so true to life and nature,-(saving only in of Lethe. Within the series of a few conthe few and well-seen instances of compli-tinuous coins he can read the records of menting a new emperor by investing him otherwise unstoried empire, and at once aid in his predecessor's features)*-that the memory and prove historic truth as he stamped metal bears testimony alike to its notes them nested in his cabinet. own genuineness, and to the voice of history.

་

Dr. Cardwell has well stated that famous instance of the testimony given by ancient It should be considered that, however coins to history, in the matter of Thurium; stale and commonplace many of these con- and various others in which the corroboracreted virtues or local genii now may seem tion of laconic statements, nay, the filling up to our long-accustomed eyes, burdened as of vague sketches, have been due to the those mystic figures are with the frequent preservation of these tiny memorials. But cornucopia and other triter emblems, there examples might be multiplied at will: perwas a time when these so obvious thoughts haps we may, in soberness, be said to know were new, just-born, unfledged-and that as much of the world's history-the Roman time might have been the coin's own birth- world in particular-from ancient money day. Keeping this in mind, how many of as from authors: indeed, many of the mighty the countries in the wise old world are among men, and more of their mighty typified in a fine spirit both of poetry and deeds, would have remained unknown to truth on the beautiful money of ancient their posterity but for some numismatic Greece and Rome! It would seem not witness to their lives and actions. How improbable that the personification of na-little, but for coins, could the student know tions upon coins was the same as that of the goodly reigns of Nerva and Trajan; adopted in triumphal processions. There, nay, even of the better chronicled days of in appropriate masquerade, mingled with Hadrian and Probus ? How inadequately, the military pageantry, were borne on stages were it not for them, would he have estior platforms the figured representatives of mated the high civilization of ancient Sicily conqueror and conquered; there, the Da--of Syracuse, Heraclia, and chiefly Agrician lay bound, while the Roman built a gentum ? How lightly would he have trophy of his arms; there, 'sad Judæa wept deemed of Rome's early struggles with beneath her palm,' and being desolate, sat the states of Magna Græcia, if he had not. upon the ground,' while the Gentile sentinel the testimony of coins to the refinement of stood guarding her and mocking; there, Tarentum, and the unequalled elegance of some dusky Ethiopian, drawn in a car by Thurium? But for coins, how little had elephants, leaning on tusks of ivory, and he known, or knowing kept in memory, the holding out the scorpion, personated Afri- civilizing occupation of our own Albion ca; the crocodile, the sistrum, and the ibis under Claudius, and Hadrian, and Geta, and testified to formal Egypt; Spain had her Severus? Where else could he have read strange barbaric weapons, and the timid at all, or in any case half so well, of the coney that creeps in her Sierras; Arabia, beautiful unhistoried Philistia, of the Ptoleladen with spices, followed with the camel maic and Antiochian kings, of the Sassaniat her feet; Parthia, 'fidens fugâ versisque dæ, Arsacidæ, and other monarchs of the sagittis,' came in the procession with bow East, and the consular families of Western and quiver at her back; Sicily was chaplet- Rome? Not a little let us Britons at the ed with Cerealic wheat; Achaia wore her ends of the earth confess to owe of historic coronet of parsley; Britain leant upon a facts to the care and skill of the numisrock, enthroned amid the seas; and Italy, matist; we speak but of our earliest age, the world's stern step-mother, was crowned our otherwise unstoried childhood: Tascio like Cybele with towers of strength, sat on and Segonax, equally with heroical Bonduthe celestial sphere, and stretched forth the ca and the noble-hearted Cymbeline, are sceptre of her monarchy. found, almost exclusively from coins, to have been far other than fabulous personages; and Ifars, Anlaf, and Sithric, primal kings of Ireland, claim from coins alone to be considered as realities. Imagine what stability it would add to our belief in the existence of a quondam King Lear, or the sturdy Brutus of our London-Troy, to discover pieces of metal stamped with their images and superscriptions; with what corroborated faith would we think of the

Yet further; for more than may allure his fancy, for higher things than serve to tickle ingenuity, the sensible numismatist looks with satisfaction on his coins. In them he perceives the very seed-corn of history, pocket epitomes of interesting facts, stepping-stones across the shallows

* The early Trajans, for example, exhibit the head of Nerva--as we have a coin of Henry VIII.

masked with his father's face.

chivalric Arthur, if we found an obol charged obverse with his profile, and reverse with the Round Table! With what interest would the men of Bath gaze upon their Bladud, and on the fortunate thirsty swine that laid the foundations of his city!

