Numismatics
From LoveToKnow 1911
NUMISMATICS (Lat. numisma, nomisma, a coin; from the Greek, derived from voµi eiv, to use according to law), the science treating of coins (Low Lat. cuneus, a die) and medals (Low Lat. medalla, a small coin).
The earliest known coins were issued by the Greeks in the 7th century before the Christian era. By the 4th century the whole civilized world used money (q.v.), each state generally having its proper coinage. This has continued to be the case to the present time; so that now there are few nations without a metal currency of their own, and of these but a small proportion are wholly unacquainted with the use of coins.
Coins, although they confirm history, rarely correct it, and never very greatly. The earliest belong to a time and to nations as to which we are not otherwise wholly ignorant, and they do not afford us that precise information which would fill in any important details of the meagre sketch of contemporary history. We gain from them scarcely any direct historical information, except that certain cities or princes issued money. When in later times the devices and inscriptions of the coins give more detailed information, history is far fuller and clearer, so that the numismatic evidence is rarely more than corroborative. There are, indeed, some remarkable exceptions to this rule, as in the case of the Bactrian and Indian coins, which have supplied the outlines of a portion of history which was otherwise almost wholly lost. The value of the corroborative evidence afforded by coins must not, however, be overlooked. It chiefly relates to chronology, although it also adds to our knowledge of the pedigrees of royal houses. But perhaps the most interesting manner in which coins and medals illustrate history is in their bearing contemporary, or nearly contemporary, portraits of the most famous kings and captains, from the time of the first successors of Alexander the Great to the present age, whereas pictures do not afford portraits in any number before the latter part of the middle ages; and works of sculpture, although occupying in this respect the same place as coins in the lastmentioned period and under the Roman empire, are neither so numerous nor so authentic. There is no more delightful companion in historical reading than a cabinet of coins and medals. The strength and energy of Alexander, the ferocity of Mithradates, the philosophic calmness of Antoninus, the obstinate ferocity of Nero, and the brutality of Caracalla are as plain on the coins as in the pages of history. The numismatic portraits of the time following the founding of Constantinople have less individuality; but after the revival of art they recover that quality, and maintain it to our own day, although executed in very different styles from those of antiquity. From this last class we can form a series of portraits more complete and not less interesting than that of the ancient period.
While coins and medals thus illustrate the events of history, they have an equally direct bearing on the belief of the nations. by which they were issued; and in this reference lies Mythology no small part of their value in connexion with history.
The mythology of the Greeks, not having been fixed in sacred writings, nor regulated by a dominant priesthood, but having grown out of the different beliefs of various tribes and isolated settlements, and having been allowed to form itself comparatively without check, can scarcely be learned from ancient books. Their writers give us but a partial or special view of it, and modern authors, in their attempts to systematize, have often but increased the confusion. The Greek coins, whether of kings or cities, until the death of Alexander, do not, with a few negligible exceptions, represent the human form. Afterwards, on the regal coins, the king's head usually occupies the obverse and a subject, usually sacred, is placed on the reverse. The coins of Greek cities under the empire have usually an imperial portrait and a reverse type usually mythological. The whole class thus affords us invaluable evidence for the reconstruction of Greek mythology. We have nowhere else so complete a series of the different types under which the divinities were represented. There are in modern galleries very few statues of Greek divinities, including such as were intended for architectural decoration, which are in good style, fairly preserved, and untouched by modern restorers. If to these we add reliefs of the same class, and the best GraecoRoman copies, we can scarcely form a complete series of the various representations of these divinities. The coins, however, supply us with the series we desire, and we may select types which are not merely of good work, but of the finest. The mythology of ancient Italy, as distinct from that of the Greek colonies of Italy, is not so fully illustrated by the coins of the country, because these are for the most part of Greek design. There are, however, some remarkable exceptions, especially in the money of the Roman commonwealth, the greater number of the types of which are of a local character, including many that refer to the myths and traditions of the earliest days of the city. The coins of the empire are especially important, as bearing representations of those personifications of an allegorical character to which the influence of philosophy gave great prominence in Roman mythology.
Coins are scarcely less valuable in relation to geography than to' history. The position of towns on the sea or on rivers, the race of their inhabitants, and many similar particulars are positively fixed on numismatic evidence. The informa- ae - tion that coins convey as to the details of the history of graphy. towns and countries has a necessary connexion with geography, as has also their illustration of local forms of worship. The representations of natural productions on ancient money are of special importance, and afford assistance to the lexicographer. This is particularly the case with the Greek coins, on which these objects are frequently portrayed with great fidelity. We must recollect, however, that the nomenclature of the ancients was vague, and frequently comprised very different objects under one appellation, and that therefore we may find very different representations corresponding to the same name.
The art of sculpture, of which coin-engraving is the offspring, receives the greatest illustration from numismatics. Not only is the memory of lost statues preserved to us in the designs Art. of ancient coins, but those of Greece afford admirable examples of that skill by which her sculptors attained their great renown. The excellence of the designs of very many Greek coins struck during the period of the best art is indeed so great that, were it not for their smallness, they would form the finest series of art-studies in the world. The Roman coins, though at no time to be compared to the purest Greek, yet represent not unworthily the Graeco-Roman art of the empire. From the accession of Augustus to the death of Commodus they are often fully equal to the best Graeco-Roman statues. This may be said, for instance, of the dupondii struck in honour of Livia by Tiberius and by the younger Drusus, of the sestertii of Agrippina, and of the Flavian emperors, and of the gold coins of Antoninus Pius and the two Faustinas, all which present portraits of remarkable beauty and excellence. The Italian medals of the Renaissance are scarcely less useful as records of the progress and characteristics of art, and, placed by the side of the Greek and Roman coins, complete the most remarkable comparative series of monuments illustrating the history of the great schools of art that can be brought together. Ancient coins throw some light upon the architecture as well as upon the sculpture of the nations by which they were struck. Under the empire, the Roman coins issued at the city very frequently bear representations of important edifices. The Greek imperial coins struck in the provinces present similar types, representing the most famous temples and other structures of their cities, of the form of some of which we should otherwise have been wholly ignorant. The art of gemengraving among the ancients is perhaps most nearly connected with their coinage. The subjects of coins and gems are so similar and so similarly treated that the authenticity of gems, that most difficult of archaeological questions, receives the greatest aid from the study of coins.
After what has been said it is not necessary to do more than mention how greatly the study of coins tends to illustrate the contemporary literature of the nations which issued Literature. them. Not only the historians, but the philosophers and the poets, are constantly illustrated by the money of their times. This was perceived at the revival of letters; and during the 17th and 18th centuries coins were very frequently engraved in the larger editions of the classics.
The science of numismatics is of comparatively recent origin. The ancients do not seem to have formed collections, although they appear to have occasionally preserved individual specimens for their beauty. Petrarch has the credit of having been the first collector of any note; but it is probable that in his time ancient coins were already attracting no little notice. The importance of the study of all coins has since been by degrees more and more recognised, and at present no branch of the pursuit is left wholly unexplored.
Besides its bearing upon the history, the religion, the manners, and the arts of the nations which have used money, the science of numismatics has a special modern use in relation to Practical Use. art. Displaying the various styles of art prevalent in different ages, coins supply us with abundant means for promoting the advancement of art among ourselves. If the study of many schools be at all times of advantage, it is especially so when there is little originality in the world. Its least value is to point out the want of artistic merit and historical commemoration in modern coins, and to suggest that modern medals should be executed after some study of the rules which controlled the great works of former times.
| Table of contents |
Definitions
The following are the most necessary numismatic definitions.
t. A coin is a piece of metal of a fixed weight, stamped by authority of government, and employed as a circulating medium.' 2. A medal is a piece, having no place in the currency, struck to commemorate some event or person. Medals are frequently comised with coins in descriptions that apply to both equally; thus, pr in the subsequent definitions, by the term coins, coins and medals must generally be understood.
3. The coinage of a country is usually divided into the classes of gold, silver and bronze (copper), for which the abbreviations N, A2, and IE are employed in catalogues. In addition to these metals, and to the modifications of them created by the presence of varying amounts of alloy, certain other compounds were frequently used, notably electrum, billon, brass and potin.
1 This definition excludes, on the one hand, paper currencies and their equivalents among barbarous nations, such as cowries, because they are neither of metal nor of fixed weight, although either stamped or sanctioned by authority, and, on the other hand, modes of keeping metal in weight, like the so-called Celtic " ring-money," because it is not stamped, although perhaps sanctioned by authority. The latter has attracted much attention, but it is by no means made out that the rings were made with the primary intention of serving as money. But it is a very common usage among savage or semisavage races to wear all their wealth in the form of ornaments (as a woman may even now wear her dowry as ornaments in the form of coins) and to use the ornaments (or cut-off portions of them, " skillings ") whenever occasion arises as a medium of exchange. These rings then were doubtless used in this manner, but they were no more money than were any other precious possessions which could be used in exchange. There is no good evidence for the use of the little Gaulish " wheels " as money. On these questions see Blanchet, Monn. gaul. pp. 24-29. On the border of the definition are such prehistoric " dumps " of metal as have been found at Enkomi in Cyprus and at Cnossus in Crete; one of these indeed seems to bear traces of a mark of some kind.
4. Electrum OX€, rpov, EKrpoS, Xeukos Xpvcroc), a compound metallic substance, consisting of gold with a considerable alloy of silver. Pliny makes the proportion to have been four parts of gold to one of silver. The material of early'coins of Asia Minor struck in the cities of the western coast is the ancient electrum. The amount of silver varies very considerably with time and place. Gold largely alloyed with silver, not struck by the ancient Greeks or their neighbours, should be termed pale gold, as in the case of some of the late Byzantine coins.
5. Billon, a term applied to the base metal of some Roman coins, and also to that of some medieval and modern coins. It contains about one-fifth silver to four-fifths copper. When the base silver coins are replaced by copper washed with silver the term billon becomes inappropriate.
6. Brass, a mixture of copper and zinc. It may be used as an equivalent to the orichalcum of the Romans, a fine kind of brass of which the sesjertii and dupondii were struck, but it is commonly applied indiscriminately to the whole of their copper currency under the empire.
7. Potin, an alloy of copper and tin (therefore a variety of bronze) used for some late Gaulish coins.
8. Various other metallic substances have been used in coinage, including iron (in Peloponnesus) and an alloy of copper and nickel employed for some Bactrian coins. The so-called " glass coins " of the Arabs are merely coin-weights.
