194 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1771. 



particular attention, both because we have the most unexceptionable evidence of 

 its standard weight; and what little we know of the money of other Greek cities 

 is chiefly by comparison with this. The current coin of Athens was the silver 

 drachm, which they divided into 6 oboles, and struck silver pieces of 1, 2, 3, 4 

 and 5 oboles, of half an obole, and a quarter of an obole. Their larger coins 

 above the drachm were, the didrachm, the tridrachm, and the tetradrachm; 

 which last they called stater, or the standard. 



It does not appear that they coined copper till the 26th year of the Pelopon- 

 nesian war, when Callias was a 2d time archon. It was soon after publicly cried 

 down ; and the conclusion of the proclamation was to this effect, that silver is 

 the lawful money of Athens. But they seem to have had copper money not long 

 after; for Theophrastus, Demosthenes, and some of the comic poets, quoted by 

 Athenaeus and Pollux, mention the chalcus, which was the name of the copper 

 coin. Many pieces of Attic copper are now in being; and Vitruvius says, they 

 coined copper oboles, and quarter oboles. Authors differ in the value of the 

 chalcus; some say, it was the 6th part of an obole, others the 8th; Pliny 

 (speaking of it as a weight) the 10th; and Vitruvius says, some called the 

 quarter of an obole dichalcon, others trichalcon. According to Polybius, it 

 seems to have been the 8th part, for he makes a quarter of an obole equal to 

 half a Roman as. But though, when Polybius wrote, the obole might pass for 

 8 chalci, it is not impossible that at different times, or in different places, it may 

 have passed for 6, 10, and 12. 



It is a common opinion, that the Athenians coined gold, for which Mr. R. 

 can find no good authority; and from the best information he has been able to 

 get, there does not appear to be any Attic gold coin now remaining, that was 

 struck while they were a free and flourishing people. The lexicographers, indeed, 

 tell us, the Xpuo-Sf 'Attdco? was equal to the daric, and speak of gold mines at 

 Laurium; but no ancient writer mentions such a coin, and all agree that the 

 mines at Laurium were silver. That they had no gold coin at the beginning of 

 the Peloponnesian war, appears from the account Thucydides gives of the trea- 

 sure then in the Acropolis, which consisted of silver in coin, and gold and silver 

 bullion; but he would certainly have mentioned gold in coin, had there been 

 any. Athenaeus tells us that gold was extremely scarce in Greece, even in the 

 time of Philip of Macedon; but that, after the Phocaeans had plundered the 

 Pythian temple, it shone forth among the Greeks. Philip conquered these Pho- 

 caeans, and put an end to the holy war, as it was called. About the time this war 

 broke out, he took the city Crenides, on the borders of Thrace, which he en- 

 larged, and called Philippi, after his own name; and he so improved the gold mines 

 in its district, which before were of small account, that they produced above 1000 

 talents yearly, and enabled him to coin gold, which he called Philippics. 



