gold. It is thus absolutely certain that the value of a cow in Sicily in the sixth century B.C. must lie within the limits of 64 to 141 grains, and if the calf of Epicharmus is a suckling, the range in the value of the cow must be from 113 to 140 grains. This is all we require for practical purposes, and it will be admitted that the value of a cow in Sicily comes very close to our Homeric ox-unit of 130-5 grains.
We are now in a position to test the truth of Mr Soutzo's hypothesis. It will be conceded that at the beginning of the fifth century B.C., the cow must have had about the same value both in Italy and Sicily. The cow in Italy was worth 100 Roman pounds of copper, in Sicily about 1650 grains of silver. If Soutzo is right in saying that silver was to copper as 120 : 1 on multiplying 1650 by 120 we ought to get a result in copper corresponding to 100 Roman pounds: 1650 × 120 = 198000. Taking the Roman pound before it was raised at about 5000 grs. the Sicilian cow was worth 39 pounds of copper (198000/5000 = 39). It is absurd to suppose that even at any time the Italian cow could have been worth 2-1/2 times the Sicilian. Let us now apply the same test to Mommsen's doctrine, and multiply 1650 grs. of silver by 300. (I take this as being more likely than 288 to have been the relation between copper and silver in the fifth century B.C.). 1650 × 300 = 495000 ÷ 5000 = 99 pounds of copper. The result is too striking to admit of our coming to any other conclusion than that Mommsen is right.
Next let us examine his doctrine that in ancient Italy gold was to silver as 16 : 1. Mr Soutzo[1] supports this view by three arguments: (1) that when Rome in the course of the Second Punic War issued gold coins for the first time, gold was to silver as 16 : 1; (2) Mr Head[2] has shown that at Syracuse under
- ↑ Mr Head (Coinage of Syracuse), Numismat. Chronicle, New Series, Vol. XIV., thinks that under Dionysius the Elder (406-367 B.C.) and his successors gold was to silver as 15 : 1 at Syracuse, whilst in the time of Agathocles (317-289 B.C.) it was as 12 : 1. We can however hardly take the evidence of the coin weights as sufficient, when we consider the extraordinary devices to which Dionysius resorted to raise money, causing coins of tin to pass as silver, making the silver coins bear a double value etc. as is related by Aristotle, Oeconomica, II. 21.
- ↑ Op. cit. 26.
