Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/400

372 by some one of the Manila family. Several golden torques, the largest of which was dedicated by the conqueror to the Capitoline Jupiter are enumerated among the spoils taken by Marcellus in his victory over the Insubrian Gauls, B.C. 196, and P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, B.C. 191, had fourteen hundred and seventy, which he had taken in action from the Boian Gauls, carried in triumph before him. On the occasion of the Transalpine Gaulish chieftain Belinus sending an embassy to proffer aid to the Senate during the Macedonian war, B.C. 186, we find that body presenting him with a torques of gold of two pounds weight = 21 oz. 17 dwts., together with two golden pateræ of four pounds each, a horse with its trappings, and armour for a horseman.

Polybius, in his description of the Celts, mentions about the same time the torques under the name , in a manner which shews it to have been unusual, and not employed as an ordinary object of attire, in the Roman armies which he accompanied. It still continued among the Celts as with the Persians an honorary mark of distinction bestowed upon their valiant or elective aristocracy, and the first ranks of the battlefield were manned by the Celtic torquati. The Druids appear from evidence nearly contemporaneous, to have worn the same decoration. I would refer to this period the torques seen on some of the gold Gaulish coins, imitations of the Philips of Macedon, and struck at different intervals from Brennus' invasion of Northern Greece, B.C. 278, till the age of Augustus. These coins may be assigned a relative scale to each other in proportion as they more correctly approach their prototypes, and the first which I shall cite, it appears most perfect, has on the obverse the laureated head of Apollo of the gold staters of Philip,