PRACTICAL CALCULATION 
49 
,de oi* it at 
ittested by 
Bdelycleon 
58 but with 
use pebbles 
The income 
Ly payment 
answers the 
The calcúla 
lo to show 
the purpose 
n reckoning 
r hand from 
iis indicates 
Diogenes 
jse who had 
i reckoning- 
d sometimes 
r asks for an 
it definite of 
e really like 
)v, according 
te, now of a 
and the next 
Laertius and 
t fixed in the 
another, and 
ation to the 
ise the talent 
ruinations on 
s may throw 
1 Darius-vase 
da, represents 
dth a table in 
n) coins, upon 
i side farthest 
m, the letters 
9. 
26. 13. 
MtH >PO<T, while in his left hand he holds a sort of book in 
which, presumably, he has to enter the receipts. Now M, S' 
(= X), H, and > are of course the initial letters of the words 
for 10000, 1000, 100, and 10 respectively. Here therefore we 
have a purely decimal system, without the halfway numbers 
represented by P (= nevre, 5) in combination with the other 
initial letters which we find in the 4 Attic ’ system. The sign 
P after > seems to be wrongly written for P, the older sign 
for a drachma, O stands for the obol, < for the f-obol, and T 
[TeTapTiyxopLou) for the ^-obol. 1 Except that the fractions of 
the unit (here the drachma) arc different from the fractions 
of the Roman unit, this scheme corresponds to the Roman, 
and so far might represent the abacus. Indeed, the decimal 
arrangement corresponds better to the abacus than does the 
Salaminian table with its intermediate 4 Herodianic ’ signs for 
500, 50, and 5 drachmas. Prof. David Eugene Smith is, how 
ever, clear that any one can see from a critical examination of 
the piece that what is represented is an ordinary money 
changer or tax-receiver with coins on a table such as one 
might see anywhere in the East to-day, and that the table has 
no resemblance to an abacus. 2 On the other hand, it is to be 
observed that the open book held by the tax-receiver in his 
left hand has TAAN on one page and TA1H on the other, 
which would seem to indicate that he was entering totals in 
talents and must therefore presumably have been adding coins 
or pebbles on the table before him. 
There is a second existing monument of the same sort, 
namely a so-called cny/cco/ra (or arrangement of measures) 
discovered about forty years ago 3 ; it is a stone tablet with 
fluid measures and has, on the right-hand side, the numerals 
XPHFAPHTIC. The signs are the ‘Herodianic’, and they 
include those for 500, 50, and 5 drachmas ; I" is the sign for 
a drachma, T evidently stands for some number of obols 
making a fraction of the drachma, i.e. the rptco(3oXou or 3 
obols, I for an obol, and C for a J-obol. 
The famous Salaminian table was discovered by Rangabe, 
who gave a drawing and description of it immediately after- 
1 Keil in Hermes, 29. 1894, pp. 262-3. 
• Bibliotheca Mathematica, ix 3 , p. 193. 
1 Dumont in Revue archeologique, xxvi (1873), p. 43. 
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