425 
exhibited. On the obverse of this is a bold figure of the 
head of Apollo encircled with a laurel wreath, or, as some 
writers suppose, the head of young Hercules ; and on the 
reverse a chariot drawn by two horses, and underneath the 
name of Philip. These coins were very soon extensively 
imitated by the native inhabitants of Gaul, and in course of 
time these imitations came over to Britain and were again 
imitated in this country. Thus the gold Greek Philippus 
was the origin of the coinage in Gaul; and the Gaulish 
imitations of it, there is no doubt, formed the first coins from 
which the Ancient Britons took their copy. The variety of 
the figures upon them, and the changes which mark them, 
enable us to form a pretty accurate opinion as to the time 
when they were issued; as the greater the divergence from 
the prototype, the later probably will be the coin. 
If, on the contrary, the art of coining was unknown in 
Britain until the time of Caesar, the coins must either have 
been struck on the Eoman model or on that of the later 
Gaulish coinage, in which nearly all resemblance of the 
original Macedonian types had been lost, and which shows 
also unmistakable signs of Roman influence. Again, we 
should have a coinage of the metals then in use — gold, silver, 
and bronze — and not one of gold only, as it would have been 
had it originated at an early period of the Gaulish coinage. 
Now let us see what evidence the coins themselves afford 
upon this point. We find coins of gold of a type which 
never occurs on the inferior metals, and which, though 
occasionally found in France, are of much more frequent 
occurrence in England, and are therefore, in all probability, 
of British origin, and on which the laureate head and the 
charioteer in the biga can at once be identified, though they 
are both considerably modified, and these are, without doubt, 
the earliest of the British series. Now as regards their date. 
The death of Philip II. took place B.C. 336, and we may 
