It is important to study the mode in which Greek money was coined, because the forms of the pieces thus receive explanation, and true coins are discriminated from such modern falsifications as have been struck, and in some degree from those which have been cast. Our direct information on the subject is extremely scanty, but we are enabled by careful inference Mode of Coining. to obtain a very near approximation to the truth on all the most important points.
Of the dies used by the Greeks exceedingly few have been preserved. In the museum at Sofia is an iron die for the reverse of a coin of Philip II. of Macedon; and several Gaulish dies exist. Most ancient dies are of bronze, others of hardened iron or steel. The blanks were, as a rule, first cast, sometimes in a spherical form, sometimes in a form more resembling that assumed by the finished coin. The blank was placed between two dies, the lower, let into an anvil, producing the obverse, the other, let into the end of a bar, producing the reverse. The bar was struck with a hammer, so that the blank received at the same time the impressions of both dies. This general rule was of course often modified; in some parts of the Greek world the dies were hinged together, in others not; and this arrangement of hinging the dies came in at different times in different places. The machinery of striking was probably much elaborated under the Roman empire, but a collar seems never to have been used in ancient times. Greek dies must usually have worn out very quickly; hence an enormous number of slightly varying representations of the same type. But the idea that it is uncommon to find two Greek coins from the same die is exaggerated. A great number of early Italian and Roman, and a few Greek coins, of large size, were cast in moulds, not struck; and under the empire many coins, originally struck, were reproduced, not always fraudulently, by casting; but the genuine ancient coin of small size is, as an almost invariable rule, struck and not cast.
We may now pass on to notice the Greek coinage of each country, following Eckhel’s arrangement. The series begins with Spain, Gaul and Britain, constituting the only great class of barbarous Greek coinage. It must not be supposed that the money of the whole class is of one general character; on the contrary, it has very Greek Coinage of the Far West. many divisions, distinguished by marked peculiarities; it has, however, everywhere one common characteristic—its devices are corrupt copies of those of Greek or Roman coins. The earliest of these barbarous coinages begin with the best imitations of the gold and silver money of Philip II. of Macedon. They probably first appeared to the north of his kingdom, but the gold soon spread as far as Gaul, and even found their way into southern Britain, by which time the original types had almost disappeared through successive degradations. Next in order of time are the silver imitations of Roman coins, the victoriati and denarii of the commonwealth, which began in Spain and passed into Gaul, being current with the gold money of Greek origin; even in Britain the later coinage shows much Roman influence. The copper money of Spain follows the imitated silver types; that of Gaul and Britain, though showing Roman influence, is more original.
Side by side with these large coinages we find Greek money of colonies in Gaul and Spain, and a far ampler issue of Phoenician coins by the Carthaginian kings and cities of the Peninsula. The coinage of Hispania, corresponding to the modern Spain and Portugal, was issued during a period of about four centuries, closing in A.D. 41. There are Spain. four classes of money, which in the order of their relative antiquity, are Greek, of two groups, Carthaginian, Romano-Iberian and Latin. The first or older group of Greek money (from before c. 350 B.C.) belongs to the widespread currency, which reveals the maritime power of the Ionians of Phocaea. It consists of fractions of the drachm of the Phocaean standard, from the diobol or third downwards. Its later pieces are of the Phocaean colony of Emporiae, founded by the earlier settlement of Massilia. Next in order and in part contemporary, beginning before the middle of the 3rd century B.C., come the drachms of Emporiae, which betray the influence of Siculo-Punic art. Their standard is probably Carthaginian. Of the neighbouring Rhoda, a Rhodian colony, there is similar money. Carthaginian coins of Spain begin in the same period with the issues of the great colony of Gades, following the same weights as the Emporian drachms. These are followed by the issues of the Barcides from 234 to 210 B.C., with Carthaginian types and of Phoenician weight, struck of six denominations, from the hexadrachm to the hemidrachm. Señor Zobel de Zangróniz has classed them to Spain, on the grounds of provenance and the possession of the silver mines by the Barcide kings, against Müller, who attributes them to Africa. The types are Carthaginian, and present some interesting subjects. The true Iberian currency begins not long after the Punic. The later drachms of Emporiae, ultimately following the weight of the contemporary Roman denarius, have Iberian legends, and form the centre of a group of imitations issued by neighbouring native tribes with their distinctive inscriptions. This coinage ceased when the Roman province was formed in 206 B.C. A little before this date the Romans had begun to introduce Latin money; about this time, however, they took the backward step of permitting native coinages of Latin weight. Probably they found that native legends and types were more welcome to their subjects than those of Rome. Consequently this coinage of Spain under the republic, which lasted until 133 B.C., may be almost considered national. The two provinces Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior have this marked difference: the coins of the nearer province, of silver and bronze, have always Iberian inscriptions on the reverse, and are clearly under distinct Roman regulation; those of the farther are apparently of independent origin, and consequently bear Iberian, Phoenician, Libyo-Phoenician and Latin legends, but they are of bronze alone. The interest of these coins lies mainly in their historical and geographical information. They bear the names of tribes, often the same as those of the town of mintage. The art is poor, and lacks the quaint originality and decorative quality of that of Gaul. Ultimately the native money was wholly latinized (133 B.C.), silver was no longer issued, and although the Ulterior continued to have its own coinage, in the Citerior only Emporiae and Saguntum were allowed to strike coins. Political circumstances for a time renewed the coinage under Sertorius (80–72 B.C.) in the modified form of a bilingual currency. The purely Latin issues of the two provinces, and under the empire more largely (from 27 B.C.) of the three, Tarraconensis, Baetica and Lusitania, present little of interest. They closed in the reign of Caligula (A.D. 37–41), though in later times purely Roman money in gold and silver was issued at different times in Hispania down to the establishment of the Visigothic kingdom.
The imperial money of Hispania introduces us to one of the two great classes of provincial coins under the empire; the larger of these was the Greek imperial, bearing Greek inscriptions, the smaller the Roman colonial, with Latin inscriptions, deriving its name from the circumstance that among Greek-speaking nations the coloniae were distinguished by the use of the Latin language on their money. In the coinage of Hispania, issued by a nation adopting Latin for official use, the aspect of the coinage is colonial, though it was not wholly issued by colonies. Many of the Spanish towns belong to the kindred class of municipia; others are neither coloniae nor municipia. In Hispania the obverse of the coin bears, as usual in the colonial class, the head of the emperor or of some imperial personage, the reverse a subject proper to the town. The priest guiding a plough drawn by an ox and a cow is peculiarly proper to a colonia, as portraying the ceremony of describing the walls of the city, so also an ox, with the same reference, the altar of the imperial founder, or, as connected with his cultus, a temple, probably in some cases that of Roma and Augustus. Other types, however, portray the old temples in restored Roman shapes, or indicate directly by fishes, ears of corn and more rarely bunches of grapes, the products of the country. Some original and grotesque types have a markedly local character. The money of Augusta Emerita (Merida) in Lusitania, a colony of pensioners (emiriti), is specially interesting, including as it does the silver issues of P. Carisius the legatus of Augustus.
The coinage commonly called that of Gaul belongs to the people more properly than to the country, for it comprehends pieces issued by the Gauls or other barbarians from the borders of Macedonia and Illyricum to the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay, through Pannonia, part of Germany, Helvetia and Gaul. It influenced the money The Gauls. of northern Italy, and, crossing the Channel, produced that of
