820 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1895. 



occurs in various classic writings of the time of Ca'sar, and yearly trib- 

 ute is noted by Dion Oassius, Eutropius, Biodorus, Strabo, and others. 

 Doctor Evans remarks : 



It may indeed be urged that these writers are all of thein later than Cfpsar; but 

 it is to be observed that the information upon which some of them wrote was derived 

 from earlier sources, and that not one of tliem treats the presence of gold and silver 

 in this country as of recent date, or apjiears to have had the remotest conception 

 that in the time of Julius Ca-sar it was destitute of them.' 



Commerce- between the Gauls and Britons existed long anterior to 

 the i^eriod of the Eoman invasion, and a native coinage existed also 

 among the Gauls. The intercourse of the Phoenicians and Britons was 

 also of an early date, and the founding of the Greek colony of Massilia 

 (Marseilles) — usually placed at about B. C. 600 — also aided in civilizing 

 that part of Gaul, where the neighboring Gauls no doubt first learned 

 of the usages of civilized life, the effect of such acquirements gradually 

 extending toward the channel settlements, and finally across and 

 among the British tribes. From this center of civilization, says Doctor 

 Evans, the Gauls became acquainted with the art of coining. 



The early silver coins of Massilia (and none in gold are known) were occasionally 

 imitated in the surrounding country ; but when, about the year B. C. 365, the gold 

 mines of Crenides (or Philippi) were acquired l)y Philip II of Macedon, and worked 

 so as to produce about £250,000 worth of gold per annum, the general currency of 

 gold coins, which had btsfore been of very limited extent, became much more exten- 

 sive, and the stater of Philip — the regale numisme of Horace — became everywhere 

 diffused, and seems at once to have been seized on by the barbarians who came in 

 contact witb Greek civilization as an object of. imitation. In Gaul this was 

 especially the case, and the whole of the gold coinage of that country may be said 

 to consist of imitation, more or less rude and degenerate, of the Macedonian 

 Philippus.2 



Doctor Evans further remarks : 



Another reason for the adoption of the Philippus as the model for imitation in the 

 Gaulish coinage has been found in the probability that when lirennus plundered 

 Greece, B. C. 279, he carried away a great treasure of these coins, which thus became 

 the gold currency of Gaul. This would, however, have had more effect in Pannonia, 

 from whence the army of Brennus came, than in the more western Gaul. 



On plate 46, fig. 1, is reproduced a type of the Philippus, the lau- 

 reate head upon the obverse representing Apollo (or, according to 

 some, of young Hercules), while on the reverse is shown a charioteer 

 in a biga, with the name of Philip below a horizontal line in the 

 exergue. 



The biga on these coins of Philippus II refers to the victories of 

 Philip at Olympia. The resemblance to Apollo may have been sug- 

 gested by some relation to that identification of Hercules and the sun 

 which prevailed in Asia at a later time, and possibly as early as that of 



' " The Coins of the Ancient Britons." London : 1864-1890, p. 20. 

 2Idem.,p.24. 



