The talent (Latin: talentum, from Ancient Greek: τάλαντον, talanton 'scale, balance, sum') was one of several ancient units of mass, a commercial weight, as well as corresponding units of value equivalent to these masses of a precious metal. The talent of gold was known to Homer, who described how Achilles gave a half-talent of gold to Antilochus as a prize. It was approximately the mass of water required to fill an amphora. A Greek, or Attic talent, was 26 kilograms (57 lb), a Roman talent was 32.3 kilograms (71 lb), an Egyptian talent was 27 kilograms (60 lb), and a Babylonian talent was 30.3 kilograms (67 lb). Ancient Israel, and other Levantine countries, adopted the Babylonian talent, but later revised the mass. The heavy common talent, used in New Testament times, was 58.9 kilograms (130 lb).
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The Attic talent
An Attic talent was the equivalent of 60 minae or 6,000 drachmae.
An Attic talent was about 26 kg. Friedrich Hultsch estimated a weight of 26.196 kg, and Dewald (1998) offers a weight of 25.992 kg.
An Attic talent of silver was the value of nine man-years of skilled work. In 415 BC, an Attic talent was a month's pay for a trireme crew, Hellenistic mercenaries were commonly paid one drachma per day of military service. There were 6,000 drachmae in an Attic talent.
Aeginetan talent
The Aeginetan talent weighed about 37 kg. The German historian Friedrich Hultsch calculated a range of 36.15 to 37.2kg based on such estimates as the weight of one full Aeginetan metretes of coins, and concluded that the Aeginetan talent represented the water weight of a Babylonian ephah: 36.29 kg by his reckoning (the metretes and the ephah were units of volume). Percy Gardner estimated a weight of 37.32 kg, based on extant weights and coins.
An Aeginetan talent was worth 60 Aeginetan minae, or 6,000 Aeginetan drachmae.
Other talents
The Babylonians, Sumerians, and Hebrews divided a talent into 60 minas, each of which was subdivided into 60 shekels. The Greek also used the ratio of 60 minas to one talent. A Greek mina was approximately 434 ± 3 grams. A Roman talent was 100 libra. A libra is exactly three quarters of a Greek mina, so a Roman talent is 1.25 Greek talents. An Egyptian talent was 80 librae.
The talent as a unit of value is mentioned in the New Testament in Jesus' parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). This parable is the origin of the use of the word "talent" to mean "gift or skill" in English and other languages. Luke includes a different parable involving the mina. According to Epiphanius, the talent is called mina (maneh) among the Hebrews, and was the equivalent in weight to one-hundred denarii. The talent is found in another parable of Jesus where a servant who is forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents refuses to forgive another servant who owes him only one hundred silver denarii. The talent is also used elsewhere in the Bible, as when describing the material invested in the Ark of the Covenant. Solomon received 666 gold talents a year.