Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/269

 THE LYDIANS, THEIR COUNTRY, HISTORY, AND RELIGION. 253 opening years of the seventh century B.C., and the honour of the invention rests between the Greeks and the Lydians ; that is to say, between two nations almost sisters in blood, and both occupy- ing the basin of the ^gean Sea. Two traditions obtained in the ancient world in regard to it, both supported by authorities of the greatest weight. The lexicographer Pollux, a judicious and well-informed man, in face of the conflicting evidence found in various authors, hesitates " to settle the question as to whether the Argian Pheidon or the Lydians first struck coins." l The question is precisely where classic antiquity left it. 2 For some Ephorus, followed by Strabo, 3 ^Elian, 4 and a goodly number of later writers, 6 as well as continental Greece generally the first coins were those bearing a tortoise on the obverse, which Pheidon, king of Argos, caused to be struck in the island of ^Egina, which formed part of his dominions. On the other hand, Herodotus says, " To our knowledge the first men who struck money of gold and silver were the Lydians." 6 The same testimony is borne by an older writer, Xenophanes of Colophon, who made the ancient history of Lydia his special study. 7 The gold of Gyges, the staters of Croesus, were likewise adduced as having passed as currency. 8 The evidence we now possess enables us to assert that the two traditions rest on a real base, and coincide with two distinct facts ; namely, that the first gold coins were issued by the kings of Lydia, and the first silver money by Pheidon in ^Egina. This last fact is connected with the institution of the oldest system of weights and measures known in Peloponnesus, and is universally attributed to that prince whose authority seems to have extended over a large portion of that province by historians who have handled the subject. 9 But which of the two monetary issues is entitled to 1 Pollux, ix. 83. 2 We do little more than give a summary of Lenormant's very precise and lucid exposition (La Marinate, I. iii. 2). 8 Strabo, viii. vi. 16. 4 ^OI.IAN, Hist. Var., xii. 10. 6 The Paros Chronicles (i. 45, 46) record certainly the fact that silver coins were struck at ygina by Pheidon, but nothing is said as to having been the first issued 6 Herodotus, i. 94. 7 Pollux, ix. 83. Xenophon was born towards the end of the seventh century ; he is the author of a poem entitled Kn'o-is KoXo^wvos. 8 Pollux, iii. 87. FuytaSas xpucros, Kpouretot araTiJpes. 9 Herodotus, vi. 127 ; PLINY, Hist. Natur., VII. Ivii. 7 (ed. Littre') ; Pollux, x. 179, from whom we learn that Aristotle, under the heading " The Constitution of the