In the description of the Shield of Minerva, which had an hundred golden drops or tassels, we are told that each of them was ἑκατομβοῖος, or worth an hundred oxen. This use of the word must be regarded as strongly charged with figure. Minerva was arming to mingle among men upon the plain of Troy[802], and it is not likely, therefore, that the Poet would represent her in dimensions utterly inordinate. He judiciously reserves this license of exaggeration without bounds for scenes where he is beyond the sphere of relations properly human, as for example, the Theomachy and the Under-world. Now we may venture to take the Homeric value of an ox before Troy at half an ounce of gold. In the prizes of the wrestling match, where a tripod was worth twelve oxen, a highly skilled woman (πολλὰ δ’ ἐπίστατο ἔργα) was worth four[803]. Two ounces of gold would be a low price for such a person in almost any age. According to this computation, each drop on the Ægis of Minerva would weigh fifty ounces: the whole would weigh above 300 lbs. _avoirdupois_, and if we were to assume the purely ornamental fringe in a work of this kind to weigh one tenth part of the whole, the Ægis itself would weigh nearly a ton and a half. _Primâ facie_, this is susceptible of explanation in either of two ways: the one, that the numbers are used poetically and not arithmetically; the other, that of sheer intentional exaggeration in bulk. The rules of the Poet, as they are elsewhere applied, oblige us to reject the latter solution, and consequently throw us back upon the former. [802] Il. ii. 450. [803] Il. xxiii. 703, 5. ~_The numerals of value._~ Again, we are told that, when Diomed obtained the exchange of arms from Glaucus, he gave a suit of copper, and obtained in return a suit of gilt[804]; [804] Il. vi. 236. χρύσεα χαλκείων, ἑκατόμβοι’ ἐννεαβοίων. Here there seems to be a mixture of the metaphorical and the arithmetical use. For, on the one hand, it is singular that he should have chosen numbers which require the aid of a fraction to express their relation to one another. He could certainly not have meant to say that the values of the two suits were precisely as 100:9, or as 11⅑:1. And yet, on the one hand, he could scarcely use the term ἐννεαβοῖα, except with reference to the known and usual value of a suit of armour, while the ἑκατομβοῖα, from its use in other places, must be suspected of having no more than a merely indeterminate force. With this fractional relation of 100:9, may be compared the arrangement at the feast in Pylos, where each division of five hundred persons was supplied with nine oxen. These numbers, however, are probably less vague than in some other cases: for the provision stated, though large, is not beyond what a rude plenty might suggest on a great public occasion.