that writer: ("They say) that Pheidon of Argos, who was tenth in descent from Temenus, and who surpassed his contemporaries in his power, whence he recovered the whole of the inheritance of Temenus, which had been rent into several parts, and that he invented the measures which are called Pheidonian and weights and stamped currency, both the other kind and that of silver." It must be carefully observed that this is the only ancient passage which says a word about the invention of weights by Pheidon. If this statement can be taken as trust-*worthy we might very well conclude that Pheidon was the person who introduced the decimal principle and made 10 silver pieces instead of 15 equivalent to the gold stater. If however this is an addition of Strabo[1], who wrote about A.D. 1-21, and whose account of Greece Proper is the most defective portion of his great work, we cannot let this passage weigh against that already given from Herodotus, who is perfectly silent as regards the invention of weights. Furthermore there is the fact that Strabo does not venture to describe the weights as called Pheidonian, but carefully limits that appellation to the measures as we find also to be the case with Pollux, when he is describing various kinds of vessels: "and likewise a Pheidon would be a kind of vessel for holding oil, deriving its name from the Pheidonian measures respecting which Aristotle speaks in his Polity of the Argives[2]." Here again we find a clear mention of the Pheidonian measures, coupled with the high authority of Aristotle's treatise on the Constitution of Argos in his great "Collection of Polities," formed to serve as the material from which to build his great philosophic work on Politics.
There is again no mention of Pheidonian weights in the newly found Polity of the Athenians (which seems beyond doubt the same as that known to the ancients under the name of Aristotle), where it is stated that "in his (Solon's) time the].]
- ↑ Strabo VIII. 358, [Greek: Pheidôna de ton Argeion, dekaton men onta apo Têmenou, dynamei de hyperbeblêmenon tous kat' auton, aph' hês tên te lêxin holên anelabe tên Têmenou diespasmenên eis pleiô merê, kai metra exeure ta Pheidônia kaloumena kai stathmous kai nomisma kecharagmenon to te allo kai to argyroun.
- ↑ Pollux Onom. X. 179, [Greek: eiê d' an kai Pheidôn ti aggeion elaiêron, apo tôn Pheidôniôn metrôn ônomasmenon, hyper hôn en Argeiôn politeia Aristotelês legei
