It is worth while before going further to enquire whether we can gain any light from the systems of weight employed by the famous daughter-cities of Phoenicia, such as Gades and Carthage. A weight bearing in Punic characters the name of the Agoranomos and the numeral 100 has been found at Jol (Julia Caesarea) in North Africa, but unfortunately it has suffered so much by corrosion from water and the loss of its handle that it is impossible to make any tolerable approximation to its original weight. Hultsch[344] conjectures with some probability that, making allowance for its loss, it represents 100 _drachms_, and deduces from this that the Carthaginians treated the drachm as their _shekel_, but for this latter hypothesis there seems no sufficient evidence. If this supposition were true, the weight would represent a half-mina of the Phoenician _silver_ standard. But there is one thing which this weight does prove, and that is that, whether it be a mina or half-mina, it is the drachm or shekel, which was evidently regarded as the unit of the system, not the mina. Thus once more we get a confirmation of our general thesis that the mina and talent are the multiples, and that it is the shekel or stater which is the basis. Nor does the coinage of Carthage furnish us with all the information that could be desired, for it was only after 410 B.C. that that great “mart of merchants” began to strike coins, and even then it was only in her Sicilian possessions that she did so, no doubt induced to adopt the practice by constant contact with her Greek enemies: for not only the type (of Persephone) was borrowed from Syracusan coins, but the very dies were engraved by the hands of Greek artists. The gold coins are struck on a standard of about 120 grs. Troy, whilst the silver issue consists of tetradrachms of the so-called Attic (or more simply light shekel or ox-unit) standard of 130-135 grs. Since during the same period (405-347 B.C.) Syracuse[345] was issuing gold pieces on the Attic standard, it is most probable that it is only through the want of heavier specimens that we are compelled to set the Siculo-Punic coins issued at Panormus (Palermo) and other places in Italy so low as 120 grs. It was not until about the time of Timoleon (340 B.C.) that money was coined at Carthage itself. This coinage consists wholly of gold, electrum and bronze, down to the time of the acquisition of the rich silver mines of Spain, and the foundation of New Carthage in that country by Hasdrubal, the son-in-law of Hamilkar Barca and brother-in-law of Hannibal, in the interval between the First and Second Punic wars (241-218 B.C.), when large silver coins both Carthaginian and Hispano-Carthaginian seem to have been first struck[346].