1851.] Remarks on some lately-discovered Roman Gold Coins. 381 



memorials as have escaped the wreck of time. To the elucidation of 

 history, and the more remarkable events of those earlier ages, there 

 can be few more valuable memorials than coins or medals. The very 

 image of those great personages who acted such conspicuous parts in 

 the Drama of History are here brought at once to the eye and it ought 

 to form the study and desire of every one to preserve, if possible, such 

 interesting records, which so faithfully illustrate the events and lives of 

 persons long passed away. To us who are in so unexampled a position 

 with respect to India, the discovery of any Roman relic here is a 

 matter of no ordinary interest — more especially when we find in this 

 country coins which commemorate the expedition of a Roman Emperor 

 into Britain some seventeen centuries ago ! Britain was styled " the 

 inhospitable" — " the barbarous country" and one " divided from the 

 rest of the World" and was eventually abandoned by the Emperor 

 Honorius, 420, A. D. as a colony not worth retaining possession of.* 

 Records which attest to such facts must possess a delightful interest 

 for every one who reflects for one moment on the position of England 

 at the present day and the fallen Roman empire. " If all our histo- 

 rians were lost" says Gibbon, " medals, inscriptions and other monu- 

 ments would be sufficient to record the travels of Hadrian," and the 

 same author elsewhere remarks, alluding to a virtuous action of Antoni- 

 nus Pius, (one of whose coins is in the present collection) wherein he 

 displays a remarkable instauce of his regard for the welfare of Rome : 

 " Without the help of medals and inscriptions we should be ignorant 

 of this fact so honourable to the memory of Pius." 



We should be more fortunate were we in possession of a greater 

 mass of materials than those left us by the labours of the Greek and 



* See the curious passage in Plutarch relating to Caesar's expedition into Britain. 

 " But his expedition into Britain discovered the most daring spirit of enterprize. 

 For he was the first who entered the Western ocean with a fleet, and embarking his 

 troops on the Atlantic, carried war iuto an island whose very existence was 

 doubted. Some writers bad represented it so incredibly large that others contested 

 its being, and considered both the name and the thing as a fiction. Yet Caesar 

 attempted to conquer it, and to extend the Roman empire beyond the bounds of 

 the habitable world. He sailed thither twice from the opposite coast in Gaul, and 

 fought many battles, by which the Britons suffered more than the Romans gained ; 

 for there was nothing worth taking from a people who were so poor, and lived in 

 so much wretchedness/' — Pint. Life of Caesar. Lang. Trans. 



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