Note 696 — Chapter XXII · WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE — IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL.
Reading edition
Respecting the statical and monetary system, prevalent among the Italian and Sicilian Greeks, see Aristot. Fragment. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ed. Neumann, p. 102; Pollux, iv, 174, ix, 80-87; and above all, Boeckh, Metrologie, ch. xviii, p. 292, and the abstract and review of that work in the Classical Museum, No. 1; also, O. Müller, Die Etrusker, vol. i, p. 309.
The Sicilian Greeks reckoned by talents, each consisting of 120 litræ or libræ: the Æginæan obolus was the equivalent of the litra, having been the value in silver of a pound-weight of copper, at the time when the valuation was taken.
The common denominations of money and weight—with the exception of the talent, the meaning of which was altered while the word was retained—seem to have been all borrowed by the Italian and Sicilian Greeks from the Sikel or Italic scale, not from the Grecian,—νούμμος, λίτρα, δεκάλιτρον, πεντεκοντάλιτρον, πεντούγκιον, ἑξᾶς, τετρᾶς, τριᾶς, ἥμινα, ἡμιλίτριον (see Fragments of Epicharmus and Sophron, ap. Ahrens de Dialecto Doricâ, Appendix, pp 435, 471, 472, and Athenæ. xi, p. 479).