Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/112

106 It now only remains to see if it is possible, from the numismatic evidence, to test the view here put forward in favour of the claim of priority for the Armorican route. Taking first the question of coin-types, it is hardly probable that unless the people of the north-west of France and the Channel Islands had been already accustomed to the coin-types of Emporiæ, Rhoda, Massalia, and Ebusus, before the stater of Philip came into Gaul and became the general basis of currency of all Central and Northern Gaul and a part of Britain, and the coinage of gold came into vogue, instead of imitating the Philippus type, they would have impressed upon their coins the type derived from the anthropocephalous Pegasus of Emporiæ. On the other hand, if Massalia and Narbo had already developed a well-defined trade route into Britain up Central France and across the Straits before the incoming of the Philippus, it is hardly likely that no trace of the earlier coin-types should exist in the currency of the Belgic tribes on either side of the Straits, especially when we find on coins of the Philippus type in those parts of Gaul which came under the influence of the older Greek coinage, symbols derived therefrom, such as the boar; and when we remember the lasting impression made by the types of Massalia on the coinage of all Eastern and South-Eastern Gaul.

Next we take the weight standards. The coinage of Gaul as a whole followed the standard of Massalia, which was itself the Phocaic, the drachm at its heaviest weighing about 59 grains. Unfortunately, we cannot use this as a criterion to as full an extent as might have at first sight been expected. Though the original Philippus was of Attic standard (135 grains), from the very first moment of its imitation in Gaul its weight was reduced, the oldest Arvernian copies being about 120 grains, that is, about two Phocaic drachms. The Gauls struck quarters of their gold coins. Now in Armorica we find these small gold coins weigh 32 grains, whence M. Hucher