Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/550

 536 NUMISMATICS coins found in the ruins of Sardis are believed to antedate the Ionian specimen. The most ancient type represents the mythical triumph FIG. 1. Gold Stater of Miletus. of the lion over the bull, typical of the triumph of royal authority over its enemies. The Per- FIG. 3. Persian Gold Daric. FIG. 2. Gold Stater of Sardis. sian stater or daric was also coined at a very early period. It bore the royal emblem, a crowned archer. The oldest silver coins extant are those of the island of ^Egina, bearing a tortoise on the obverse. Those of the first period are very rude, with ir- regular punch marks on the back ; in the sec- ond period the punch holes are more regular, and in the third the tortoise is more elaborate and the punch holes have a decided tendency toward symme- try. A marked feature in the history of coin- age is the passage through the successive stages of improvement in the punch holes on the reverse. The first FIG. 4. Silver Coin of ^Egina, First Period. FIG. 5. Silver Coin of ^Egina, Third Period. improvement was to give the end of the punch some rude design, as in the coin of the Corinthian colony of Syracuse, fig. 6. The next advance was to make the punch cor- respond to the die, which produced a coin with a design in relief on one side and an incused impression of the same design on the other. The coins of Tarentum in Magna Graecia are fine examples of this class, some of which are as early as 600 B. C. Sometimes FIG. 6. Coin of Syracuse. the incused reverse differs in design from the obverse. Coins with both obverse and re- FIG. 7. Incused Coin of Tarentum. verse in relief were made in Magna Grsecia about 610 B. C., and this form came into general use previous to 400 B. C. One of the oldest known coins bearing the name of a sovereign is inscribed AAE2ANAPO, the name of Alexander I. of Macedon, who reigned from about 500 to 454 B. C. Coins of Ge- tas, king of the Edoneans, bear in addition to the name the title of king and the name of the people. The first devices on coins were generally the forms of animals, local genii, river gods, nymphs, and the like. Portraits do not appear until the time of Archelaus I. of Macedon (413-399 B. C.) ; but some doubt that the face on his coins is a portrait, and contend that no human head was impressed on a coin until after the death of Alexander the Great, whose head was then admitted as in some sort that of a divinity. To the Greeks belongs the credit of bringing the art of coin- ing to perfection; and although modern art has invented new processes which secure greater uniformity, the most elaborate coins of the present day dp not surpass those of the Macedonian empire in boldness and beauty of design. The spread of the art was very rapid. There was scarcely a colony of Greece, and certainly no independent nation, which did not have its coinage. More than 1,000 series of Greek autonomous coins, or coins of self-gov- erning cities, are extant. There are also the splendid series of the Parthian kings, the Mace- donian, Armenian, Bactrian, Syrian, Thracian, Bithynian, Cappadocian, Carian, the Ptolemaic series of Egypt, and numerous others, all in- cluding large varieties extending through many years, sometimes through centuries, and all