the Olympic stadium, existed." What evidence is there to prove that the Olympic standard of the foot-measure was adopted by all the countless autonomous communities of Greece? Why are we to regard Samos as the solitary case of exception? Long measures differ in this respect from cubic measures or weights-they have a natural standard: but the unit of weight or of capacity must be determined by the special dictum of law. An autonomous community, on first establishing a scale of weight, being under the necessity of making some arbitrary selection, might naturally borrow the Euboic or the Æginæan scale, prevalent amongst its neighbours but many distinct standards of the foot-measure, all proceeding from the natural standard of the human foot, but each minutely differing from the rest, might co-exist in Greece without serious inconvenience. We are not to presume here any preany cise identity, or universal adoption of one common standard, unless we can prove the fact by some positive evidence.

Until the abundant erudition of M. Boeckh can supply such evidence, I must contend that he is not entitled to treat the Olympic foot as an universally adopted Grecian foot: still less is he entitled to consider Herodotus as having alluded to this Olympic foot, and the cubit founded upon it, when he said that "the Babylonian cubit was three daktyls longer than the moderate cubit." Unfortunately, these two unauthorized assumptions lie at the bottom of all the elaborate calculations in the Metrologie respecting the Grecian and Babylonian long measures—calculations leading after all only to an approximative result, which M. Boeckh is obliged to excuse by appealing to the inaccurate mechanical proceedings of the ancients. Such mechanical inaccuracy I freely admit; and if sufficient positive testimony were produced, of intentional correspondence between two distinct metrical systems in the ancient world, I should not reject the testimony on the ground that details of the proceeding had not precisely conformed to the attested designs of the framers. But here we are without positive testimony: we are called upon to infer intentional adaptation, or relationship between two systems, merely from harmony in the results; and for such an inference nothing short of exact harmony-no approximative analogies will suffice. More especially is this true with respect to the foot and the cubit; measures

which always have been and always will be nearly equal, even in countries the most widely separated.

The most remarkable circumstance which characterizes the long measures as well as the weights, of Greece, Asia, and Egypt, is the prevalence of the same scale of division- the cubit, the foot, the span, the palm, and the dactyl. Throughout all the wide extent of territory here spoken of, this same scale of division prevailed, pointedly distinguished from the uncial or duodecimal division of the foot which we find in Italy and Sicily.

That so precise a conformity in the metrical scale argues one common origin, and that Greece was in this respect a borrower from the East, I see no reason to doubt. But that the actual standard of the lengths measured was identical and derivative, I cannot believe until I see it proved. M. Boeckh nevertheless permits himself to assert positively-" As the Grecian long measure has been already shewn to have existed in the earliest times in Egypt, which had a community of system with the Chaldæans, the derivation of the Grecian measure either from the East or from Egypt no longer admits of a doubt." (xvi. 1. p. 281). I trust that the complete conviction which this sentence breathes will induce M. Boeckh to re-examine and improve the very precarious evidence on which alone it now reposes.

As I have felt myself compelled to call in question many references upon which M. Boeckh seems implicitly to rely, I will notice one case in which he seems to me to impugn without reason the testimony of one of his own best authorities. In treating of the royal or Philetarian foot, applied in the measurements of Asia Minor under the kings of Pergamus, he cites a passage from Heron, in which the ratio of the Philetarian foot to the Roman foot is given as 6:5—given in plain language and with precise fractions (Metrol. xii. 2; p. 215). But M. Boeckh finds that this ratio does not exactly comport with that which he imagines himself to have discovered as the original determining ratio of the Babylonian foot to the Grecian foot: viz. 32. Accordingly, he denies the rigid accuracy of the valuation given by Hero: he says" Assuredly the estimate of the Philetarian foot in reference to the Roman foot as 6: 5, is not precise, because it is certain that neither of them was determined with any view to

the other." (p. 218). Now there is not throughout the whole of M. Boeckh's metrological investigations, a more direct, precise, or unimpeached testimony than this of Hero, which he treats as merely approximative: and that too because it does not coincide with a long tissue of calculations of his own, based upon assumptions as yet unsupported. If a statement such as this of Hero is not to be trusted, the class of researches to which the Metrologie is devoted will become utterly impracticable: for no better evidence can be procured.

The last four chapters of M. Boeckh's volume are devoted to an account of the various pound weights and scales of weight throughout Italy-of the perplexing variations in the Roman silver and copper money-and of the monetary estimates in the census of Servius Tullius. They are chapters highly instructive: in respect to the Roman silver money, the clearest and most complete that I know. He rejects and refutes the opinion of Niebuhr, that the debasement of the Roman standard was caused or accompanied by an extraordinary rise in the value of copper, so that the diminished coins possessed as great a purchasing power as the full-sized coins had possessed before. Whether the value of the metal copper underwent any serious or continued reduction in reference to silver, may be a matter of reasonable doubt: certain it is, that no such adventitious cause need be invoked to account for the degradation of the standard. Such a proceeding has been so nearly universal with governments both ancient and modern, that the contrary may be looked upon as a remarkable exception.

