VOL. LXI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. IQS'. 



What Athenaeus says of the scarcity of gold, may be true, if confined to 

 Macedon, and the poorer states of Greece; but must not be extended to 

 Corinth or Athens; for though Thucydides does not specify the quantity of gold 

 that was in the Athenian treasury at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, 

 it was probably not inconsiderable; for the gold about the statue of Minerva 

 weighed 40 talents, which valued, according to Herodotus, at 13 times its weight in 

 silver, will be found to amount to above 120,000 pounds sterling. There is a gold 

 coin in the Britisli Museum, of elegant workmanship, with the head of 

 Minerva on one side, and the owl and oil bottle on the other, the inscription 

 A0H, and under the oil bottle the letters NH. It weighs lOQi troy grains; but 

 being a little worn, it probably, when new, came up to the just weight of the 

 Roman imperial aureus. Whence we may conclude, that when this piece was 

 struck, the Athenians had reduced their money to the Roman standard, and that 

 their drachm was then equal to the denarius. But Mr. R. cannot find there is any 

 Attic gold now extant, that was coined before Greece became subject to the 

 Romans. 



■ The Persian daric seems to have been the gold coin best known at Athens in 

 ancient times. This they called stater, probably because it was the standard to 

 which their drachm was originally adjusted, which the lexicographers tell us was 

 half its weight. Though Greaves says the daric is still found in Persia, it is 

 certainly very scarce, and perhaps of doubtful antiquity. For want therefore of 

 the daric, we must have recourse to the gold of Philip, who took either that 

 coin or the Attic drachm for his standard. Philip and his son Alexander coined 

 gold of 4, 2, 1, and half an Attic drachm. Mr. R. then gives an account of a 

 great number of these Philippics, or Attic drachms, then in the possession or 

 museums of the curious; and after selecting 24 of the most perfect specimens, 

 then weighing them all very accurately, he added all their weights together, and 

 divided the sum of all by their number 24, when tne quotient came out 132.92 

 troy grains, for the medium weight. Mr. R. then adds, as none of these species 

 can have increased their original weight, but, on the contrary, some may have 

 lost a small part of it, we may fairly conclude, that the standard v.'eight of the 

 Philippic was not less than 133 Troy grains; but probably somewhat greater. 

 And its half Mr. R. afterward shows was also the Attic drachm of 66^ grains. 

 In Sect. 2, Mr. R. next treats of the Eginean and Euboic Talents. 



The Attic was not the only money-talent used in Greece. Historians and 

 others mention the Eginean and the Euboic talents. The former weighed 10000 

 Attic drachms, but, like other talents, contained only 6000 of its own; which 

 being so much heavier than the Attic, the Athenians called it 7raj^tTa> S^oi.yjjt.y\v, 

 or the thick drachm. This talent was used at Corinth, as appears by a passage 

 in A. Gellius, where the Corinthian talent is valued at 10000 attic drachms: and 



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