Talent (measurement)

The talent (Latin: talentum, from Ancient Greek: τάλαντον "scale, balance") is an ancient unit of mass. It corresponded generally to the mass of water in the volume of an amphora, i.e. one foot cubed. Depending on the length of the respective, legal foot, this corresponds roughly to the mass of 27 kg or about 60 English pounds.

The Babylonians and Sumerians had a system in which there were 60 shekels in a mina and 60 minas in a talent. This ratio 1:60, talent to mina, was also observed in Ancient Greece where the Attic talent was about 26 kg. The Greek mina is evaluated – depending on sources – to be 434 ± 3 grams. The Ancient Romans also gave the name 'talent' to their weight of 100 libra (pounds). Since the Roman libra is exactly three quarters of the Greek mina, the Roman talent is 1.25 Greek talent.

The monetary talent

When used as a measure of money, it refers to a talent-weight of gold or of silver. The gold talent is reported as weighing roughly the same as a person, and so perhaps 60 kg (132 lb avoirdupois). Some authorities state, more precisely, that the talent typically weighed about 33 kg (75 lb) varying from 20 to 40 kg. The international price of gold is about US$800 per troy ounce, i.e. about $25 per gram. At this price, a talent (33 kg) would be worth about $825,000. Similarly, at the 2007 price of about $14/troy ounce or 44 cents/gram, a 26 kg silver talent would be worth about $11,500. Thus when we read that King Auletes of Egypt paid Julius Caesar the sum of 6,000 talents of gold to grant him the status of a "Friend and Ally of the Roman People," the amount paid, in modern equivalence, was about $5 billion USD. However, these estimates, based on modern values, are only rough values.

Later in Roman history, during the medieval Byzantine period, the emperor Basil II was said to have stockpiled the legendary amount of 200,000 talents of gold, which in modern terms would be worth approximately $100 billion USD. At any rate, he did save enough money that the Byzantine government was able to remit all taxes paid during the final two years of his reign.

Another way to calculate the modern equivalent to a talent is from its use in estimating military pay. During the Peloponnesian war in Ancient Greece, a talent was the amount of silver needed to pay the crew of a trireme for one month. Hellenistic mercenaries were commonly paid one drachma for every day of service, which was a good salary in the post-Alexander (III) days. 6,000 drachma made a talent. Based on this fact, assuming a crew of roughly 200 rowers paid at the basic pay rate of a junior enlisted member of the US armed forces (E-2), a talent would be worth nearly $300,000.

The talent as a unit of coinage is mentioned in the New Testament in Jesus's parable of the talents, but it is not clear (or important) exactly what quantity of money is implied. The important point in the parable is that even one talent was a very large sum.