six talents of gold, beside that he had of the merchantmen, and of the traffick of the spice merchants, and of all the kings of Arabia, and of the governors of the country. And king Solomon made two hundred targets of beaten gold: six hundred shekels of gold went to one target.” Spices such as myrrh, cinnamon, calamus and cassia (Exod. xxx. 23) were sold by weight, being as costly as gold. The familiar description of Goliath of Gath, the weight of whose coat of mail “was five thousand shekels of brass,” and whose “spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron,” will serve to show that articles in the inferior metals were at that time estimated according to weight by the Hebrews and their neighbours, the Philistines. Of the weighing of wool we find no instance, but it is quite possible that it was from the practice of weighing wool that Absalom when he “polled his head, (for it was at every year’s end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king’s weight” (2 Sam, xiv. 26). But it is perhaps more probable that the habit of weighing a child’s hair against gold or silver to fulfil a vow (which was almost certainly Absalom’s motive) may have suggested the employment of the scales for wool[168]. Finally, once in the prophet Ezekiel do we find food weighed, but evidently under special circumstances: “And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it. Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink” (iv. 10, 11). In any case we should expect to find traces of later usage in the writers of the age of the prophets, but from the directions regarding the amount of water, it is evident that we cannot take this passage as a proof of the ordinary practice of the time. Unfortunately our oldest records of Roman life and habits go back but a short way before the Christian era, and hence we cannot get much direct information as regards the first objects which were sold by weight. We have already seen that in the time of Plautus (_flor._ 200 B.C.) the habit prevailed of weighing wool out to the women slaves. However, from the legal formula used in the solemn process of conveyance of real property (_res mancipi_) _per aes et libram_, we may perhaps infer that the scales were used for none but precious articles such as copper, silver and gold. That they were used for those metals there can be little doubt. On the other hand, as we find all kinds of corn sold at a later period by dry measure, such as the _modius_ or bushel, we may with certainty conclude that such too had been the practice of the earlier period.