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[1]." Again forty years ago Haxthausen[2] 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[3].' Moreover in.]
