Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/694

Rh 636 NUMISMATICS [GAUL AND BRITAIN. fluenced the money of northern Italy, and, crossing the Channel, produced that of 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, those which can be classed to the tribes and chiefs of Gaul, and the imperial coinage of that country. The coins here attributed to the Gauls and other barbarians are by some numismatists classed to Pannonia. It is qiiite true that the silver money of this class is not found in Gaul, but in the case of the gold it is impossible to draw a distinct geographical line. Further, no nation is so likely to have struck the bulk of these pieces as the plunderers of the Greek cities ; at the same time, there are Thracian and other barbarous mintages which are not Gaulish. The gold money cannot be limited to any one country ; it is common to all, having evidently spread as a safe commercial medium ; the silver, on the other hand, remained limited to the neighbourhood of the Macedonian territory. Thus, though we may separate certain eastern issues, the general designation of the whole group as issued by the Gauls and other barbarians is safest, so long as the great class of gold remains common to the whole region, and even in some varieties to Britain apart from the true British coinage unless, indeed, its presence there is due to commerce. Massilia. The great mart of Massilia (Marseilles), founded about 600 B.C. by the Phocoeans, was the centre of the Greek settlements of Gaul and northern Spain. Emporise 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 Phocsean obols, part of the widespread Western currency already noticed in speaking of Emporine. These were succeeded by Attic drachms, some of which, about Philip of Macedon s time, are beau tiful 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 Phocrea, the Italian Velia in Lucania. Gaul. The coinage of the Gauls clearly had its origin in their predatory incursions into Greece. They there found the money of Philip and Alexander still the great currency. Civilized enough to convert their spoil from metal into money, they speedily coined gold and silver, of which the earliest examples imitate, often with no small intelligence, the gold staters or didrachms of Philip and the silver staters or tetradrachms of Alexander. From the greater rarity of Alexandrine types in silver and their absence in gold, it may be conjectured that the earliest issues were struck in Philip s reign, though the mass of the coinage must be later. 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 class, identified as bearing regal or geo graphical 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 name of the Helvetian prince Orgetorix is likewise traced on Gaulish coins, on which it appeal s allied with those of native chiefs, and in a special coinage of his own, remarkable for the characteristic Swiss type of the bear. The bronze money of Gaiil is still more abundant than the silver, and has a special interest from its characteristic types. The Roman coins recall those of Hispania, but are limited to a few colonize, They range in date from Antony and Augustus to Claudius. The principal issues are the well-known money of Lugdunum (Lyons) and Nemausus (Nimes). Those of Lugdunum may have been struck in a district around the city ; the type of the famous altar of Lyons, that of Roma and Augustus, is worthy of note. The type of Nemausus, commemorating the conquest of Egypt in the crocodile and palm, is further remarkable as sometimes struck in the shape of the hind-leg of a deer, and is therefore called the pied de biche. Britain. The ancient coinage of Britain is the child of that of Gaul, retain ing 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 Yorkshiie, 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 Ganl 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 B. c. Its close may be placed about the middle of the 1st cen tury A. D. 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 Csesar, 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 Cuno- belinus, Shakespeare s Cymbeline, 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 Epaticeus is scanty, but that of Cunobelinus, with Camulotlunum (Colchester) for his chief town, is even more abundant than his father s, indicating a second long reign, and having the same general charac teristics. The gold shows a modification of the traditional type, the silver and bronze the free action of Roman influence and a remark able progress in art. With the death of this prince not long before 43 A.D. British coinage probably ceases, none being known of his sons, Adminius, Togodumnus, and the more famous Caractacus, though the coins of the Iceni may have continued as late as 50 A.D. 1 The ancient coins of Italy occupy the next place. They appear Italy, to have been struck during a period of more than 500 years, the oldest being probably of the beginning of the 6th century B.C., and the latest somewhat anterior to the time of Julius Cfesar. 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 Graco-Italian ; but many coins cannot be referred to either, since they 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. Some of the silver coins have an incuse device on the reverse, which is almost always a repetition of that on the obverse ; they are of Greek cities, but their fabric is peculiar to Italy. There are also a few with a design on the obverse and a perfectly plain reverse. The most remarkable bronze coins of this class are of the kind called ses grave, some of which were the early proper coinage of Rome, although others are known to have been struck by other Italian cities. These are very thick coins, some of which are of great size, while most have a rude appearance. The designs of the Italian coins are generally, if not always, of Greek origin, although the influence of the native mythology may be sometimes traced. The inscriptions are in Latin, Oscan, or Etruscan, and follow a native orthography ; sometimes on the earlier coins they are retrograde. The art of this class is generally poor, or even barbarous. The denominations are common to Greek money, except in the case of the bronze, which follows a native system. Of this system the early proper Roman coins afford the best known examples. The Grteco-Italian coins are of gold, silver, and bronze. The silver and .bronze are very common, and the gold comparatively so, although struck by few states or cities. In form the silver and bronze coins are thicker than those of Greece of the same period, but there is not the same difference in the gold. The designs are of Greek origin, although here, as in the proper Italian coins, but less markedly, native influence can be detected. This influence is evident in the frequent occurrence of types symbolically representing rivers, showing a bias towards the old nature -worship, and still more in the use of Latin inscriptions, with half -Italian forms of the letters on coins otherwise Greek. Of the best art of ancient Italian money we have already spoken, and we shall have occasion to mention some of its most beautiful examples. The denomi nations of the gold and silver coins are unquestionably derived from those of Greece, according to the weight of the Attic talent, the heaviest gold piece being the stater or 3000th part of that talent ; in silver there are few tetradrachms, the didraclnns are extremely common, and smaller denominations are usually not rare. We thus learn that the silver currency was chiefly of didrachms, smaller pieces being less used, and larger ones scarcely used at all. It is important here to notice that the interchange of the native or Italian bronze coinage with the Greek silver coinage led to a double standard, silver and bronze. The bronze standard, as might be suspected, was of Italian origin, the silver of foreign introduction. 1 This summary is from Evans s Coins of the Ancient Britons, London, 1864.