714

DEVICES ON LYDIAN AND GREEK COINS. APP. BOOK L

Croesus sent the image of a lion to Delphi, among his other presents (Herod. i. 50); and an ancient myth connected the safety of the city with a certain miraculous lion borne to King Meles by his con

cubine (ib. i. 84). The animal was sacred to Cybêlé, who seems to have been the deity specially worshipped at Sardis (infra, v. 102. Cf. Sophocl. Philoct. 391-402), and who is generally represented as drawn by lions. (Comp. Orphic Hymn, ταυροφόνων ζεύξασα ταχυδρομον ἅρμα λεόντων. Sophocl. 1. s. c. Lucret. ii. 602. Virg. Æn. iii. 111-113.)

While the Persians, on their conquest of Lydia, appear to have adopted, with certain modifications, the human figure of the Lydian coins, the Greeks seem generally to have preferred the notion of an animal emblem, which they varied according to their religions belief or local circumstances. The Eginetans adopted the device of the sea-tortoise; the Argives that of the wolf; the Phocæans that of the seal (Phoca); the Clazomenians that of the winged boar; the Ephesians that of the bee; the Lampsacenes that of the sea-horse; the Samians that of the lion's scalp; the Cyzicenes and Sybarites that of the bull; the Agrigentines that of the crab; the Syracusans that of the dolphin; the Corinthians that of the Pegasus, or winged horse; the Phocians that of the ox's head; and the Athenians that of the owl, the sacred bird of Athêné. A similar practice was followed in Lycia, where the wild boar, the lion's scalp, the winged lion, the goat, and the griffin, are the emblems of distinct localities. A religious meaning appears for the most part to have attached to the emblem. Where an animal device was not used by the early Greeks, the head of a god was (commonly) substituted, as in the coins of Thasus and Naxos. Human figures and heads do not occur till a comparatively recent date, the earliest being those on the series of Macedonian coins, commencing with Alexander, the son of Amyntas, soon after the close of the Persian War. The shield of the Boeotians, and the silphium of Cyrêné (infra, iv. 169), are remarkable; the latter, however, is not without certain parallels (see note ad loc.).

Before the introduction of coined money into Greece by Pheidon, it had been customary to use for commercial purposes, pieces of metal called oẞeloi, or oßeλioko, literally, "spits," or "skewers." These are thought by Col. Leake (Num. Hellen. p. 1, App.), to have

NOTE B.

COINAGE OF THE GREEKS.

715 been "small pyramidal pieces of silver;" but the more general opinion is that they were long nails of iron or copper, capable of being actually used as spits in the Homeric fashion. This is borne out by their very small value (three-halfpence of our money), combined with the fact that six of them made the spaxun, or handful, which implies that they were of a considerable size. A number of these spits were deposited by Pheidon in the temple of Juno, at Argos (Etym. Magn.), at the time when he superseded them by his coinage, which consisted of silver obols and drachms, of the same value and name with the primitive "spits" and "handfuls." These coins, and their divisions and multiples, extending from the Aentov, or fifty-sixth part of an obol, to the Terpádpaxov, or piece of the value of four drachms, continued to form the Greek currency down to the Roman conquest. Mina and talents were not coins, but sums, or money of account. Copper was very little used, and gold scarcely at all, until the time of Alexander, excepting in the Asiatic states. Hence the ordinary Greek word for money was "silver,” (ǎpyupos, àpyúpiov—comp. the French use of argent); and moneychangers were called apyvpauoiBol; money-chests, apyvрoka; coiners, ἀργυροκοπιστῆρες, οι αργυροκόποι; robbers, ἀργυροστερεῖς ; ships employed in collecting money, ȧpyvpoλóyoɩ vñes, &c. A gold coinage existed, however, among the Asiatic Greeks from an early date, as at Phocæa, Cyzicus, Lampsacus, Abydos, &c. It was copied from the Lydian, to which it conformed in weight and general character. The name stater (orarip), which was attached in the time of Herodotus to the ordinary gold coin of Western Asia, whether Persian (iii. 130; vii. 28), Lydian (i. 54), or Greek (Boeckh, Corp. Ins. 150; Thuc. iv. 52), and which means "standard," is said to have been originally applied to the silver didrachm, the prevailing coin of the early currencies; whence it passed to the ordinary gold coin, which was about equal to the didrachm in weight. The original and full name was "the gold stater" (OTаThρ Xpurous), whence, by the usual process of abbreviation, the coin came to be called indifferently, orarip, and xpurous. (ComDouble staters were also pare with the last the Latin aureus.) coined occasionally. Subdivisions of the stater, sixths (ra), and

Decadrachms, or pieces of ten drachms, were also occasionally coined. Sir H. Rawlinson recently brought from the East a silver piece of this

size, struck by Alexander the Great at Babylon, which is now in the British Museum.