June 1, 1895.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



123 



while the art of Greek coinage in the preceding period 

 stands unapproached. Some of the most striking of these 

 portraits were, strange to say, produced in the distant land 

 of Bactria, to which we have already referred (Fig. 22). 



But the vast mass of Greek coinage from the third century 

 ceases to possess an interest anywhere approaching that of 

 earlier days. The types become formalized and stereotyped. 

 The great issues of Philip and Alexander (from the gold 

 coins of the former our own early British coins were by a 

 slow process of degeneration developed ) remained for some 

 time the chief currency of the ancient world. Next to them 

 for importance rank the issues of Lysimachus, King of 

 Thrace, of Athens and Rhodes, and of the Kings of Syria, 

 Pergamus and Egypt. But all alilre are less interesting to 

 the artist than to the minute historian who studies the 

 sequence of rulers and monetary magistrates. The work 

 is usually poor and hastily executed ; in fact the pieces 

 have almost ceased to be works of art, and are mechanically 

 reproduced. In time the influence of Rome begins to 

 be felt, to the destruction of whatever artistic purpose 

 lingers still. The Roman rulers struck coins (Fig. 21) 

 in the Asiatic provinces which bore, it is true, a type 

 relating to a religious subject (the cista or chest connected 

 with the mystic worship of the wine-god Dionysos, from 

 which the coins were called cistophori), but the coins 

 were no longer closely associated with the life of a par- 

 ticular city which issued them. It was the lively interest 

 of the Greek in the afl'airs of his own city which had 

 enabled him to produce the finest art. In the universal 

 empire of Rome the individual Greek could have no part, 

 and the intellectual, as well as the political, centre of the 

 world was now shifted to the banks of the Tiber. 



In this brief sketch of the coinage of Greece we have 

 dwelt mainly on the external form which that coinage 

 assumed. There is one question, however, which we 

 must not be content to pass over with a mere allusion, 

 and that is the actual significance of the types before the 

 period in which, as we have seen, the influence of the 

 ruler became supreme. Before the introduction of money, 

 types bearing some resemblance to those afterwards found 

 on coins occur on the engraved gems which were used to 

 set the seal of ownership on articles of value. Now the 

 state, in issuing coinage, would wish to mark it with some 

 stamp representative of itself and its right to make such 

 issues ; and as the Greeks were an essentially religious 

 people, it was natural that they should regard the chief 

 deity of a city as its representative. Hence it is that a 

 very large proportion of coin-types have a religious signi- 

 ficance. The human figure or face is, however, the last 

 thing in the delineation of which art attains mastery, p.nd 

 consequently the early artists were content to represent 

 god or goddess by some symbol or attribute, rather than in 

 person. A stag represents the huntress Artemis ; a thunder- 

 bolt Zeus, the god of the sky ; a lyre or a tripod (Fig. 3) 

 Apollo, the god of music and prophecy. But this is far 

 from exhausting the nature of coin-types. Those natural 

 objects which were especially characteristic of a place and 

 its surroundings would, of course, suggest themselves ; 

 a maritime city, whose chief interest was fishing or 

 seafaring, would engrave on its money perhaps a ship, 

 perhaps a dolphin, a sea-shell, or a cuttle-fish. Lions, 

 goats, or boars (Fig. 5), would figure where these animals 

 were plentiful. The wild celery grows in such large 

 quantities near Selinus, in Sicily, as to give its name to the 

 town, and its leaf figures on the coins, just as does the 

 fig-leaf on the coins of Camirus in Rhodes. The particular 

 article of commerce for which a city was famous might be 

 suggested by its coin-type ; thus we find trade in wine 

 represented by a wine-jar or wine-cup. Silphium (Ferula 



timiitand or, perhaps, Thapsia (/ummifcra) was a plant much 

 cultivated on the Barca plateau, and, therefore, was the 

 almost constant type of the coins of this district of 

 Northern Africa. Some coins of Barca bear the silphium 

 plant with a gazelle couched before it or browsing on its 

 shoots. On another (Fig. 11) the silphium is seen from 

 above, and in the field are a jerboa, a chameleon, and an 

 owl. Another little piece of local colour is found at 

 Metapontum, in South Italy, where, on one coin the 

 " praying mantis " {Mantis n'lii/iosa) is seen perched on a 

 leaf beside the main type (an ear of corn, cp. Fig. 4). Much 

 has been written to prove that all types are in their origin 

 commercial, and that, for instance, the occurrence of a boar 

 denotes a special line in hams. Neither this view, nor the 

 view that all types have a religious significance, expresses 

 the whole truth. The fact is, that a city famous for its 

 wine would naturally regard the wiue-god as its chief deity, 

 and, therefore, represent him, or something connected with 

 him, on its medium of exchange. The proof of this is 

 that as soon as the Greeks became able to represent the deity 

 in question satisfactorily, the article of commerce over the 

 production of which that deity presided occupied, as a rule, a 

 subordinate position on the coins. Athens was famous for 

 its olives, which were under the protection of Athena ; and 

 on the later coins the head of Athena occupies the obverse 

 or more important side, while the reverse bears the owl 

 (symbolic of Athena's wisdom), the olive-wreath, and the 

 jar of olive-oil (Fig. 23.) A city situated on a river of 

 importance often adopted as type the representation of the 

 I'iver-god (conceived as a bull — significant of the stream's 

 tumult and force — or a monster with the body of a bull 

 and the head of a man, or again, a horned man). Still, 

 many a coin-type remains less than half explained. Why 

 have we on the coins of Lampsacus, in Mysia, a com- 

 bination of two heads, looking different ways, on a single 

 neck ■? Why a cock on the coins of Himera, in Sicily ? It 

 may be connected with Asclepios, the physician -god, for 

 there were healing-springs in the neighbourhood ; or, 

 though this is less probable, the " bird of day " may be a 

 punning allusion to the city-name, which only differs 

 slightly from the Greek word for day (/lemcra). The use 

 of punning types was by no means uncommon. Thus, 

 on coins of Phocsea, in Asia Minor, we have (Fig. 2) 

 the seal (plwkei ; on coins of Rhodes, a rose (rluMlon). 

 Other types, again, allude to some event connected with 

 the history of a city ; thus, on some coins of Thebes, 

 an infant Heracles, strangling the snakes which attacked 

 him in his cradle, symbolizes the struggle with the 

 old-established power of Sparta, in which Thebes (where 

 Heracles was worshipped) was victorious. Or the victory 

 won at the Olympian games by the ruler of some 

 Sicilian town would be commemorated by a chariot 

 drawn by horses, on the heads of which, or on the 

 head of the charioteer who guides them, the goddess of 

 Victory places a wreath. One of the most remarkable of 

 Greek coins (Fig. 7) w-is struck just after, and may allude 

 to, the great victory of the Greeks over the Carthaginians 

 at Himera in the same year (-180 b.c.) in which the Persians 

 were defeated at Salamis. On the reverse is a female head 

 (perhaps that of the goddess of Victory herself) wreathed 

 with laurel, and surrounded by the nane of the people 

 (the Syracusans). Around swim four dolphins, expressing, 

 with a symbolism characteristic of the time, the fact that 

 the sea surrounds the island of Orcygia, which is the centre 

 of Syracuse, and which the goddess represented has under 

 her protection. 



But the discussion of the types of Greek coins might be 

 prolonged indefinitely. For further information on this 

 and the other matters with which we have dealt so slightly. 



