THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 199 
Tenedos, and there is more than probability that just as the 
tunny fish coin of Cyzicus represented the earlier form so the 
axe stamped coins of Tenedos represented an earlier axe cur- 
rency. We know from the Iliad that axes were given along 
with oxen, slaves, kettles, etc., as prizes in the funeral games for 
Patroclus. “ But he (Achilles) set for the archers dark iron, and’ 
he set down ten axes and ten half axes,” Iliad XXIII, ll. 850-1; 
where the half axe is obviously the single headed axe. The 
earliest coins of the Island of Tenedos, which lies off the Troad, 
bear the device of the double headed axe and represent an 
original axe currency such as we find in Africa to-day. 
While the ox undoubtedly formed the unit of value and a 
medium of exchange over the whole of the wide area from the 
Straits of Dover to the Himalayas, as indeed in every other 
region where it can flourish, it was nowhere the sole medium of 
exchange. In almost every region of which we have any infor- 
mation, there is, or was, a regular scale of value in which the ox 
was simply the chief unit. Some writers have tried to show 
that the ox was unsuited for currency purposes, because it was 
incapable, without the adoption of the Scythian practice of cut- 
ting steaks from the flanks of the living animal, or the Celtic 
practice of bleeding the cattle to make the unleavened bread 
more nutritious, of sub-division to transact the smaller exchanges; 
and that their use must quickly on that account have been 
abandoned. Cattle were unsuitable in many ways, though they 
had considerable stability and uniformity of value throughout 
their continental range ; but the reason their use as money was 
given up was not their lack of divisibility, for, as we have said, 
they never formed more than the principal article in a carefully 
constructed scale of exchange values. 
To this day in the Sondan we find, that while the ox is almost 
universally the standard of value and the medium ot exchange 
for more valuable articles, each particular district has its own 
peculiar lower units, generally selected from the articles most in 
*For this and the other instances from the Greek coinage which polloNs and for 
many others from which these are selected, see Ridgeway, op. cit., Ch. X 
