Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/466

438 Victory has a torque, or armlet, in her hand instead of a crown; a fact which shows that those ornaments were marks of distinction like crowns among the Greeks. The meaning of the coins was to a great extent lost by the time they arrived in Britain, and the crown of Apollo became transformed into an ear of barley. Mr. Franks considers that the designs of the Prehistoric Iron age have been derived from classic originals, which have been treated in the same way as the coins.

The date of the earliest British coins is fixed by Mr. Evans between B.C. 200 and 150.

The evidence of the coins proves that trade was carried on with the neighbouring tribes of Gaul, and that commodities from Britain were passed from tribe to tribe until they arrived at Massilia. In later times a more direct intercourse was carried on, and caravans passed from the shores of the Mediterranean to the shores of the English Channel. Coins of silver and brass appear, some struck in the same dies as the later series of gold. Counterfeit coins also have been discovered, composed of copper or bronze covered with gold or silver. British coins were first struck in the south-eastern parts nearest to Gaul, and they are found as far west as Cornwall, and north as Yorkshire. According to Solinus, money was not current among the Silures of South Wales in the first century after Christ. Among other traces of the trade with the Mediterranean we