who at this hour endure a living death in the mines of Siberia.

For our immediate purpose it is interesting to notice that the Egyptians from a far back time obtained an abundant supply of gold from the confines of their own territory, and doubtless drew a further supply from those rich gold districts along the Red Sea of which we have just spoken.

Whilst in the latter case we had a most instructive instance of the first attempts to utilize the metals made by men, so in the case of Egypt we find an example of the most elaborate and scientific process of gold-mining known to the ancients. For we shall find that the process employed in Spain by the Romans for refining the crude gold was not nearly so elaborate as that employed by the Egyptians.

It is of course quite possible that supplies of gold either in the form of dust or of rings may have reached Egypt from the interior of Africa, but of that we have not as far as I am aware any historical record. For the negroes who are depicted in Egyptian paintings bringing tribute of gold rings might have brought them from Nubia or from a region on the coast of the Mediterranean further west. It is indeed a fact of great interest that down to the present day gold in the shape of rings or links is brought to Massowah on the Red Sea from Sennaar (Nubia). This is the best of the three qualities which reach Massowah; the second quality is Abyssinian gold, “in grains or beads,” and the third is also Abyssinian gold “in ingots.” Thus two most ancient ways of using gold are employed in this region still, for the gold in grains or beads reminds us at once of the story of its being employed by the Debae to form necklaces[118].

Once more let us advance westward, and notice the last gold-field on the continent of Africa. That gold was obtained by the Carthaginians from a district in North Africa is put beyond doubt by a passage of Herodotus (IV. 195), who, after describing a certain people called the Gyzantes, who coloured themselves red with raddle, and ate apes, says that “the Carthaginians declare that opposite this people lies an island named Cyraunis, two hundred stades long (25 miles) but narrow in breadth, with a crossing from the mainland; the island is full of olives and vines, and there is a lake in it from which the native maidens by means of birds’ feathers smeared with pitch take up gold dust out of the silt.” Whatever may be the exact spot meant on the coast of the Libyan nomads we may at least conclude that there is a distinct indication that the Carthaginians were well acquainted with gold deposits in this quarter. Whether or not the Carthaginians and in later times the Romans may have obtained by caravans across the desert supplies of gold from the great gold-bearing regions of West Africa, we have no means of judging, but it is on the whole probable that they did. The voyage of Hanno, the Carthaginian admiral, along the western side of Africa can hardly have failed to make known to them the existence of rich gold fields, even if they had been previously ignorant of them; but it is still more likely that it was the knowledge of such an Eldorado far away beyond the great Sahara that induced them to send out the expedition.

It has often happened in the history of both ancient and modern commerce that the products of a certain region are known long before travellers or merchants from civilized lands have ever reached the country that produces them. Thus the merchants of Marseilles were probably familiar with the tin brought from Devon and Cornwall across Gaul before the famous Pytheas ever coasted round Spain and Gaul and visited our shores. Again, in modern times, it is only within the last thirty years that the source of that most familiar of drugs, Turkey rhubarb, has been discovered.

By whatever means they may have learned its existence the following passage of Herodotus (IV. 196) puts it beyond all doubt that the Carthaginians in the fifth century B.C. traded by sea for gold to the west coast of Africa, and that consequently the savages of that region must have been long acquainted with the metal: “The Carthaginians,” he says, “also relate the following: there is a country in Libya and a nation beyond the Pillars of Heracles, which they are wont to visit, where they no sooner arrive than forthwith they unlade their wares, and having disposed them after an orderly fashion along the beach, leave them and returning aboard their ships, raise a great smoke. The natives, when they see the smoke, come down to the shore, and laying out to view so much gold as they think the worth of the wares, withdraw to a distance. The Carthaginians upon this come ashore and look; if they think the gold enough, they take it and go their way, but if it does not seem to them sufficient, they go aboard once more and wait patiently. Then the others approach and add to their gold, till the Carthaginians are content. Neither party deals unfairly with the other, for they themselves never touch the gold until it comes up to the worth of the goods, nor do the natives ever carry off the goods till the gold is taken away[119].”

Let us now retrace our steps to Europe and take up our investigation at the point from which we diverged into Asia. We found Thrace and Thasos to have been for many ages an inexhaustible source of gold. We must now pass on from the Balkan peninsula to the Italian.

Although according to Helbig (Die Italiker in der Poebene, p. 21) no traces of gold have as yet been found in the lake-dwellings of Northern Italy, which were erected and occupied by the Umbrians, who occupied all that region until conquered by the Etruscans[120], we cannot take this negative evidence as at all conclusive proof that the inhabitants of these dwellings were utterly ignorant of gold and its use. Helbig has shown that the inhabitants of the lake-dwellings were in the bronze age at the time of the Etruscan conquest, which can be hardly placed later than B.C. 1100. Bronze implements are found in the remains. But as a matter of fact ornaments of gold are not generally found in the ruins of the habitations of the living, but rather in the tombs of the dead. That certainly has been the case at Mycenae, at Spata, on Mount Hymettus in Attica, in the island of Thera, and at Ialysus in Rhodes. Contrast the wealth of gold ornaments found in the tombs at Mycenae with the complete absence of that metal in the palace at Tiryns. Of course it may be urged on the other side that at Hissarlik amid the ruins of a burnt city great treasure in gold and silver has been found, and we must undoubtedly admit that in certain cases such as that of a city suddenly destroyed by a fire before there was time either for the owners to remove or the enemy to pillage the valuables therein, there is the possibility of finding such remains. If we were to apply this negative method consistently we must conclude that Orchomenus, which Homer called “rich in gold,” was inhabited by men who were not yet acquainted with that metal, and we should I believe be constrained to arrive at the same conclusion in the case of Nineveh and Babylon. At least Sir Henry Layard discovered scarcely a fragment of any articles of gold in the course of his excavations on the site of those two cities, which nevertheless we have the strongest grounds for believing were amongst the wealthiest of those of ancient days. In dealing with the question of Northern Italy we cannot separate it from the contiguous region of Switzerland or Helvetia. Dr Keller, in his well-known work on the Lake-dwellings (p. 459), gives instances where gold has been found in lake-dwellings amongst remains that indicated the owners to have been in the bronze period. Of course it may be said and said with truth that the lake-dwellings of Switzerland continued to be occupied down to a time posterior to those found in the Aemilia. But when we find that a gold ornament has been found in a dwelling of neolithic age, we have a positive proof not simply of the knowledge, but probably of the skill requisite to manufacture the metal. If any upholder of the negative method urges that gold has been found very sparingly in these lacustrine dwellings, let him remember that the existence of one single object of gold in these remains is sufficient to demolish all his argument. The objects found in the lakes are chiefly débris, the offal of the house, bones of animals, which had formed the food of the former owners, broken and disused implements, and such like. Ornaments of gold were not likely to have been flung into the bottom of the lake for the purpose of getting rid of them. Such precious articles were probably handed down with great care from generation to generation, and possibly in later days gold that once graced the neck or arms of prehistoric men and women has reappeared time after time in the form of coins, first the rude imitations of the staters of Philip of Macedon, again under the form of Roman aurei, and perhaps even bore the impress of some mediaeval monarch at a later time. There have been issues of coins both in ancient and modern times of which not a single specimen is at present known; yet if any one were to argue from this against the truth of the documentary evidence, the spade of a peasant by turning up a single coin might on the moment wreck all his logic. The sum of positive knowledge which we obtain from this discussion is therefore that some people who inhabited Switzerland in what is called the neolithic age (a vague and often misleading phrase) were acquainted with the use of gold ornaments. Could we but fix the inferior limits of this neolithic age, we should at least obtain an approximate date before which gold was already known. But it is most probable that stone, bronze and even iron long continued to be used side by side in the same areas. The man who had no articles to barter for bronze continued to use stone implements of his own manufacture, whilst his more fortunate coeval used weapons made of the superior but more costly material.

