Note 2 — Chapter I · THE CURRENCY IN WHICH WERGELDS WERE RECKONED AND PAID.

For convenience I adhere throughout to reckoning in wheat-grains. Professor Ridgeway informs me that three barleycorns were equated with four wheat-grains, and that a passage in Theophrastus shows that in the fourth century B.C. 12 barleycorns = obol and 12 obols = the stater. The Greek diobol = therefore 24 barleycorns, i.e. 32 wheat-grains, and the stater = 144 barleycorns, i.e. 192 wheat-grains. The reader will understand that as Romans, Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans reckoned in wheat-grains, there will be great convenience in adhering throughout to wheat-grains in this inquiry. And further the theoretic building up of weights in wheat-grains was preserved traditionally more easily than the actual standards of weight.