9. The forms of coins have greatly varied in different countries and at different periods. The usual form in both ancient and modern times has been circular, and generally of no great thickness.
10. Coins are usually measured by millimetres, or by inches and tenths, the greatest dimension being taken, or, when they are square or oval, the greatest dimension in two directions.
it. The weight of a coin is of great importance, both in determining its genuineness and in distinguishing its identity. Metric weights are used by most numismatists except in England, where troy weight is still in general use.
12. The specific gravity of a coin may be of use in determining the metals in its composition.
13. Whatever representations or characters are borne by a coin constitute its type. The subject of each side is also called a type, and, when there is not only a device but an inscription, the latter may be excluded from the term. This last is the general use. No distinct rule has been laid down as to what makes a difference of type, but it may be considered to be an essential difference, however slight.
14. A difference too small to constitute a new type makes a variety. 15. A coin is a duplicate of another when it agrees with it in all particulars but those of exact size and weight. Strictly speaking, ancient coins are rarely, if ever, duplicates, except when struck from the same pair of dies.
16. Struck coins are those on which the designs are produced by dies impressed on the blank piece (or flan) of metal by some form of hammering or pressure; they are distinguished from cast coins made by running metal into a mould.
17. Of the two sides of a coin, that is called the obverse which bears the more important device. In early Greek coins it is the convex side, or the side impressed by the lower die; in Greek and Roman imperial it is the side bearing the head; in medieval and modern that bearing the royal effigy, or the king's name, or the name of the city; and in Oriental that on which the inscription begins. The other side is called the reverse. 18. The field of a coin is the space unoccupied by the principal devices or inscriptions. Any detached independent device or eharacter is said to be in the field, except when it occupies the exergue.
19. The exergue is that part of the reverse of a coin which is below the main device, and distinctly separated from it; it often bears a secondary inscription. Thus, the well-known inscription Conob occupies the exergue of the late Roman and early Byzantine gold coins.
20. The edge of a coin is the surface of its thickness.
21. By the inscription or inscriptions of a coin all the letters it bears are intended; an inscription is either principal or secondary.
22. In describing coins the terms right and left mean the right and left of the spectator, not the heraldic and military right and left, or those of the coin.
23. A bust is the representation of the head and neck; it is commonl used of such as show at least the collar-bone, other busts being called heads. A head properly means the representation of a head alone, without any part of the neck, but it is also commonly used 2 Hist. nat. xxxiii. 23; cp. xxxvii. t t. Pliny distinguishes two kinds of " electron," - amber, and this metallic substance. In Greek poetry the name seems to apply to both, but it is generally difficult to decide which is meant in any particular case. Sophocles, however, where he mentions Tare, EKrpov, 1 C al TOY 'Iysckov XpU ?OY (Ant. 1037-1039), can scarcely be doubted to refer to the metallic electrum.
| GREEK COINS] |
Origin of the Science. when any part of the neck above the collar-bone is shown. The present article follows custom in the use of the terms bust and head. When the neck is clothed, the bust is said to be draped.
24. A bust or head is either facing, usually three-quarter face, or in profile, in which latter case it is described as to right or to left. Two busts may be placed in various relative positions, as jugate or confronted.
25. A bust wearing a laurel-wreath is said to be laureate. 26. A bust bound with a regal fillet (diadem) is called diademed. 27. A bust wearing a crown with rays is said to be radiate. 28. An object in the field of a coin which is neither a letter nor a monogram is usually called a symbol. This term is, however, only applicable when such an object is evidently the badge of a town or individual. The term adjunct, which is sometimes employed instead of symbol, is manifestly incorrect.
29. A mint-mark is a difference placed by the authorities of the mint upon all money struck by them, or upon each new die or separate issue.
30. A coin is said to be " over-struck " or " re-struck " when it has been struck on an older coin, of which the types are not altogether obliterated.
31. A double-struck coin is one in which the die or dies have shifted so as to cause a double impression.
A coin which presents two obverse types, or two reverse types, or of which the types of the obverse and reverse do not correspond, is called a mule; it is the result of mistake or caprice.
Arrangement of Coins
No uniform system has as yet been applied to the arrangement of all coins. It is usual to separate them into the three great classes of ancient coins (comprising Greek and Roman), medieval and modern, and Oriental coins. The details of these classes have been differently treated, both generally and specially. The arrangement of the Greek series has been first geographical, under countries and towns, and then chronological, for a further division; that of the Roman series, chronological, without reference to geography; that of the medieval and modern, the same as the Greek; and that of the Oriental, like the Greek, but unsystematically - a treatment inadmissible except in the case of a single empire. Then, again, some numismatists have separated each denomination or each metal, or have separated the denominations of one metal and not of another. There has been no general and comprehensive system, constructed upon reasonable principles, and applicable to every branch of this complicated science. Without laying down a system of rules, or criticizing former modes of arrangement, we offer the following as a classification which is uniform without being servile.
1. Greek Coins
All coins of Greeks, or barbarians who adopted Greek money, struck before the Roman rule or under it, but without imperial effigies. The countries and their provinces are placed in a geographical order from west to east, according to the system of Eckhel, with the cities in alphabetical order under the provinces, and the kings in chronological order. The civic coins usually precede the regal, as being the more important. The coins are further arranged chronologically, the civic commencing with the oldest and ending with those bearing the effigies of Roman emperors. The gold coins of each period take precedence of the silver and the silver of the copper. The larger denominations in each metal are placed before the smaller. Coins of the same denomination and period are arranged in the alphabetical order of the magistrates' names, or the letters, &c., that they bear.
2. Roman Coins
All coins issued by the Roman commonwealth and empire, whether struck at Rome or in the provinces. The arrangement is chronological, or, where this is better, under geographical divisions.
3. Medieval and Modern Coins of Europe
All coins issued by Christian European states, their branches and colonies, from the fall of the empire of the West to the present day. This class is arranged in a geographical and chronological order, as similar as possible to that of the Greek class, with the important exception of the Byzantine coins and the coins following Byzantine systems, which occupy the first place. The reason for this deviation is that the Byzantine money may be regarded not only as the principal source of medieval coinage but as the most complete and important medieval series, extending as it does without a break throughout the middle ages. The regal coins usually precede the civic ones, as being the more important. The medals of each nation should be arranged in two series: (1) medals of rulers, according to their dates; (2) medals of private persons, as far as possible according to the artists.
4. Oriental Coins
All coins bearing inscriptions in Eastern languages, excepting those of the Jews, Phoenicians and Carthaginians, which are classed with the Greek coins from their close connexion with them. These coins should be arranged under the following divisions: Ancient Persian, Arab, Modern Persian, Indian, Chinese and coins of the Far East.
This method of arrangement will be found to be as uniform as it can be made, without being absolutely mechanical. It differs in some important particulars from most or all of those which have previously obtained; but these very differences are the result of the consideration of a complete collection, and have therefore an inductive origin. A general uniformity is no slight gain, and may well reconcile us to some partial defects.
I. Greek Coins There are some matters relating to Greek coins in general which may be properly considered before they are described in geographical order. These are their general character, the chief denominations, with, the different talents of which they were the divisions, their devices and inscriptions, their art, and the mode of striking.
The period during which Greek coins were issued was probably not much less than a thousand years, commencing about the beginning of the 7th century B.C. and generally ending at the death of Gallienus (A.D. 268). If classed with reference only to their form, fabric, and general appearance they are of three principal types - the archaic Greek, the ordinary Greek, and the Graeco-Roman. The coins of the first class are of silver, electrum and sometimes gold. They are thick lumps of an irregular round form, bearing on the obverse a device, with in some cases an accompanying inscription, and on the reverse a square or oblong incuse stamp (quadratum incusum), usually divided in a rude manner. The coins of the second class are of gold, electrum, silver and bronze. They are much thinner than those of the preceding class, and usually have a convex obverse and a slightly concave or flat reverse. The obverse ordinarily bears a head in bold relief. The coins of the third class are, with very few exceptions, of bronze. They are flat and broad, but thin, and generally have on the obverse the portrait of a Roman emperor. Many Greek cities, however, during the empire issued quasiautonomous coins bearing the head of some deity or personification. Greek coins thus fail mainly into the classes of autonomous, quasi-autonomous and imperial. The coinage of Roman colonies in Greek as in other lands is usually distinguished by Latin inscriptions.
Since Greek coinage originated in Asia Minor, the coins were adjusted to the weight-systems there in use, and these go back to a Babylonian origin. But it is possible that some of the standard of Greece proper had a native origin. The unit Systems. of weight in the East was the shekel (siglos). This was s of the manah (mina, mna), and this of the talent (talanton). This scale the Greeks modified, in that, starting from the siglos as unit, they invented a money-mina of 50 sigli, with a money-talent of 60 minae or 3000 sigli. The siglos-units (and corresponding standards) chiefly employed in Asia Minor were the following (the relation between gold and silver at the time of the invention of these gnits seems to have been 131 :I): Gold shekel, 8.40 grammes.
Phoenician silver shekel, 7.44 g. =es of 111.72 g. of silver, which was equivalent to 8.4 g. of gold.
Babylonian or Persic silver shekel, 11.17 g. = I t oof 111.72 g. of silver, which was equivalent to 8.4 g. of gold.
| [GREEK COINS |
Thus one gold shekel was the equivalent of 15 Phoenician or so Babylonian silver shekels. Side by side with this system was another in which the weights were exactly double of those just given; a shekel of the heavier system might be regarded as a double shekel of the lighter. Various Babylonian weights are extant, dating from 2000 B.C. downwards, which prove the existence of minae of the two systems. The gold shekel standard was almost invariably used for gold coins, sometimes also for electrum. The Babylonian and Phoenician standards were also sometimes used for gold or electrum as well as silver. A weight more or less approaching that of the gold shekel or its multiples seems to have been usual all over the civilized world in Greek times; e.g. the Phocaean standard of 16.52 g. was but a modification of it. But for silver in Greece proper, from a very early period, the following standards prevailed: the Aeginetic (unit, didrachm or stater, of 12.6 g.) and the Euboic-Attic (stater of 8.72 g.), with its modification the Corinthian. The Euboic-Attic standard attained enormous importance owing to the spread of Athenian trade and the adoption of the weight by Alexander of Macedon. It was used for both gold and silver. The Corinthian standard differed only in its divisional system, the stater being divided into thirds instead of halves. From it were derived some of the standards in use among the Greeks of S. Italy. Other standards of more local importance were: the Campanian, used in a large part of S. Italy (didrachm originally of 7.41 g., afterwards reduced), and perhaps derived from the Phoenician; the Rhodian (instituted about 400 B.C., tetradrachm about 15 g.); and the cistophoric (from about zoo B.C., with a tetradrachm of about 12.73 g.).