'We have coins bearing on the obverse the head of Alexander the Great, encircled with a diadem, together with the inscription AAEZANAPOY, and on the reverse a warrior on horseback, with the inscription KOINON MAKEẠONN. Now, were this the whole account that the coins in question afford us of themselves, we To take a few only of those great names should probably have assigned them to some who have confessed an interest in what period in the history of Macedon connected with Addison does not scruple to style the that illustrious conqueror. We might indeed science' of numismatics-Pericles and Au- tend themselves as far as his conquests, and conceive that the coins of Alexander would exgustus are to be counted among its patrons, that, in acknowledgment of his talents and of no less than Elizabeth and Leo, and yester- their admiration, his successors would still retain day the Napoleon of war, as to-day the Na- his name and impress long after he was dead. poleon of peace; Lorenzo and Petrarch We find too, even on a slight acquaintance with take their rank among the band; Alfred, numismatic antiquities, that many cities of Bede, Alcuin, and the elder Bacon are re- Greece and Asia did in fact adopt the badges ported, on sufficient grounds, to have been that they continued to be in use to an advanced chosen by him for the coins of Macedon, and of the fraternity; Cromwell too, following period of the Roman empire. Still if the coins, the example of his martyred master; Sel- that I am considering, had given us no further den, Camden, Laud, Clarendon, Evelyn, tokens of their date, we should probably have Wren-not to mention Walpole, and a assigned them to Macedon, without fixing upon thousand of less note-knew the joys of any precise time in Grecian history as the exact the collector. But in truth, from Rubens period they belonged to. Fortunately we find, and Raffaelle, from Chantrey, and Canova, which convey a reference to Roman history of after the word MAKEAONON, other letters, and Thorwaldsen, from Newton, and Mead, the time of the empire, and beneath the figure and Hunter, down to the veriest smatterer of the horse the three Greek numerals EOC, in art and science of our own all-educating expressing the date 275. Now, referring this day, it is probable that few men of intellect date back to the battle of Actium, the epoch have escaped the influenza of a hankering commonly adopted during the time of the emfor coins, if at times they were incautiously exposed to the attractions of a cabinet: for it is verily both a pleasant thing and profitable to collect, possess, study, and enjoy these small but imperishable records of the past, pocket triumphs, miniature temples, deciduous morsels shed from Fame's true laurel, whose stem is iron, and its leaves bronze, and its buds silver, and expanded flowrets gold, and the bloom or patina as the morning dew upon them all; to keep, we say, and have a property in, these little monuments of brass as lasting as the pyramids-these scoriæ struck out on all sides when the fetters of an empire were forged -these relics of primitive antiquity more genuine than Helen's cross or Peter's chain these elixir-drops of concentrate durability congealed to adamant and graven with the short-hand memorials of truththese ineffaceable transcripts of character, fact, and feature-in number multiplied, and in authenticity undoubted, that now at these last days may well defy the ravages of chance, change, suppression, or forgetfulness.

pire, we are brought down to the year of Rome 998,, corresponding with the year 245 of the Christian era, the precise period at which Philip the elder, who then occupied the throne of the Cæsars, was celebrating his recent victories in the East, and connecting them, as we may suppose, with the ancient fame of Alexander the Great. To complete the proof, if confirmation be wanting, we meet with a medal having the device, and date, but bearing on the obverse the same reverse in all its particulars of inscription, titles of this very Philip, with the head of a Roman emperor. So then these coins, which, from most of their tokens, might at first sight have been assigned to a much earlier period, were minted for the use of Macedon, about the middle of the third century after Christ, in obedience to the mandate of the emperor Philip, and displaying some alleged connexion between that emperor and the ancient conqueror of the East.'-pp. 35, 36.

