In passage (IX. 87) already quoted he says: “Yet the Sicilian talent was the least in amount, the ancient one, as Aristotle says, weighed four and twenty _nummi_, but the later one twelve; now the _nummus_ is worth three half obols.” These three half obols plainly mean the ordinary half obols of the Attic standard. As the Attic drachm is 67½ grains (normal), 65 grains in actual coins, the ⅙ or obol = 11 grains roughly speaking; three half obols therefore weigh 16½ to 17 grains. Accordingly, if we take the weight of the _nummus_ or _litra_ at 16 to 17 grains of silver, we shall not be wide of the mark. The price then of a good heifer calf was 10 _nummi_ or 160 to 170 grains of silver. The term _moschos_ (calf) is used rather vaguely by various Greek writers, but fortunately by the aid of the Sicilian poet Theocritus, we are certain that it means a calf of the first year not yet weaned; for he speaks[189] of putting the _moschos_ to the cows to suck. From what we have seen (p. 32) of the relative values of cattle of different ages, it is tolerably certain that no full-grown cow would be worth less than six or more than ten calves of the first year. Hence the Sicilian cow, at the end of the sixth century B.C., must have been worth from 960-1020 to 1600-1700 grains of silver. We cannot tell exactly what was the ratio between gold and silver in Sicily or Italy at this time, but as we find it was 14 to 1 in Attica in 440 B.C., the probability is that it was not very far from that in Sicily. It certainly must have been at some point between 15:1 and 12:1. Taking it at 12:1, the value of the cow would range from 80 to 141¾ grains of gold, whilst in the ratio of 15:1 the range is from 64 to 113 grains of gold. It is thus absolutely certain that the value of a cow in Sicily in the sixth century B.C. must lie within the limits of 64 to 141 grains, and if the calf of Epicharmus is a suckling, the range in the value of the cow must be from 113 to 140 grains. This is all we require for practical purposes, and it will be admitted that the value of a cow in Sicily comes very close to our Homeric ox-unit of 130-5 grains.