A glance at the table will suffice to show the truth of the proposition which we laid down as the object of this chapter, viz., that over the whole of the area with which we are dealing, the same unit with but little variations and fluctuations was employed for the weighing of gold. Having proved the universal employment of the ox as a chief unit of barter, the universal distribution of gold, the priority of that metal both in discovery and in being weighed, and finally, in the preceding pages, the remarkable fact that to all intents and purposes the same unit of weight during many centuries was employed in its appraising, we advance to our next proposition, that this uniformity of the gold unit is due to the fact that in all the various countries where we have found it, it originally represented the value in gold of the cow, the universal unit of barter in the same regions. It will of course be hardly possible for us to find data for a direct proof that in all the countries given in our table as employing the gold unit, that unit really represented the value of the ox. In some cases we shall be able to produce a fair amount of evidence more or less direct, whilst in others owing to the necessity of the case the evidence will be almost wholly inferential. Finally we shall be able to bring forward a very cogent form of proof by demonstrating the absolute necessity felt by barbarous persons of equating a ready made weight standard, which is being taken over from their neighbours, to the older unit of barter, and likewise the necessity felt by semi-civilized peoples under certain circumstances, even when long accustomed to the use of coined money, of returning to the animal unit as a means of fixing the standard of their coinage. Starting first with the Greeks, we have already seen at an early stage in this work that the talent of the Homeric Poems was the equivalent of the ox, the older barter name being as yet the only term used in expressing prices of commodities, and the term talent being confined to the small piece of gold. Passing next to the Italian Peninsula and Sicily, although possessed of certain definite statements as regards the value in _copper_ of an ox in the fifth century B.C., nevertheless, owing to the uncertainty which still exists as regards the relative value of gold, silver and copper at Rome, we shall encounter considerable obstacles in our attempt to find the value of an ox in _gold_. As Dr Theodore Mommsen[183] has laid down certain propositions in reference to inter-relations in value of the metals at Rome, which were generally received until a very recent period, when Mr Soutzo[184], in a clever brochure, put forward views of a widely different character which have met with the approval of some competent critics, and as the matter is still _sub judice_, I think it best, after briefly giving the historical evidence for the value of cattle, to give the views of both these writers.