The following table exhibits the weights in grammes of the principal denominations of the Greek systems: - The term stater is usually applied to the didrachm, but also to the tetradrachm, and at Cyrene to the drachm.
The bronze standards have been less fully discussed. Some notice of them will be given under different geographical heads.
In the types of Greek coins (using the term in its restricted sense) the first intention of the designers was to indicate the city or state by which the money was issued. The necessity for distinctive devices was most strongly felt in the earlier days of the art, when the obverse of a coin alone bore a design, and, if any inscription, only the first letter, or the first few letters, of the name of the people by whom it was issued. Whatever may have been the original significance of the type in itself, religious or otherwise, it was adopted for the coinage - at least in the earliest times - because it was the badge by which the issuing authority was recognized. It was only with the increased complexity of the denominations in later times, when new distinguishing types had to be found, that - as in the 4th century B.C. - the religious motive in the choice of types came deliberately into play.
Greek coins, if arranged according to their types, fall into three classes: (I) civic coins, and regal without portraits of sovereigns; (2) regal coins bearing portraits; and (3) GraecoRoman coins, whether with imperial heads or not. The coins of the first class have either a device on the obverse and the quadratum incusum on the reverse, or two devices; and these last are again either independent of each other, though connected by being both local, or - and this is more common - that on the reverse is a kind of complement of that on the obverse. It will be best first to describe the character of the principal kinds of types of the first class, and then to notice their relation. It must be noted that a head or bust is usually an obverse type, and a figure or group a reverse one, and that, when there is a head on both obverse and reverse, that on the former is usually larger than the other, and represents the personage locally considered to be the more important of the two. We must constantly bear in mind that these types are local if we would understand their meaning.
In the following list the types of Greek coins of cities, and of kings, not having regal portraits, are Civic, °" classed in a systematic order, without reference to their relative antiquity.
1. Head or figure of a divinity worshipped at the town, or by the people, which issued the coin, as the head of Athena on coins of Athens, and the figure of Heracles on coins of Boeotian Thebes. Groups are rare until the period of Graeco-Roman coinage.
2. Natural or artificial objects - (a) animal, often sacred to a divinity of the place, as the owl (Athens) and perhaps the tortoise (Aegina); (b) tree or plant, as the silphium (Cyrene) and the olive-branch (Athens); (c) arms or implements of divinities, as the arms of Heracles (Erythrae), the tongs of Vulcan (Aesernia). It is difficult to connect many objects comprised in this class with local divinities. Some of them, as the tunny at Cyzicus, are doubtless only so connected because the chief industry of a place was placed under the tutelage of its chief divinity.
3. Head or figure of a local genius - (a) river-god, as the Gelas (Gela); (b) nymph of a lake, as Camarina (Camarina); (c) nymph of a fountain, as Arethusa (Syracuse).
4. Head or figure of a fabulous personage or half-human monster, as a Gorgon (Neapolis Macedoniae), the Minotaur (Cnossus).
5. Fabulous animal, as Pegasus (Corinth), a griffin (Panticapaeum), the Chimaera (Sicyon).
6. Head or figure of a hero or founder, as Ulysses (Ithaca), the Lesser Ajax (Locri Opuntii), Taras, founder of Tarentum (Tarentum).
7. Objects connected with heroes - animal connected with local hero, as the Calydonian boar or his jaw-bone (Aetolians).
8. Celebrated real or traditional sacred localities, as mountains on which divinities are seated, the labyrinth (Cnossus).
9. Representations connected with the public religious festivals and contests, as a chariot victorious at the Olympic games (Syracuse).
The relation of the types of the obverse and reverse of a coin is a matter requiring careful consideration, since they frequently illustrate one another. As we have before observed, this relation is either that of two independent objects, which are connected only by their reference to the same place, or the one is a kind of complement of the other. Among coins illustrating the former class we may instance the beautiful silver didrachms of Camarina, having on the obverse the head of the river-god Hipparis and on the reverse the nymph of the lake carried over its waters by a swan, and those of Sicyon, having on the obverse the Chimaera and on the reverse a dove. The latter class is capable of being separated into several divisions. When the head of a divinity occurs on the obverse of a coin, the reverse is occupied by an object or objects sacred to that divinity. Thus the common Athenian tetradrachms have on the one side the head of Athene and on the other an owl and an olive-branch; the tetradrachms of the Chalcidians in Macedonia have the head of Apollo and the lyre; and the copper coins of Erythrae have the head of Heracles and his weapons. The same is the case with subjects relating to the heroes: thus there are drachms of the Aetolian League which have on the obverse the head of Atalanta and on the reverse the Calydonian boar, or his jaw-bone and the spear-head with which he was killed. In the same manner the coins of Cnossus, with the Minotaur on the obverse, have on the reverse a plan of the Labyrinth. Besides the two principal devices there are often others of less importance, which, although always sacred, and sometimes symbols of local divinities, are generally indicative of the position of the town, or have some reference to the families of magistrates who used them as badges. Thus, for example, besides such representations as the olive-branch sacred to Athene on the Athenian tetradrachms, as a kind of second device dolphins are frequently seen on coins of maritime places; and almost every series exhibits many symbols which can only be the badges of the magistrates with whose names they occur. Regal coins of this class, except Alexander's, usually bear types of a local character, owing to the small extent of most of the kingdoms, which were rather the territories of a city than considerable states at the period when these coins were issued.
.The second great class - that of coins of kings bearing portraits - is necessarily separate from the first. Religious feeling affords feeling that it would be profane for a mortal to take the clue to the long exclusion of regal portraits - the g p a place always assigned hitherto to the immortals.
| Gold Shekel System. | Babylonian or Persic. | Phoenician. | Aeginetic. | Euboic-Attic. | |
| Double shekel, distater or tetradrachm | 16.80 | 22.40 | 14'92 | 25'20 | 17'44 |
| Shekel, stater or didrachm.. . | 8.40 | II.20 | 7'46 | 12.60 | 8.72 |
| Hemistater or drachm. ... . | 4.20 | 5.60 | 3'73 | 6.30 | 4'36 |
| Third or tetrobol | 2'80 | 3'73 | 2'49 | 4'48 | 2'92 |
| Twelfth or obol. .. ... . | 0.70 | 0'93 | o 62 | I.12 | 0.73 |
Were there any doubt of this, it would be removed by the character of the earliest Greek regal portrait, that of Alexander, which occurs on coins of Lysimachus. This is not the representation of a living personage, but of one who was not only dead but had received a kind of apotheosis, and who, having been already called the son of Zeus Ammon while living, had been treated as a divinity after his death. He is therefore portrayed as a young Zeus Ammon. Probably, however, Alexander would not have been able, even when dead, thus to usurp the place of a divinity upon the coins, had not the Greeks become accustomed to the Oriental " worship " of the sovereign, which he did not discourage. This innovation rapidly produced a complete change; every king of the houses which were raised on the ruins of the Greek empire could place his portrait on the money which he issued, and few neglected to do so, while the sovereigns of Egypt and Syria even assumed divine titles.
The reign of Alexander produced another great change in Greek coinage, very different from that we have noticed. He suppressed the local types almost throughout his empire, and compelled the towns to issue his own money, with some slight difference for mutual distinction. His successors followed the same policy; and thus the coins of this period have a new character. The obverses of regal coins with portraits have the head of the sovereign, which in some few instances gives place to that of his own or his country's tutelary divinity, while figures of the latter sort almost exclusively occupy the reverses. Small symbols, letters, and monograms on the reverses distinguish the towns in this class.
The Graeco-Roman coins begin, at different periods, with the seizure by Rome of the territories of the Greek states. They are almost all bronze; and those in that metal are the m ost characteristic and important. In their types we P YP see a further departure from the religious intention of those of earlier times in the rare admission of representations, not only of eminent persons who had received some kind of apotheosis, such as great poets, but also of others who, although famous, were not, and in some cases probably could not have been, so honoured. We also observe on these coins many types of an allegorical character.
The following principal kinds of types may be specified, in addition to those of the two previous classes. (i) Head or figure of a famous personage who either had received a kind of apotheosis, as Homer (Smyrna), or had not been so honoured, as Herodotus (Halicarnassus) and Lais (Corinth). (2) Pictorial representations, always of a sacred character, although occasionally bordering on caricature. We may instance, as of the latter sort, a very remarkable type representing Athene playing on the double pipe and seeing her distorted face reflected in the water, while Marsyas gazes at her from a rock - a subject illustrating the myth of the invention of that instrument (Apamea Phrygiae). (3) Allegorical types, as Hope, &c., on the coins of Alexandria of Egypt, and many other towns. These were of Greek origin, and owed their popularity to the sculpture executed by Greeks under the empire; but the feeling which rendered such subjects prominent was not that of true Greek art, and they are essentially characteristic of the New Attic school which attained its height at Rome under the early emperors.
There is a class of coins which is always considered as part of the Graeco-Roman, although in some respects distinct. This is the colonial series, struck in Roman coloniae, and having almost always Latin inscriptions. As, however, these coloniae were towns in all parts of the empire, from Emerita in Spain (Merida) to Bostra in Arabia, in the midst of a Greek population and often of Greek origin, their coins help to complete the series of civic money, and, as we might expect, do not very markedly differ from the proper Greek imperial coins except in having Latin inscriptions and showing a preference for Roman types.
We have now to speak of the meaning of the inscriptions of Greek coins. These are either principal or secondary; but the former are always intended when inscriptions are mentioned without qualification, since the secondary ones are non essential. The inscription of civic money is almost always the name of the people by which it was issued, in the genitive plural, as Aohnaiszn on coins of the Athenians, Eypakoeis2n on coins of the Syracusans, or the name of the city in the genitive singular, as Akpatantoe' at Agrigentum. The inscription of regal money is the name, or name and title, of the sovereign in the genitive, as Aaeanapoy, or BAEIAESZE Aaeanapoy, on coins of Alexander the Great. Instead of this genitive an adjective is sometimes found, as ApKa&K6v on early Arcadian coins, 'AX€ElcvSpecos on staters of Alexander of Pherae. This genitive or adjectival form implies a nominative understood, which has been generally supposed to be vop,toµ. " money," or the name of some denomination.
