John Lightfoot on Mark 14:5

[More than three hundred pence.] The prices of such precious ointments (as it seems in Pliny) were commonly known. For thus he, "The price of costus is sixteen pounds. The price of spike(nard) is ninety pounds. The leaves have made a difference in the value. From the broadness of them it is called Hadrosphaerum; with greater leaves it is worth X. xxx," that is, thirty pence. "That with a lesser leaf is called Mesosphaerum, it is sold at X. lx," sixty pence. "The most esteemed is that called Microsphaerum, having the least leaf, and the price of it is X. lxxv," seventy-five pence. And elsewhere: "To these the merchants have added that which they call Daphnois, surnamed Isocinnamon, and they make the price of it to be X. ccc" three hundred pence.

II. It is not easy to reduce this sum of three hundred pence to its proper sense; partly because a penny was two-fold, a silver penny, and a gold one: partly because there was a double value and estimation of money, namely, that of Jerusalem and that of Tyre, as we observed before. Let these be silver (which we believe), which are of much less value than gold: and let them be Jerusalem pence (which we also believe), which are cheaper than the Tyrian; yet they plainly speak the great wealth of Magdalene, who poured out an ointment of such a value, when before she had spent some such other.

Which brings to my mind those things which are spoken by the Masters concerning the box of spices, which the husband was bound to give the wife according to the proportion of her dowry: "But this is not spoken, saith Rabh Ishai, but of Jerusalem people. There is an example of a daughter of Nicodemus Ben Gorion, to whom the wise men appointed four hundred crowns of gold for a chest of spices for one day. She said to them, 'I wish you may so appoint for their daughters'; and they answered after her, 'Amen.'" The Gloss is, "The husband was to give to his wife ten zuzees for every manah, which she brought with her to buy spices, with which she used to wash herself," &c. Behold! a most wealthy woman of Jerusalem, daughter of Nicodemus, in the contract and instrument of whose marriage was written, "A thousand thousand gold pence out of the house of her father, besides those she had out of the house of her father-in-law": whom yet you have in the same story reduced to that extreme poverty, that she picked up barley-corns for her food out of the cattle's dung.