The first Carthaginian coinage was issued in the Sicilian cities, especially Panormus, at a comparatively late date, certainly not earlier than 410 B.C. As this coinage was entirely under Greek influences of comparatively late date, we cannot of course get any direct evidence from it as regards the original Phoenician standard. Carthage herself did not issue coins until about a century later, B.C. 310[180]. Hence we have no data of an early date. The gold coins struck in Sicily are didrachms of about 120 grains troy, with various subdivisions. This is usually described as the Phoenician standard, or rather the Phoenician gold standard of 260 grains considerably reduced. But the full unit of 240 is never found in the coins, and although we get coins of 2½ drachms (= 147 grains), it is more natural to regard the didrachm of about 120 grains as the real unit, in other words the slightly lowered common unit, which we already found fixed at about 127 grains in the Egyptian rings. In Sicily and Magna Graecia we are fairly certain that the unit was in early times that of 130 grains. But whether this was native or brought in by the Greek colonists, it is impossible to prove. All that we know for certain is that there was in Sicily and Magna Graecia, a small talent used only for gold; which was equivalent to three Attic gold staters, or in other words the threefold of our Homeric ox-unit. Thus an ancient writer says “the Sicilian talent had a very small weight; the ancient one, as Aristotle says, 24 _nummi_, the later 12 _nummi_. But the _nummus_ weighs three half obols[181].” From this it is plain that the ancient form of this talent weighed 36 obols, that is, six drachms, or three staters.