The word xovóv not unfrequently occurs elsewhere; as, for example, on a silver piece from Cyrene in Africa, bearing obversely the head of Jupiter Ammon, and with its characteristic silphium on the reverse. This silphium, we may note in passing, was a plant yielding a drug as much esteemed by ancient Greeks as opium is now by the Chinese: it was called Opopanax, or heal-all-and as a matter of course effected miraculous cures. So great was its price that, according to Pliny, Julius Cæsar defrayed the expenses of the first

civil war by selling 110 ounces of silphium, kind of ornamental money (and the idea of which he found stored in the public trea- combining money with ornament is still sury. After thus much we may be startled extant in head dresses of Venetian sequins, to be told, that a drug so choice was neither and in circlets of old coins worn commonly more nor less than assafætida. But to re-in the East) has been dug up by the Duke of Argyll from beneath the upright stones at Inverary.

turn.

Others have been found in Ireland-of which Mr. Akerman gives faithful representations, and thus writes:

Some have preferred to xovóv the etymology of 'cuneus,' a wedge or ingot, asserting that the earliest form of money was the lump or mass. Whether 'cuneus' be the root or not, the fact is indisputable that mere crude metal was weighed as money Cæsar, it is somewhat remarkable that nothing 'With regard to the iron rings mentioned by long anterior to its formation into coin. of the kind is known to have been discovered 'Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, with British coins in England; while in Ireland four hundred shekels, current with the rings of gold and brass have been dug up in merchants;' now, the shekel was a weight great numbers. Enough to load a cart were centuries before it was a coin; 3000, ac- found in a tumulus, in Monaghan, a few years cording to Arbuthnot, being equal to a tal-since; and this fact proves, that though these ent; and the word 'current' may be under-rings might occasionally have been applied to stood more fitly by sterling, as being un-intended for fibulæ, or some such personal ornathe purposes of money, they were originally alloyed, of right assay; the word 'sterling,' ments.'

as we need hardly observe, being a cor

ruption of Easterling, so termed from the We must confess that, at first sight, the money of Eastern Germany, which was fact of finding a cart-load of these rings remarkably pure, and therefore in request, seems to us to prove the direct oppositeat a period when our own coinage was exces- namely, that it was rather a hoard of cash sively corrupt. We all remember too how than an accumulation of ornaments. Mr. Brennus the Gaul flung his heavy sword Akerman might, we think, have stated a into the scales that were too penuriously better reason for his opinion; it is not weighing the ransom of Rome: and similar impossible that over the dead body of a instances need not be multiplied. Unminted chieftain his followers may have flung bullion, as a legalized medium of exchange, their bracelets in his honor. Nevertheis not less a modern than it has been an less, when we recollect that the Egyptian ancient expedient; for it has been revived hieroglyphic for money is a ring, we think in our own times by Mr. Ricardo, although it less likely that a tribe should impoverish the project was abortive and dropped im- itself, than that their chief should hoard his mediately, only one brick of gold weigh-treasures. ing sixty ounces, and impressed with a Sovereign stamp, having been made and issued for foreign commerce: a leaden model of this, gilt to resemble the original, is now in the British Museum; and furnishes a remarkable illustration of the manner in which the arts circulate, 'the whirligig of time bringing round its revenges.' The progress from lumps of metal to the minted flan' of coinage, was gradual and natural: for, after the mere mass or weight, it would seem likely that the gold bracelet, the mancus, the torques, or the fibula, or other decoration, of legitimate size and purity, succeeded; as, to take a familiar instance, we find Le Balafré in Quentin Durward paying his reckoning with links untwisted from his gold neck-chain in like manner the bracelets of Judah, and his staff, (upon which the signet was commonly carried,) were Tamar's hire; the bushels of gold rings by which Carthage bought a truce with Rome, were possibly this sort of substitute for coin: the same VOL. III. No. III. 26

But precious metal (and this word is more likely to be the root of medal' than the Arabic 'methalia,' head) was soon found to require some guarantee for its purity, as well as the more easily discoverable fact of its just weight; and in a day when seals were sacred things, no test was so obvious as the signet. Heraldic emblems, or rather allegorical devices, to save anachronism in terms, would appear to be the first ideaas the Babylonish lion, Egina's tortoise, Baotia's shield, the lyre of Mytilene, and the wheat of Metapontum; but it would soon seem advisable to add the sanction of religion to that of mere honor, and this will at once account for the common impress of the head of some divinity. Thus Juno, Diana, Ceres, Jove, Hercules, Apollo, Bacchus, Pluto, Neptune, and many of the rest of the Pantheon, have sanctioned by their effigies impressed the most perfect mean of barter in the world. Superstition dared not cheat, in the very face of Rhodes's brilliant Phœbus, of the stern Athenian Miner

