MONEY OF ATTICA. 



489 



The Attic silver was of acknowledged purity, and circulated very 

 extensively ; the Athenian merchants, particularly in their com- 

 mercial dealings with the more distant and barbarous nations, appear 

 frequently to have made their payments in it. The barbarians being 

 once impressed with these notions of its purity, the government of 

 Athens in all probability was afraid materially to change that style 

 and appearance, by which their money was known and valued among 

 these people. A similar proceeding in the state of Venice throws 

 the strongest light on the practice of the Athenians. The Venetian 

 sechin is perhaps the most unseemly of the coins of modern Europe ; 

 it has long been however the current gold of the Turkish empire, in 

 which its purity is universally and justly esteemed ; any change in 

 its appearance on the part of the Venetian government would have 

 tended to create distrust. 



Xenophon says, that the silver of Attica in foreign countries was 

 more valuable than the coin of other nations, because it was finer, and 

 consequently was worth more than its own weight of any other silver, 

 that had more alloy in it. (Davenant. See also the treatise, no'pw.) 

 And Zeno (Diog. L. in v.) in his allusion to the rudeness of the Attic 

 tetradrachms, praises them at the same time, as superior in purity of 

 metal to other coins, which were more beautiful in form and design : — 



k,(pa<rxs os Tovg [A.tv tw acroXoixuv Xoyoug xai cnrr,pTi(rfJuevovq opoioug avtxk tu : 

 dpyvplco ru AXt^avfioivu' evocp&aXfcovg plv xal 7repiy£y^ajy^svovg 9 xaQa xal to 

 vopi(T[/,ct i ov$&v <Je tuvtu (2sXTi6vag' rovg de rovvavrlov acpu/xolov roig Arrixotg 

 TeTpa.fycx.xfj.oig, hxvj plv xexofx^evovg zocl <roXoixovg 9 Ka.QtXx.tiv pevTa TtoXXoixig' 



Tag xixaXXiy^acp^evag x&Psig. " He said, that the polished discourses of 

 the learned resembled the Alexandrian money ; they were beautiful 

 to look at, and finished all round ; but not the better on that account. 

 Those of an opposite class were like the Attic tetradrachms ; there 

 was a rude and plain stamp about them ; but they often outweighed 

 the discourses of a more ornamented kind." It is evident from the 

 nature of the commercial transactions between the Athenians and the 

 inhabitants of some of the shores of the Euxine, that a great 

 quantity of Attic money must have been given to the latter, in ex- 

 change for what the Athenians most wanted ; namely, corn. " No 



