legitimate descendant of the Homeric Talanton, the stater or _weigher_ representing the Talanton or _weight_ of the older time. As long as no other unit than the ox-unit or Talanton was employed, the Talanton or weight _par excellence_ was sufficient to describe it, but when under Asiatic influences the higher unit of the _mina_ (μνᾶ) and _talent_ were introduced, a term was substituted which indicates clearly that the gold unit of 130 grs. was _the weigher_ or basis of the whole system. Starting then with our ox-unit, we find already in Homer definite traces of a decimal, but nothing to indicate the existence of a sexagesimal system. _Ten_ talents of gold are mentioned in several passages. Starting then with the ox-unit of 130 grs. we can thus arrive at the fully elaborated Greek systems. The term mina (μνᾶ) is beyond doubt a borrowing from the East. How far it was ever much employed in the reckoning of gold it is hard to say, but it is at least remarkable that, when we hear so frequently of _minae_ of silver in the Attic writers, no instance of a mina of gold is quoted in our books of reference. From this one is led to infer that it was for the purpose of measuring the less precious metal, silver, that the term _mina_ was brought into use in Greece. In fact, as stater is essentially a term which clings to gold, so _mina_ is especially a term used of silver. With the mina the Greeks borrowed likewise the highest Asiatic unit (the _kikkar_ of the Hebrews), which became the Talanton or talent of historical Greece. But it is remarkable that the Greeks did not borrow its Asiatic name along with the unit itself. They simply gave it their own name _weight_ (literally, ‘_that which can be lifted_,’ cp. τλάω, _tollo_, etc.). This fact can be explained readily if we suppose that the Greeks, like all those other primitive peoples whom we have mentioned, had a rough and ready unit for estimating bulky wares, the standard of _the load_, or as much as a man could conveniently carry on his back. Having already such a unit they would have no difficulty in adopting the _load_ or talent, which had been fixed according to the Sexagesimal system, and which had permeated all Western Asia. In fact their position towards the Asiatic _load_, which had been accurately fixed by the mathematical skill of the Babylonians, would be exactly analagous to that of the Malays of Java and Sumatra towards the accurately adjusted Chinese _picul_. Because the Malays themselves were accustomed to use _loads_ of various weights as their rough highest unit of bulk, they have with all the more readiness received the form of the same unit, which the clever Chinese have incorporated into their commercial weight system by making it equal to 100 _chings_ (catties, or pounds). But it is doubtful if at any time in Greece Proper the talent of gold was ever considered as a monetary unit. We have found Eupolis speaking of “3000 staters of gold”