Granting now that bronze implements made their way from the Mediterranean into the middle and north of Europe, brought most likely by traders from the more civilized shores of the Aegean, let us ask ourselves how did the men of the neolithic stage obtain them. Did the kindly Phoenician trader generously bestow as free gifts these articles on the barbarians of the West? Does the trader of today among the isles of Melanesia lavish for mere thanks his wares upon the natives who gather round him on the beach? In Homer those Phoenician shipmen are described by an epithet, which by the mildest interpretation means knaves. The men who brought bronze got some valuable objects in exchange for it. Such objects must be portable: slaves, gold, silver, copper, tin, skins and furs would probably form the main objects of barter. If we make use of the philological method of Schrader and his school, there can be no doubt that copper was known to the Italians before ever a Phoenician keel grated against their shores, for the Latin aes is as we said a true Aryan word. There is no suspicion of borrowing here from the Semitic as there is in the case of the Greek chalkos. In such a case as this the philological argument has some distinct force; for whilst, as I argued, it is easy to realize a state of things under which a native name for a particular substance already known may give place to a foreign one, on the other hand it is difficult to see how a people who are receiving such a substance for the first time from foreigners, and who would therefore naturally apply to it a term obtained from the foreigners’ language, could afterwards replace this name by one which is found applied to the same substance by a cognate people dwelling thousands of miles away from them. The Italians therefore probably had copper from a very early age. But we have already seen good reason for believing that a knowledge of gold precedes that of copper whenever both are found in the same area. We saw that the Scythians, who got copious store of gold from the Ural-Altai region, made no use of copper in the fifth century before our era, although copper is found abundantly in the same area. From this we may infer with some probability that the Italian stock were acquainted with gold sooner than with copper. We may apply the same argument to gold in Italy as we did to copper. Aurum (older ausum), the Latin word for gold, is plainly not borrowed, as is perhaps the Greek chrysos, from the Semites. Hence it cannot be maintained that it was only with the Phoenicians that the knowledge of gold reached Italy.

It now only remains for us to see if the Italians had the means within their reach of discovering gold. No one I suppose will dispute that the Italian stock entered the peninsula from the north, driving before them older occupants. They must then have either entered Italy by the head of the Adriatic, coming round from the valleys of the Balkan peninsula, or through the Alpine passes. If they came from the first quarter it is impossible to suppose that a people in close contact with the tribes who occupied the Balkan peninsula, and who as we have seen above must have been acquainted with gold from a remote time, could have remained without a knowledge of the metal. On the other hand it will be seen from the following evidence that there was every opportunity for the discovery of gold in the Alpine valleys. Strabo gives various notices of the gold workings of this region. “Polybius states that in his own day in the vicinity of Aquileia, in the territory of the Taurisci of Noricum, was found a gold mine so productive that on clearing away the surface dirt to a depth of two feet gold which could be dug was straightway found, and that the pit did not exceed fifteen feet, and that part of the gold was pure on the spot, being the size of a bean or a lupin, only one-eighth being lost in refining, whilst some of it required a process of smelting which, though more elaborate, was still very remunerative. When the Italians worked them along with the barbarians for a space of two months, straightway gold coin went down one-third in value throughout the whole of Italy; but when the Taurisci became aware of this they expelled their partners and held the monopoly. But now all the gold mines are in the hands of the Romans. And there too, just as in Iberia, the rivers in addition to the dug gold produce gold dust, but not in such quantities[121].”

In another passage, speaking of the town of Noreia in Noricum, he says “this district possesses productive gold-washings and iron-works[122].”

Moving on again westwards, we easily find strong evidence of active gold-mining in the Alpine regions. All the granite strata on the southern side of the High Alps from the Simplon to Mont Blanc are auriferous. Not only have extensive mining operations been carried on at different points down almost to the present day, but the mines were beyond all doubt vigorously worked, not merely in Roman but in pre-Roman days. In the district of La Besse, at the foot of Mont Grand on the right bank of the Cervo between Biella and Ivrea, are still to be seen very extensive traces of gold washings and gold diggings[123]. These are no other than the once famous mines of Victumulae alluded to by Strabo when, in speaking of this region, he says that “there is not now as much attention bestowed on the mines as there used to be, because the mines in the country of the transalpine Kelts and in Spain are more profitable, but formerly they were well worked, since at Vercelli there was a gold-digging. Vercelli is a village near Ictumulae which is itself a village, and both of them are in the vicinity of Placentia[124].” So important were these mines that Pliny[125] says there existed a Censorian law relating to them, by which it was provided that the capitalists who farmed the mines were not to employ more than 5000 workmen.

There are also traces of ancient gold-washings on the Cervo, on the Evenson, a small stream which comes down from Monte Rosa, and which falls into the Doria at Bardo, and likewise on the Doria itself from Bardo down to its junction with the Po. This latter region was anciently the territory of the powerful and wealthy tribe of the Salassi. The traces I speak of are beyond doubt the remains of the gold-workings described by Strabo. “The territory of the Salassi contains gold mines, which the Salassi, when aforetime they were strong, kept possession of, just as they had likewise the control of the passes (i.e. the Great and Little St Bernard). The river Durias (Doria) gave them very great assistance in their gold washing, and on this account dividing over many places the water into many side-channels they used to empty completely the main bed of the river.

“This was of service to them in their quest of gold, but it did harm to the cultivators of the plains below, who were being deprived of the means of irrigation, since the river was not able to water their land from the others having possession of the stream in its upper course. From this cause there were incessant wars between the two peoples. But when the Romans got the mastery the Salassi were expelled from the gold-mines and from their territory, but still being in possession of the mountain, they used to sell the water to the farmers who had hired the gold-mines, and with whom there were constant quarrels because of the grasping conduct of the contractors[126].” This passage shows plainly that for a very long period before the Roman Conquest the Salassi had not merely worked the gold of their mountains, but had attained to very considerable engineering skill in so doing. Further, in this region have been found gold coins bearing the inscriptions Prikou, etc. in one of the North Etruscan alphabets. These coins were most probably struck by the Salassi, who were probably not Kelts, but a remnant of the ancient Rhaetian stock[127].

