We have previously noticed the fact that the two principal terms applied to silver coins, _drachm_ and _obol_, give clear indications that they have been borrowed from an ancient system of copper (just as we shall presently find that the _denarius_, the special term employed for their silver currency by the Romans, owes its origin to the ancient copper _as_). If further proof were required, it is afforded by the name employed for the subdivisions of the obol. The latter at Athens was divided into 8 _chalci_ or _coppers_ (χαλκοῖ). The smallest silver coin at Athens was the half-obol, but in some places names, _Trichalcum_, _Tetrachalcum_, etc. were given to copper coins. Now, as the Aeginetan obol weighed about 16½ grs. and the Attic 11¼, the former is one-third greater than the latter. But we shall see shortly that as the Attic obol has 8 _chalci_, the Aeginetan must have had 12, from which it follows that the ancient copper obol or bar used in Aegina, throughout Peloponnesus, and at Athens, and probably throughout Boeotia, was everywhere the same. _The Sicilian System._ In dealing with the Sicilian and Italian systems we must reverse the order of treatment of the metals, and as it is in the copper that we shall find the closest link between the Greek and those other systems, we shall therefore commence with that metal. On the Italian Peninsula and in Sicily we find a series of weight and monetary terms totally distinct from any found in Greece Proper. From this alone we may infer that, even before the settlement of any Greek Colonies in Magna Graecia and Sicily, there existed a well defined system, if not of weight, at least for the exchange of copper by fixed standards of measurement. In various Sicilian cities we find small silver coins called _litrae_; these beyond all question are simply the representatives in silver of an ancient copper unit employed by the Sicels, and which they had brought with them into the island. These Sicels were a tribe of the great Italian stock (itself a branch of the Aryan family) closely related to the Umbrians, Latins, and Oscans, had probably formed the van of the Aryan advance into the Peninsula, and had finally crossed the straits and overcome the Sicanians, an Iberic race, who were the earliest inhabitants of the island of whom any historical record exists. The word _litra_ is merely a dialectic form of the same original _lidhra_[419], from which the Latin _libra_ itself is sprung. But whilst we shall have little difficulty in finding out the weight at which the Latin _libra_ was fixed, we have just as great difficulty in discovering that of the Sicilian _litra_, as we have lately found in the case of the ancient Greek copper obol. As copper was only coined at a late period, and the copper coins are merely tokens, or money of account, we are unable to arrive at any conclusion as to the original full weight of the litra from any data afforded by the copper coins of the various