There are a few instances in which a nominative of this kind is expressed on coins -4 [[Aenoe Emi Ehma, "' I]] am the badge of Phaeno (?) or Phanes " on an archaic Ionian coin; Toptynoe To Iiaima, " the striking, struck piece, or type of Gortys "; cIAIETION TO Iiaima Eeyoa Aptypion (silver money), or Komma (" striking " or " struck piece "); and Kotyoe ' 'Xapakthp (" engraving " or " engraved piece "). Seuthes (end of 5th century B.C.) and Cotys (1st century B.C.), semi-barbarian Thracians, afford no evidence for Greek usage. The other instances (all archaic) point to the nominative understood in early times being in reality some word meaning type, or badge. But, if so, this latent nominative was eventually superseded by one meaning " money " or " coin." Thus the staters of Alexander of Pherae are inscribed 'AX€ cvSpecos, his drachms 'AX avnpela. Probably from the 4th century onwards " coin " was always understood. Occasionally the name of the issuing authority is found in the nominative, as Kuµ€ (at Cumae), t u ' eXs (Zancle-Messana), `ABe. o N. /Los on a late coin probably issued by the Athenians in Delos, Tapas at Tarentum. These are by no means always descriptive of the type, but merely a straightforward way of naming the issuing authority. The simple inscriptions of the early period of Greek coinage are under the kings and the Roman empire replaced by elaborate legends, most of which, however, fall under the description above given. A certain number of inscriptions directly describe the type (not merely giving the name of its owner) as EcwaiiroXcs (the goddess of Gela) or NiKa (at Terina). Others, especially in Roman times, indicate the reason of issue, as Iov5aias EaAcaKvias on coins of Judaea under Vespasian, or names of festivals for which the coins were issued. These, however, properly belong to the class of secondary inscriptions which either describe secondary ' types, as Aoaa, " rewards," accompanying the representation of the arms given to the victor in the exergues of Syracusan decadrachms,' or are the names of magistrates or other officers, or in regal coins those of cities, or are those of the engravers of the dies, of whom sometimes two were employed, one for the obverse and the other for the reverse, or are dates. These inscriptions are often but abbreviations or monograms, especially when they indicate cities on the regal coins.
The importance of Greek coins as illustrating the character of contemporary art cannot be easily overrated. They are beyond all other monuments the grammar of Greek art. Their geo graphical and historical range is only limited by Greek Coins. history and the Greek world; as a series they may be called complete; in quality they are usually worthy of a place beside contemporary sculpture, having indeed a more uniform merit; they are sometimes the work of great artists, and there is no question of their authenticity, nor have they suffered from the injurious hand of the restorer. Thus they tell us what other monuments leave untold, filling up gaps in the sequence of works of art, and revealing local schools known from them alone.
The art of coins belongs to the province of relief, which lies between the domains of sculpture and of painting, partaking of the character of both, but most influenced by that which was dominant in each age. Thus in antiquity relief mainly shows the rule of sculpture; in the Renaissance that of painting.
It may be expected that Greek coins will bear the impress of the sister art of sculpture, filling up the gaps in the sequence of examples of the art of which we have remains, telling us somewhat of that which has but a written tradition. Our first duty is to endeavour to place the documents in the best order, separating the geographical from the historical indications, first examining the evidence of local schools, then those of the succession of styles. It is from coins alone that we can discover the existence of great local schools, reflecting the character of the different branches of the Hellenic race. In tracing the changes in these schools we gain a great addition to our ideas of the successive styles, and can detect new examples of those which owe their fame to the leading masters. But in dealing with works in relief we have the advantage due to their intermediate character. In our larger geographical horizon we can trace the character of the successive styles, not of sculpture only, but also of sculpture and painting.
Greek coins clearly indicate three great schools, each with its subordinate groups. The school of central Greece holds the first place, including the northern group centred in Thrace and Macedonia, and the southern in the Peloponnesus, with the outlying special schools of Crete and Cyrene. The Ionian school has its northern group, Ionia, Mysia and Aeolis, and its southern, Rhodes and Caria. Beyond these are certain barbarous and semi-barbarous groups, of which the most important is that of eastern Asia Minor, Persia and Phoenicia, with Cyprus. The school of the West comprises the two groups of Italy and Sicily.
The whole duration of the schools is limited, by the repulse of the Persians and the accession of Alexander, from 480 to 332 B.C. Before this age all is archaic, and it is hard to trace local characteristics. After it, the centralizing policy of the sovereigns and the fall of the free cities destroyed local art. In certain cultivated centres under enlightened kings a local art arose, but it speedily became general, and we have thus to think of a succession of styles 1 The arms on the Syracusan decadrachms represent a reward given to the victors in the Assinarian games (see below).
xix. 28 a during the rest of the life of Greek art. The century and a half of the local schools is significantly the great age of this art.
In the study of each school we have first to determine its character, and then to look in its successive phases for the influence of the great masters of style. Two dangers must be avoided. We must not too sharply divide the sculptors and the painters as if they always were true to the special functions of their arts. It is well to bear in mind that the earliest great painter, Polygnotus, was a portrayer of character, KaMos 7780-ypac/)os, 7)00K6s, as Aristotle calls him, whereas the latest great sculptors represented expression Era, iraOn). Thus since r70os is the special province of sculpture, and Tel, irekOn of painting, sculpture first weighed down the balance, afterwards painting; but it must be remembered that relief can be truer to painting than sculpture in the round, which is more limited by the conditions of the material and mechanical necessities. Our second danger is due to the ease with which local qualities may be ascribed to the influence of a leading style. It is also to be borne in mind that the movement of art in coins was during one period slower than in sculpture - hence an influence more general than particular. Pheidias and Myron do not make their mark so much as Polyclitus. In all cases the direct influence of great masters is to be looked for later than their age.
The school of central Greece in its southern group, comprehending Attica, is remarkable for its widespread extent. It has its colonies in Magna Graecia at Thurium, an Athenian foundation, probably at Terina., and in Macedonia at Amphipolis and Chalcidice under Athenian rule. It alone shows instances comparable to the works of Pheidias, though its most numerous fine works are of the age of Polyclitus and that of Praxiteles and Scopas. Its qualities may be seen by comparison of the same subjects as treated by the other schools and groups. The earliest works are marked more than any others by the qualities of high promise which characterized the Aeginetan marbles - the same dignified self-restraint and calm simplicity. Next we perceive a series strong in style, and showing that lofty dignity, that reposeful embodiment of character, which are the stamp of the works of Pheidias and his contemporaries. The subjects are more remarkable for fidelity, breadth and boldness than for delicacy of execution or elaboration of ornament. Every subject is ideal, even the portrayal of animal form. Thus the character shows us what divinity is intended and the ideality what is intended by the representation of beast or bird. From these works we pass to those which reflect the style of the time of Praxiteles and Scopas, when the influence of painting began to be felt, and art inclined towards feeling and descended to sentiment. Still, to the last, character rules these coins, and the chief difference we see is in the increased love of beauty for its own sake and the fondness for representing movement, not to the exclusion of repose, but by its side. In other respects there is little change except in the finer execution and more ornamental quality of the work. Even when the greatest achievement of the Sicilian school, the female head on the decadrachms of Syracuse, is copied by the Locrians and the Messenians, the larger quality of the school of Greece asserts itself, and the copy is better than the original: there is less artifice and more breadth. The northern group is at first ruder, in the age of Pheidias severer, and afterwards it merges into the greater softness of its southern rival. If it copies, as Larissa may copy Syracuse and Neapolis in Campania, it again asserts its superior simplicity, and we prefer the copy to the original.
The Ionian school lacks the sequence which the rest of the Greek world affords. It is broken by the baneful influence of the Persian dominion, and consequently the best works belong to the earliest and latest part of the period. The earliest coins, of the Aeginetan age, present nothing special; the later, of the time of Praxiteles and Scopas, comprise works not inferior to those of central Greece, and remarkable, like the Western and the Cretan, as the sole records of a school otherwise unknown. They are markedly characterized by the qualities of the style of feeling, that of Praxiteles and Scopas; but more than this, they are the expression of that style in pictorial form.
They represent expression, and they treat it as it could not be treated in sculpture in the. round, portraying locks streaming in the air and flowing draperies. It must be remembered that, while Hellas produced the great sculptors, western Asia Minor bred the great painters after Polygnotus, himself a sculptor in painting rather than a painter. In the native land of Zeuxis, Parrhasius and Apelles we see the evidence of the rule of painting. The technical skill is inferior to that of the West, yet the skill in modelling is far greater, and has no parallel in the medallic work of any other time or country.
The school of the West, if we except such outlying examples of the art of Hellas as those of Thurium and Terina, has its highest expression in Italy, its most characteristic in Sicily. It has distinctive qualities throughout the age. Even in the earlier period we trace a striving after beauty and a delicacy of finish, with a weakness of purpose, that mark the school with an influence increasing to a time long after the extinction of its rivals. At the same time there is a knowledge of the capacity of the materials and the form of the coin and a masterly power of finish, on the whole a completeness of technical skill which is unequalled. The result in the lower subjects is splendid, if wanting in variety, but in the higher we miss the noble achievements of the greater schools. So far there is a general agreement in the northern and southern groups. Yet the Italian shows a nobler and simpler style, with some affinity to that of central Greece, which we look for in vain in Sicily, though we are dazzled by the rich beauty of the magnificent series of coins which marks her wealthiest age. Sicilian art has this apparent advantage, that the great cities, save Syracuse, perished in the Carthaginian invasion, or under the tyranny of the elder Dionysius. Thus we have no important works save of Syracuse during the second half of our period, and cannot judge fully to what this school would have fallen. The key to this exceptional development of Greek art is found in the absence of sculptors or painters in the West, except only Pythagoras of Rhegium at the very beginning of the age, whose influence is thought to be traceable on the money of his native town. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that many of the Sicilian die-engravers, as Phrygillos (to mention one whose signature is actually found on an intaglio) were gem-engravers. The Western art is that of engravers accustomed to minute and decorative work, uninfluenced by sculpture or painting. Their designs will not bear enlargement, which only enhances the charm of those of the other leading schools. Those of the great Syracusan decadrachms are small; those of the minute hectae of Cyzicus are large.