Passing northwards by the Pennine Alps, the regular road in ancient days from Italy into Switzerland, into the valley of the Rhone, the so-called Vallis Poenina, the modern Canton of Valais, we come to the Helvetii, whom Posidonius of Apamea, the famous Stoic philosopher who travelled in Western Europe about 100-90 B.C., describes as “wealthy in gold.” This gold was probably derived from the same Alpine region. The Helvetii struck both silver coins in imitation of the silver coins of Massalia with the Lion type, and gold ones after the type of Philip’s staters. We may now pass on to Gaul Proper, many peoples of which were famous for their wealth, especially the Arverni, who have left their name in Auvergne, and the Tectosages, whose chief town was Tolosa (Toulouse). The former, whose original home was on the upper waters of the Loire, probably had no gold in their native mountains (for if they had, Strabo would hardly have failed to mention it), but in the second century B.C. they became the most powerful state of Central and Southern Gaul, for “they extended their dominion even as far as Narbo (Narbonne) and the borders of the territory of Massalia (Marseilles), and they likewise had the control of all the tribes as far as the Pyrenees, and as far as the Ocean and the Rhine. And it is said that Luerius, the father of Bituitus, who fought against Maximus and Domitius (121 B.C.), came to such a pitch of wealth and luxury that on one occasion, making a display of his riches to his friends, he drove on a waggon through a plain sowing broadcast gold and silver coin, while his friends followed him gathering it up[128].” It was the Arverni who first[129] struck gold coins in imitation of the gold staters of Philip II., a fact explained by the passage just quoted, which shows that their empire extended up to the frontiers of the great Greek emporium of Massalia, by which they would be brought into immediate contact with all kinds of Greek currency; furthermore their conquests put them in possession of those districts where we have direct evidence of the existence of gold fields[130].

Again Strabo says: “The Tectosages adjoin the Pyrenees, and to a slight extent they likewise touch upon the northern side of the Cevennes (Κέμμενα), and they occupy a land rich in gold[131].” It is no doubt with reference to the same region that Strabo, whilst describing the Spanish gold-mines, remarks incidentally that “the Gauls advance the claims of the mines in their country, both those in the Cevenne mountain and at the foot of the Pyrenees, themselves[132].” Beyond doubt from those mines came “the gold of Tolosa,” those vast treasures which were plundered by the Roman General Caepio. They were said to have amounted to fifteen thousand talents of unwrought gold and silver. There was a current story that, for laying sacrilegious hands on the consecrated treasure, misfortune dogged the steps of Caepio and his family, he himself dying in exile and his daughters, after lives of degradation, coming to a shameful end. This was the account given by one Timagenes, who also stated that the treasure of Toulouse was part of the spoil taken by the Gauls from the temple of Delphi in 279 B.C., the Tectosages as he alleged having formed part of the invading host. This story doubtless is due to the circumstance that one of the three tribes of Gauls who settled in Asia Minor (the “foolish Galatians” of St Paul’s Epistle) was called by the same name as the Tectosages of Gaul (the other two being called Trocmi and Tolistobōgii). The treasures were partly stored in shrines or sacred enclosures, partly deposited in the sacred lakes. There can be little doubt that Posidonius was right (as Strabo also thought) in considering them ancient native offerings, not spoils of war. He put forward the good argument that at the time of the attack on Delphi the temple there was bare of treasure, as it had been plundered by the Phocians in the Sacred War some seventy years before, that any treasure that remained was distributed among many, and that it was not likely that any of the Gauls returned to their own land, since after their retreat from Greece they broke up and were scattered into various regions. This is confirmed by what Diodorus tells us in a remarkable chapter: “The Kelts of the interior have a singular peculiarity with respect to the sacred enclosures of the gods. For in the temples and sacred enclosures consecrated in their country gold is deposited in quantities, and not one of the natives touches it owing to superstition, although the Kelts are excessively avaricious[133].” This passage seems to explain thoroughly the real nature of the treasures of Tolosa; they were doubtless ancient votive offerings under a taboo, not, as Timagenes imagined, some of the treasure of Delphi, dedicated to appease the wrath of Apollo, with additions from the private resources of the Tectosages themselves. In the same chapter Diodorus says that “there is no silver at all found in Gaul, but gold in abundance, of which the natives get supplied without mining or hardship. The currents of the rivers, which are tortuous in their course, beat against the banks formed by the adjacent mountains, and bursting away considerable hills, fill them with gold dust. This the persons who are engaged in the workings collect, and they grind or break up the lumps which contain the gold dust. Then having washed away the earthy part with water, they transfer the gold to furnaces for smelting. In this fashion heaping up quantities of gold, not only the women but likewise the men employ it for adornment. For they wear bracelets round their wrists and arms, and thick torques of solid gold round their necks and rings of remarkable size, and moreover breastplates of gold.” The statement regarding silver is not accurate, as the more careful and trustworthy Strabo mentions silver mines in various places in Gaul. Finally, in the land of the Tarbelli, an Iberian tribe of Aquitania, who dwelt in the extreme south-west corner of Aquitania on the shore of the Bay of Biscay, there were extremely productive gold-mines. “For in spots dug only to a shallow depth are found plates of gold that sometimes require little refining, and the rest consists of dust and nuggets which involve but little working[134].”

I have purposely gone somewhat minutely into the gold-fields of ancient Gaul, and the story of the sacred treasures. For I think that no one who considers carefully the statements of Posidonius, Strabo, and Diodorus, can help regarding as wholly inaccurate the conclusion of Schrader, based on the Irish word or, that the Keltic peoples were not acquainted with gold until the fourth century B.C. The sacred treasures point to a ceremonial consecration of gold extending back through untold ages.

Fig. 14. Ancient British Coins. A. Coin of Iceni. B. Common type with plain obverse[135].

