Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/42

citation not devoid of interest, to trace the hypotheses which have been successively applied to these coins, the earlier of which will be found in the learned dissertation of Dr. Pegge, who diligently collected the errors of his predecessors while adding another to the list. The first English antiquary who published the coins of Cunobelin, was Camden, who to the honour of his sagacity assigned them to England, but conjectured that they were struck expressly for the payment of the Roman tribute; that those with the horse, hog, tree, and ear of corn respectively, were destined as the payment vice cattle, forest and corn lands; this extraordinary notion, al- though supported by the eminent authority of Cardinal Baron, (who added the idea of a fluctuating tribute currency made for the occasion co-existent with a fixed ordinary coinage,) was amply confuted by Casaubon. The antiquary Thoresby did not much advance the question by supposing that these pieces were amulets, concurring with Bishop Nicholson, and misled by the work of Bartholinus. Wise, the author of the Bodleian Catalogue, justly considered them to be coins, but conjectured they were not British, a rather pardonable error in the numismatic learning of that day. CUN he imagined was the name of the Iberian Cunei of Spain, or the Tascodunitari Cononiensis. Yet he might have been convinced by the recurrence of these coins in the island from the time of Camden, that they were essentially British. A step in advance was however made by Dr. Pettingal in a dissertation, elaborate for its day, read before the Society of Antiquaries in 1769; he restored the coins to Britain, a conclusion to which he was necessarily led by the fact of their frequent discovery in the island. Cunobelin he supposed was the name of the prince by whose authority they were struck, who indeed is mentioned by Dio and Suetonius, two of the most read of classical authorities; but he signally failed in his explanation of the reverse, he returned to the exploded notion of Camden, that they were struck to pay tribute; an argument the most inconclusive, for it is as well known to have been paid in kind, as that the Britons had a currency prior to the invasion of Cæsar; while the old refutation was in full force, that such a fact as the issue of a currency to pay a tax is almost unheard of in the history of the world; the beard-money of Peter the Great of Russia being probably the solitary exception. Pettingal supposed the word Tascia to be derived