THE LARGEST UNIT AND THE SMALLEST. A dēnarion was a labourer's day-wage (Matthew 20:2 sets the rate). A talanton was a weight of silver worth roughly six thousand denarii — about twenty years of daily work. ⚠ So the parable of Matthew 18 is doing arithmetic on purpose: the first slave owes MYRIŌN TALANTŌN, 'ten thousand talents' — the largest number in Greek attached to the largest unit — some sixty million day-wages, on the order of two hundred thousand years of labour. Josephus puts the combined annual tribute of Judea, Idumea and Samaria at six hundred talents, so the debt is over sixteen times the tax revenue of the province, and the man promises to repay it all. The second debt is a hundred denarii: a hundred days' wages, a real and ruinous sum, and about one six-hundred-thousandth of the first. Versions that render these as 'a great sum' and 'a few pounds' preserve the moral and destroy the joke. → first discussed at Matt 18:24