The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

284 NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE.
out golden scales." 7
(53.) Here,
it is the name of the
scales themselves. On the other hand, in the Ventures
of Crates
"
First of all tell me which of the men comes
"
to a talent it is uncertain whether the reference is
up
to value or to weight ; so again when Alcaeus, the comic
poet, speaks in the Endymion of diseases of a talent.
For the talenting (raXavToxris) of Antiphon indicates
weight; so does the ten-talent stone of Aristophanes
in the Dramata or the Centaur. The talent of gold
was worth three Attic gold pieces, 8 and that of silver,
sixty Attic minas. (54.) The term was also applied to
number, 9 as when the rich man is called a man of many
talents, and what is expensive, a thing of many talents.
Also in Homer "And there lay in the midst of them
two talents 10 of gold." You may speak of a ditalent,
7 Iliad 6, 69, and x> 209. This must be the correct trans-
lation, but " spread forth golden talents " would better suit the
context, with " weights " for " scales " in the next line.
8 Didrachms in gold were issued at Athens for a short period
B.C. That the term talent was
during the fourth century,
applied at Athens to six drachms of gold is in itself unlikely,
and we have no proof of the fact beyond the assertion of Pollux.
9 The instances cited by Pollux scarcely bear out this asser-
tion ; the reference in them is to talents as money not as
number. He probably means that there is in that reference a
notion of general quantity rather than a denned sum.
10 II.