436 



MONEY OF ATTICA. 



instead of having recourse to the scale. This was done to make 

 allowance for any diminution in the weight or fineness of the money, 

 and greatly facilitated the transaction of commercial business. 



The silver-money of Attica was of seven kinds ; the tetradrachm, 

 didrachm, tetrobolus, triobolus, diobolus, obolus, and j semiobolus. 

 The talent and mina of the Attics were merely nominal, j. The 

 obolus has been found at Athens in the excavations of ancient tombs, 

 not only in the mouth of the dead, but also in urns. A miscon- 

 struction of a passage in the Frogs of Aristophanes, has led D'Han- 

 carville (2. 33.) to suppose that two oboli were sometimes given to the 

 dead ; but the poet, when he mentions that sum, vv. 140, 270, is 

 ridiculing the Sikohttikov p«r(lov, as some of the Scholiasts have re- 

 marked. § It is singular that the custom of depositing money with 

 the dead, should have continued at Athens to so late a time as the 

 age of the Scholiast on Juvenal (Sat. 3. 267.) ; a practice of a similar 

 kind is observed to prevail among some Tartar nations. 



The Attic tetradrachms examined by Greaves weighed 268 grains 

 English, or each drachm, 67 grains. || We may assign 273 grains, 

 272, and 271, as the weight of the coins in the time of Pericles ; at a 

 later period, when the Greeks became subject to the Romans, and still 

 retained permission to coin % their own money, the drachma was made 

 lighter, and was then equal only to 54*75 grains, or an eighth part of 

 an ounce. The sense of the passages of some of the Greek writers, 

 when they speak of their money, has not been always correctly ex- 



* After Solon's time, 84 drachmae were struck out of the pound, which was still 

 reckoned at 100 drachmas. The pound in tale was in use also among the Romans. — 

 See Clarke on Coins, 724. 



f In the Heraclean tablet we find mention of No^oi, v. 75, written in later times vou/a^oi. 

 The ancient word occurs also in Epichar. 8ex« vofx-aov. —See Valck. Theoc. p. 308. 



t Taylor ad. Mar. Sand. 



§ Hem. Polluc. i. 422. 



|| Mr. Knight says, 65 grains. Prol. in Horn. sec. 56. Of 120 tetradrachms weighed 

 by Barthelemy, the heaviest gave 263' grains English. 



% For the time of the Peloponnesian war, we may set the drachma at ten-pence 

 sterling; the mina of that age will be 4l. 3s. 4d. ; and the talent, 2501. At a later 

 period, the drachma may be considered as worth 8d. sterling, or equal to the Roman 

 denarius. See Mitford's advertisement to the 2d vol. of the H. of Greece, 4to. 



