Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/690

632 NUMISMATICS [GREEK COINS. Types. Classes Attic. .iEginetic. Phoenician. Persic, j Distater or Tetradrachm Stater or Didrachm Grains. 270 135 Grains. 194 Grains. 2-24 112 Grains. 354 177 Hemistater or Drachm .... Tliird or Tetrobol 67-5 45" 97 5(3 37 88 59 Fourth or Triobol 33 75 48 28 44 22 5 32 IS 29 Eighth or Trihemiobol 16-8 24 14 2 Twelfth or Obol 11-25 1(3 9 14 Types of civic,&c., coins. The Rhoilian drachm weighed 60 grains. The Babylonian weight is somewhat lower than the Persic, and it wants the distater. The term stater is usually applied to the didrachm, but also to the tetradrachm, and at Gyrene to the drachm. 1 The bronze standards have been less fully discussed. Some notice of them will be given under different geographical heads. In the types of Greek coins (using the term in its restricted sense) the first intention of the designers was to indicate the city or state by which the money was issued. The necessity for dis tinctive devices was most strongly felt in the earlier days of the art, when the obverse of a coin alone bore a design, and, if any inscription, only the first letter, or the first few letters, of the name of the people by whom it was issued. The motive which dictated the kind of type to be selected was undoubtedly a religious one. 2 There are some isolated instances in which the religious character of a type is doubtful ; but these, if proved, would be only exceptions to a general rule. The piety of that age adopted religious devices, and for a long time it was held to be impious to substitute any other representations for them. To the same cause may, perhaps, be partly ascribed the preference on the most ancient coins for devices of a symbolical character to actual representations of divinities, although the difficulty of portraying the human form in the infancy of art must have had considerable influence in this direction. Greek coins, if arranged according to their types, fall into three classes: (1) civic coins, and regal without portraits of sovereigns ; (2) regal coins bearing portraits; and (3) Grseco- Roman coins, whether with imperial heads or not. The coins of the first class have either a device on the obverse and the quadratum incusum on the reverse, or two devices ; and these last are again either independent of each other, though connected by being both local, or and this is more common that on the reverse is a kind of complement of that on the obverse. It will be best first to describe the character of the principal kinds of types of the first class, and then to notice their relation. It must be noted that a head or bust is usually an obverse type, and a figure or group a reverse one, and that, when there is a head on both obverse and reverse, that on the former is usually larger than the other, and represents the personage locally considered to be the more important of the two. We must constantly bear in mind that these types are religious and local if ve would understand their meaning. "I do not believe," Burgon says, " that the types of coins are, on any occa sion, original compositions, but always copied (from the earliest to the lowest times) from some sacred public monument. Thus, when we find what is called a Boeotian buckler on coins, we are not to look upon the representation as a Boeotian buckler, but as the buckler of some Boeotian hero well known to the ancient inhabitants of that country, and accounted to be sacred by them. In like manner, when we find Minerva represented on coins we are not to under stand the type as a Minerva, but the Minerva of that place, ; and, in some cases which might be brought forward, the individual statues which are represented on coins, or ancient copies, will be found to exist. The only example of originality of composition apparent on coins is where types have been doubled or halved, to express similar modifications of value." In the following list the types of Greek coins of cities, and of kings, not having regal portraits, are classed in a systematic order, without reference to their relative antiquity. 1. Head or figure of a divinity worshipped at the town, or by the people, which issued the coin, as the head of Pallas on coins of Athens, and the figure of Heracles on coins of Boeotian Thebes. Groups are rare until the period of Grseco-Roman coinage. 2. Sacred natural or artificial objects, (a) animal sacred to a divinity of the place, as the owl (Athens) and the tortoise (./Egina); (b) sacred tree or plant, as the siiphium (Gyrene) and the olive- branch (Athens) ; (c) arms or implements of divinities, as the arms of Heracles (Erythrse), the tongs of Vulcan (JEsernia). It is difficult to connect many objects comprised in this class with local divinities. The reason of this appears to be that the Hellenes, wherever they colonized, and nowhere more than in Greece, found an earlier system of low nature -worship, and en deavoured to incorporate it into their own more intellectual mythology, sometimes with but partial success. 3. Head or figure of a local genius, (a) river-god, as the Gelas (Gela) ; (b) nymph of a lake, as Camarina (Camarina); (c) nymph of a fountain, as Arethusa (Syracuse). 