The limits to which this article has already extended will not permit me to furnish any detailed remarks upon M. Boeckh's account of the Italian and Roman scales of weight and money. I will only mention, that since the publication of the Metrologie, another work of singular importance on the same subject has appeared in Italy, by the learned fathers Marchi and Tessieri: "L'æs grave del Museo Kircheriano, ovvero le Monete primitive de' Popoli dell' Italia Media ordinate e descritte. Roma 1839." The collection of the Kircherian Museum at Rome, unrivalled in the number and completeness of its specimens of the ancient Italian æs grave, and enriched by many recent discoveries, has here, for the first time, been explained and reduced

to order, and connected with the inferences legitimately deducible from it.

Two of these inferences I will briefly glance at, inasmuch as they bear directly upon the positions maintained in M. Boeckh's Metrologie: in one case, in the way of confirmation - in the other, of contradiction.

M. Boeckh advances two positions; first, that the duodecimal division of the pound prevailed all over Italy; next, that the absolute weight called by the name of a pound was not the same throughout that country-heavier in some parts, lighter in others.

The second of these two positions has been placed beyond a doubt by the new facts set forth in the work of the two learned fathers. They have produced ancient cast copper-money of the Latins and Volscians, which belong to an as, or pound weighing 13 Roman ounces, and coins of Hadria in Picenum, which indicate an as, reaching even to 16 Roman ounces. The ancient Etruscan pound, as far as we can judge by the coins published and authenticated, appears to have been the lightest in Italy.

But, on the other hand, the opinion of M. Boeckh, that the duodecimal division of the pound was universal throughout Italy, has been shewn to be erroneous. Amongst the people of middle Italy, north of the Apennines, a decimal division of the pound prevailed, distinguishing them from the people south of the same chain, who employed the duodecimal scale. Of the numerous coins belonging to the people south of the Apennines, not a single quincunx, or coin of five ounces, has yet been discovered: the complete series runs from the semis or six ounces downwards, omitting the quincunx-triens, quadrans, sextans, and uncia. On the other hand, for the coins north of the Apennines, comprising those of seven different townships, no semis has ever been found; the highest denomination below the as is the quincunx, below which the other coins appear just as in the duodecimal series. There is no way of explaining this very marked and uniform contrast, except by admitting a decimal division of the pound north of the Apennines". In Sicily, where the coa

9 See the valuable Dissertation of Dr. Lepsius, "Ueber die Verbreitung des

Italischen Münzsystems von Etrurien aus, p. 74. (Leipzig. 1842).

lescence of the Grecian and Italian systems produced a complication almost inextricable, a silver quincunx as well as a semis appears to have prevailed: at least we find in the fragments of Epicharmus mention both of πεντώγκιον and ἡμίλιτρον (Pollux, ix. 82). This double scale of weight, prevalent in different regions of Italy, is a remarkable phenomenon; only recently verified, and as yet unexplained.

II.

HYMN TO ISIS.

GEORGE GROTE.

OUR collections of Greek inscriptions have recently been enriched by about one hundred and seventy new ones, which have been published by Professor Ross, of Athens1. All of them have been found in the islands of the Ægean, which are still promising a rich harvest, as many of these islands have not yet been explored. Among these new inscriptions there are some of great historical interest; several of them are in verse, and one among these has attracted so much the attention of continental scholars that there are already three different editions of it. This is a fragment of a hymn to Isis, which was found in the island of Andros, and is indeed an important document, inasmuch as it shows the extent of the worship of this Egyptian goddess in Greece, and at the same time. the curious pantheistic views about this divinity, which appear to be a combination of the religious opinions of the East with those prevalent in the more western parts of the Roman empire. The

1 Inscriptiones Græcæ inedita. Collegit ediditque Ludovicus Rossius, Holsatus, &c. Fascicul. II. Insunt Lapides insularum Andri, Ii, Teni, Syri, Amorgi, Myconi, Pari, Astypalææ, Nisyri, Teli, Coi, Calymnæ, Leri, Patmi, Sami, Lesbi, Theræ, Anaphæ et Peparethi. Athenis, 1842. 4to.

2 One by Welcker, in the Rheinisches Museum, Neue Folge, 11. p. 326, foll. ; another by Th. Bergk, in the Zeitschrift für die Alterthumswissenschaft for 1843, p. 36, foll.; and the third is a separate edition by H. Sauppe, Hymnus in Isim. Distinxit, emendavit, annotavit H. S., Turici, 1842. 8vo.