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country from which the coin proceeded, upon its language, upon its ancient mode of writing, upon its wish to be remembered hereafter, and above all, upon the leading subjects of its heroic history and mythological creed,—may be suggested to any philosophic mind by the contemplation of a single coin. The common representative of value among the ancients, becomes. among the moderns the representative of antiquity itself.

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It will be acknowledged that, if the coin in question is one which was struck by the countrymen and contemporaries of Thucydides and Plato, the subjects thus suggested are worthy of more than ordinary consideration. An unquestionable, and in some cases an uninjured, specimen of the school of art to which Phidias and Praxiteles belonged, cannot, surely, be regarded with indifference. It was truly observed by Payne Knight, that 'when we compare the smallness and insignificance of some of 'the states of Greece, with the exquisite beauty and elegance, and costly refinement displayed in their money, the com'mon drudge of retail traffic in the lowest stages of society,'we cannot but admit that there is scarcely anything more wonderful in the history of the world.' And yet, as if they thought little of it themselves, we find extremely few records of the name of their numismatic artists. Even in the distant colonies the characteristic beauty of the national coinage was carefully maintained. The beautiful drachma of Tyras, a colony on the farther side of the Black Sea, not far from the modern Odessa, will bear comparison with the choicest coins of the mother country, both in regard to execution and design.

The study of coins is the study of history from contemporaneous documents. We learn more respecting the religious worship and the political relations of the independent States of Greece from inscriptions and coins, than from the formal compositions of the poet and the historian. Of the wealthy and refined cities of Magna Græcia what should we know, if it were not for their monuments, and especially their coins? Pæstum would be known to us merely as a sort of Chiswick,

'Biferique rosaria Pæsti,'—

were it not for the majestic remains of her temples, and the long series of her beautiful coins. In these we have unquestionable proof that she rivalled the greatest cities of Magna Græcia in population, in wealth, in commerce, and in the arts, and that she flourished down to a later period than any of them. It is almost entirely from coins and inscriptions that we know anything respecting the commercial importance and the long duration of the kingdom of Bosporus, better known in modern

times as the peninsula of Kertsch. This little peninsula from its geographical advantages became a wealthy and populous State, and, in fact, it was for a long succession of years the chief granary of Athens. We learn from their coins that although for a while the kingdom of Bosporus was annexed to that of Pontus, its dynasts were afterwards, as socii populi Romani, left free, and remained so until the reign of Constantine.

It must be remembered, too, that these metallic monuments are more safely to be depended upon than the written documents which constitute what is received as History in the common acceptation of the term. No other historical document is so little liable to the suspicion of having been tampered with. None is so safe from the effects of the vanity, or the caprice, or the ignorance of private individuals; none so free from the mystification so often caused by the inaccuracy of a careless transcriber. The study of Greek coins is the study of the most authentic history in the most exquisite productions of contem-poraneous art. The best and most beautiful characteristics of a Greek coin must be seen in order to be appreciated. There is a softness and roundness of outline, and a freedom of design, which makes us forget the rigidity of the material. When the coin was struck, little regard was paid either to the shape of the lump of metal, or to the just position of the die upon its surface. This and other indications of negligence, the cracked edge, perhaps, and the abnormal outline, which form a most remarkable contrast with the prim regularity of modern coin,— conspire to set off in more captivating beauty the device that occupies the field.

The varieties of Greek coinage seem to be almost without limit. Not only had every State its own coinage, but in every coinage there were a vast number of varieties; and the power of designing and striking money was exercised even by the smallest islands and towns, such as Salamis or Ooce in Egina. Five hundred distinct types are assigned to Tarentum; and in the extensive cabinet of Sicilian medals belonging to the Prince of Torremuzza it is said that scarcely two could be produced which were exactly similar. When it is remembered, then, that in Mionnet's list we have no fewer than three hundred kings, and one thousand cities, it is clear that the Greek numismatist has a field before him which he may live to a good old age without exhausting. The geographical range extends over the whole of the orbis 'veteribus notus.' There was a Greek coinage wherever there was a Greek colony, from the coast of Spain to Bactria, and from the African coast to the Cimmerian Bosporus. A rude imitation of it may be found still further,—

'Seu pedibus Parthos sequimur, seu classe Britannos.'

Upon Parthian coins the monarch is represented, with a Greek legend, as holding out that arrow at the mention of which the Roman soldier grew pale: and on the British coin we recognise a barbarous imitation of the Greek types of the ear of corn, the biga, and the figure of Victory hovering over the horses. We recognise also the Greek fabric, the convexity on the one side and the concavity on the other. The coinage of Britain attained its highest point under Cunobelin, the Cymbeline of Shakspeare, and it was then superseded by Roman money. Whether this evident acquaintance with Greek coinage was derived from Gaul, or from Phoenician merchants, is a question into which we have no need to enter.