4. Head or figure of a fabulous personage or half-human monster, as a Gorgon (Neapolis Macedonian), the Minotaur (Cnossus). 5. Fabulous animal, as Pegasus (Corinth), a griffin (Panticaprcum), the Chimajra (Sicyon). 6. Head or figure of a hero or founder, as Ulysses (Ithaca), the Lesser Ajax (Locri Opuntii) ,Taras, founder of Tarentum (Tarentum). 7. Objects connected with heroes, animal connected with local hero, as the Calydonian boar or his jaw-bone (jEtolians). Arms of heroes also occur as types, but their attribution to particular personages is difficult or impossible. 8. Celebrated real or traditional sacred localities, as mountains on which divinities are seated, the labyrinth (Cnossus). 9. Representations connected with the public religious festivals and contests, as a chariot victorious at the Olympic games (Syracuse). The relation of the types of the obverse and reverse of a coin is a matter requiring careful consideration, since they frequently illustrate one another. As we have before observed, this relation is either that of two independent objects, which are connected only by their reference to the same place, or the one is a kind of complement of the other. Among coins illustrating the former class we may instance the beautiful silver didrachms of Camariua, having on the obverse the head of the river-god Hipparis and on the reverse the nymph of the lake carried over its waters by a swan, and those of Sicyon, having on the obverse the Chimsera and on the reverse a dove. The latter class is capable of being separated into several divisions. When the head of a divinity occurs on the obverse of a coin, the reverse is occupied by an object or objects sacred to that divinity. Thus the common Athenian tetradrachms have on the one side the head of Pallas and on the other an owl and an olive - branch ; the tetradrachms of the Chalcidians in Macedonia have the head of Apollo and the lyre ; and the copper coins of Erythrae have the head of Heracles and his weapons. The same is the case with subjects relating to the heroes : thus there are drachms of the ^Etolian League which have on the obverse the head of Atalanta and on the reverse the Calydonian boar, or his jaw-bone and the spear-head with which he was killed. In the same manner the coins of Cnossus, with the Minotaur on the obverse, have on the reverse a plan of the Labyrinth. Besides the two principal devices there are often others of less importance, which, although always sacred, and sometimes symbols of local divinities, are generally indicative of the position of the town, or have some reference to the families of magistrates who used them as badges. Thus, for example, besides such representations as the olive-branch sacred to Pallas on the Athenian tetradrachms, as a kind of second device dolphins are frequently seen on coins of maritime places ; and almost every series exhibits many symbols which can only be the badges of the magistrates with whose names they occur. Regal coins of this class, except Alexander s, usually bear types of a local character, owing to the small extent of most of the kingdoms, which were rather the territories of a city than considerable states at the period when these coins were issued. The second great class- that of coins of kings bearing portraits Regal, is necessarily separate from the first. Religious feeling affords the with por cine to the long exclusion of regal portraits, the feeling that it traits, would be profane for a mortal to take a place always assigned hitherto to the immortals. Were there any doubt of this, it would be removed by the character of the earliest Greek regal portrait, that of Alexander, which occurs on coins of Lysimachus. This is not the representation of a living personage, but of one who was not only dead but had received a kind of apotheosis, and who, having been already called the son of Zeus Ammon while living, had been treated as a divinity after his death. He is therefore portrayed as a young Zeus Ammon. Probably, however, Alexander would not have been able, even when dead, thus to usurp the place of a divinity upon the coins, had not the Greeks become accustomed to the Oriental "worship " of tie sovereign, which he adopted. This innovation rapidly produced a complete change ; every king of the houses which were raised on the ruins of the Greek empire could place his portrait on the money which he issued, and few neglected to do so, while the sovereigns of Egypt and Syria even assumed divine titles. The reign of Alexander produced another great change in Greek coinage, very different from that we have noticed. He suppressed the local types almost throughout his empire, and compelled the towns to issue his own money, with some slight difference for mutual distinction. His successors followed the same policy ; and thus the coins of this period have a new character. The obverses of regal coins with portraits have the head of the sovereign, which in some few instances gives place to that of his own or his country s tutelary divinity, while figures of the latter sort almost exclusively occupy the reverses. Sinall symbols, letters, and monograms on the reverses distinguish the towns in this class.