Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

4

MONEY.

The standards of the Hebrew weights were preserved in their
Sanctuary or Temple, a practice common in other nations. Hence
by "the shekel of the Sanctuary" nothing more is meant than a just
and exact weight (Exod. xxx. 13-15). It is evident that the first
capitation tax for the service of the Tabernacle was half a shekel,
and the shekel was a quarter of an ounce. But after the time of
the Maccabees a new shekel of half an ounce was introduced, and still
named the shekel of the Sanctuary. Whatever this was owing to,
whether policy or necessity, it enabled the Jews to embellish and
adorn their temple by doubling its revenues.
Herodotus (I. 94) expressly asserts that the Lydians were the
earliest people who coined money of gold and silver, and employed
it in traffic. In the neighbourhood of Sardis, the capital of Lydia,
have been found both gold and silver coins, oblong or circular, but
rude in character and device, indicating an early state of the art
of coining, and possibly older than any known specimens of the
coins of Greece. Herodotus had travelled in search of knowledge in
Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Phoenicia, but he makes no mention
of their coinage, and as yet no coins of these countries have been
found as old as those of Lydia and of Greece.
The Parian Chronicle, however, assigns an earlier date to the
origin of coined money, and gives the honour, not to the Lydians,
but to the people of 2Egina. This is reasserted by.2Elian. Phidon,
king of Argos is reported to have struck silver drachmue in 2Egina,
740, B.c. (Leake, Num. Hellen.). The gold Darics of Darius and
succeeding kings of Persia are not improbably the next in point
of antiquity to the coinage of the Lydians.
About 880 B.c. when Lycurgus reformed the Constitution of
Sparta, the iron money adopted by that State was useless in any
traffic with their neighbours, and from its nature could not have
lasted long. In about half a century after, a dispute arose concerning
money, and was the cause of the first Messenian War. It could
scarcely have been the iron money of the Spartans that was in
question.
Herodotus (IIi. 95) in reference to the revenues of Darius Hystaspes, states that gold was reckoned at that time to be thirteen times
the value of silver. Herodotus read his History at Athens, B.c. 445.
About 50 years after Herodotus, Plato in his Hipparchus asserts
that the value of gold was twelve times that of silver.
Thebes was probably the only city in Greece which coined gold
before Philip II, king of Macedon, who began his reign B.e. 358,
and drew more than 1000 talents of gold from the mines near
Mount Pangsus. With this gold he had a coin struck called a
Philippus. (Diod. Sic. II., p. 88). About the same lime the Phoenicians
plundered the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and carried off gold to
the amount of more than 10,000 talents. These circumstances
rendered gold so plentiful, that, according to Menander, who was
the plate, or shekel divided into two parts, as by its form might easily be done:
and Festus has observed that the Roman didrachm was called sicilicus (siclus)
for the same reason, quod semiunciam secet. (Hussey, Essay on Ancient Weights,
p. 196).
The shekel of the Iebrews, the o-icXos of the Greeks, and the Sicilicus or
siclus of the Romans were synonymous terms, and mean the same thing, a
quarter of an ounce, differing very little in weight; the name and estimate of
both coming most probably from the same original.