Returning to the Kelts, the close kinsfolk of the Italians, the reader will recollect that the Gauls struck their imitations of the stater of Philip of Macedon on a standard of 120 grs., 15 grains lower than the weight of the archetype. Now similar but still more barbarous imitations of Philips gold stater are found in Germany. These Rainbow dishes (_Regenbogenschüsseln_), as they are popularly termed in allusion to the picturesque superstition that a treasure of gold lies at the foot of the rainbow, and also to their scyphate form, are found in especial abundance in Rhenish Bavaria and Bohemia. Like the Gaulish imitations of the Philippus from which they are copied, they follow a standard of 120 grs. (and like the Gauls the Germans struck quarters of this coin, a division wholly unknown to the Greeks)[194]. In the region just indicated dwelt the ancient Alamanni, and there can be no doubt that it was this people who issued the coins found there. Now the Alamanni were among the barbarians who after having overrun the provinces of the Roman Empire, committed to barbarous Latin their immemorial laws and institutions. In the Laws of the Alamanni the best ox is estimated at five _tremisses_[195], that is 1⅔ _solidi_, or in other words 120 grs. of gold, the medium ox = 4 _tremisses_ = 96 grs. The coincidence that the value of the ox in gold is the actual weight of the coins of the Alamanni is too striking to admit of any other explanation than that the gold coins of this people were struck on the native standard, the ox-unit. The Keltic and Teutonic tribes were so intermixed that we may plausibly infer that the Gauls had reduced the weight of the Philippus to 120 grs. because owing to gold being less plentiful and cattle more abundant to the north of the Alps, from a very remote time the ox-unit throughout Gaul and Germany was slightly lower than along the Mediterranean. In the Laws of the Burgundians the value of an ox is set at 2 _solidi_ = 144 grs. of gold[196]. This of course is considerably more than that of the Alamannic ox, but when we consider the late period at which the laws of the Barbarians were compiled, and the various recensions which they underwent, the strange fact is that the ox should have varied so little in its relation to gold from the Homeric ox-unit of at least 1000 B.C. Passing into Scandinavia we once more, even so late as the eighth century A.D., find the same strange agreement in value. In the ancient Norse documents (where the cow is the unit of value as we have already seen) it is reckoned at 2½ öres (ounces) of silver = 1078 grains. But we likewise know from the same sources that gold stood to silver as 8:1; accordingly the cow was worth 134 grs. of gold[197].