It must also be borne in mind that in the treasure of Tolosa there was a good proportion of silver which probably came from the silver mines mentioned by Strabo[136] as existing in the land of the Ruteni and Gabales (Γαβάλεις), two peoples of Aquitania, whose names are represented by the modern Rovergue and Gevaudan. As the working of silver is so much later than that of gold, it is impossible to believe that if the Gauls in Italy only learnt the use of gold in the 4th century B.C. we should find consecrated treasures of silver, evidently of ancient date, at Tolosa in the time of Servilius Caepio. It is also important to observe that it is among the Iberians of Aquitania, not the Kelts, that we find silver mines being worked. The former people were entirely free from Roman influence, and we shall see shortly that there is the strongest evidence for believing that the Iberians south of the Pyrenees were acquainted not merely with gold but with silver, centuries before ever Brennus stood in the Roman Forum. But before we cross the Pyrenees, we shall conclude our survey of the ancient gold fields of Europe in the north-west by glancing briefly at Britain. When Julius Caesar invaded the island he found the natives using gold not simply as ornaments, but in the shape of coins, for he says, “They have great numbers of cattle, they use for money either bronze, or coins of gold, or rods of iron of a fixed standard of weight. Tin is produced there in the inland, iron in the coast districts, but the supply of the latter is scanty; the copper which they use is imported[137].” Caesar’s statement is fully confirmed by the existence of ancient British coins, chiefly in gold and copper; although silver coins are likewise found, they are for the most part imitations of the types of Roman denarii, whilst the gold are the descendants of the Philippus, from which the Gauls got their chief gold type. All the Britains did not employ coins, but only the Belgic tribes in the south and east, who had crossed over at a comparatively late period. About a century before our era a king of the Suessiones (Soissons) by name Divitiacus ruled over all Northern France and a large part of Britain[138]. Coins similar in type and weight are found on both sides of the Channel, indeed the French numismatists claim them as struck in Gaul, whilst their English brethren have maintained that they are of British origin. Those found in Kent are regarded by Dr Evans, in his Coins of the Ancient Britons, as the prototypes of the whole British series. Hence we may infer that the Belgic invaders brought the Philippus type of coin into Britain, as it is most probable that the time when the same coins were in circulation on both sides of the Straits of Dover corresponds with the period when Divitiacus held sway on both sides of the sea[139]. Strabo substantiates Caesar’s account; “It (Britain) produces wheat and cattle, and gold and silver and iron. These are exported from it, also hides and slaves and good hunting dogs. But the Kelts employ even for their wars these, and their own native dogs[140].”

There can therefore be no doubt that gold was found in Britain although we are not told in what particular part. Gold is still found in Wales and in several parts of Scotland, although not in sufficient quantity to be worth working. Two observations remain to be made on the statements of Caesar and Strabo. Caesar tells us definitely that whilst they used copper as money, they had to import that metal. He omits all mention of silver, whilst Strabo, writing half-a-century later, speaks of it as a British product. I have remarked already that the silver coins of the Britons are all late, and exhibit as a rule Roman influence. It would therefore seem as if the working of silver had developed some time after Caesar’s invasions. Thus once more we have an instance of gold in full use long before silver. But what is still more important, though the Britons are in the bronze period and are actually using copper money, they have to import that metal, although copper is actually found native in Cornwall. It still remained undiscovered in Strabo’s time to judge by his silence, but as he is equally silent about tin, which was known long before, we cannot press the argument ex silentio. However, it is of great importance to find a people who possess gold and copper in a native state, already working the gold long before they have even discovered the copper. This is completely in harmony with what we have already seen in the case of the Scythians and Arabs of the Red Sea coasts. At a later stage we shall have to notice the rods or bars of iron used as currency by the Britons in connection with a similar practice elsewhere.

The writers of the classical age have left us no information respecting Ireland save that the people practised polyandry, and ate each other[141]. Nevertheless there is abundant evidence to show that there were large deposits of gold on the east side of Ireland, in the Wicklow Mountains, and that the natives from a very early period wrought it into ornaments of various kinds. The vast quantity of gold ornaments to be seen in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy is a proof of its abundance.

We shall now return to Aquitania and the Bay of Biscay, from which we digressed to Britain, and coming into Northern Spain enter that region which was to the Greek of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. what the Spanish Main was to the Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It seems beyond doubt that when the Phoenicians first reached the Spanish coasts the natives were fully acquainted with both gold and silver. Tradition told how the Phoenicians found the native Iberians feeding their horses from mangers made of silver, and that after having filled every available portion of their ship with freight of treasure, they replaced their anchors by others made of silver. Colaeus of Samos in the eighth century B.C. had been the first of all Greeks to reach Tartessus, the Tarshish of Holy writ, having been carried away by a storm when on a voyage to Egypt, and driven right through the Straits of Gibraltar, “under some guiding providence,” says Herodotus[142]: “for this trading town was in those days a virgin port” (i.e. unfrequented by merchants). “The Samians in consequence made a profit by their return freight, a profit greater than any Greeks had ever made before, except Sostratus, son of Laodamas, of Egina, with whom no one else can compare.” From the tenth part of their gains, amounting to six talents, the Samians made a brazen vessel. At a later period the Phocaeans made great profit by trade with Iberia, which at that time meant East Spain as opposed to Tartessus, as well as with the Tartessians. The king of this people, by name Arganthonius, who reigned over them for eighty years, and attained to the patriarchal age of one hundred and twenty, became such a friend of the Phocaeans that he invited them to settle in his land, perhaps through motives of policy, wishing to have their support against the Phoenicians of Gadeira, or Gades (Cadiz), the most ancient of all the daughter cities of Tyre. When he did not succeed in persuading the Phocaeans, afterwards having learned from them of the great growth of the power of the Medes, he gave them treasure to enable them to fortify their city with the strong wall by means of which they were to withstand Harpagus, the general of Cyrus, until they launched their ships, and embarked their wives and children, with that firm resolution to be free, which has made their name memorable through the ages[143].

The evidence of these passages is sufficient to show that already in the seventh century B.C., not simply the gold, but likewise the silver, of the Spanish peninsula was known to and wrought by the Iberians, the oldest race of whom written history affords any traces in the west of Europe.

We shall now deal with the actual localities and mines described for us by the ancient writers. Strabo once more is our chief helper: he seems as usual for all statements about the mines of the west to have drawn his information chiefly from Posidonius, although he likewise makes use of Polybius and others. “Posidonius averred that in the country of the Artabri, who are the most remote people in Lusitania towards the north and west [occupying the present province of Galicia], the earth crops out in silver, tin and white gold (for the gold is mixed with silver), and that the rivers carry down this earth, and that the women scrape it up with hoes and wash it in sieves into a box[144].” Here we have a description of the method employed by the natives in the remote regions of the north-west of Spain about 100 B.C., before Roman influences had time to affect them, and we may not unreasonably infer from it that the same process was universal amongst the Iberians and Celtiberians of Spain.

