April 3. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



325 



the leading object in every amendment of Shak- 

 speare's text advocated by me, viz., the unravelling 

 and explaining, rather than the alteration, of the 

 original. Perhaps it is with a similar aim that 

 C W. B. wishes to investigate the value of " siclus ;" 

 if so, he must pardon me if I forestall him. 



I see no difficulty in the passage which he asks 

 to have construed ; its meaning is this : 



" The sacred sickle (or shekel) was equivalent to an 

 Attic tetradrachma, which Budasus estimated at 14 

 Gallic solidi, or thereabouts ; for the didracbma was 

 seven solidi, since the single drachma made three and 

 'a half solidi, less a denier Tournois." 

 Which is as much as to say, that the sickle equalled 

 fourteen solidi, less four deniers ; or 13f solidi. 



But owing to the rapid declension in the value 

 of French coin after the tenth century, it is mani- 

 festly impossible to assign a value to these solidi 

 unless the precise date of their coinage were 

 known. A writer may, of course, allude to coin 

 indefinitely precedent to his own time. In the 

 present case, however, we may, as a matter of 

 curiosity, anahjticallij approximate to a result in 

 this way : — 



The drachma is now known to have contained 

 about QH grains of pure silver, consequently the 

 tetradrachma contained 260 grains. The present 

 franc contains about 70 grains of pure silver, and 

 consequently tlie sol, or •20th part, is 3i grains. 



This last, multiplied by 13|, produces about 

 48 grains. But the weight of the tetradrachma is 

 260 grains ; therefore the sol with which the com- 

 parison was made must have contained upwards 

 of fivefold its present value in pure silver. 



Now, according to the depreciation tables of 

 M. Dennis, this condition obtained in 1483, under 

 Charles VIII., at which time Budaius was actually 

 living, having been born in 1467 ; but from other 

 circumstances I am induced to believe that the 

 solidus gallicus mentioned by him was coined by 

 Louis XII. in 1498, at which time the quantity 

 of pure silver was fourfold and a half that of the 

 present day. 



So much in answer to C. W. B.'s Query ; now 

 for its relation to Shakspeare's text, with which 

 however the " siclus" in question has nothing in 

 common except the name ; since the " sickles," so 

 beautifully alluded to by Isabella, in Measure for 

 Measure (Act II. Sc. 2.), were sicli aurei, "of 

 the tested gold." 



But I have designedly used the word sicMe as 

 the English representative of the Latin siclus 

 (Gallice cicle), because it is the original word of 

 Shakspeare, which was subsequently, most un- 

 warrantably and unwisely, altered by the commen- 

 tators to shekels in conformity with the Hebraicised 

 word of our scriptural translation.* Hence it is 



[* Our correspondent of course alludes to King 

 James's translation. Upon reference to Sir Frederic 



that " sickles" has come to be looked upon as a 

 corruption of the text ; and " shekels " as a very 

 clever conjectural emendation ! 



We retain sickle, Anglice for sicula, a scythe ; 

 but we refuse it to Shakspeare for a word almost 

 identical in sound — siculu^, or siclus ! 



The real corruption has been that of Shak- 

 speare's commentators, not his printers' ; and I 

 hope that some future editor of his plays Avill have 

 the courage to permit him to spell this, and other 

 proper names, in his own way. For how can his 

 text continue to be an example of his language, if 

 his words may be altered to suit the precieuse 

 fashion of subsequent times ? A. E. B* 



Leeds. 



A FEW MORE WORDS ABOUT " DULCARNON. 



(Vol. i., p. 254. ; Vol. v., pp. 252-3.) 



By the aid of Dr. Adam Littleton and your cor- 

 respondent A. N"., all future editors of Chaucer 

 and glossarists are helped over this pons asinorum r 

 the word being evidently nothing more than the 

 adoption of the Arabic dhu 'lkarnein, i. e. two- 

 horned ; and hence, as the reputed son of Jupiter 

 Ammon, Alexander's oriental name, Iscander 

 Dhu 'Ikarnein, i.e. Bicornis. 



The legend of the building of the wall, in the 

 fabulous Eastern lives of Alexander, is to be 

 found in the 18th chapter of the Koran ; and it is 

 related with variations and amplification by Sir 

 John Mandeville. The metrical as well as prose 

 romances on the subject of Alexander also contain 

 it ; and those who wish for more information will 

 find it in the third volume of Weber's Metrical 

 Romances, p. 33 1 . 



I cannot say that I am quite convinced of the 

 truth of the ingenious supposition of your corre- 

 spondent, that " Sending to Dulcarnein is merely 

 an ellipsis of the person for his place, i.e. for the 

 rampart of Dulcarnein." It appears to me more 

 probable, that as, according to St. Jerome and 

 other writers of the Middle Ages, the Dilemma 

 was also called Syllogismura Cornutum, its Arabic 

 name was Dhu 'Ikarnein ; and we know how much 

 in science and literature the darker ages were in- 

 debted to the Arabian writers. Wyttenbach, in his 

 Logic, says : " Dilemma etiam Cornutus est ; quod 

 utrimque veluti Cornibus pugnat." At any rate 

 it is clear that the enclosure had another name : 



Madden's admirable edition of WicklifFe's Bible, we 

 find A. E. B.'s position directly corroborated : "The 

 erthe that thou askist is worth foure hundryd sicks of 

 silver." — Genesis, xxiii. 15. And in Exodus, xxx. IS., 

 " A side that is a nounce hath twenti half scripples ; " 

 or, as in the second edition, " A side hath twenti hal- 

 pens,"— Ed.] 



