Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/337

 Archaic coin of Samos.

Coin of Cnidus.

lion and bull upon the coins of Lydia represent the Sun-god and the Moon-goddess. May not the lion simply be the royal emblem? I have already suggested this explanation for the lion weights of Assyria. Undoubtedly from the earliest times the king of beasts (as in Aesop's Fables) was regarded in the East as the true badge of royalty. "The Lion of the tribe of Judah" is familiar to us all, and it is more rational to regard the lions which guarded the steps of Solomon's throne as emblems of kingship rather than as symbols of the Sun. Is then the Lion on the coins of Lydia nothing more than the kings badge, just as the stag is the badge of Phanes? But what about the bull or cow? Shall I go too far if I regard it as indicating that the coin is the ox-unit? When the Greeks borrowed the art of coining from Lydia it is easy to understand that they would likewise borrow the type either in a complete or modified form, and hence it is that we find the lion or lion's head on the coins of Miletus, the lion's scalp on those of Samos (on which the cow's head also is found), the lion's head on the coins of Cnidus, of Gortyn in Crete, at Rhodes, at Miletus, and at the Phocaean towns of Velia in Lucania, and Massalia in Gaul, and put by the Samian exiles on their coins at Zancle. If the Greeks had been barbarians they would have