In his general description of Spain Strabo declares that nowhere in the world down to his day was such plenty of gold, silver, copper and iron to be found as in Turdetania, the district named after the Turdetani, one of the two great tribes into which the Turti were divided [from the name of Turti it is probable that Tartessus, the Greek name for this region, as also for the Baetis (Guadalquivir), and also the Phoenician Tarshish were formed]. “Not merely is the gold got by mining but it is swept up. The rivers and torrents carry down the golden sand, which in many localities is likewise to be found in places where there is no water, but there it is invisible, but in those that water flows over the gold dust gleams out. And flushing with water that has to be fetched the arid spots, they make the gold dust glitter, and by digging wells and by devising other means they get out the gold by washing the sand, and what are called gold washings are now more numerous than the gold diggings. But they say that in the gold dust are found nuggets sometimes even half a pound in weight (βὼλους ἡμιλιτριαίας) which they term palae, which need but little refining, and they say likewise that when stones are split little nuggets like teats are discovered, and when the gold is refined and purified with a kind of earth which contains alum and vitriol, the residuum is electrum. When this residuum, which consists of a mixture of gold and silver, is again refined, the silver is burnt away and the gold remains. But the gold is very fusible, and on this account it is melted with chaff rather than with coal, because the flame being gentle acts moderately upon a metal which is yielding and easily fused, whereas the charcoal causes excessive waste by melting it too much by its violence, and detracting from it. In the river-beds the sand is swept up and then washed in troughs beside the river; or else a well is dug, and the earth that is brought up out of it is washed. They make the furnaces for the silver high, that the smoke from the ore may be carried up into the air: for it is noisome and pestilential[145].” Then he adds that “some of the copper works are called gold mines, from which people infer that gold was formerly dug from them. Posidonius, when praising the number and excellence of the mines, refrains from none of his wonted rhetoric, but warms up with hyperboles, for he says he cannot doubt the truth of the story that once on a time when the woods caught fire, the earth having been melted, inasmuch as it was permeated with silver and gold, boiled out on to the surface over the whole mountain, and that a whole hill was a mass of money heaped up by the bounteous hand of fortune. And to speak generally (he says) any one who saw these regions would say that they were Nature’s perennial store chambers or Sovereignty’s inexhaustible treasure house. For not merely the surface but the under-soil is rich (πλουσία—ὑπόπλουτος), and with those people it is not Hades who dwells in the region beneath the earth, but Pluto (Πλούτων). So spake he in a fine figure as though he himself too were drawing from a mine his diction in copious store. There was a saying of Phalereus in reference to the eagerness of the miners of Laurium in Attica, that they dug as continuously and earnestly as if they expected to drag up Pluto himself. This saying Posidonius quotes anent the energy and vigour of those who worked the Spanish mines, for they cut deep and winding galleries, and by means of ‘Egyptian pumps’ combated the springs which burst into the workings[146].”

So rich were the silver mines of New Carthage (Cartagena) that in the time of Polybius (140 B.C.) 40,000 men were employed in working them for the Roman State, and the daily out-put was reckoned at 25,000 drachms, or roughly speaking about 3,000 ounces Troy.

Diodorus Siculus[147] gives an account of mines and mining in Spain, which, as it is clearly derived from the same passage of Posidonius as the account of Strabo, is worth quoting, especially as it gives probably in extenso what Strabo has summarized. For although it more particularly refers to the discovery of silver mines, yet it is very relevant to our subject, since silver invariably is later in point of discovery than gold; thus if we can fix at an early period an inferior limit for the knowledge of silver in Spain, we may with confidence fix the inferior limit for the knowledge of gold at a still earlier epoch. Diodorus has been describing the range of the Pyrenees, which like all the early geographers he represents as running north and south, and thus proceeds: “Since there are on them (the Pyrenees) many forests dense with trees, they say that in ancient times the whole mountain region was completely burned by some shepherds having cast away a firebrand. Then since the fire kept burning on for many days continuously, the surface of the earth was burned and the mountains from the circumstance were called Pyrenaean (Πυρηναῖα, scorched), and the surface of the burnt region flowed with much silver, and since the natural ore had been smelted, there ensued many lava-like streams of pure silver. But inasmuch as the natives did not understand the use of it, the Phoenicians trading with them, and having learned about the occurrence, bought the silver for some small return in other wares; accordingly the Phoenicians by conveying it to Greece and to Asia and all the rest of the world acquired great wealth. And so covetous were the merchants that though their ships were fully freighted, when much silver still remained over they cut out the lead that was in their anchors and replaced it with silver. The Phoenicians by means of such trade increased greatly and sent out many colonies, some to Sicily and the adjacent islands, others to Libya, others again to Sardinia and Spain. But many years afterwards the Spaniards, having become acquainted with the peculiarities of silver, started remarkable mines. Wherefore as they prepared very excellent silver in very great quantities they used to get great revenues.” Diodorus then gives a detailed account of the working of the shafts and winding galleries which followed the course of the veins of gold and silver, the difficulties caused by the bursting in of springs and subterranean streams, and the ways in which the miners overcame this latter obstruction by means of the Egyptian pumps. But Diodorus, as a patriotic Sicilian, takes care to tell his reader that this pump was invented by Archimedes, the famous mathematician of Syracuse, when, in the course of his travels, he paid a visit to Egypt. Finally, he gives a short but graphic picture of the sufferings of the wretched slaves who were bought wholesale by the mine owners and endured incredible miseries until death, the only friend they had to look to, came to end their sufferings. Strabo, the stoic, is silent on this point, which here, as in Egypt, so strongly moved the heart of Diodorus.

The story of the discovery of silver by the burning of the woods at first savours of the mythical, but there is really good reason for believing that there is in it a solid nucleus of truth. Tin was unknown in Sumatra until in 1710[148] it was discovered by the accidental burning down of a house (an incident which recalls Charles Lamb’s delightful account of the discovery of Roast Pig). It is highly probable that it was owing to some such accident that men first became acquainted with silver, as that metal is rarely if ever found native. It may well be therefore that mankind has learned the art of smelting metalliferous ore from observing the results of some such conflagration as that described by Posidonius.

Finally, we shall turn to Pliny the Elder for a moment. That industrious collector has given us a minute account of the various methods of mining carried on in Spain in his time, but as that is beside our present purpose I shall only quote a short passage, in which we get some interesting technical expressions relating to gold-mining. After detailing the method of washing soil containing gold by bringing streams of water to bear on it, just as we found the Salassi doing in the valley of the Doria, by which process he says 20,000 lbs. of gold were annually obtained in Asturia, Gallaecia, and Lusitania, he proceeds: “Gold obtained by shafting (arrugia) does not require refining, but is straightway pure. Nuggets of it are found in this way; likewise in pits nuggets are found exceeding ten pounds each. The Spaniards call them palacrae, others palacranae. The same people term the gold dust balux[149].” Here then we have an interesting group of technical terms, arrugia, palacra or palacrana and balux. The latter forms at once remind us of Strabo’s palae (πάλαι), and we can have little doubt that palacra and pala are simply dialectic variants, just as palacrana evidently was considered by Pliny to be a bye-form of palacra. Corssen has sought to find a Latin etymology for arrugia, connecting it with runco, ruga, but it is hardly possible to regard it as otherwise than Spanish, especially as this appears to be the only place where it is found. Balux (also baluca) is undoubtedly a native Iberian term. On Schrader’s principles we might at once argue that as the technical words for gold-mining and for the different kinds of gold are native Spanish words, it is beyond doubt that the Spaniards were acquainted with gold and knew the art of working it before any foreign traders brought that metal to them. Without dogmatizing in this fashion and keeping to our more cautious principles we may say that the evidence of those words is strongly in favour of such a conclusion, unless a Semitic origin be sought for those terms, which is highly improbable. For we know beyond doubt that the Spanish mines were worked for centuries before ever a Roman soldier passed the Ebro. Unless then the technical terms were introduced by the Greeks (which they were not, as Strabo considers pala a native word) or by the Phoenicians, they are ancient Iberic terms connected with gold from its first discovery. We saw that in the Red Sea the first form in which gold was utilized by the Arabs was that of nuggets used as rude beads. The palae of the Iberians may represent the same period of development as well as the same kind of gold. From the traditions given us by the ancient writers there can be little doubt that the art of mining silver was of extremely ancient date in Spain. The founding of Gadeira (Cadiz) is placed at 1100 B.C. and the tradition of Posidonius regards the Phoenician colonies in the west as long posterior to their trading for silver with the rude natives. If this tradition could be relied on, silver must have been known to the Spaniards in the twelfth century B.C. And there is no reason to doubt the story. At Mycenae gold and silver were found along with Baltic amber. The two former prove that amongst the civilized races around the Aegean the precious metals were abundantly used, the latter that the trade routes across Europe from the Baltic and North Sea to the Adriatic were already in use. Accordingly there is no improbability in the supposition that in the twelfth century B.C. the shipmen of Tyre traded for silver to North Eastern Spain as well as to Northern Italy for amber. If the knowledge of silver came so early in Spain, much earlier must that of gold have been.

