ISLAND OF PATMOS. 55 
to attribute them to PHILIP THE SECOND, the 
father of Alexander the Great, simply from the 
circumstance of the gold mines being disco- 
vered during his time, and of which he was the 
possessor 3 . There is, however, much greater 
probability that they were struck during the 
reign of PHILIP ARID^US, and for the following 
reasons : fast, that some of them have the 
legend BAZ!AEnZ4>IAIPPOY, a title not found 
upon Greek medals before the time of Alexander 
the Great 4 ; secondly, that in these medals the 
art of coining was carried to a degree of per- 
fection unknown in any former period, and 
to which it never afterwards attained. The 
medals of the Macedonian kings before the age 
of Alexander have no resemblance, whether in 
form, in weight, in substance, or in the style 
of their fabrication, to those which bear the 
name of PHILIP: the only examples to be 
compared with them, in beauty and perfection 
of workmanship, are the medals of Lysimachus; 
and even these are in a certain degree inferior. 
Many of the medals of Alexander the Great, 
(3) Pellerin Recueil de Medailles de Rois, |>. 9. Paris, 1762. 
(4) Hardouin and Frcelich ascribed all the medals with this legend 
to PHILIP ARIDJEUS. Eckhel maintained a. different opinion. See 
Doctrina Num. Vet. Pars I. vol. II. p. 94. Pindobon. 1794. 
