Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/688

630 NUMISMATICS [DEFINITIONS. cuted after some study of the rales which controlled the great works of former times. Definitions. The following are the most necessary numismatic definitions. 1. A coin is a piece of metal of a fixed weight, stamped by author ity of government, and employed as a circulating medium. 1 2. A medal is a piece, having no place in the currency, struck to commemorate some event or person. Medals are frequently com prised with coins in descriptions that apply to both equally ; thus, in the subsequent definitions, by the term coins, coins and medals must generally be understood. 3. The coinage of a country is usually divided into the classes of gold, silver, and bronze (copper), for which the abbreviations N, M, and jE are employed in catalogues. In each class are comprised, not only the coins of the metal from which it takes its name, with no more than a necessary or inseparable proportion of alloy, but coins of other metallic substances, usually base, and always Com pound, which were generally struck in the place of the purer pieces. The principal metallic substances thus used were electrum for gold, billon for silver, brass for copper, and potin for silver and copper. 4. Electrum (-rjXfKrpov, ^Xe/crpos), a compound metallic substance, consisting of gold with a considerable alloy of silver. Pliny makes the proportion to have been four parts of gold to one of silver. 2 The material of early coins of Asia Minor struck in the cities of the western coast is the ancient electrum. It appears here to have at first consisted of three parts of gold to one of silver ; but after wards the proportion of silver was increased, though perhaps not everywhere. Gold largely alloyed with silver, not struck by the ancient Greeks or their neighbours, should be termed pale gold, as in the case of some of the late Byzantine coins. 5. Billon, a term applied to the base metal of some Eoman coins, and also to that of some medifeval and modern coins. It is silver with a great proportion of alloy. When the base silver coins are replaced by copper washed with silver the term billon becomes in appropriate. 6. Brass, a compound metallic substance employed for coins. It may be used as an equivalent to the orichalcum of the Romans, a fine kind of brass of which the sestertii and dupondii were struck, but it is commonly applied indiscriminately to the whole of their copper currency. 7. Potin, a term applied to the base metal of which some ancient coins are composed. It is softer than billon. 8. Various other metallic substances have been used in coinage. The so-called "glass coins" of the Arabs are merely coin-weights. 9. The forms of coins have greatly varied in different countries and at different periods. The usual form in both ancient and modern times has been circular, and generally of no great thickness. 10. Coins are usually measured by Mionnet s scale, from which the greatest dimension is taken, or, when they are square, the greatest dimension in two directions. This is, however, a very unsatisfactory scale, as its divisions are of an arbitrary character, and the instruments for applying it are such as make exactness scarcely possible. A gauge graduated to inches and decimal parts of an inch or to millimetres is far more satisfactory. 11. The weight of a coin is of great importance, both in deter mining its genuineness and in distinguishing its identity. To ascertain exact weight even to the tenth of a grain is therefore necessary, and this can only be done by the careful use of excellent scales. 12. The specific gravity of a coin may be of use in determining the metals in its composition. 13. Whatever representations or characters are borne by a coin constitute its type. The subject of each side is also called a type, and, when there is not only a device but an inscription, the latter 1 This definition excludes, on the one hand, paper currencies and their equivalents among barbarous nations, such as cowries, because they are neither of metal nor of fixed weight, although either stamped or sanctioned by authority, and, on the other hand, modes of keeping metal in weight, like the so-called Celtic "ring-money, "because they are riot stamped, although perhaps sanctioned by authority. The latter has attracted so much attention that it must not be passed by without some further notice. There seems to be no reasonable doubt that the Celtic gold rings all weigh multiples of the same unit, but very seldom multiples of one another. From their form it is probable that most of them were used as ornaments, and as such they would probably have been generally made to weigh an exact weight without fractions, on the same principle that the ancients frequently avoided fractions of their measures in architecture. They belong to a time anterior to the introduction of money among the Celts, or before its general use, and one, therefore, at which precious metal must have been weighed when employed in barter. Hence an additional reason, and prob ably the main one, why their weight is always some multiple of the same unit. In a primitive state of society in the present day a woman often wears her dowry in coins as ornaments ; and thus these Celtic rings may have been both ornaments and substitutes for money, 2 Hist. Nat., xxxiii. 23; comp. xxxvii. 