292 NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE.
According to the well-known passage of Androtion (Plut. Solon, c. xv.) Solon's monetary reform took the shape of a trick by which debtors were empowered to pay back in small drachms debts which had been incurred in larger drachms. The majority of writers, both ancient and modern, are however agreed that the relief of the debtors took the form of simply writing off their debts
This ffetaa^Beia and the change in the weights and measures had, in fact, nothing to do with each other. Androtion's statement had more weight before the discovery of the new treatise than it has now, when we know that the weight of the drachm was increased, not lowered. He works on the basis of the drachm of his own time instead of on that of the doubly heavy drachm introduced by Solon. His calculations are none the less valuable as enabling us to fix approximately the weight of the pre-Solonian mina.
The change of standard, by which the drachm was lowered to half its former weight, and the other denominations altered accordingly, has been attributed by M. Six11 to Hippias, on the strength of the pseudo- Aristotelian Second Book of the Oeconomwa, where we are told (ii. 4) that Hippias called in the Athenian coinage, and then instead of issuing, as was expected, a different 'xapaKTYjp, gave the Athenians back TO OUTO apyvpiov. The change introduced by Hippias was merely one of nomenclature, but it was at the same time a change which meant that Hippias only paid back 50 per cent, of wbat he had received.
G. F. HILL.
11 Num. Chron , 1895, p. 178.