This page needs to be proofread.
 | An image should appear at this position in the text. To use the entire page scan as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/342}}". Otherwise, if you are able to provide the image then please do so. For guidance, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images. |  |
Fig. 41. Vase from Cyrene, shewing the weighing of the Silphium.
as a cupbearer, a certain measure of wine being equated to a slave-boy, so we may conclude that some such wine-unit was equated to a packet or bale of silphium, the latter in turn having a certain amount of silver equated to it, which when coinage was introduced was stamped with the silphium device. That the silphium was packed in bales of a fixed weight is proved by a now famous vase-painting which represents the weighing (on ship board?) of the bales of silphium in the presence of Arcesilas the king of Cyrene[1]. The figure who points to the scales is marked sliphiomachos ([Greek: sliphio-*
- ↑ Baumeister, Denkmäler, s.v. Silphium. Studicyna, Kyrene, p. 22. Birch, Ancient Pottery (frontispiece). The vase is in the Paris Bibliothèque.