The most important of the lesser schools is the Cretan. Crete, retaining the primitive life of older Hellas, was never truly civilized, but to the last enjoyed the privileges and exhibited the faults of an undeveloped condition. Producing in the age of high art neither sculptor nor painter of renown, the Cretans, to judge from their coins, were copyists of nature or art. At first rude, their work acquires excellence in design, but never in execution. While we see their poor reproductions of the designs of the Peloponnesus, we are amazed by their skill in portraying nature. Their gods are seated in trees with a background of foliage. Their bulls are sketched as they wandered in the meadows. All fitness for the mode of relief, as well as for the material and the shape of the coin, is entirely ignored. Hence a delight in foreshortening, and a free choice of subject with no reference to the circle in which it must be figured. In spite, however, of their skill, the Cretans never attempted the three-quarter face, which is at once the best suited to the surface of a coin and the most trying to the skill of the artist. Yet their work is delightfully fresh, as if done in the open air. There is no idealism, but much life and movement. In a word, the school is naturalistic and picturesque. Its works are of the highest value in the study of Greek art, but as examples of the application of that art to coins they are to be used with caution. Nowhere else do we see the artist so freely copying nature and art, nowhere so unshackled by academic rules, nowhere so little aware of the limitation of his province.
| GREEK COINS] |
It is important to study the mode in which Greek money was coined, because the forms of the pieces thus receive explanation, Mode of and true coins are discriminated from such modern falsifi cations as have been struck, and in some degree from those Coining, which have been cast. Our direct information on the subject is extremely scanty, but we are enabled by careful inference to obtain a very near approximation to the truth on all the most important points.
Of the dies used by the Greeks exceedingly few have been preserved. In the museum at Sofia is an iron die for the reverse of a coin of Philip II. of Macedon; and several Gaulish dies exist. Most ancient dies are of bronze, others of hardened iron or steel. The blanks were, as a rule, first cast, sometimes in a spherical form, sometimes in a form more resembling that assumed by the finished coin. The blank was placed between two dies, the lower, let into an anvil, producing the obverse, the other, let into the end of a bar, producing the reverse. The bar was struck with a hammer, so that the blank received at the same time the impressions of both dies. This general rule was of course often modified; in some parts of the Greek world the dies were hinged together, in others not; and this arrangement of hinging the dies came ih at different times in different places. The machinery of striking was probably much elaborated under the Roman empire, but a collar seems never to have been used in ancient times. Greek dies must usually have worn out very quickly; hence an enormous number of slightly varying representations of the same type. But the idea that it is uncommon to find two Greek coins from the same die is exaggerated. A great number of early Italian and Roman, and a few Greek coins, of large size, were cast in moulds, not struck; and under the empire many coins, originally struck, were reproduced, not always fraudulently, by casting; but the genuine ancient coin of small size is, as an almost invariable rule, struck and not cast.
We may now pass on to notice the Greek coinage of each country, following Eckhel's arrangement. The series begins with Spain, Gaul and Britain, constituting the only Greek Coinage of great class of barbarous Greek coinage. It must not the Far be supposed that the money of the whole class is of West. one general character; on the contrary, it has very many divisions, distinguished by marked peculiarities; it has, however, everywhere one common characteristic - its devices are corrupt copies of those of Greek or Roman coins. The earliest of these barbarous coinages begin with the best imitations of the gold and silver money of Philip II. of Macedon. They probably first appeared to the north of his kingdom, but the gold soon spread as far as Gaul, and even found their way into southern Britain, by which time the original types had almost disappeared through successive degradations. Next in order of time are the silver imitations of Roman coins, the victoriati and denarii of the commonwealth ., which began in Spain and passed into Gaul, being current with the gold money of Greek origin; even in Britain the later coinage shows much Roman influence. The copper money of Spain follows the imitated silver types; that of Gaul and Britain, though showing Roman influence, is more original.
Side by side with these large coinages we find Greek money of colonies in Gaul and Spain, and a far ampler issue of Phoenician coins by the Carthaginian kings and cities Spain. of the Peninsula. The coinage of Hispania, corresponding to the modern Spain and Portugal, was issued during a period of about four centuries, closing in A.D. 41. There are four classes of money, which in the order of their relative antiquity, are Greek, of two groups, Carthaginian, Romano-Iberian and Latin. The first or older group of Greek money (from before c. 350 B.C.) belongs to the widespread currency, which reveals the maritime power of the Ionians of Phocaea. It consists of fractions of the drachm of the Phocaean standard, from the diobol or third downwards. Its later pieces are of the Phocaean colony of Emporiae, founded by the earlier settlement of Massilia. Next in order and in part contemporary, beginning before the middle of the 3rd century B.C., come the drachms of Emporiae, which betray the influence of Siculo-Punic art. Their standard is probably Carthaginian. Of the neighbouring Rhoda, a Rhodian colony, there is similar money. Carthaginian coins of Spain begin in the same period with the issues of the great colony of Gades, following the same weights as the Emporian drachms. These are followed by the issues of the Barcides from 234 to 210 B.e., with Carthaginian types and of Phoenician weight, struck of six denominations, from the hexadrachm to the hemidrachm.
Senor Zobel de Zangroniz has classed them to Spain, on the grounds of provenance and the possession of the silver mines by the Barcide kings, against Muller, who attributes them to Africa. The types are Carthaginian, and present some interesting subjects. The true Iberian currency begins not long after the Punic. The later drachms of Emporiae, ultimately following the weight of the contemporary Roman denarius, have Iberian legends, and form the centre of a group of imitations issued by neighbouring native tribes with their distinctive inscriptions. This coinage ceased when the Roman province was formed in 206 B.C. A little before this date the Romans had begun to introduce Latin money; about this time, however, they took the backward step of permitting native coinages of Latin weight. Probably they found that native legends and types were more welcome to their subjects than those of Rome. Consequently this coinage of Spain under the republic, which lasted until 1 33 B.C., may be almost considered national. The two provinces Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior have this marked difference: the coins of the nearer province, of silver and bronze, have always Iberian inscriptions on the reverse, and are clearly under distinct Roman regulation; those of the farther are apparently of independent origin, and consequently bear Iberian, Phoenician, Libyo-Phoenician and Latin legends, but they are of bronze alone. The interest of these coins lies mainly in their historical and geographical information. They bear the names of tribes, often the same as those of the town of mintage. The art is poor, and lacks the quaint originality and decorative quality of that of Gaul. Ultimately the native money was wholly latinized (133 B.C.), silver was no longer issued, and although the Ulterior continued to have its own coinage, in the Citerior only Emporiae and Saguntum were allowed to strike coins. Political circumstances for a time renewed the coinage under Sertorius (80-72 B.C.) in the modified form of a bilingual currency. The purely Latin issues of the two provinces, and under the empire more largely (from 27 B.C.) of the three, Tarraconensis, Baetica and Lusitania, present little of interest. They closed in the reign of Caligula (A.D. 37-41), though in later times purely Roman money in gold and silver was issued at different times in Hispania down to the establishment of the Visigothic kingdom.
The imperial money of Hispania introduces us to one of the two great classes of provincial coins under the empire; the larger of these was the Greek imperial, bearing Greek inscriptions, the smaller the Roman colonial, with Latin inscriptions, deriving its name from the circumstance that among Greek-speaking nations the coloniae were distinguished by the use of the Latin language on their money. In the coinage of Hispania, issued by a nation adopting Latin for official use, the aspect of the coinage is colonial, though it was not wholly issued by colonies. Many of the Spanish towns belong to the kindred class of municipia; others are neither coloniae nor municipia. In Hispania the obverse of the coin bears, as usual in the colonial class, the head of the emperor or of some imperial personage, the reverse a subject proper to the town. The priest guiding a plough drawn by an ox and a cow is peculiarly proper to a colonia, as portraying the ceremony of describing the walls of the city, so also an ox, with the same reference, the altar of the imperial founder, or, as connected with his cultus, a temple, probably in some cases that of Roma and Augustus. Other types, however, portray the old temples in restored Roman shapes, or indicate directly by fishes, ears of corn and more rarely bunches of grapes, the products of the country. Some original and grotesque types have a markedly local character. The money of Augusta Emerita (Merida) in Lusitania, a colony of pensioners (emiriti), is specially interesting, including as it does the silver issues of P. Carisius, the legatus of Augustus.
The coinage commonly called that of Gaul belongs to the people more properly than to the country, for it comprehends pieces issued by the Gauls or other barbarians from the borders of Macedonia and Illyricum to the English The Gauls. Channel and the Bay of Biscay, through Pannonia, part of Germany, Helvetia and Gaul. It influenced the money of northern Italy, and, crossing the Channel, produced that of Britain, which has its own distinctive features. Four classes of coinage are found in these vast limits. Arranging them by date, they are the money of the Greek colony of Massilia and her dependencies, that of the Gauls and other barbarians of. central and western Europe, that which can be classed to the tribes and chiefs of Gaul and the imperial coinage of that country. The coins of the Gauls and other barbarians outside Gallia include the gold coins known as " rainbow cups " (Regenbogenschaisselchen), which seem to have been an original currency of the tribes inhabiting the Bohemian and Bavarian districts, and other gold and silver coins (the later series bearing names in Latin characters) which circulated in Noricum, Pannonia, Helvetia, Upper Germany, &c.
The great mart of Massilia (Marseilles), founded about 600 B.C. by the Phocaeans, was the centre of the Greek settlements of Gaul Massilia. and northern Spain. Emporiae was her colony, with other nearer towns of inferior fame. Yet Massilia always held the first place, as is proved by the abundance of her money. At first it consisted of Phocaean obols, part of the widespread Western currency already noticed in speaking of Emporiae. These were succeeded by Attic drachms, some of which, about Philip of Macedon's time, are beautiful in style and execution. Their obverse type is the head of Artemis, crowned with olive, at once marking the sacred tree, which had grown from a branch carried by the colonists, so tradition said, with a statue of the goddess, from Ephesus, and proclaiming the value of the olive-groves of Massilia. On the reverse we note the Asiatic lion, common to it and the last colony of Phocaea, the Italian Velia in Lucania. These coins circulated extensively in southern Gaul, and were much imitated by the barbarians on both sides of the Alps.
The Gauls, on their predatory incursions into Greece, must have seized large quantities of the gold coinage circulating there,. but it is probable that the gold staters of Philip (Pl.
