Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/271

 THE LYDIANS, THEIR COUNTRY, HISTORY, AND RELIGION. 255 which are generally ascribed to the kings of Lydia. The latter, as struck by the Lydians, will alone engage our attention in this part of our history. Our reason for assigning a Lydian origin to them rests upon the following data : The vast majority of similar pieces (found in our museums) were collected in the environs of Sardes. 1 The type seen on them is in harmony with the hypothesis we uphold ; it is a lion, whose image Crcesus sent to Delphi, 2 which, carried round the ramparts of Sardes, 3 made them impregnable, and, last not least, it is the animal sacred to Cybele, the great goddess of Asia Minor. In other specimens the head of the lion is opposed to that of the bull, and numerous examples have already shown us how dear was the device to Asiatic art ; the juxtaposition of the two animals would seem to have had a symbolic value. 4 More- over, many of these pieces are in electrum, that is to say, the metal par excellence of Lydia. 5 The Greeks gave the name of electrum, pale gold, to a natural alloy of gold and silver in varying quantities. The electrum obtained from the auriferous sands of Tmolus and minted by the Lydians contains seventy-three parts of silver to twenty-seven of gold. 6 The use of a coinage, of which the alloy was not constant, is in itself a strong presumption of remote antiquity ; since Herodotus tells us that later, in the reign of Crcesus, moneyers took to refining gold destined for coinage, so as to bring it nearer to standard. The form and aspect of the pieces in Lydia, which are little more than ingots ovoid shaped, betray the gropings of a nascent art far more effectually than imperfection of the metal employed. Then, too, on these kind of huge lozenges flattened at the rim, appear hollows or striae on one side, and three deeply incused stilettos or puncheons symmetrically arranged on the other. 1 RAWLINSON, Herodotus, i. p. 713. a Herodotus, i. 50. 3 Ibid., 48. 4 Hist, of Art, torn. ii. Fig. 443 ; torn. iii. p. 652, Figs. 475, 476, 544, 624. One of these stilettos is in the shape of a fox's head, symbolic of Dionysios, who in Lydia was called Bassareus, fox. Bassara was the name of the fox among certain barbarous people {Thesaurus, s.v.). 6 SOPHOCLES, Antigone, 1037-1039: KepScuver' ffj.TroX5.Tf TOV Trpos SapSecov rifKTpov, ei /JouA.<r#e, /cat TOV 6 BARCLAY V. HEAD, Hist. Numorum, Introduction, Plate XXXIV. ; FR. LENORMANT, La MonnaU dans Fantiquite, torn. i. pp. 190-194. The periphrase " white gold," Aev/cos x/wo-os, was sometimes used instead of rjXfKrpov by the Greeks (Herodotus, i. 70).