52 THE LYCIAN COINS. 



disconnect the language from the tombs and the 

 coins. We feel that the people who spoke the 

 language were the authors both of the archi- 

 tecture and the coinage ; and these facts we fairly 

 assume as data, because they are the data on 

 which any one must argue who would prove the 

 language to be Lycian ; and it seems altogether 

 beyond belief, that if this particular language had 

 been the language of the country for many cen- 

 turies, it should have been first employed as a 

 language of inscription by persons who did not 

 speak it, and who, we have historical authority 

 for saying, were strangers to the country. Hero- 

 dotus distinctly states, of one district at any rate, 

 that the early inhabitants were all but annihilated 

 by the Persian invasion; and that those inha- 

 biting Lycia in his time, and calling themselves 

 Xanthians, were, with the exception of certain 

 families, foreigners. Now let us for a moment 

 bring the question of coins to bear upon this 

 portion of our inquiry. These coins apparently 

 belong to a certain series of cities, many of which 

 are determined by their resemblance to the 

 Greek names, and all of which, as far as we have 

 any knowledge of them, were situated along the 

 coast of Lycia, or the bordering country of Persea 