I. fig. 14), from which the chief types of the Gaulish gold are derived (Pl. I. fig. 1), had already found their way, independently of such raids, by means of trade along the Danube valley into the districts then inhabited by the Gauls. This is clear from the fact that the gold coins of Alexander were never, his silver rarely, imitated by the Gauls, yet these were in circulation at the time of the incursions. Nor did the influence of Philip's silver travel far west. But his gold money evidently travelled through central Europe to Gallia. The money of Gallia before the complete Roman conquest, to which it may be anterior in its commencement by half a century, belongs in the gold to degraded types of the earlier widespread currency. The undoubted gold and electrum of this imitative class, identified as bearing regal or geographical names, are extremely limited. By far the most interesting coin of the group is the gold piece which bears the name at full length of the brave and unfortunate Vercingetorix. The silver money is comparatively common. The Gauls were ready to copy any types that came in their way, so that in the coinage of Gaul we find imitations of the coinage of Tarentum, Campania, various Spanish cities such as Rhoda, and Roman coins of the republic and early empire. The effect of the silver of Massilia and other Greek colonies is especially noticeable in S. Gaul, and the Roman denarius naturally exerted a strong influence. The bronze money of Gaul is still more abundant than the silver, and has a special interest from its characteristic types. Some of the later local coins are casts of an alloy of copper and tin called potin, but merely a variety of bronze. The Roman coins recall those of Hispania, but are limited to a few coloniae. They range in date from Antony and Augustus to Claudius. The best-known coins of this time, those struck at the colony of Copia Lugdunum (Lyons) with the " Altar of Roma and Augustus," belong, however, strictly speaking, to the Roman series. The coins of Nemausus (Nimes), commemorating the conquest of Egypt in the crocodile chained to a palm-tree, were sometimes made in the shape of the hind-leg of an animal, evidently for dedication in the sacred fountain, from the mud of which all the specimens of this variety are derived.
The ancient coinage of Britain is the child of that of Gaul, retaining the marks of its parentage, yet with characters of its own due to independent growth. Money first came in Britain. trade by the easiest sea-passage, and, once established in Kent, gradually spread north and west, until the age of the earlier Roman wars, when it was issued in Yorkshire, probably in Lincolnshire, and in a territory of which the northern limits are marked by the counties of Norfolk, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford, Gloucester and Somerset. The oldest coins are gold imitations of Philip's staters, which, whether struck in Gaul or Britain, had a circulation on the British side of the Channel. They are the prototypes of all later money. From a careful comparison of their weights with those of later coins, and from a study of the gradual degradation of the types, Evans places the origin of the coinage between zoo and 150 B.C. Its close may be placed about the middle of the 1st century A.D. The inscribed coins occupy the last century of this period, being contemporary with uninscribed ones. The uninscribed coins are of gold, silver, bronze and tin, the gold being by far the most common. There is small variety in the types, nearly all in gold and silver, and some in copper, presenting in more or less degraded form the original Gaulish type for gold. It may be suspected that all new types and the extremely barbarous descendant of the tin series are of the age of the inscribed coins, or but little earlier. The Channel Islands are remarkable for a peculiar coinage of billon, a very base silver, presenting the usual types modified by Gaulish grotesqueness. The place of this group in the British series is merely accidental; in character as in geography it is Gaulish.
The inscribed coins are evidently in most cases of chiefs, though it is certain that one town (Verulamium) and some tribes had the right of striking money. The most interesting coins are those of known chiefs and their families - of Commius, probably the active prince mentioned by Caesar, of Dubnovellaunus, mentioned in the famous Ancyra inscription, which has been called the will of Augustus, and most of all the large and interesting series of Cunobelinus, Shakespeare's Cymbeline (P1. I. fig. 2), his brother Epaticcus, and his father Tasciovanus. It is evident from the coins and historical evidence collected by Evans that Tasciovanus had a long reign. His chief town, as we learn from his money, was Verulamium. His coins are in three metals, repeat the traditional types, and present new ones, some showing a distinctly Roman influence. The money of Epaticcus is scanty, but that of Cunobelinus, with Camulodunum (Colchester) for his chief town, is even more abundant than his father's, indicating a second long reign, and having the same general characteristics. The gold shows a modification of the traditional type, the silver and bronze the free action of Roman influence and a remarkable progress in art. With the death of this prince not long before A.D. 43 the bulk of the British coinage probably ceases, none being known of his sons, Adminius, Togodumnus and the more famous Caractacus, but the coins of the Iceni may have continued as late as A.D. 50, and the Brigantes issued silver coins as late as the time of Cartimandua, whose name is partly preserved on one of them.
The ancient coins of Italy occupy the next place. They appear to have been struck during a period of more than 500 years, the oldest being probably of the beginning of the 6th century B.C. and the latest somewhat anterior to the time of Julius Caesar. The larger number, however, are of the age before the great extension of Roman power, which soon led to the use of Roman money almost throughout Italy. There are two great classes, which may be called the proper Italian and the Graeco-Italian; but many coins present peculiarities of both. The proper Italian coins are of gold, silver and bronze. Of these, the gold coins are extremely rare, and can never have been struck in any large numbers. The silver are comparatively common, but the bronze are very numerous and characteristic. A few of the earliest gold and silver coins of Etruria have a perfectly plain reverse. The most remarkable bronze coins of this class are of the kind called aes grave, most of which were the early proper coinage of Rome, although others are known to have been xix. 876. Greek Coins.
| PLATE II. |
| 16 |
| 18 |
| 21 |
4 7 12 15 22 27 6 14 14 ,0 23 26 issued by other Italian cities. These are very thick coins, some of which are of great size, while most have a rude appearance. They are always cast, and were preceded by formless lumps of bronze, known as aes rude, which were not properly a statecoinage. The designs of the Italian coins are generally, if not always, of Greek origin, although the influence of the native mythology may be sometimes traced. The inscriptions are in Latin, Oscan or Etruscan, and follow a native orthography; sometimes on the earlier coins they are retrograde. The art of this class is generally poor, or even barbarous. The denominations are common to Greek money, except in the case of the bronze, which follows a native system. Of this system the early proper Roman coins afford the best known examples. The GraecoItalian coins are of gold, silver and bronze. The silver and bronze are very common, and the gold comparatively so, although struck by few states or cities. A number of the cities of S. Italy issued in the 6th century coins with an incuse design on the reverse repeating with slight modifications the design of the obverse. The designs are of Greek origin, although here, as in the proper Italian coins, but less markedly, native influence can be detected. This influence is evident in the frequent occurrence of types symbolically representing rivers, showing a bias towards the old nature-worship, and still more in the use of Latin inscriptions, with half-Italian forms of the letters on coins otherwise Greek. Of the best art of ancient Italian money we have already spoken, and we shall have occasion to mention some of its most beautiful examples. The denominations of the gold and silver coins are unquestionably derived from those of Greece, according to the weight of the Attic talent, the heaviest gold piece being the stater or 3000th part of that talent; in silver there are few tetradrachms, the didrachms are extremely common, and smaller denominations are usually not rare. We thus learn that the silver currency was chiefly of didrachms, smaller pieces being less used, and larger ones scarcely used at all. It is important here to notice that the interchange of the native or Italian bronze coinage with the Greek silver coinage led to a double standard, silver and bronze. The bronze standard, as might be suspected, was of Italian origin, the silver of foreign introduction.
The peculiarity of the Italian bronze is that in its oldest cast form it was of such weight as to show the absence in some parts of the country of silver equivalents. It was long after silver had been introduced everywhere, with struck bronze equivalents, before the heavy coinage (aes grave) went out of circulation. The silver money is at first remarkable for the evidence it affords of its extraneous character in presenting two standards. Afterwards it becomes equivalent to the bronze, or supplies equivalent pieces, and is quite regular. The original condition of the Italian currencies is best illustrated by the money of Etruria in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. Etruria, be it remembered, was an early goal of oriental commerce by sea. At the great mart of Populonia, and in the country round, we find, besides a few gold coins, not only silver coins of two different foreign standards, the Euboic and the so-called Persic, but also cast aes grave and later struck bronze pieces. Without discussing the origin of these various currencies it is enough to note that they bear witness to the effects of a widely-spread commerce, and show that here was the meeting-point of the native system and of foreign ones.
In Italy the aes grave long ruled. Originally it was libral, the principal coin being the as, nominally of the weight of the Italic pound of 273 grammes; this, at least, is the weight of the earliest Roman coinage. On the other hand, the aes grave of some places in E. Italy, as Hatria and Ariminum, is heavier. The successive reductions of the as belong to Roman numismatics, and it is only necessary here to add that they affected the local bronze coinages as Italy fell under the rule of the republic. The silver coinages, on the other hand, survived for a longer time throughout the Greek cities. Apart from the complicated silver coinage of Etruria, and from the Roman issues, we find in central Italy a few silver coins (the unit of 1.18 grammes being the equivalent, at the rate of 1 250, of a bronze as of i 1-10 oz.) and a large silver coinage of didrachms and smaller denominations in lower Italy.
This was chiefly issued by the wealthy marts which dotted the coasts of Campania, Calabria, Lucania and the Bruttii. We find Etruscan inscriptions on the coins of Etruria, and Oscan on some of those of middle and lower Italy, where they are eclipsed in number and style by the Greek issues. The chief silver standards of S. Italy are (I) the Campanian (with a didrachm of 7.41 grammes); (2) the Italic, with a stater of 8.16 grammes, divided into thirds; and (3) the Tarentine, with a stater of 8.32 grammes, divided into halves. The Tarentine stater was known as voi, os. The independent coinage of Italy, with one exception, came to an end in 89 B.C.
Beginning in the north of Italy, the first coins that strike us are those of Populonia in Etruria. The silver money of this place is generally of the peculiar fabric in which the reverse is left perfectly plain. The aes grave of upper and middle Italy was largely dominated by the issues of the Roman mints at Rome and Capua (to be treated later). Samnium shows us a curious revival of native silver money after the local coinage of the Italian towns had been almost abolished by Rome. It was the result of the Social or Marsic War of the confederate tribes, who struck for Italy against the Roman supremacy during the years between 90 and 88 B.C. The coins present the head of Italia, and reverse types, of which the most striking are warriors, varying in number, taking an oath over a sacrificial pig, and a bull for Italy goring the prostrate wolf of Rome. The inscriptions are Oscan or Latin.
