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had existed in Macedonia. Hence Philip II. did not require to go to Athens to seek for a standard for his new gold coinage. Passing into Asia we find there the shekel as the Daric ([Greek: Dareikos]), the normal weight of which is 130 grains troy. This standard prevailed all through the Persian empire, thus extending into the countries now represented by Afghanistan and Northern India. Numismatists have pointed out the fact that Philip coined his staters some five grains heavier than the rival gold currency of the Persian empire, as if to enhance the estimation of his new coinage. This explanation is perhaps over subtle; at all events it is interesting to find the successors of Alexander the Great in the Far East, the kings of Bactria, coining their staters not on the standard of 135 grains, but rather on that of 130, in other words following the native standard which the Daric simply represented as a coin. Thus Dr Gardner^[1] in his Table of Normal Weights makes the Bactrian stater of what he calls the Attic standard weigh 132 grains and the drachm 66 grains, and it is also admitted that from the time of Eucratides the Greek kings of Bactria adopted a native standard.

Fig. 17. Persian Daric.

Fig. 18. Gold Stater of Diodotus, King of Bactria.

This new standard seems to be identical with that called by metrologists the Persian, on which [silver] coins were struck in

1. Catalogue of Greek Kings of Bactria, p. lxix.