Let us now take a general survey of the region over which we have travelled. In the far east we had both the literary evidence of the Rig Veda and the evidence of the traditions and legends handed down by the historians to show that well back in the second millennium B.C. the gold deposits of Thibet were known and worked. Silver is as yet unknown to the people of the Rig Veda. Again in the region of the Altai and Oural mountains, the tale of the “Arimaspian pursued by a griffin” pointed to great antiquity for gold-mining in this district; the barbarous Massagetae[150], who occupied the modern Mongolia and Sangaria, were rich in gold; and to the west the Scythians, who used neither silver nor copper, had abundant store of gold. These tribes stretched right across Russia until they touched on the west the Getae and the other tribes of the great Thracian stock. Gold must early have been known throughout all Thrace. Greek tradition and history unite in demonstrating the great antiquity of the first Phoenician gold-seeking in Thasos and on the mainland. The evidence in Greece itself puts it beyond doubt that gold was in use 1500 years B.C. The Balkan Peninsula was occupied on the north-west by Illyrian tribes, some of whom, like the Dardani, dwelt interspersed among the Thracian clans. The Illyrians inhabited all the northern end of the Adriatic, and originally much of the east side of all Italy, although under the pressure of the Umbrians and Kelts they had been almost completely crushed out of the Italian Peninsula, only maintaining themselves in the extreme southeast where the Messapians remained independent of both Italian and Greek alike. The Keltic tribes were their neighbours in Noricum, where they had succeeded the ancient Rhaetian stock, the survivors of which, like the Salassi, had managed to maintain themselves in the fastnesses of the Alps. We found strong evidence that these Rhaetians must long have known the art of working gold, for they had devised elaborate pieces of engineering work for the purpose of developing their gold fields; added to this was the fact that gold as an ornament seems to have been used by the inhabitants of the Swiss lake dwellings in the neolithic age. The Kelts must have been in contact with this people for a considerable time before they ever invaded Italy; again in Spain we found every token of great antiquity in the working of gold and silver. Again, before they invaded Italy, the Kelts must have been long in contact with the Iberians of what in later days was Aquitania, for the Keltic conquest of Northern Spain can hardly be placed later than in the fifth century B.C., and it is most probable that that conquest only took place after long and stubborn struggles. The Kelts too in Southern Gaul must have come in contact with the Ligyes (or Ligurians), whose territory at one time extended from the Iberus (Ebro) along the coast of the Mediterranean to the frontiers of Etruria. The Ligurians had been in touch with the Iberians on their western border; in fact the two races had blended to a considerable degree, and since they had also had communication with Etruscans, Phoenicians and Greeks (with the last from at least 600 B.C., when Massilia was founded in their country), it is impossible to suppose that this people could have remained ignorant of the use of gold. The Kelts thus at every point along their southern front, as they advanced, must have been for centuries in full knowledge of gold before they ever entered Rome. Add to this the fact that when they entered Italy they appear to have brought nothing but their gold ornaments and their cattle, and that in Gaul it had been the habit to dedicate great piles of the precious metal in the sacred precincts of their divinities.

CHAPTER IV.
Primaeval Trade Routes.

There can be little doubt that from the extreme West of Europe to Northern India, or rather to China and the Pacific shore, there was complete intercourse in the way of trade, from the most remote epochs. In the lake dwellings of Switzerland are found implements of Jade, a stone which is not found at any spot in Europe; in fact the nearest point from which the material was fetched must have been Eastern Turkestan on the borders of China[151]. If in neolithic days such communication existed between Further Asia and Western Europe, it is not unreasonable to suppose that when gold, an article existing in almost every country across the two continents, came into use, a like facility of intercourse must have existed. In one of the passages of Herodotus which I have given above we had explicit information respecting a trade route extending from the Greek factories on the northern shores of the Black Sea through the medium of the Scythians right away to the remote region of the Altai. On the other hand there is good evidence for the existence of a great trade route from the Black Sea westward up the valley of the Danube, and so reaching the head of the Adriatic; and again, there is equally good reason for believing that from the mouth of the Po there ran a similar route across Northern Italy through Liguria and Narbonese Gaul and into Spain. In reference to the first of these routes we may quote a tradition preserved in the Book of Wonderful Stories before alluded to. It is there stated that once on a time travellers who had voyaged up the Danube finally by a branch of that river which flowed into the Adriatic made their way into that Sea. It is there alleged[152] that “there is a mountain called Delphium between Mentorice and Istriana, which has a lofty peak. Whenever the Mentores who dwell on the Adriatic mount this crest, they see, as it appears, the ships which are sailing into the Pontus (Black Sea). And there is likewise a certain spot in the intervening region in which, when a common mart is held, Lesbian, Chian and Thasian wares are set out for sale by the merchants who come up from the Black Sea, and Corcyraean wine jars by those who come up from the Adriatic. They say likewise that the Ister, taking its rise in what are called the Hercynian forests, divides in twain, and disembogues by one branch into the Black Sea, and by the other into the Adriatic. And we have seen a proof of this not only in modern times, but likewise still more so in antiquity, as to how the regions there are easy of navigation (reading εὔπλωτα). For the story goes that Jason sailed in by the Cyanean Rocks, but sailed out from the Black Sea by the Ister.”

The story of the meeting between the traders from the Black Sea and Adriatic has every mark of probability, whilst we are possibly justified in regarding the legend of Jason as evidence that for long ages the Greeks knew that up the valley of the Danube traders from the Pontus made their way. Doubtless too it was with a view to tapping the trade of this very route that the trading factories like Istropolis were founded on the Danube.

The branch of the Danube flowing into the Adriatic can only mean that travellers from the Danube by passing up one of its tributaries would reach a point from which it was but a short journey to the Adriatic shore. But a famous story in Herodotus will yield us more efficient aid. To the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. the extreme north was represented by the land of those happy beings the Hyperboreans, just as the furthest south was represented by the sources of the Nile. Thus Pindar sings: “Countless broad paths of glorious exploits have been cut out one after another beyond Nile’s fountains and through the land of the Hyperboreans[153].”

