Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/270

 254 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. priority ? To whom should the honour of the invention be attri- buted with a greater degree of probability ? The witnesses in favour of the kings of Lydia seem more worthy of belief than those upholding the pretensions of the ^ginetans ; they are older and nearer the facts they purpose to relate. Xenophanes was a contemporary of Alyattes and Crcesus, and had seen the use of coinage gradually spread from the Lydian empire to the Ionian cities. If Herodotus lived after the fall of the Mermnadse, he yet was the senior by a hundred years or thereabouts of Ephorus ; more than this, he was born and his youth was spent in a region where, in his day, considerable quantities of specie, formerly issued by the Lydian monarchs, were doubtless still in circulation, and he was more curious and better informed than the rhetor-historians of the Isocrates school. The fact that the self-conceit of the Greeks would not permit them readily to acknowledge the superior claim of the Lydians is another reason why we should believe the testimony of Xenophanes and Herodotus ; for nothing short of titles of unquestionable authority would have compelled the former to yield the palm of honour to others. Historical chronology cannot be depended upon to solve the question, since no date is more controverted than that assigned to the reign of Pheidon. If certain instances would seem to mark the eighth or even the ninth century B.C. as a possible date, there are others which oblige us to go down to the middle of the seventh century, in order to find, in Peloponnesus, a range of circumstances in accord with the great and special part attributed to Pheidon. Hence it is that the eminent historian of Greece, Ernest Curtius, has embraced the latter hypothesis. 1 In his estimation Pheidon was a contemporary of Gyges, but somewhat his junior, and still a youth when the Mermnad bore down all opposition and firmly seated himself on the throne of Lydia. The best way for settling the point at issue is to address one- self to the monuments, for superficial inspection will suffice to bring out clearly the importance of the witnesses we have adduced. No extant series of coins bear so primitive and old an aspect as the silver pieces of /Egina, and certain " electrum " examples Argians," subjoined to his great collection, devoted part of a chapter to the weights and measures instituted by Pheidon ; the Paros Chronicles, i. 45, 46. 1 E. CURTIUS, Hist, of Greece, torn. i. p. 299, n. 3.