Certain of the Greek towns of Italy deserve special mention for the splendour of their coinage - beautiful in style and delicate in execution. In Campania (leaving the Romano-Campanian Gree k for later notice) the two most interesting currencies are of Cumae and Neapolis, the modern Naples. Cumae presents money of the archaic and the early fine style, in which lastwe first observe the peculiar naïveté of western Greek art before it had attained elaboration. The abundant silver coins of Neapolis are of the early and the late fine periods and of the decline. The types are usually the head of the siren Parthenope, more rarely Athene; the reverse presents the man-headed bull common on Campanian money, and possibly meant for the river-god Acheloiis, father of the Sirens. The bronze money is of good style, and age has beautified it with the rich blue or green patina due to the sulphurous soil. When we reach Calabria the Greek money startles us in astonishing wealth of beauty in the currency of the opulent and luxurious mart of Tarentum, second only to Syracuse in the whole West, of all the main periods of art, and including in the age of its present prosperity and its fall (the time of the contest with Rome) the most abundant gold issues of any Greek city. The gold money of Tarentum (see Plate) is a delight to the eye, with the varied beauty of its gem-like types, which, while they show the gem-engraver's art, prove the medallist's knowledge of the rich but opaque metallic material. Several heads of divinities adorn these coins, and the chief reverse types relate to the legendary founder, Taras, son of Poseidon. Always a youth, he appears as a charioteer, perhaps as a horseman, and riding on a dolphin - the familiar Tarentine type. The most remarkable subject represents him with outstretched arms praying to Poseidon, probably in allusion to the Tarentines' appeal to Sparta for aid about 346 B.C. (P1. I. fig. 3). The silver coinage is chiefly of didrachms of reduced Corinthian weight. The prevalent type is Taras seated on a dolphin; in the earliest money the type is single, and repeated incuse on the reverse; afterwards this subject occupies the reverse, and, itself a charming composition, is delightfully varied. On the early fine coins the people or demos, personified generally as a youth, often holding a spindle, occupies the obverse, but gives place in the 4th century to a horseman in various attitudes, affording great scope to the engraver's skill; probably he is Taras himself, save when he is a full-grown warrior. These representations illustrate the famed horsemanship of the Tarentines, and refer to contests and games which were probably local. Heraclea in Lucania shows us didrachms of the fine age, with heads of Athene and subjects connected with Heracles: the contest with the Nemean lion is most skilfully treated, and the series is very characteristic of the gemengraver's art. The powerful city of Metapontum begins with early coins having the incuse reverse, and then displays a long series stretching down to the decline of art. The constant type, which recurs with the heraldic instinct of the West, is the ear of barley, reminding us of the " golden harvest " (xpvvouv 9Fpos) which the Metapontines dedicated at Delphi. Like the Taren(ine badge, it first occupies the obverse, then the reverse, balanced by a charming series of heads of divinities. Persephone is the most appropriate counterpart; we also note heads of Concordia (`Oµovoaa) and Hygieia, marked by an ingenuous grace peculiar to the early fine work of the Western school, of Leucippus the founder as a helmeted warrior (occurring on a rare tetradrachm and the usual didrachms), and many other types of unusual variety and originality of conception.
Poseidonia issued coins from the archaic period (beginning with the usual incuse fabric) to its capture by the Lucanians early in the 4th century. Its successor Paestum began to coin about 300, and was allowed to keep its mint open ever after 89 B.C., when all other local mints in Italy were closed, until the time of Tiberius.
The ancient Sybaris, famous for her luxury, has left archaic coins; she was, however, destroyed by Croton in 510 B.C. The Athenian colony of Thurium eventually arose near the site of the old Sybaris in 443, and immediately began to issue a splendid series of coins. Not only is the face of the coin occupied by the head of Athene, and the great currency, as at Athens, of tetradrachms, but the severe beauty of the style points to the direct influence of the art of central Greece (P1. I. fig. 4). The head of Athene is covered by a helmet adorned first with a wreath of olive and then a splendid figure of the sea-monster Scylla. The reverse shows a bull butting (Bouptos), in a strikingly ideal form. Probably the obverse type affords the nearest reflection of the masterpiece of Pheidias, or at least the closest following of his style.
Velia, the last colony of Phocaea, whose citizens sailed away to the far west rather than submit to the Persian tyrant (544 B.C.), shows coins from its foundation. The pieces of fine work witness to an Asiatic origin in the types of the lion, devouring the stag or as a single device, while the obverse displays the head of Athene so much in favour in Magna Graecia. The style, which lacks strength but not beauty, is Italian, and we see no trace of the pictorial qualities of Ionian art, which indeed had not taken its mature form when the exiles left the mother country.
The Bruttii are the first native Italians whom we find striking a fair Greek coinage. Their gold and silver is of late style, the gold presenting the head of Poseidon and Thetis on a sea-horse, the silver the head of Thetis and the figure of Poseidon, both with other subjects. Caulonia has early coins running down to the early fine period, mythologically interesting in type, and the later with a beautifully designed stag on the reverse. For Croton the ruling type is the tripod. The eagle occurs on the obverse and the tripod on the reverse. The bird of Zeus is inferior to that at Agrigentum, as this again is inferior to the eagle of Elis. We note also beautiful types of Heracles seated, one of marvellously delicate work, on the reverse of which Apollo aims an arrow at the Python from behind his tripod - a remarkable composition. The other Heracles types form a most interesting series of recollections, " memory sketches," of a famous statue, the pose of which recalls the so-called Theseus of the Parthenon, while the obverse presents the head of the Hera Lacinia worshipped on the promontory close by. The latest coins, like the parallel ones of Metapontum, are weak and pretty. The money of the Locri Epizephyrii affords two curious types of reverse, Eirene seated, of fine style, with the legend Eiphnh Aokpszn, and the later yet more remarkable subject of Roma seated while Pistis crowns her, the legend being Pszma IlIETIE Aokpszn. There are beautiful coins of the little known town of Pandosia, bearing the head of the nymph Pandosia (?); the reverse has the river Crathis, a splendid head of the Lacinian Hera, and Pan.
Rhegium was closely connected with Messene in Sicily opposite, and thus the great Sicilian currency of tetradrachms prevails. Anaxilaus, tyrant of Rhegium from 494 to 476 B.C., early in his rule acquired Messene through Samian adventurers. The coins of both towns at first present Samian types, and then, the Samians having been expelled, Anaxilaus commemorates his Olympic victory in the mule-car. The same type appears at Messene and last longer. In both cases the reverse bears a running hare, an animal which Anaxilaus introduced into Sicily. The later 5th-century coinage of Rhegium shows a seated figure of the Rhegine Demos, and a fine head of Apollo, by the engraver Hippocrates.
The little-known town of Terina is illustrious as having produced a series of silver didrachms which, on the whole, is the most beautiful in Italy (Pl. I. fig. 5). The obverse has the head of a goddess, who is portrayed winged on the reverse - a wonderfully fine subject, well conceived and most delicately executed in a variety of different attitudes, some recalling the Victories which adorn the balustrade of the temple of Wingless Victory at Athens. Very curiously, the money of Terina begins with an archaic coin which bears on the reverse the named figure of a Wingless Victory, surrounded by the olive-wreath.
The coinage of Sicily is Greek. The Hellenic and Carthaginian colonies of the coast left the barbarous natives undisturbed in the inland country, and both issued Greek money, the Sicily, Punic with a tincture of Phoenician style. The coinage ranges from the 6th century B.C. until the subjugation of the island by the Romans, after which a few cities struck colonial or imperial coins for a short space. The marked periods are those of the preponderance of Syracuse from 480 to 212 B.C., interrupted by the great Carthaginian wars, which were fatal to the cities of the southern coast. The coinage is in gold and electrum, mainly issued at Syracuse, in silver and in bronze. The standard is Attic, except the earliest money of the Chalcidian colonies Himera, Zancle (Messene), and Naxos, which follows the Aeginetan weight. The metrology of Sicily has a distinct. relation to that of Italy. Here also there is a double standard, silver and bronze, and in consequence an intrusive silver coin, differing but little from the obol, weighing o 87 instead of .73 grammes, the silver equivalent of the bronze litra, whose name it borrows. The litra in bronze was the Sicilian pound of 218 grammes, equal to half an Attic mina, and to two-thirds of the Roman libra or pound. So important was the litra in Sicily that the silver litra supplanted the obol, and the didrachm was sometimes called a stater of ten litrae, the decadrachm a piece of fifty litrae, pentecontalitron. The leading coin is the tetradrachm, not, as in Italy, the didrachm.
The Sicilian money is of extremely careful artistic work, not unfrequently even in the case of bronze allowing for a more rapid execution of the die; and the highest technical excellence is attained. The art is that of the southern branch of the great Western school, generally more skilful than the art of southern Italy, but less varied. The earlier fine work has a naïve beauty peculiar to the West and almost confined to Sicily; all that follows is evidently gem-engravers' work. These coins are remarkable for the frequency of artists' signatures, which for the short period of highest skill are almost universal on the larger silver money of Syracuse, and occur less frequently on that of the other great cities. Among these artists may be mentioned Exacestidas (at Camarina), Eucleidas, Eumenes, Phrygillus (at Syracuse), Euaenetus (Syracuse, Camarina, Catana), Cimon (Messana, Syracuse Pl. I. figs. 7, 8), Heracleidas and Choirion (Catana). As in Italy, the decline is more rapid than elsewhere in the Greek world, in consequence of the inherent weakness of the style; but it is in part due to the calamities of the island, as of lower Italy.
The fame won by the tyranni and other leading aristocrats of Sicily in the great national contests of Hellas, in the race with the quadriga, the mule-car and the horse, led to the introduction and supremacy of types commemorating these victories, probably in most cases those achieved at Olympia. It is obvious that no success could be so appropriately figured on the coinage; the charioteer or the horseman, not the city, was the victor, but at the same time the renown of the city was indissolubly connected with the citizen who won it. Hence these types are almost confined to states ruled by tyranni or oligarchies; outside Sicily they are practically only found at Rhegium when it was closely connected with Sicily, at Cyrene, in the money of Philip II. of Macedon and at Olynthus and in Euboea. The horseman is not a frequent type; the mule-car is limited to Messene (and Rhegium); but the quadriga becomes the stereotyped subject for the reverse of the great Sicilian tetradrachms - the bulk of the coinage - and only escapes heraldic sameness by a charming variety in the details. In the age of finest art a divinity of the city takes, in Homeric guise, the place of the charioteer, or Victory herself so wins the contest; commonly she hovers above, about to crown the charioteer or the horses. Yet more interesting are the types connected with nature-worship, especially those portraying river-gods in the form of a manheaded bull, or a youth with the budding horns of a calf, or in the shape of a dog, and also the subjects of the nymphs of fountains. These types occur on either side of the coin. On nearly all, one side (in early times the reverse, later the obverse) is held by the head of a divinity, Persephone and Athene taking the first place.
