Photograph from Mary Mills Patrick 



MILKING A GOAT OUTSIDE A CUSTOMER'S HOUSE 



A goat can thrive where cattle would starve and sheep would hunger. Europeans be- 

 lieve that goat milk, if used unboiled, will cause Malta fever, but the Asia Minor natives 

 drink it fresh and warm. 



was the Wall Street of the town — where 

 the excitement of trade ran so high that 

 a market-master was necessary to con- 

 trol it. 



THE FIRST COINS 



The question naturally arises : "How 

 was business carried on, by barter or by 

 some primitive kind of banking system ?" 



Our chief testimony on this point is 

 furnished by the coins of the period, for 

 coinage originated in Asia Minor, and as 

 early as the time of the Wise Men coins 

 were in common use. There are very 

 few specimens of that age now in ex- 

 istence, yet some are preserved in the 

 British Museum and in other collections. 



The first coins were made of electrum, 

 which is a mixture of gold and silver and 

 which was found in natural form in the 

 mountains of Lydia. There were no in- 

 scriptions on them, but emblems of re- 

 ligious worship and also of trade. The 

 connection of the coins with religion may 

 have been because everything in that time 

 was associated with religion. Possibly 

 the priests in the temples were the first 



to invent coins. On the other hand, the 

 association may simply indicate that the 

 two things about which the people cared 

 most were religion and trade. 



Of this type the coin of Cyzicus, on 

 the Marmora, is well known. It bears 

 the figure of a tunny fish decorated with 

 a sacrificial fillet. The great trade of 

 Cyzicus at that time was in tunny fish, 

 which belongs to the mackerel family 

 and is found in the Sea of Marmora. 

 The fillet expressed the religious ac- 

 knowledgment. 



The coins were very primitive in ap- 

 pearance and irregular in shape, some 

 round and some oblong, and all of them 

 much thicker than coins of a later day. 



HOW THE CULTURE OP A PAST AGE IS 

 STUDIED 



The age of the Wise Men was an age 

 of a certain type of culture. There are 

 two conditions necessary for culture : one 

 is freedom, and the other is a fair degree 

 of material comfort. As Homer says in 

 the Odyssey: 



53 



