12. I shall equally abstain from collecting the various accounts respecting the finance and trade of other Doric states; since the inland countries, in which many peculiarities may perhaps have existed, are little known; and the commercial cities, such as Ægina, Corinth, Rhodes, and Cyrene, gave up their national customs for the sake of trade. In Peloponnesus, however, the cities on the coast of Argolis were adapted by nature for exchanging the products of the agricultural nations of the interior for foreign commodities;(1002) and thus they established a connexion and intercourse between Laconia and Arcadia, and other countries.(1003) In these cities also there were many commercial establishments, which did not manufacture only for the interior.(1004) In Corinth, the duties from the harbour and market had in the time of Periander become so considerable, that the tyrant limited his receipts to that one branch of revenue;(1005) although, according to a fabulous tradition, the golden colossus of Cypselus at Olympia was consecrated from a tax of a tenth upon all property continued for ten years.(1006) The strongest proof of the ancient commerce of Peloponnesus, and of its great extent, is the Æginetan money; the standard of which was in early times prevalent in Peloponnesus, in Crete, in Italy,(1007) and even in the north of Greece, since the early Bœotian, Thessalian, and Macedonian coins were before the time of Philip adapted to it.(1008) In Italy the monetary system was arranged in a peculiar manner, for the convenience of intercourse with the natives; and as this subject is of much importance in a historical point of view, we will now examine it briefly, without attempting a complete investigation. If we consider the names of the coins in use among the Dorians of Italy and Sicily, for example, at Syracuse and Tarentum (as they had been collected by Aristotle in his Constitution of the Himeræans from Doric Poets),(1009) viz., λίτρα for an obolus, ἠμίλιτρον for six, πεντόγκίον for five, τετρᾶς for four, τριᾶς for three,(1010) ἑξᾶς for two, ὀγχία for a twelfth; it is at once evident that these Greeks had adopted the Italian and Roman duodenary system, in which the libra, the pound of brass, was the unit;(1011) a system which was originally unknown to the Greeks, and accordingly the word λίτρα has no root in their language. Now, together with these coins in the Greek states, the νόμος,(1012) among the Latins _numus_, occurs; manifestly, as Varro says, a word belonging to the former people, and signifying a coin current by law; whence it is evident that the Italians, in the regulations of their monetary system, did not merely give to the Greeks of Italy, but that they also received something in return, and that one standard was compounded, partaking in some measure of both methods of computation. If we, then, consider the form and value of these coins, it is plain that the Greek colonies retained the system of money which they brought with them