Oxen therefore, in that age, seem to have come nearer, than any other commodity, to the discharge of the functions now performed by the precious metals: for they were both used to express value, and probably purchased not for use only, but also with a view to re-sale. Thus the Homeric evidence, with respect to them, is in conformity with the testimony of Æschylus in the Agamemnon, who seems to represent the ox as the first sign imprinted upon money[178]. [178] Agam. 37. The precious metals themselves were much employed for both personal ornament and for art. This was, no doubt, their proper and established application; and when they are stored, they are stored in common with other metals not of the same class, and with a view, in all likelihood, to manufacture. ~_Relative scarcity of metals._~ It appears clear, from the Homeric poems, that silver was more rare than gold. It is used, when used at all, in smaller quantities: and it much more rarely appears in the accounts of stored-up wealth. A like inference may be drawn, perhaps, from the books of Moses; and it corresponds with the anticipations we should reasonably form from the fact that gold is found in a native state, and, even when mixed with other material, is more readily fitted for use. The extensive employment of silver only arrives, when society is more advanced, and when the use of money is more familiar and minute. Payments in the precious metals on a somewhat large scale precede those for smaller transactions. We are not however to infer, from the greater rarity of silver, that it was more valuable than gold: the value depending, not on the comparative quantities only, but upon the compound ratio of the quantities as compared with the demand. It would however appear from a passage in the account of the funeral games, that gold, if not silver, was then much less esteemed than it now is. For, while a silver bowl was the first prize of the foot-race, a large and fat ox (perhaps worth three ordinary ones) was the second, and a half talent of gold was only the third[179]. [179] Il. xxiii. 740-51. The position of iron, however, relatively to the other metals, was very different in the heroic age from what it now is: and probably its great rarity was due, like that of silver, to the difficulty of bringing the metal into a state fit for use; which could more readily be effected with copper, with tin, or with κύανος, in whatever sense it is to be interpreted. Iron, however, would appear to have been more valuable than these metals; greatly more valuable, in particular, than copper, which is now worth from fifteen to twenty times as much as iron. A mass of crude iron is produced at the funeral games as a prize; and iron made into axe-heads forms another. No other metal, below the rank of gold and silver, is ever similarly employed in an unmanufactured state.-- Let us now turn to a brief view of the polity and organization of the army.