11. Pliny distinguishes two kinds of "electron," amber, and this metallic substance. In Greek poetry the name seems to apply to both, but it is generally difficult to decide which is meant in any particular case. Sophocles, however, where he mentions TO.TTO Zap5ewj> fjKeKrpov, . . , KO.I rov v5iKOV ^pvffov (Ant. 1037-39), can scarcely be doubted to refer to the metallic electrum. may be excluded from the term. This last is the general use. No distinct rule has been laid down as to what makes a difference of type, but it may be considered to be an essential difference, how- ver slight. 14. A difference too small to constitute a new type makes a variety. 15. A coin is a duplicate of another when it agrees with it in all particulars but those of exact size and weight. Strictly speak ing, ancient coins are rarely, if ever, duplicates, except when struck from the same die. 16. Of the two sides of a coin, that is called the obverse which bears the more important device or inscription. In early Greek coins it is the convex side ; in Greek and Roman imperial it is the side bearing the head ; in mediaeval and modern that bearing the royal effigy, or the king s name, or the name of the city ; and in Oriental that on which the inscription begins. The other side is called the reverse. 17. The field of a coin is the space unoccupied by the prin cipal devices or inscriptions. Any detached independent device or character is said to be in the field, except when it occupies the exergue. 18. The exergue is that part of the reverse of a coin which is below the main device, and distinctly separated from it ; it often bears a secondary inscription. Thus, the well-known inscription CONOB occupies the exergue of the late Roman and early Byzan tine gold coins. 19. The edge of a coin is the surface of its thickness. 20. By the inscription or inscriptions of a coin all the letters it bears are intended ; an inscription is either principal or secondary. 21. In describing coins the terms right and left mean the right and left of the spectator, not the heraldic and military right and left, or those of the coin. 22. A bust is the representation of the head and neck ; it is com monly used of such as show at least the collar-bone, other busts being called heads. 23. A head properly means the representation of a head alone, without any part of the neck, but it is also commonly used when any part of the neck above the collar-bone is shown. The present article follows custom in the use of the terms bust and head. 24. A bust or head is either facing, usually three-quarter face, or in profile, in which latter case it is described as to right or to left. Two busts may be placed in various relative positions which cannot be described in English without circumlocution. 25. A bust wearing a laurel-wreath is said to be laureate. 26. A bust bound with a regal fillet (diadem) is called diademed. 27. A bust of which the neck is clothed is said to be draped. 28. An object in the field of a coin which is neither a letter nor a monogram is usually called a symbol. This term is, however, only applicable when such an object is evidently the badge of a town or individual. The term adjunct, which is sometimes em ployed instead of symbol, is manifestly incorrect. 29. A mint-mark is a difference placed by the authorities of the mint upon all money struck by them, or upon each new die or separate issue. 30. A coin is said to be surfrappe when it has been struck on an older coin, of which the types are not altogether obliterated. 31. A double-struck coin is one in which the die or dies have shifted so as to cause a double impression. 32. A coin which presents two obverse types, or two reverse types, or of which the types of the obverse and reverse do not correspond, is called a mule ; it is the result of mistake or caprice. Arrangement of Coins. No uniform system has as yet been applied to the arrangement of all coins. It is usual to separate them into the three great classes of ancient coins (comprising Greek and Roman), mediaeval and modern, and Oriental coins. The de tails of these classes have been differently treated, both generally and specially. The arrangement of the Greek series has been first geographical, under countries and towns, and then chronological, for a further division ; that of the Roman series, chronological, without reference to geography ; that of the mediaeval and modern, the same as the Greek ; and that of the Oriental, like the Greek, but unsystematically, a treatment inadmissible except in the case of a single empire. Then, again, some numismatists have sepa rated each denomination or each metal, or have separated the denominations of one metal and not of another. There has been no general and comprehensive system, constructed upon reasonable principles, and applicable to every branch of this complicated science. Without laying down a system of rules, or criticizing former modes of arrangement, we offer the following as a classifica tion which is uniform without being servile. 1. Greek Coins. All coins of Greeks, or barbarians who adopted Greek money, struck before the Eoman rule or under it, but with out imperial effigies. The countries and their provinces are placed in a geographical order from west to east, according to the system of Eckhel, with the cities in alphabetical order under the provinces, and the kings in chronological order. The civic coins usually pre cede the regal, as being the more important. The coins are further