AND TRADERS 67 



The third reason was due to nearly all ordinary trade 

 being effected by barter. Payment was in kine, kind, or 

 service. The ox, probably because all round the most 

 important of possessions, constituted the ordinary measure of 

 value : thus a female slave skilled in embroidery fetches four 

 oxen. Laertes gives twenty for Eurycleia, while much-wooed 

 maidens by gifts from their successful suitors " multiply 

 oxen " for their fathers. 



Mentes sails to Temesa with a cargo of " shining iron " to 

 exchange for copper. ^ Then again in //., VII. 472 ff., " the 

 flowing-haired Achaeans bought them wine thence, some for 

 bronze and some for gleaming iron, and some with hides, 

 and some with whole kine, and some with captives," Among 

 the fishermen of the Indian Ocean, fish-hooks, on the same 

 principle of importance of possession, " the most important 

 to them of all implements, passed as currency and in 

 time became a true money larin, just as did the hoe in 

 China." 2 



" The talents of gold," ^ probably Babylonian shekels, 

 whether Hultsch's heavy or W. Ridgeway's light one, implied, 

 according to some, a money standard of value. But wrongly, 

 because neither gold nor silver came to coinage in Greece or 

 an5Avhere else till long after Homer's day. 



Fishermen seem slowly to have acquired some sort of 

 status. 'AAieuc, at first meaning a seaman or one connected 

 with the sea, in time denoted also a fisherman. Od., XIX. iii, 

 characterises the well-ordered realm of a " blameless king " 

 as one, in which " the black earth bears wheat and barley, 

 and trees are laden with fruit, and sheep bring forth and fail 

 not, and the sea gives store of fish." 



Any objection that such a kingdom had no actual existence, 

 but was only invented to heighten the hyperbole of laudation 

 of Penelope's fame, " which goes up to the wide heaven, as doth 

 the fame of a blameless king," concerns us not at all, for the 

 kingdom whether actual or imaginary is held up as worthy of 



1 Od.. I. 182 ff. 



2 ^. 'R.idgevia.y, The Origin of Metallic Currency {Cd.mhv\d^Q, 1892), 27 ff. 



3 //., XXIII. 269. 



