Historical-Political Dissertation on Coins, Both Functional and Commemorative

measures and weights. However, Hostus himself admits (p. 9) that one would not dare to affirm this rashly regarding stamped coins. Since the word chremata wealth/money is ambiguous and signifies both ktemata possessions/acquisitions (that is, all things that are acquired and possessed, as Xenophon testifies in his Oeconomicus) and money itself. Nevertheless, it still seems likely to Hostus, from this very passage of Josephus, that Cain invented weights and measures. But it would perhaps be easier to assert the same concerning Tubal-Cain, the fifth in descent from Cain, these are the words of the same most famous man in the work cited. Stratemann also strives to prove the same in his Book on Economics, ch. 7, p. 80: Tubal-Cain, [saying,] Gen. IV, v. 22, is proclaimed to have been the father of bronze and all iron. Therefore, if bronze and iron had been invented and in use at that time, surely the world did not lack gold or silver; add to this that all these things are unearthed from the same mines. Nor is it likely that the world could have lacked the use of money for 1656 years. But these arguments of Stratemann are not sufficiently valid. For first, there is nowhere any mention of stamped metal or money in the stricter sense, nor even of weighed money or money distinguished by weight, in the sacred antediluvian history, but only of metal simply, which (namely, bronze and iron) could have had, and did have, many uses, even if the use of stamping and properly crafting coins from it perhaps did not yet obtain. We certainly doubt not that bronze and metal, even if more rarely, were in use among the Romans immediately after the Republic was established, but only as crude metal, and only in the progress of time was it stamped, as we shall see in the following §. 7. What then prevents us from saying the same about antediluvian iron and bronze? Namely, that those metals had their notable uses in various things, although money had not yet been crafted from them. In short: that he [Tubal-Cain] was an expert smith, but not a mint-master, is well inferred from the original text by the distinguished Mr. Mirus in his Stathmica Sacra Sacred Weights and Measures, which offers itself to us quite opportunely as we are occupied with this institution, and often confirms us in these opinions (p. 6). Nor shall we now controvert whether it necessarily follows that once bronze and iron were invented, gold and silver were also invented at the same time. But let us grant even this; yet no one will necessarily conclude from this the stamping of metals, or even the use of them as weighed money, for the reasons