*mnaai=os. oi( tw=n *baliari/dwn nh/swn sfendonh=tai mnaai/ous li/qous e)/ballon. kai\ au)=qis: mnaai=on didou=si tou= kerami/ou u(dreu/esqai toi=s e)qe/lousi.
cf.
mu 1150, with a different spelling; see also
mu 1144.
Considered as a weight (it could also be a sum of money, as perhaps in the second quotation) the mina -- more exactly, mna -- varied from place to place. On the widespread Attic-Euboic standard it was just short of an imperial pound, or c.437 grams, but other systems had a rather lighter mina; and the stones or bullets archaeologically preserved (see Pritchett, below in n.1) are considerably lighter than this.
[1] Adler makes no comment on the source of this statement, but it is surely
Diodorus Siculus 19.109.1-2, on the Balearic slingers used by Hamilcar against
Agathocles in 311 BCE; they "are accustomed to throw stones weighing a mina". For the Balearic Islands (present-day Mallorca etc.) see generally OCD4 p.222. For Balearic slingers cf.
beta 83 and
sigma 1728, and see generally on slingers OCD4 p.1376; Pritchett 1-65. Stones "weighing a mina" seem to have been in plentiful natural supply: cf.
Xenophon,
Art of Horsemanship 4.4, and
Cavalry Commander 1.16.
[2] Or perhaps a mina-weight of clay, to make pottery to carry it in? At any rate, both quotation and subject are unidentifiable.
W.K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War 5 (Berkeley & Los Angeles 1991).
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