The Egyptian correlation of 6½ to 1 cannot, it is true, be definitely established until we have data proving that the _kite_ was exactly 9·1 _grammes_, nor can it be accurately applied to other commodities, but it may help us to a rough approximation of what some of their prices were in the XXth Dynasty.[871] The depreciation of money between the XVIIIth and XXth Dynasties, heavy as it seems, was as nothing to that which ensued in subsequent centuries. Examples of this can be observed in the fall of the Gallienus _tetradrachm_ from about half a crown to one halfpenny in less than a century. Again under Macrianus (260 A.D.) the coinage was so bad and so worthless that the banks closed their doors, but were compelled by the king to open and continue “his divine coinage.” At the time of Diocletian’s Edict on maximum prices (301 A.D.) a _denarius_ (4 _drachmæ_) was reckoned at 1/50000 of a _litra_ of gold, but in Egypt after Constantine’s reign it fell much lower, _e.g._ 432,000 _denarii_ equalled 1 pound. From the _Papyrus Oxyrh._ 1223 we find the _solidus_ computed at 2,020 × 10,000 = 20,200,000, (!) _denarii_ at the end of the fourth century.[872] Billon _Denarii_, _i.e._ made out of copper and very little silver, ceased to be coined at Alexandria after A.D. 297, and got utterly depreciated. We get little farther in our quest of correlation of prices even with other passages; in _Pap. Fayum Towns_ (A.D. 100), of 12 _drachmæ_ for fish; in _Pap. Petrie III._ 107 (_e_), 6, 24 _drachmæ_ for fish (third century B.C.); and in a Papyrus not yet (1918) published, 4 _obols_ and 5 _obols_ for a “male” _Cestreus_, or _Mugil capito_. With salt fish, again, we have no certain leading. For 2 _dipla_ or double jars of this comestible the price was 2 _drachmæ_, but then their size is uncertain.[873] So again it doth not vantage us much to read of 240 _drachmæ_ being given in A.D. 255 for “a jar of pickled fish” (λεπτίον), because the size of the jar is still undetermined.[874] Nor does “56 _drachmæ_ for 100 pieces of salt fish” (third century A.D.) solve the problem because, although a “piece of salt fish” probably implied some definite weight, we have no data for discovering to what this amounted.[875] Nor again can we deduce anything definite from the statement that in the third century A.D. a jar (κεράμιου) of salt fish fetched 1 _drachma_ 1½ _obols_. The superior derision with which some writers regard the simple, if inaccurate account, given by Herodotus of the spawning of the Egyptian fish betokens their ignorance of the parable of the beam and the mote. If Herodotus erred, what (and this I keep reiterating, on the Kipling principle of “lest we forget”) about the theorists for 2300 years as to the procreation of Eels?