Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/908

Rh Britain, which has its own distinctive features. Four classes of coinage are found in these vast limits. Arranging them by date, they are the money of the Greek colony of Massilia and her dependencies, that of the Gauls and other barbarians of central and western Europe, that which can be classed to the tribes and chiefs of Gaul and the imperial coinage of that country. The coins of the Gauls and other barbarians outside Gallia include the gold coins known as “rainbow cups” (Regenbogenschüsselchen), which seem to have been an original currency of the tribes inhabiting the Bohemian and Bavarian districts, and other gold and silver coins (the later series bearing names in Latin characters) which circulated in Noricum, Pannonia, Helvetia, Upper Germany, &c.

The great mart of Massilia (Marseilles), founded about 600 by the Phocaeans, was the centre of the Greek settlements of Gaul and northern Spain. Emporiae was her colony, with other nearer towns of inferior fame. Yet Massilia always held the first place, as is proved by the abundance of her money. At first it consisted of Phocaean obols, part of the

widespread Western currency already noticed in speaking of Emporiae. These were succeeded by Attic drachms, some of which, about Philip of Macedon’s time, are beautiful in style and execution. Their obverse type is the head of Artemis, crowned with olive, at once marking the sacred tree, which had grown from a branch carried by the colonists, so tradition said, with a statue of the goddess, from Ephesus, and proclaiming the value of the olive-groves of Massilia. On the reverse we note the Asiatic lion, common to it and the last colony of Phocaea, the Italian Velia in Lucania. These coins circulated extensively in southern Gaul, and were much imitated by the barbarians on both sides of the Alps.

The Gauls, on their predatory incursions into Greece, must have seized large quantities of the gold coinage circulating there, but it is probable that the gold staters of Philip (Pl. I. fig. 14), from which the chief types of the Gaulish gold are derived (Pl. I. fig. 1), had already found their way, independently of such raids, by means of trade along the Danube

valley into the districts then inhabited by the Gauls. This is clear from the fact that the gold coins of Alexander were never, his silver rarely, imitated by the Gauls, yet these were in circulation at the time of the incursions. Nor did the influence of Philip’s silver travel far west. But his gold money evidently travelled through central Europe to Gallia. The money of Gallia before the complete Roman conquest, to which it may be anterior in its commencement by half a century, belongs in the gold to degraded types of the earlier widespread currency. The undoubted gold and electrum of this imitative class, identified as bearing regal or geographical names, are extremely limited. By far the most interesting coin of the group is the gold piece which bears the name at full length of the brave and unfortunate Vercingetorix. The silver money is comparatively common. The Gauls were ready to copy any types that came in their way, so that in the coinage of Gaul we find imitations of the coinage of Tarentum, Campania, various Spanish cities such as Rhoda, and Roman coins of the republic and early empire. The effect of the silver of Massilia and other Greek colonies is especially noticeable in S. Gaul, and the Roman denarius naturally exerted a strong influence. The bronze money of Gaul is still more abundant than the silver, and has a special interest from its characteristic types. Some of the later local coins are casts of an alloy of copper and tin called potin, but merely a variety of bronze. The Roman coins recall those of Hispania, but are limited to a few coloniae. They range in date from Antony and Augustus to Claudius. The best-known coins of this time, those struck at the colony of Copia Lugdunum (Lyons) with the “Altar of Roma and Augustus,” belong, however, strictly speaking, to the Roman series. The coins of Nemausus (Nimes), commemorating the conquest of Egypt in the crocodile chained to a palm-tree, were sometimes made in the shape of the hind-leg of an animal, evidently for dedication in the sacred fountain, from the mud of which all the specimens of this variety are derived.

The ancient coinage of Britain is the child of that of Gaul, retaining the marks of its parentage, yet with characters of its own due to independent growth. Money first came in trade by the easiest sea-passage, and, once established in Kent, gradually spread north and west, until the age of the earlier Roman wars, when it was issued in Yorkshire, probably in

Lincolnshire, and in a territory of which the northern limits are marked by the counties of Norfolk, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford, Gloucester and Somerset. The oldest coins are gold imitations of Philip’s staters, which, whether struck in Gaul or Britain, had a circulation on the British side of the Channel. They are the prototypes of all later money. From a careful comparison of their weights with those of later coins, and from a study of the gradual degradation of the types, Evans places the origin of the coinage between 200 and 150 Its close may be placed about the middle of the 1st century The inscribed coins occupy the last century of this period, being contemporary with uninscribed ones. The uninscribed coins are of gold, silver, bronze and tin, the gold being by far the most common. There is small variety in the types, nearly all in gold and silver, and some in copper, presenting in more or less degraded form the original Gaulish type for gold. It may be suspected that all new types and the extremely barbarous descendant of the tin series are of the age of the inscribed coins, or but little earlier. The Channel Islands are remarkable for a peculiar coinage of billon, a very base silver, presenting the usual types modified by Gaulish grotesqueness. The place of this group in the British series is merely accidental; in character as in geography it is Gaulish.

The inscribed coins are evidently in most cases of chiefs, though it is certain that one town (Verulamium) and some tribes had the right of striking money. The most interesting coins are those of known chiefs and their families—of Commius, probably the active prince mentioned by Caesar, of Dubnovellaunus, mentioned in the famous Ancyra inscription, which has been called the will of Augustus, and most of all the large and interesting series of Cunobelinus, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (Pl. I. fig. 2), his brother Epaticcus, and his father Tasciovanus. It is evident from the coins and historical evidence collected by Evans that Tasciovanus had a long reign. His chief town, as we learn from his money, was Verulamium. His coins are in three metals, repeat the traditional types, and present new ones, some showing a distinctly Roman influence. The money of Epaticcus is scanty, but that of Cunobelinus, with Camulodunum (Colchester) for his chief town, is even more abundant than his father’s, indicating a second long reign, and having the same general characteristics. The gold shows a modification of the traditional type, the silver and bronze the free action of Roman influence and a remarkable progress in art. With the death of this prince not long before 43 the bulk of the British coinage probably ceases, none being known of his sons, Adminius, Togodumnus and the more famous Caractacus, but the coins of the Iceni may have continued as late as 50, and the Brigantes issued silver coins as late as the time of Cartimandua, whose name is partly preserved on one of them.

The ancient coins of Italy occupy the next place. They appear to have been struck during a period of more than 500 years, the oldest being probably of the beginning of the 6th century and the latest somewhat anterior to the time of Julius Caesar. The larger number, however, are of the age before the great extension of Roman power, which soon led

to the use of Roman money almost throughout Italy. There are two great classes, which may be called the proper Italian and the Graeco-Italian; but many coins present peculiarities of both. The proper Italian coins are of gold, silver and bronze. Of these, the gold coins are extremely rare, and can never have been struck in any large numbers. The silver are comparatively common, but the bronze are very numerous and characteristic. A few of the earliest gold and silver coins of Etruria have a perfectly plain reverse. The most remarkable bronze coins of this class are of the kind called aes grave, most of which were the early proper coinage of Rome, although others are known to have been