va, and the mighty Jupiter of Macedon. | the apparent incredulity as to Suidas, &c.; Almost without doubt the coin's prototype, for we can add with certainty to this list a the original model of these beautiful heads, multitude of well known similar substitutes, was in each respective case some statuary many even much stranger, and worse adaptidol, venerable for alleged miracles as any ed for exchange. For example, a species Lady of Loretto, or for indefinite antiquity of coal-money, and circular bits of hide, are as the black Jupiter now doing duty as St. not unfrequent in our British barrows; the Peter. It seems to us clear that it was ow- Dutch have minted pasteboard; our old exing to this exhibition of idolatry on coins chequer tallies might be called in some sort that the Jewish shekel never bore a head, wooden money; James II. coined gunbut was charged only with the almond rod metal; in 1690 we had a tin coinage to the and pot of manna; for Israel, as we know by extent of £70,000; lead and pewter have her banners, might innocently bear an her- circulated largely as tradesmen's tokens; aldic emblem, but was forbidden to fashion the Malays have a currency of betel-nuts, any device which the heathen nations wor- the Madagascar people of almonds, the Afrishipped. Mohammedan money in like man- can tribes cowrie-shells, the inhabitants of ner, and for a similar reason, is prohibited Yucatan certain seeds of plants, and the by the Koran from exhibiting any portrait- original settlers in Massachusetts accountAnother interesting fact may be ex-ed musket-balls, full-bore,' a legal tender; plained in an analogous manner-namely, so lately as in 1803, teste Captain Marryat, that until Alexander of Macedon had over-deer-skins at the stated value of 40 cents run the Persian monarchy in the East, and per pound were a legalized mean of barter until Julius Cæsar had consummated the at Cincinnati, and if proffered instead of Roman empire in the West, no image of a money could not be refused. But no need living man was permitted to be stamped to look either far back or far abroad; silver upon a coin; deities or heroes alone could paper, flimsy as a stoutish cobweb, liable resume to give a sanction to the national more than any sibylline leaves to be scatredit. tered and destroyed by water, wind, and fire, exposed to demolition by mere contact with its sturdy brother cash, and to illegibility from mere grease and dirt-this very type of insecurity, if not of immateriality, is our own chief circulating medium, and represents our highest sums.

ure.

Besides and beyond the usual metals (gold, silver, and copper,) many and strange substitutes have often been adopted as means of commercial circulation. Dr. Cardwell says:

"We are informed, on such authority as that of Suidas, that money of leather and of shells was once used by the Romans; and by Cedrenus, that wood was also employed by them for the same purpose. Aristides says that leather money was once current at Carthage, and Seneca makes the same remark on Sparta. But with respect to all these cases alike we may answer, that no such money is now known to exist; that the authorities quoted are in no instance competent evidence respecting times so far remote from them; and that if such money ever had existed, and could have been preserved to the present day, it would be as utterly destitute of historical usefulness to us as of intrinsic value in itself. We are told, on authority somewhat more considerable, that iron was used in the

same manner at Sparta, at Clazomena, at Byzantium, and at Rome, and tin also, by Dionysius of Syracuse. No ancient specimen in either of these metals has ever been discovered; but we may admit that such coins have actually existed, and may account for their total disappearance by the extreme remoteness of the time when they were made, and the great probability that they would long since have been decomposed. Lead has also been mentioned by ancient authors as formerly used in coinage."-p. 94.

We do not altogether agree with Dr. Cardwell in much of the above, especially in

Coins were first stamped on one side only, the reverse of the earliest Greek money being the impress of points on which the stricken flan was fixed, and that of our own most ancient British, as well as some of indefinite antiquity from Hindostan, being the indentation of a smooth concavity. The metal was a bead hot from the furnace— perhaps our own skeattas (shot-money) were so called from their form before striking-and the money, when stamped, was often naturally serrated, from radiation caused by the blow; this effect giving the first idea for our modern safeguard against clipping the milled edge. The simple mechanism used for minting were hammer, anvil, and pincers, as we find them portray. ed on an interesting consular coin inscribed MONETA.' Now, concerning the dies, nothing is more wonderful in ancient coins than their infinite variety. Dr. Cardwell says, and the statement is known to be correct by all numismatists—

