XXV111 
PEOCEEDINGS OE THE 
parts of Britain, however, there does not appear to have ever been 
an inscribed coinage. Among the gold coins, and not nnfrequently 
among those in the other metals, there is a great general simi¬ 
larity of type on one or both faces. On the obverse there is 
usually a wreath in some form or other, and on the reverse a horse 
more or less distinctly portrayed; and this circumstance at once 
points to a derivation of the different varieties of type from some 
common source. 
Two questions are therefore suggested: 1. What is this prototype 
or source ? And 2. What are the laws which seem to govern its 
modifications ? 
Fortunately the prototype of many of the derivations is readily 
to be recognized in the coins like Figs. 2 and 3 in the Plate, which 
are found over the whole of the south-east of Britain, though they 
would appear to be most abundant in Kent. The parentage of this 
British prototype can also readily be traced. There can be no doubt 
of its being a descendant from the Philippus—the gold stater of 
Philip II. of Macedon. 
Nor is it difficult to see in what manner a type from so remote a 
country as Macedonia travelled to Britain. The close intercourse 
between this country and Gaul has already been mentioned, and in 
Gaul a coinage had existed for several centuries b.c. The knowledge 
of the art of coining seems to have been introduced from Massilia— 
now Marseilles—a Phocsean colony founded about b.c. 600, and from 
other Greek colonies founded in the south of France. The silver 
coins of Massilia were at an early period imitated in the surrounding 
districts, but until the latter half of the fourth century b.c. the 
currency of gold coins among the Greeks was limited in extent. 
About b.c. 356, however, the gold mines of Crenides or Philippi 
were acquired by Philip II., and were soon made to yield an amount 
of gold equivalent to nearly £250,000 per annum. An enormous 
extension of the gold coinage was a natural result, and the staters 
of Philip became current all along the coasts of the Mediterranean, 
and were soon seized on as objects for imitation by those who, like 
the Gauls of southern France, were on the borders of Greek 
civilization. The extension northwards through Gaul must soon 
have followed, and the transition thence into Britain was a natural 
consequence. 
Though intermediate types exist between the Philippus, Fig. 1, 
and what is termed the British prototype, Figs. 2 and 3, it is need¬ 
less to adduce them, the modifications which the types have under¬ 
gone not preventing their original identity from being apparent, 
though they are by no means inconsiderable in extent. 
On the obverse the laureate head of Apollo, or, as some have 
thought, of the young Hercules, has received additions in the shape 
of a bandlet round the head and a gorget on the neck, not improb¬ 
ably to give it the attributes of some more purely Gallic divinity. 
The wreath and hair have been reduced into a regular system, the 
back hair being rendered by a series of flowing locks all of one 
pattern, and the front hair by three open crescents. On the reverse, 
