Now we have already adverted to the fact that the earliest Sicilian towns which coined money, Naxos, Zancle and Himera, although Chalcidian colonies, yet employed the Aeginetic standard, whereas we might naturally expect them to follow the Euboic. This would give the maximum of 16½ grs. for the silver obol. Now according to Pollux, Aristotle in his lost treatise on the constitution of Agrigentum says that the litra is worth an Aeginetan obol, and Pollux goes on to say that “one would find in him (Aristotle) in his Constitution of the Himeraeans likewise other names of Sicilian coins, such as _ungia_, which is equivalent to one _chalcus_, and _hexas_, which is equivalent to two _chalci_, and _trias_, which is equivalent to three _chalci_, and _hemilitron_ (half litra), which is equivalent to six, and litra which is equivalent to an obol[420].” It is plain from this that Aristotle knew that the Aeginetic obol was divided into _twelve chalci_. Thus the proposition laid down above, that the ancient Greek copper obol was a rod or spike divided into 12 parts, is thoroughly proved. The reason why the Attic obol had only 8 _chalci_ is now plain; it was, as we saw, only two-thirds of the Aeginetan and consequently only contained two-thirds of the whole number of pieces of copper into which the ancient copper unit was divided. Now, as we find the Chalcidian settlers of Himera and other places not using their native Euboic standard for coining, but employing the Aeginetic, and as the Aeginetic obol was equal to the Sicilian litra, we are justified in the conclusion, that when the Greek settlers reached Italy and Sicily they found their Italic kinsfolk using a copper unit exactly the same as that employed in Greece; and that finally, when they began to coin, they found it more convenient to strike silver on a standard which was both convenient in reference to exchange with gold, as I have shown above, and had the further advantage of corresponding accurately in value to the ancient copper unit in use among the Sicels. If, as I indicated, silver was to copper as 300:1, the Aeginetic silver obol of 16⅔ grs. would be worth 5000 grs. of copper (practically the same as the early Roman _libra_). It follows then that if we could only discover the weight of the Sicilian litra we should know that of the old Greek _copper_ obol. Is this possible? We have no reason to doubt that the obol was a rod of copper of a certain size, which in the course of time after the introduction of coined money shrank up until the original rod was only represented by what had been its equivalent in silver, or a small copper coin, whose name still survives in the _ob_ used in old account books as the symbol for _half-penny_[421]. The Greek coinage has preserved for us but faint traces of the various steps in the degradation of the copper obol, but, as we have already seen, we find the Sicilian copper litra in various stages of its decadence from 990 grs. down to 200 grs.