Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/272

 256 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. The oldest coins of ^Egina have a far-off resemblance with the metallic bars of former days, which served as medium of exchange ; the ingots are still oblong instead of approaching a more or less circular shape ; 1 so that their primitive rough appearance might at first sight be taken to denote priority of date as against those of Lydia. But if the puncheons seen on the coins we attribute to Gyges show better workmanship than those issued at ^Egina with a tortoise impressed on the obverse, the difference admits of easy explanation. In the seventh century B.C., Asia Minor was greatly in advance of Greece ; her art and the crafts allied thereto testified to a development and surety of hand which training and experience alone can give. The fact which apparently decided the question of priority of date is that the oldest coins of Lydia, as compared with those heading the ^Egina series, do not, as these, entirely fulfil the conditions which, in antiquity, constituted and defined coinage. The pieces clearly belong to an early epoch of transition ; they are still ingots, of the kind once circulated in Egypt and throughout Asia, but the stamp of public authority has conferred upon them all the essentials requisite in a coinage, as a medium of traffic and public convenience. On the other hand, a gigantic step onward was made with the advent of the coiner's block, when impressions in relief could be obtained ; and this enormous progress is non-existent in the earliest gold staters of the Lydians. Consequently pieces, no matter how rude in make, but on which types in relief appear, have no claim to be con- sidered as the oldest, since they carry the mark of a new and progressive stage in the coiner's art ; and to this stage belong the oldest silver coins of ^gina. 2 Herodotus would seem, then, to be right when he awards the honour of the invention of coined money to the Lydians ; save that it is inaccurate, as regards the Lydia of that time, to speak of 1 In the famous temple of Hera, at Argos, were shown bars (o/ScXio-xoi) said to have been consecrated by Pheidon, as a standing witness of an old usage his inven- tions had caused to be set aside (EtymoL Magnum, -vide 6/3eA.rKos). 2 For a comprehensive survey of the Lydian coinage, besides Lenormant, see BARCLAY V. HEAD, The Coinage of Lydia and Persia, which appeared in the International numismata Orientalia from 1874-1877 (Triibner and Co.). In it (p. 19) the author discusses in full the reform attributed to Croesus. Each number is accompanied by excellent plates in photogravure, which form a separate work. The same questions are more briefly treated in Hist. Numorum, pp. 545, 546, by the same author. M. C. Souxzo, Systemes monetaires primitifs de F Asie Mineure et de la Grece (Revue Roumaine d"Arche., d*histoire, et de philologie, torn, ii., 1883).