Some of the oldest legends of the young world’s prime cluster around this shadowy region. Herakles had wandered there in quest of the hind of the golden horns, consecrated to Artemis Orthosia by Taygeta[154]; “In quest of her he likewise beheld that land behind the chilling north wind; there he stood and marvelled at the trees.” The judge at the Olympic festival placed round the locks of the victor “the dark green adornment of the olive, which in days of yore Amphitryon’s son had brought from the shady sources of the Ister, a most glorious memorial of the contests at Olympia, when he had won over by word the Hyperborean folk that are the henchmen of Apollo[155].” The hero Perseus too had reached that land where no ordinary mortal could find his way. “Neither in ships nor yet on foot wouldst thou find out the marvellous ways to the assembly of the Hyperboreans, but once on a time did the chieftain Perseus enter their houses and feast, having come upon them as they were sacrificing glorious hecatombs of asses to the god. Now Apollo takes continuous and especial delight in their banquets and hymns of praise, and he laughs as he beholds the rampant lewdness of the beasts[156].”

Herodotus felt puzzled where to place the Hyperboreans; “For concerning Hyperborean men neither the Scythians say anything to the point nor any other of those that dwell in this region, save the Issedones. But as I think, not even do they say anything to the point; for in that case the Scythians too would have told it, as they tell about the one-eyed people” (the Arimaspians[157]). “But a certain Aristeas, the son of Caÿstrobius, a man of Proconnesus, alleged in a poem that under the influence of divine afflatus he had reached the Issedones, and that beyond them dwelt the Arimaspians who have but one eye, and that beyond these are the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans, stretching to the sea[158].” But where Pindar and Herodotus hesitated, the priest of Apollo at Delos stepped in with an explicit statement of that “marvellous road” which Pindar said no one could find by sea or land. Accordingly Herodotus has to resort to the men of Delos for his information about the Hyperboreans: “Much the longest account of them is given by men of Delos, who have alleged that sacred objects bound up in wheaten straw are brought from the Hyperboreans to the Scythians, and that the Scythians receive them and pass them on to their neighbours upon the west, who continue to pass them on until at last they reach the Adriatic, and from thence they are sent on southwards. First of the Greeks do the men of Dodona receive them, and from them they travel down to the Melian Gulf and cross over to Euboea, and city sends them on to city as far as Carystus. The Carystians take them over to Tenos without stopping at Andros; and the Tenians convey them to Delos.” Then he adds a further story that on the first occasion the Hyperboreans sent two maidens, Hyperoché and Laodicé, with five male protectors, but as they died at Delos, and returned home no more, they for this reason “bring to their borders the sacred objects packed up in wheaten straw and lay a solemn injunction on their neighbours, bidding them send them forward to another nation, and the men say that being forwarded in this fashion they arrive at Delos[159].”

From the various passages quoted we may draw the probable conclusion that there was a well-defined trade route existing for untold ages between the heart of Asia, the valley of the Danube and the head of the Adriatic. The nameless poets who framed the legends of Herakles and his wanderings would certainly make the hero travel by the routes where both in their own time and from tradition they knew of the existence of highways from nation to nation. Thus in his journey to the Hyperboreans Herakles is represented as having visited the shady forests of the Danube, which points to the same road as that assigned to the Hyperborean maidens by the Delian tale. Finally it may not be farfetched to conjecture that the sacrifice of hecatombs of asses may be taken as evidence that the Hyperborean legend points to a people of Central Asia, which is the natural habitat of the wild ass. However, as it seems that there was an annual sacrifice of asses to Apollo at Delphi[160], we must be careful not to lay much stress on this argument, although it is quite possible that a vague knowledge of a far-off region where asses abounded and were sacrificed may have given the Greeks the idea that the Hyperboreans were worshippers of their own god Apollo, at whose altar like offerings were made.

Having seen some reasons for believing that before the beginning of history there was a well-defined route from Central and perhaps Further Asia across Southern Russia to the valley of the Danube, and then by one of the valleys of its tributaries to within a short distance of the Adriatic, whence after crossing the watershed it reached the head of that sea, we are now in a position to enquire whether we have similar evidence for the further continuance towards the west of this highroad of nations. We have had occasion already to remark that the legends of the Voyage of the Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece, and the journeyings of Herakles and such-like stories, really represent the earliest knowledge of the regions which lay far away to the east and north-west. There is no tale of the hero Herakles more famous than that of his travelling to the very marge of Ocean, where in the Pillars of Hercules he left an imperishable record of his wayfaring for the men of aftertime. His object, so goes the story, was the capture of the famous kine of the giant Geryon who dwelt in the island of Erythia, in after years the site of Gaddir, or Gadeira as the Greeks called it, the Gades of the Romans, and the modern Cadiz. Many vague stories relating to the early ethnology of Western Europe and Northern Africa cycle round this expedition[161]. But for our present purpose it is only the fabled route by which he went with which we are concerned. As might naturally be expected that part of Italy with which the Greeks seem first to have become acquainted was the district lying in the Adriatic around the mouths of the Po (Eridanus). The reason why they came thither is not far to seek. They doubtless simply followed the example of the Phoenicians who probably had long traded thither to obtain both the highly prized golden amber from the Baltic, and the red amber of Liguria, called from that region Lingurium, or ligurion, a name for which the Greeks found a strange etymology which connected it with the lynx[162]. According to Herodotus, “the Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks who made long voyages and discovered Adria, Tyrsenia (Etruria), Iberia and Tartessus” (I. 163). The trade routes to the amber coasts of the north have long been well known; they passed over the Alps, crossed the Danube at Passau, Linz or Presburg, and proceeded then either to Samland or to the vicinity of Jutland[163]. As these northern routes crossed that which came up the valley of the Danube, we see that by this route there was complete communication between the Black Sea and the Adriatic. In later times we know that active trade was carried on with all Northern Italy from Marseilles along by the Ligurian shore, for the coinage of Massalia, and the barbarous imitations of it struck by the peoples of what was afterwards known as Cisalpine Gaul, formed the currency of that region until the Roman Conquest. But once more the Book of Wonderful Stories comes to our aid: “They say that from Italy into Keltiké, and the land of the Keltoligyes and Iberians, there is a certain road called that of Herakles, by which if any journey, whether Greek or native, he is protected by those who dwell along it, that he may suffer no wrong. For those in whose vicinity the wrong is done have to pay the penalty.” Here we have a clear instance of a well-defined caravan route, connected by Greek tradition with the name of Herakles, which was placed under a kind of taboo, so that all travellers could use it with impunity. We may then conclude that as from Central Asia there was unbroken communication with Northern Italy, so likewise from Northern Italy there was from remote ages a definite trade route into Gaul and Spain, and that these routes were in turns connected with the great routes which lead from the Mediterranean to the Baltic and North Sea.

Fig. 15. Barbarous imitation of Drachm of Massalia.

CHAPTER V.
The Art of Weighing was first employed for Gold.