"It may also be a matter of surprise, that, with cients should still have recourse to the hammer their imperfect command over metals, the anfor common purposes, as they would be com

pelled, from want of a well-tempered material. The earliest known coins, or at least to be constantly making new dies, after a small those now in being, bore the indented number of impressions had been taken; but this difficulty only furnishes us with a new evidence square, as the monies of Ægina: to this in favor of what has been stated as to the gene-wheat-ear of Metapontum, and the bull's soon succeeded simple incusion, as the ral practice. It is a singular fact, that in very few instances have any two ancient coins been head of Phocis. And this incused kind of found which evidently proceeded from the same coin followed probably very close upon the die. The Prince Torre-Muzza, for instance, indented; for, instead of being fixed on who was for many years a collector of Sicilian points, the idea would soon occur of fixing medals,* could not find in his extensive cabinet the metal on some slightly yielding surface any two that corresponded in all particulars with each other."-pp. 101, 102. -lead, for example, or wood--so as to produce a reversed intaglio of the obverse cameo. Incused coins next came to have two different impressions; thus we find the Neptune of Posidonia with his drapery arranged both back and front, evidencing distinctly the obverse and the reverse. this succeeded the double stamp-or proper tail-piece added to the profile-often within squares, as we find on the Darics, and early Athenian money; from which step it is easy to imagine further gradations, until the perfect medal is attained. And a word here concerning the term medal-Dr. Cardwell observes

furnace.

It is possible that these perishable dies, so exquisite in workmanship, may have been carved, for the greater ease, in a sort of clay, or other plastic composition, which hardened by heat, would thus be made capable of striking one impression on the drop of precious metal still softened from the The ancients had no steel, their coins were numberless, and the dies as diverse as the coins. Striking, not casting, was, from many marks, their method; and we can only imagine that the heavy ham mer had attached to its face the quasi mould, the highly-wrought but fragile dies, which, like Virgil's bees, must perish as they strike

To

"You will have observed that the words

coins' and 'medals' have hitherto been used indiscriminately, as if it were not intended to acknowledge that any important distinction ex

'Animasque in vulnere ponunt.' Even with all our modern skill, and its ma-ists between them. The distinction, in point of ny mechanical appliances, the longevity of dies, steel of treble temper though they be, is always problematical; one may be capable of striking half a million coins without material deterioration, while another will give way beneath a score; to so many casualties are steel dies liable from the variations of temperature, from degrees of force in striking, from chemical deficiencies in the original process of face-hardening, and from other causes little understood.

But leaving thus too slightly touched the mysterious topic of an ancient die, upon which no light has been thrown even by the discovery of moulds for casting, which were certainly the tools of Gaulish forgers, let us proceed with the history of coins. It is a remarkable fact, that, notwithstanding high civilization, there appears to have existed no money in Egypt anterior to the Persian occupancy. Cash does not seem to have entered into the calculations of a Pharaoh, and nothing like a coin is found upon sculptures or papyri: Joseph's 'money for the corn' need not have been other than personal ornaments; and although there are extant an abundance of circular seals or 'cartouches' stamped on burnt clay, we nowhere see the idea carried on to the precious metals.

*This collection was purchased by Lord North

wick.'

fact, has not been generally observed; and the neglect of it is probably owing to the impossibility of separating those specimens which were intended to be used as money, from specimens designed for other purposes. There are, indeed, some among them of so large a size, and so peculiar in other respects, that they cannot be confounded with common currency; but for these I reserve the term medallion, intending to use the term medals as denoting all minted pieces whatsoever, and coins to distinguish those among them which were designed as money.

"It was an opinion, however, maintained by Hardouin, and before him by Erizzo, that none of the various specimens we possess were issued as money, but were all of them originally bestowed as tokens or memorials. But the opinions of Hardouin, as Barthelemy well observes, have no longer any claim to be refuted; and the circumstances of the case are so directly opposed to this opinion of his, that we now endeavor to ascertain what medals are tokens or memo

rials by examining whether they possess the

known characteristics of coins.

"Those characteristics may be thus briefly stated. Wherever any class of specimens preserves the same specific character, though minted in different years, or even reigns, or even, as in some cases, in different centuries; wherever they present a uniformity of weight, or device, or general style of workmanship, allowing only for of the arts; wherever they have been found in the changes required by the varying condition immense numbers; wherever they bear in their inscription either the name or the denoted value of a coin: in those cases we may infer that they