Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/298

 282 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. and decimal division, by means of which the end aimed at was more easily reached. 1 The important thing to be remembered is the fact that the lighter pieces were struck at Sardes to facilitate the caravan traffic carried on between the Euphrates valley and Lydia ; whilst the larger, heavier mine would seem to have been more particularly employed in the commercial transactions of the Mermnadae with the Greeks of the seaboard. The interest these pieces have in our estimation does not reside in their specific weight, but in their form and the image impressed thereon ; we study them as monuments of the arts of design. The moneys attributed to . the age of Gyges and Ardys are all in electrum. On one side are mark- ings or striae, but no impression made with the die; on the reverse, three deep FIG. 188. Lydian coin. Electrum. i, i ,1 -j 11 British Museum. indentations, oblong in the middle, square on either side. In these hol- lows are symbols in relief, sometimes very indistinct. The most curious is seen in Fig. 188, exhibiting a running fox within the narrow slit cut right across the piece. Here and there, despite the smallness of the image, the animal is distinguishable and easily recognized ; 2 in the majority of cases, however, it is guesswork rather than vision. On the smaller ingots, as the half and other fractions of the stater, the markings of the punches are more or less rude and irregular. The Greeks of Miletus, Ephesus, Cymse, and Phocaea, who had in very early days adopted the electrum, then the gold coinage of Lydia, showed no less alacrity in making their own the new in- vention, the advantages of which were patent to all. But they soon improved upon the medals they had borrowed from the Lydians, and made a great step onward when they took the image out of the bed in which it lay in shadow, and set it up in the light of day, on one of the faces. To this progressive stage already be- longs a specimen attributed with a great degree of probability to 1 See FR. LENORMANT, Monnaies royales de la Lydie, pp. 184-196 ; BARCLAY V. HEAD, Coinage of Lydia and Persia, pp. 1-7 ; Hist. Num., " Introduction," pp. xxviii.-xxxvi. 2 Some have denied the existence of the fox in the situation referred to in the text ; but it is plain enough in Fig. 188, which was drawn by M. St. Elme Gautier, from an impression kindly forwarded to us by Mr. Barclay V. Head of the British Museum.