We have seen in the preceding pages that from the Atlantic seaboard right across into Further Asia the ox was universally spread, and from a period long before the daybreak of history already formed the chief element of property amongst the various races of mankind which occupied that wide region. We have likewise seen that gold was very equally distributed over the same area, being ready to hand in the still unexhausted deposits in the sands of rivers. And lastly we have seen that from the most remote times there was complete communication for purposes of trade between the various stocks. For whilst peoples in the pastoral and nomad stage do not dwell together in large communities they nevertheless are within touch of one another. No better illustration of this can be found than the relations between Abraham and Lot as set forth in Genesis (xiii. 5 sqq.): “And Lot also, which went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together. And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdmen of Lot’s cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land. And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right: or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other. Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.” But although, from the necessity of finding sufficient pasturage for their flocks and herds, they had parted from one another, they remained within touch. For we find that no sooner had Lot and his possessions been carried away by Chedorlaomer and his confederates, after the overthrow of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, than Abraham at once hears of his mishap and hastens to his rescue (xiv. 13 sqq.).

The picture here given may be taken as holding good for a large part of Asia and Europe. There is a great intermingling of various races and untrammeled intercourse between the various communities. Thus we find that Abraham was able to journey from Haran into Egypt with his flocks and herds and suffered harm or hindrance of no man. Nay, a still stronger proof of the safety and freedom of intercourse is that when Abraham entered Egypt, although afraid that if it were known that Sarah was his wife the Egyptians might murder him, yet he had no fear that they would take her away by force if she was supposed to be his sister. Thus, when his princes told Pharaoh that the Hebrew woman was fair to look on, though the king commanded her to be taken into his house, he did not act with high-handed violence against the stranger, but “he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels.” And when Pharaoh discovered that she was really Abraham’s wife, although on account of Abraham’s mendacity the Lord had “plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Abraham’s wife,” he did not, as he might very justly have done, take a summary vengeance upon him, “he commanded his men concerning him: and they sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had.” (Gen. xii. 12-20.)

Such then being the general distribution of cattle and sheep, and such again the distribution of gold, we can have little hesitation in coming to the conclusion that the ox, which we have evidence to show was the chief unit of value in all those countries, had the same value throughout, and in like manner that gold would have almost the same value over all the area in which we have shown that it was so impartially apportioned out by Nature. From this it follows that if the unit of gold was fixed upon the older unit, the ox, the same quantity of gold would be found serving as the metallic unit throughout the same wide area.

If then it can be proved that throughout the area in which those weight standards arose from which all the known systems of the ancient, mediaeval, and modern world were derived, the same gold-unit is found everywhere, and that wherever evidence is to hand, this unit is regarded as equal in value to a cow or ox, the truth of our hypothesis will have been demonstrated. For it would be impossible that such an occurrence should be a mere coincidence if found repeated in different areas. Furthermore, if it can be shown that in cases at a comparatively late historical period peoples who were borrowing a ready-made metallic system from more civilized neighbours, have found it impossible to do so without adjusting or equating such metallic standard to their own unit of barter, we may infer a fortiori that it would have been impossible for any people to have framed a metallic unit for the first time for themselves without any reference to the unit of barter. But as we have already proved that the unit of barter is in every case earlier in existence than even the very knowledge of the precious metals, it follows irresistibly that the metallic unit is based on the unit of barter. We have also given reasons for believing that gold was the first of the metals known to primitive man, but as yet we have not proved that the metals are the first objects to be weighed. If this can be proved, and if furthermore it can be proved that before silver or copper or iron were yet weighed, gold has been weighed by that standard, which we find universal in later times, we have still more closely narrowed down our argument and put it beyond all reasonable doubt that weighing was first invented for traffic in gold, and since the weight-unit of gold is found regularly to be the value of a cow or ox, the conclusion must follow that the unit of weight is ultimately derived from the value in gold of a cow.

If we begin in modern times and reflect on the articles which are usually sold by weight, we find at once that the more valuable and less bulky the commodity, the more regularly is it sold and bought by the medium of the scales and weights; furthermore, on enquiry we find that many kinds of goods which are now sold by weight were formerly sold simply by bulk or measure. At the present moment corn is generally sold by weight (though sometimes still by measure), although the nomenclature connected with its buying and selling shows beyond doubt that formerly it was sold entirely by dry measure. The English coomb, the Irish barrel, the bushel and the peck are indubitable evidence. The selling of live cattle by weight has only lately been adopted in some markets in this country; but go back to a more remote period, and you will find that even dead cattle were not sold by weight. Thus we see that it is only in a comparatively late epoch that two of the chief commodities on which human life depends for subsistence have been trafficked in by weight. Nothing now remains but man’s clothing, weapons, ornaments, fuel and furniture.

The more primitive the condition of life, the more scanty and rude is the household furniture, and as even in modern times timber is not sold by weight, beyond all doubt the same must hold good in a still stronger degree of a time when wood could be had for the mere trouble of sallying forth with an axe and cutting it. The same argument applies cogently to the question of fuel. For even though coal is now sold by weight, both coal and coke are still sold in some places at least in name by the chaldron, a fact that indicates that it was only when facilities increased for weighing large and bulky commodities that such a practice came into vogue. Similarly, although firewood is now sold by weight on the Continent, beyond all doubt at a previous period it was uniformly sold by bulk, as peat or turf is now sold in Cambridgeshire, in Scotland, and in Ireland.

Weapons and ornaments and utensils now only remain. To take the last-named first, at no period have vessels of earthenware been sold by weight. On the other hand those of metal, especially when made of copper and iron, are usually sold in this fashion, although vessels of iron and tin are commonly sold by bulk, or according to their capacity, thereby following, as we shall shortly see, a most ancient precedent. The value of ornaments largely consists in the artistic skill displayed in their manufacture, hence weight is not employed in estimating their value except when the material is gold or silver, and therefore possesses a certain intrinsic value apart from the mere workmanship. We may therefore infer that in early times no decorative articles save those in metal were valued by weight. Next comes the question of weapons, one of the most important sides of ancient life. Of course gold and silver are unfit for weapons and implements, save in the case of the gods, as for instance the chariot of Hera, with its wheel-naves of silver and its tires of gold[164]. The spear-head and sword-blade must be made from tougher and cheaper metals. Hence copper or bronze (copper alloyed with tin) in the earlier periods which succeeded the stone age, and iron at a later time, have mainly provided mankind with weapons of offence and defence. But precious as copper and bronze and iron were to the primitive man, we do not find them sold by weight: a simple process was employed; the crude metal was made into pieces or bars of certain dimensions, so many finger-breadths or thumb-breadths long, so many broad, so many thick, just as wooden planks are now sold with us, when the value of a piece of timber is estimated by its being so many feet of inch board, or half-inch board, and of a fixed width. Lastly we come to the question of clothing. Skins of course were sold by bulk, the hide of an ox or a sheepskin having generally a fixed and constant value. Even when sheep came to be shorn, the fleece was set at an average value. But beyond all doubt among the peoples who dwelt around the Mediterranean the practice of weighing wool was of a most respectable antiquity. Such, too, was the practice all through the middle ages in England and on the Continent. We have abundant specimens still left of the weights carried by the wool merchants, slung over the back of a pack-horse.