122 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[June 1, 1895. 



found everywhere, and in the sixth century gold and silver 

 came into use — a change associated with the proverbial 

 name of Croesus the Lydian. The Greek cities of the 

 Asiatic coast and in Europe readily adopted the invention 

 of the Lydians, but the scarcity of gold in Europe almost 

 entirely limited the coinage of European Greece to silver. 

 Thus, while some of the Greek cities of Asia Minor 

 continued to coin electrum, silver was the metal 

 employed in the other cities of that continent and in 

 Europe. Gold was a monopoly of Persia until the end of 

 the fifth century. Although the ancients understood the 

 art of debasing and plating, the purity of their coinage 

 in these early times is remarkable. As to the other 

 metals, a very short notice must suffice. We hear of iron 

 coins in Sparta, and tin coins at one period in Syracuse ; 

 but none of these have come down to us. Bronze was 

 introduced in the fourth century, and remained the usual 

 metal for the smaller denommations. The increasing 

 wealth of the Greek cities now enabled them to issue gold, 

 and Philip II of Macedon (359-336 b.o.) and his son, 

 Alexander the Great (336-323 b.c), struck enormous 

 quantities of gold as well as silver coins. One other 

 metal, it is interesting to note, was used in the second 

 century by a few of the kings of the remote district of 

 Bactria (corresponding to south-western Turkestan), to 

 which the ambition of Alexander had carried the arms and 

 civilization of Greece. This was an alloy of copper and 

 nickel, in almost the same proportions as are employed by 

 several modern states. The discovery of " kupfernickel " 

 in the eighteenth century was thus anticipated by some 

 two thousand years. 



The unit of coinage was called the stater. As different 

 cities coined on different standards, this varied considerably 

 in weight. The question of standards, far from settled as 

 it is, cannot be discussed here. It must suffice to mention, 

 with regard to denominations, that the stater was divided 

 into two (exceptionally three) drachms, and the drachm into 

 six' (ihols. Larger denominations were the di-stater or 

 tetradrachm, the octadrachm, and the decadrachni, of four, 

 eight, and ten drachms respectively. 



Tradition attributes the first striking of coins in Greece 

 proper to Pheidon, King of Argos; but what he actually 

 did in this direction is a subject of much dispute. We 

 may, however, be certain that coinage was first adopted in 

 Greece about the end of the seventh century. From 

 Greece proper, with the colonization of Italy and Sicily, 

 the art of coinage spread to the western Mediterranean in 

 the middle of the sixth century. The earliest Italian 

 coinage is of a peculiar fabric, the reverse design being the 

 same, or nearly the same, as the obverse, but represented 

 in intaglio (incuse) instead of in relief (Figs. 3 and 4). In 

 Sicily no such peculiarity is found. 



Tlie fifth century witnessed the transition from archaism 

 to artistic perfection, from the stage in which the artist 

 produced a sometimes grotesque but always honest attempt 

 to represent his object, to that in which he obtained perfect 

 mastery over his material and tools. Owing to the dis- 

 appearance of the incuse square or circle, both sides of the 

 coin became flat, and the design on both stood out nearly 

 equally in high relief — a relief much too high from the 

 modern point of view, according to which, coins should be 

 flat and easily packed together. But to the height of the 

 relief is due much of the effect of ancient coins, which 

 present u^, in fact, with a sculptured design, not a flat 

 outlined pattern. 



Although most states obeyed the general tendency, and 

 produced better executed work as time went on and skill 

 increased, it is noticeable that some of the greatest com- 

 mercial cities adhered to certain archaisms of style or 



fabric, probably because the scope of their commercial 

 relations forbade any innovations which might damage the 

 genuine appearance of their money in the eyes of the less 

 civilized peoples with whom they traded. Thus the coins 

 of Athens (Fig. 6), the chief centre of Greek art, are rude 

 to excess in comparison with the contemporary productions 

 of other cities (Pig. 12,. And the important city of Cyzicus, 

 on the present Sea of Marmora, continued down to the 

 middle of the fourth century to put no design on the 

 reverses of its numerous electrum staters, the obverses 

 of which were, nevertheless, executed in the best style 

 (Fig. 14). 



By the fourth century, the art of coinage had reached 

 its highest point. Nothing is more generally admired 

 than the famous " medallions " of Syracuse, struck in the 

 late fifth and early fourth centuries. These large 

 decadrachms, of which we give an example (Fig. 8), are 

 perhaps the most showy pieces of antiquity — indeed, it is 

 doubtful whether they circulated as ordinary coins, and 

 were not rather show pieces, or money struck for prizes. 

 The chariot and four, and the prize set of arms — helmet, 

 cuirass, shield, and greaves, — represented in the exergiU', 

 seem to bear out this latter opinion. The games to which 

 the type obviously refers may have been those instituted by 

 the Syracusans in the flush of their victory over the 

 Athenians on the Assinaros in b.c. 413. The main design, 

 however, had been anticipated more than sixty years before, 

 on a coin to which we shall have to refer on a later occasion. 

 Many of these medallions bear the names of the artists who 

 designed them — Kimon and Euainetos — names which 

 would otherwise have been totally forgotten, though their 

 work takes an easy place in the first rank. Fine as these 

 coins of Syracuse are, they are still only typical of a great 

 number of equally beautiful pieces struck, not only in 

 Sicily and South Italy (Figs. 9 and 10), but in widely 

 distant places such as Elis (Fig. 12) and Amphipolis in 

 Macedonia (Fig. 13). 



The coins of the best period are successful because they 

 combine nobleness and simplicity of conception with 

 perfect execution. But from this time onwards the latter 

 qr.ality becomes ascendant, and as skill of hand is power- 

 less to produce good work unless the mind supplies good 

 ideas, towards the end of the fourth century the decline of 

 art in coins, as in all else, has thoroughly set in. The 

 influence of Philip and Alexander of Macedon was decisive, 

 not only in politics, but in all forms of human activity ; 

 and the personal element which they introduced became 

 dominant in art. The designs of coins had hitherto, as a 

 rule, been connected with subjects relating to the state as 

 a whole, its religion, its athletics or its commerce ; the 

 successors of Alexander used the royal prerogative of 

 coinage to commemorate themselves and their own interests. 

 Hence the beginning of portraiture. Philip and Alexander 

 themselves had adhered to religious or athletic types (Figs. 

 15 — 18) ; but the head of Heracles on the latter' s coins 

 (Fig. 18) was only an idealized representation of Alexander 

 conceived as Heracles. And his successors, going a step 

 further, put the portraits, first of Alexander, with some 

 divine attribute (Fig. 19), and then of themselves with 

 similar attributes (Fig. 20) or as human I'ulers, where 

 formerly only the gods, or at least impersonal subjects of 

 state-importance, had been seen. The name of the ruler, 

 with the epithet "king," also replaced the name of the 

 people, and the place of mintage was indicated, if at all, 

 only by a small symbol or initial letters in the field of the 

 coin. The imagination which characterized the earlier 

 designs is replaced by a realism which, it is true, produces 

 most marvellous representations of individual men, but 

 which is, nevertheless, equalled by the art of other countries, 