The leading position which Syracuse held in the island makes it proper to notice her splendid currency first, the finest for knowledge of the materials, for skill in suitably filling the space, and for delicacy of execution in the whole Sy range of Greek money, though we miss the noble simplicity of Greece, the strong feeling of western Asia Minor, and the simple picturesqueness of Crete. Syracuse was founded in 734 B.C. by Archias of Corinth, an origin which, remembered on both sides, served her well in later history. In the 6th century, perhaps while still under the oligarchy of the Geomori, she issued her most archaic silver money, which, primitive as it is, gives promise of the care of the later coinage, and begins the agonistic types, thus indicating some early victory at a great Hellenic contest. Gelo, tyrant of Gela, won the chariot race at Olympia in 488 B.C., secured Syracuse in 485 B.C., and, when the Carthaginians, probably by agreement with Xerxes, invaded Sicily, utterly routed them at the great battle of Himera (480 B.C.), the Salamis of the West. These events find their record in the issue and subjects of his Syracusan money, which, however, was struck, as usual in that age, in the name of the people. The chariot type is varied, for Victory appears hovering above the charioteer, about to crown the horses, and the coins issued after the great battle show the lion of Libya beneath the car in the exergue (Pl. I. fig. 6). These last pieces are fixed in date by the famous story how Gelo's wife Demarete, having gained favourable terms for the vanquished Carthaginians, was presented by them with a hundred talents of gold, by means of which were coined the great silver pieces of fifty litrae or ten drachms, which were called after her Demareteia. They bear the head of Victory, crowned with laurel, and the quadriga and lion. The battle of Himera and the death of Gelo (478 B.C.) fix the date of these remarkable coins, which close the archaic series of Syracuse and give us a fixed point in Greek art, at about 479 B.C.
Hiero I. (478-466 B.C.), the brother and successor of Gelo, continues the same types, alluding, as Head well remarks (loc. cit.), to his great victory over the Etruscans off Cumae (474 B.C.), by the marine monster in the exergue of the reverse which denotes the vanquished maritime power. It is to be noted that as Gelo introduces the Victory in the chariot type, so in the horseman type we now first see Victory crowning the rider. Gelo had won an Olympic victory in the four-horse contest, Hiero in the horse-race, though he also won with the four horses in the Pythian games. With Hiero's money we say farewell to archaic art. The female heads on the obverse now have the eye in profile and show beauty and variety, and the horses are even exceptionally represented in rapid action. With the short rule of Thrasybulus, the last brother of the house, it came to an end, and the age of the democracy (466-406 B.C.) began. The victories by land and sea of Gelo and Hiero had established the power of the city on a sure basis, and fifty years of prosperity followed. To the earlier part of this age belong the beautiful transitional coins in which the female heads are marked by a youthful simplicity of beauty combined with fanciful and even fantastic treatment of the hair; the reverses remain extremely severe. Towards the close of this age, beginning about 430, there are very fine works, the first signed coins, with the old dignity yet with greater freedom of style, the horses of the quadriga in rapid movement.
The victory of Syracuse in the contest with Athens was the occasion for the reissue of ten-drachm pieces, commonly but erroneously called medallions. On the reverses of these. are a victorious chariot and a panoply of arms, representing the prizes offered at the games by which the Syracusans commemorated the defeat of the Athenians on the Assinarus in 413. On the obverses is the head of the local nymph Arethusa. The designs are by the artists Cimon (Pl. I. fig. 8), Euaenetus, and a third who is nameless. These pieces continued to be issued down to about 360 B.C. through the Dionysian period. Contemporary with them are numerous splendid tetradrachms - signed and unsigned - as well as the first gold and bronze issued by Syracuse. The interference of Dion in Syracusan politics (357-353) was marked by the introduction of an electrum coinage, and of a silver didrachm of Corinthian type, corresponding in weight to the tridrachm of Corinth, and with the same types, the head of Athena and the Pegasus. The Dionysian dynasty closed in anarchy, until Syracuse appealed to Corinth, and Timoleon was sent to restore order (344 B.C.). .His advent marks an epoch in Sicilian coinage. He restored the gold coinage and issued various silver coins which allude to Corinth and to liberty, and under his influence many small cities in Sicily awoke to political life as members of Timoleon's league and issued a scanty but interesting bronze coinage. The Syracusan democracy was overthrown in 317 B.C.
and the city seized by Agathocles (317-289 B.C.), the worst of the tyrants of Syracuse. In the course of his reign he adopted the royal style, and his coins, a reflection of earlier work, give his name first without and then with the title king - a double innovation. The most interesting of his coins are those which bear allusions to his campaign in Africa.
The tyrant Hicetas (288-280 B.C.) and the next ruler, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus (278-275 B.C.), continue the coinage, Pyrrhus issuing money in the name of the Syracusans and also striking his own pieces. The departure of Pyrrhus led to the establishment by Hiero II. (c. 270-216 B.C.) of a dynasty which, so long as he ruled, restored the ancient prosperity and preponderance of the rule of his namesake. At first content with inscribing his name alone, he soon not only takes the title of king, conferred on him in the early years of his reign, but also places his portrait on the money. Of his time is the beautiful portrait of his queen Philistis. The money of the short reign of Hieronymus (215214 B.C.) and of the brief democracy which fell before the Romans (214-212 B.C.) close the independent series of this great city. But her name still appears in bronze money issued after the conquest.
Taking the rest of the money of Sicily in alphabetical order, we first note a very fine bronze coin bearing a beautiful female head, perhaps that of Sicilia, crowned with myrtle, and a lyre, et which belongs to the time of Timoleon's league. This coin Ci i o is conjecturally attributed to Adranum. The first great S i cily. town is Agrigentum, represented by archaic, transitional, and fine coins, the fine series ending with the overthrow of the city by the Carthaginians in 406 B.C. - a blow from which it never recovered. The usual types are the eagle and the fresh-water crab, but in the age of finest art we see two eagles devouring a hare (cf. Aeschylus, Agam. 109 seq.) and a victorious chariot; these occur in the rare decadrachm (Pl. I. fig. 9), on which the river-god Acragas himself drives the car, and the tetradrachms. The eagle is superior to that of Croton, inferior to that of Elis. Many of the bronze coins are of good work. The type most worthy of note is the head of a river-god, with the name Acragas, which was that of the local stream, and on the reverse an eagle standing on an Ionic capital, the Olympic turning-post. The success of Agrigentum at the games is attested by Pindar, while Virgil (Aen. iii. 704), Gratius (Cyneg. 526) and Silius Italicus (xiv. 2 ro) mention its ancient renown for horses.
The money of Camarina is of especial beauty and interest. Camarina struck but few coins before the year of liberation (461), soon after which was issued a didrachm having on the obverse a helmet upon a round shield and on the reverse a pair of greaves, between which is a dwarf palm. This piece is followed by tetradrachms and didrachms of the best period, most beautiful in style, and varying a little from difference of age. The tetradrachms bear on the obverse the head of Heracles in the lion's skin, and on the reverse Athena as a victor at the Olympic games in a quadriga. It was Athena, protector of the city (iroXcaoxe IlaXX6s), whose sacred grove was made more illustrious by the success of Psaumis. The didrachms have on the obverse the head of a river-god, portrayed as a young man with small horns and with wet hair. Of the two rivers of Camarina, the Oanus and the Hipparis, the Hipparis is here represented, for in one case the name is given on the coin. Pindar seems to show the same preference, for, while he merely mentions the Oanus (lroTaµ6v. .. "S2avcv), he speaks of the sacred channels by which the Hipparis watered the city (eeµvous 6 X ET6s, "Iirirapcs afro, a.pSec arpar6v). On the reverse the nymph Camarina ('t2Keavot OiyaTep. Ka t capiva) is seen carried across her lake (Ey X wpiav. .. Xi,uvav) by a swan swimming with expanded wings, while she aids it by spreading her veil in the manner of a sail. Some of these didrachms have on either side, around the chief device, fresh-water fishes. The series of Catana comprises fine archaic tetradrachms and others of the time of the best art. The archaic tetradrachms have the types of a river in the form of a man-headed bull and of the figure of Victory, of a type remarkably advanced for the time at which they were struck. From 476 to 461, under the name of Aetna, its coinage is represented especially by a unique tetradrachm (Pl. I. fig. 10), with a wonderful head of Silenus, and Zeus as the god of the volcano holding a thunderbolt and a sceptre made of a vine-branch; before him is an eagle perched on one of the Aetnaean pines. The head of Apollo succeeds, with for reverse the victorious quadriga, in one case passing the turning-post, an Ionic column. Historically interesting is a small silver coin issued by Catana and Leontini in alliance between 405 and 403. Eryx towards the end of the 5th century produced some rare tetradrachms on which Eros is represented at the knees of his mother, asking for the dove which she holds.
Gela is represented by coins of which the archaic tetradrachms must be especially mentioned. They have on the obverse the forepart of the river-god Gelas, whence the city took its nar_ie. The Gelas is represented as a bull, having the face of a bearded man. On the reverse is a victorious quadriga, in some examples represented passing an Ionic column, as on coins of Catana. A beautiful tetradrachm represents the city goddess (Sosipolis) placing a wreath on the head of the monstrous river-god. A little later is a tetradrachm which has types of the head of the Gelas as a young man horned, surrounded by three fishes, and on the reverse Victory in a biga with a wreath above. Small gold coins, and a didrachm representing a Geloan cavalryman spearing an Athenian hoplite, are among the coins issued shortly before the fall of Gela in 405. The money of Himera is of great interest. The oldest didrachms of Himera, which probably began in the 6th century B.C., bear on the obverse a cock and on the reverse an incuse pattern; later, a hen. During the time that Thero of Agrigentum held the city (before 480 to 472), the crab of Agrigentum appears on the didrachms. The transitional tetradr