If we travel eastward, we find the Syrian coins of the Seleucidæ rivalling the coinage of Greece itself in point of excellence of design and execution. The coinage of Bactria bore Greek devices and legends, but it sank by degrees into mere barbarism. The Persians issued a coinage in imitation of the Greek as early as the time of Dareius the son of Hystaspes. The conquest of Lydia gave rise to this early advance in the march of improvement, and hence the earlier Darics were more especially an imitation of the money of the Lydians. An imitation of the coinage of Greece has been discovered even in India. Upon money issued by a king of Upper and Central India, by name Chandra, in the sixth century of the Christian era, we find certain figures, which were pronounced by no less an authority than Payne Knight to be imitations of the Greek. A number of these coins, in gold, were discovered on the banks of the Hoogley river, ten miles above Calcutta, in 1783.*

The study of Greek coins, in short, is, as Colonel Leake has observed, one of the most instructive and interesting chapters in the history of ancient civilisation.' All who have pursued the study have found it so; and as the opportunities for pursuing it become more easy of attainment, so will Colonel Leake's assertion be more generally acquiesced in. Private collections of coins-of which our island can boast a few that she may well be proud of must necessarily be even less available than private collections of books, and for the most part useful to none but the owners. With regard to a National collection, every facility ought to be afforded to the student for examination and comparison, consistently with the safety of the coins, and their preservation from injury. The number of those who are ad

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* Marsden's Numismata Orientalia, p. 726.

mitted to handle a coin must necessarily be small. At the Bibliothèque at Paris a selection in glass cases is offered to the inspection of all visitors; and many are found desirous to profit by this simple provision, who would otherwise be unacquainted with the beauty of numismatic art, and ignorant of the vast amount of historical information which may be so easily extracted from the numismata' themselves. At the same time the study of coins, if pursued to any extent, must necessarily be a home-study. National collections may be useful for consultation and comparison, but the student who would acquire a sound and practical knowledge of his subject must have his coins on the table before him, and his books on the shelf at his elbow. Whatever coins are too costly for his means, must be represented by a copy. We do not recommend an engraving of the coin, for in no one department has the art of engraving failed so much in attaining its object as in that of Numismatics. Infinitely preferable to engravings are casts. Mionnet compiled his laborious catalogue with the aid of sulphur casts. But modern art has discovered a process by which the cast is made of metal, of course more durable than sulphur, and in some cases not distinguishable from the coin itself. After an impression of the coin has been taken upon gutta-percha which, provided that it be done carefully, is a process entirely harmless-electrotype representations of that coin may be produced to almost any extent. Of equal importance is the still more recent application of photography to these purposes. Phoebus may be employed to take his own likeness, whether it be from the radiate head of Rhodes, or from the beautiful profile on a rare coin of Cnossus in Crete. In fact, these discoveries form a new era in the science. The costly monuments of ancient art are reproduced with all their characteristic beauties, as well as with their defects; and the student who possesses a cabinet well stored with such fac-similes may, with Colonel Leake's assistance, derive as much practical knowledge from his researches as if he had purchased the Devonshire or the Pembroke collection en masse.

That the Greeks were the inventors of the art of coining there seems to be but little doubt. Not a single coin, nor the mention of a single coin, of any other nation, prior to the date of the early coinage of the Greeks, has come down to The earliest Hebrew coin is of the date of the Maccabees. From the nineteenth century before Christ, when Abraham weighed to Ephron four hundred shekels of silver, 'current 'money with the merchant,' as the price of the cave of Mach

us.

pelah*, until the middle of the second century B. C., when Antiochus Sidetes gave permission to Simon Maccabeus to coin money with his own stamp,'t there is no indication that the shekel was anything more than a denomination of weight, as its name implies. Of Egypt and of Assyria we possess many archæological remains, but we do not possess any trace whatever of a coinage. In regard to Egypt, indeed, hieroglyphical discovery has established the fact that no coinage whatever existed in that country, until it was introduced by the successors of Alexander.

With regard to the origin of coinage, we see no reason to question the commonly-received opinion as stated by Colonel Leake, that the early use of silver among the Greeks for purposes of commerce, was in the shape of oßeλOKOL - pins or pieces of wire ‡ — of which a certain number by conventional usage went to the Spaxun, or handful. About the tenth Olympiad (B. c. 740), the people of the island Egina — which, although forming as yet a part of the kingdom of Argos, was populous, and powerful in ships and commerce, and in fact the greatest emporium in Greece-began to use solid lumps of silver, corresponding in weight to the Spayun, or handful, of BioKOL. It is very probable, as Colonel Leake observes, that as six oẞónot went to make up the newly-coined Spayun, so six BENGKOL had hitherto constituted the old-fashioned handful. The new drachma would doubtless be found very convenient for purposes of currency, provided that its weight and standard of metal might be depended upon; and for this purpose a public pledge or assurance was given, both to the Eginetans and to strangers, by the impressing it with a stamp or public seal, which was the accredited mode of giving effect to a compact from the earliest ages. The earliest coins were literally pieces of sealed metal. A lump of silver weighing about ninety-five grains was placed upon a sort of anvil, having three or four pyramidal projections, and was then struck with a seal or die, bearing the device of a sea-tortoise.§ The credit of this invention was given to a certain king of Argos by name Pheidon,

* Gen. xxiii. 16.

† 1 Macc. xv. 6.

In the time of Marco Polo a similar currency, in gold, was used in a certain province in China. The gold was formed into small rods, and from these were cut certain lengths, which passed according to their weight. (Marsden's Marco Polo, vol. ii. p. 38.)

A mode of coinage almost as simple is practised in India in modern times, as will appear from the following account of the inaugurative ceremonial of a Rajah of the Tipperahs: A piece of mango'tree, about four feet in length, was half-buried in the ground, in the

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