THE

CLASSICAL MUSEUM.

I.

METROLOGISCHE UNTERSUCHUNGEN ÜBER GEWICHTE, MÜNZFÜSSE, UND MASSE DES ALTERTHUMS IN IHREM ZUSAMMENHANGE, VON AUGUST. BOECKH. BERLIN, 1838. 1 VOL. 8vo.

(INVESTIGATIONS ON ANCIENT WEIGHTS, COINS, AND MEASURES.)

M. BOECKH has so long been celebrated in the philological world for profound erudition-for method, as well as ingenuity, in the combination of scattered facts, and for the quality, somewhat rare among eminent scholars, of sobriety in the field of conjecture-that no preface is necessary when I proceed to offer a few remarks upon one of his recent and most elaborate productions.

The Metrologie is a work not unworthy of its distinguished author. The dispersed fragments of evidence, respecting the weights, measures, and monetary systems of the ancient worldone of the most perplexing subjects in the whole range of philology, are patiently collected, and perspicuously discussed: and the thirty chapters, of which the book consists, are so closely packed with matter, as to forbid the possibility of any condensed abstract of the entire contents. The views of M. Boeckh are, in several respects, original, differing even from opinions stated by himself in former publications: he has, moreover, imparted to the subject a new interest, by considering the metrological systems of the various countries in antiquity in continual com

parison with each other, so as to elicit valuable proofs of early communion and transition of ideas between them. His book embraces the weights and measures prevalent throughout all the countries known to us in the ancient world. Babylon, Syria, Phenicia, Judæa, Egypt, Sicily, Italy, and Rome: and the comparative metrology of these nations is presented to us in a way analogous to the Vergleichende Grammatik of Bopp, in regard to the extensive family of the Indo-Germanic languages; it exhibits the diffusion of institutions, originating in the very ancient civilization of Babylon, to the neighbouring countries whose period of settled ordinances and commerce was more recent.

Though this transition must have taken place anterior to recorded history, and, therefore, in a manner which we cannot now fathom, yet the reality of the fact is sufficiently proved by its lasting and ascertained results. In cases where the weights and measures of two different nations are found to be in a precise and definite ratio one to the other, either exactly equal, or exact multiples and parts of each other,—we may fairly presume, either that the one has borrowed from the other, or that each has borrowed from some common source, (Metrol. c. ii. § 3.) Where the ratio is inaccurate, or simply approximative, it is to be treated as accidental and undesigned.

I request particular attention to this distinction between a precise ratio, and a ratio merely approximative, which M. Boeckh lays down very clearly, and which he justly announces as the cardinal principle of his metrological reasonings. To a great

extent, he has succeeded in exhibiting an analogy, both interesting and hitherto unknown, between the metrical and statical systems of the various countries to which his work relates. But I must at the same time add, that there are several of his conclusions which appear to me very imperfectly supported, and some even which are not to be reconciled with the evidence. In a subject so obscure and perplexed from beginning to end, this is by no means wonderful.

In investigating the subject of the ancient weights and measures, in so far as they afford evidence of communion or analogous proceeding between the different nations of antiquity, the great point to be attended to is the normal system as it was

fixed by law, abstracting from those imperfections which attended the execution of it in detail. All mechanical processes in antiquity were carried on far more loosely and inaccurately than they are at present: pieces of money, as well as weights and measures, were both less durable and less exact, in spite of the solicitude of the ancient governments. We know by the evidence of inscriptions, with respect to Athens, that normal weights and measures were preserved under custody of a public officer in the chapel of the Hero Stephanephorus; that copies of these were made and distributed for private use; and that strict watch was directed to be kept for the purpose of excluding fraudulent or incorrect weights and measures in the shops and the market'. The case was similar at Rome, and seemingly also at Jerusalem (Metrol. c. ii. § 3). In this manner the theoretical perfection of the standard was maintained in the minds of the people as it was when originally adopted, in spite of imperfect execution in practice.

M. Boeckh enters upon his subject, in the third chapter of the work, by an investigation of the Roman liquid measure, quadrantal or amphora, in its relation to the Roman pound weight. According to the Silian plebiscite, as reported by Festus, the legal definition of a quadrantal was, a vessel containing 80 pounds weight of wine or water: the congius being one-eighth part of it, and containing 10 pounds weight of the same. By this regulation the dimensions of the vessels containing liquids were made dependent, not upon cubical measurement, but upon weight, like the imperial gallon in England. Now the Attic liquid measure called xoûs, was the exact equivalent of the Roman congius; and the Attic μerpýrns, the largest unity of liquid measures at Athens, contained 12 xóes, and was equivalent to 14 amphora, or quadrantalia. Such a definite ratio does undoubtedly indicate either some common original from which both systems must have been deduced, or an imitation of one of them by the other. M. Boeckh seeks to deduce both one and the other from the East, where it will be presently shewn that the Chaldæans at Babylon had adopted in very early times

Boeckh, Corpus Inscript. Græcar. No. 123-150.

a system of determining their cubic measures by ultimate reference to a given weight.

"If," (he says, iii. 4, p. 26) "we regard this relation of the weights and measures, based upon a given weight of water, which is the keystone of the Roman system-and if we carry the application of this water-weight backwards to the chief measures of the ancient world-we shall find a connection really and truly organic between the systems of the different people of antiquity, and we shall arrive at last at the fundamental unity of weight and measure in the Babylonian system; so that this supposition is found to be verified in all its consequences and details. To give some preliminary intimation of this-I shall shew that the Grecian (or, more accurately, the Æginæan) and the Roman pound are in the ratio of 109: the Æginæan pound is half the Æginæan mina: but the cubical measures stood normally in the ratio of the weights; and therefore the Grecian cubic foot was to the Roman as 10: 9-and as the Roman cubic foot weighs 80 pounds of rain-water, so also the Grecian cubic foot weighs 80 Grecian or Æginæan pounds, equal to 40 Æginæan minæ. The unity of weight (in Greece) however is, not 40 minæ, but 60 minæ, or a talent. In the original institutions of the people of antiquity every thing has its reason, and we find scarcely any thing purely arbitrary nevertheless, this unity of weight, the talent, does not coincide with the unity of measure-neither with the cubic foot, nor with any other specific cubical denomination. But the coincidence reveals itself at once, as soon as we discover that the Babylonian cubic foot, standing as it does in the ratio of 3: 2 to the German cubic foot, weighs 60 Æginæan minæ (= 60 Babylonian minæ = 1 Babylonian talent) of rain-water."

M. Boeckh here promises more than his volume will be found to realise. He does, indeed, satisfactorily shew that the Babylonian talent was identical with, and was the original prototype of, the Æginæan talent, and that the standard and scale of weight was strikingly and curiously similar in Asia, in Egypt, and in Greece. But he has not, I think, made out the like with regard to the Grecian measures, either of length or of capacity, and his proof of the ratio of 3: 2 between the Babylonian and the Grecian foot will be found altogether defective. Nor