Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/300

 284 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. corresponding with the two systems current in Lydia proper and the neighbouring provinces. As to the silver stater issued by this prince, it was the tenth part of his gold stater. Thanks to these wise measures, Lydian pieces were readily accepted, not only throughout the empire, from the Halys to the yEgean, but out- side the frontiers as well ; whilst in every market of the seaboard they more than held their own against the coinage struck by the Ionian cities. No matter the metal of which the coins were made, whether large or small, all that came out of the royal mint at Sardes have one uniform type : the foreparts of a lion and a bull face to face, the former with open mouth, the latter with protruding horn (Fig. 192) ; on the reverse, two hollow squares, made by two dies with rude irregular surface. Of the types that appear on these FIG. 192. Gold Lydian coin. ,1 i- j .1 i Cabinet des Medaiiies. coins, the lion and the group made up of the lion and the bull, alone belong to the " common properties " of Oriental art. The lion seems to have held in the national myths of Lydia as large a place as in Cappa- docia and Phrygia. 1 As to the manipulation of all these pieces, it is in perfect harmony with the origin and the date we ascribe to them ; the forms of the animal have the somewhat rigid precision which we found everywhere to be the characteristics of analogous works, from the palaces of Assyria to the Phrygian necropoles. It is not to be denied that the Lydian staters, with types on relief, have little to differentiate them from those that were struck nearly at the same time by the cities of the seaboard ; a resemblance, than which no more likely hypothesis can be adduced than that Ionian engravers were called to Sardes by Alyattes and Crcesus. In the sixth century B.C., Ephesus and Miletus would not have con- descended to take their types from people they called Barbarians ; the art of Ionia was too far advanced ; it moved from progress to progress with too bold and independent a mien, to have permitted her to look beyond her frontiers for such borrowings as these. On the other hand, at that time Greek sculpture, in its representation of the animal form, notably the lion, was still archaic and a slavish imitator of Oriental models ; it needed no effort nor shifting of its lines to enable it to turn out images for the Mermnadae in perfect 1 See Hist, of Art, torn. v. p. 262.