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., 11. 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 Soudan 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 follow, and for 

 many others from which these are selected, see Ridgcway, op. cit., Ch. XII. 



