196 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1771. 



as Corinth was a place of great trade, it was probably used in most of the cities 

 of the Peloponnesus. If the Attic drachm weighed 66^ Troy grains, the 

 Eginean should weigh llOf; which, to avoid fractions, and because the Attic 

 drachm is rather undersized, he calls 111. And there are Macedonian coins, 

 struck before Philip coined gold, that answer to this standard. Therefore the 

 Eginean talent must have been the standard of the Macedonian money, till 

 Philip changed it. 



It appears likewise, from many specimens here noticed, to have been the standard 

 of the Ptolemaic money in Egypt. And not only so, but that it was originally 

 Egyptian. For what should induce Ptolemy, to relinquish the standard 

 established by Alexander, and used all over Asia and the greater part of Greece 

 but that he found the Eginean talent established in Egypt, when he possessed 

 himself of that opulent kingdom. 



The Euboic talent certainly came from Asia; for Herodotus tells us, the Kings 

 of Persia weighed their gold by that talent. In the same place he informs us, 

 that the Babylonian talent weighed 70 Euboic minas. Pollux says, it weighed 70 

 attic minas. Therefore the Euboic talent should be equal to the Attic. 

 But ^Eilian tells us, it weighed 72 Attic minas; and if so, the Euboic talent 

 should be heavier than the Attic, in the proportion of 72 to 70. An article in the 

 treaty between the Romans and Etolians, recorded by Polybius, by which the 

 latter were to pay a certain number of Euboic talents, in silver of Attic fineness, 

 seems to favour this inequality of the two talents: for had they been equal, there 

 would have been no occasion to specify the quality of the silver by the standard 

 of one country, and its weight by that of another. 



By one passage in Xenophon, it appears probable that the Babylonian talent 

 weighed above 70 Attic minas; by another, that it weighed above 70 Euboic 

 minas; and if Pollux took his value of the Babylonian talent from Herodotus, 

 as the text now stands, and JEVian his value of the same from a more correct 

 copy of that author, or from some better authority, the Euboic talent must have 

 been equal to the Attic. 



In Sect. 3, Mr. R. treats of the Roman Money. 



Pliny has given the following historical account of the Roman coinage: 

 " Silver was first coined at Rome in the 485th year of the city, when 

 Q. Ogulnius and C. Fabius were consuls, 5 years before the first Punic war. 

 And the denarius was made to pass for 10 pounds of copper; the quinarius, for 5 ; 

 and the sesterce, for two and a half. But the weight of the as was reduced in 

 the first Punic war, when the republic, being unable to defray its expences, 

 resolved to coin 6 asses out of the pound, by which they gained 5 parts, and 

 paid their debts. The stamp of the as was a double-faced Janus on one side, 

 jind the prow of a ship on the other: on the triens and quadrans a boat. After 



