The Antiquary, Vol. 7 PDF Download

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ISBN: 9781331314820
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Excerpt from The Antiquary, Vol. 7: A Magazine Devoted to the Study of the Past; January June Bullion Money. - Many centuries before the invention of the art of coining, gold and silver in the East, and bronze in the West, in bullion form, had already supplanted barter, that most primitive of all methods of buying and selling, when among pastoral peoples the ox and the sheep were the ordinary mediums of exchange. The very word Pecunia is an evidence of this practice in Italy at a period which is probably recent in comparison with the time when values were estimated in cattle in Greece and the East. The Invention of Coinage. - "So far as we have any knowledge," says Herodotus (I. 94), "the Lydians were the first nation to introduce the use of gold and silver coin." This statement of the father of history must not, however, be accepted as finally settling the vexed question as to who were the inventors of coined money, for Strabo (VIII. 6), Aelian (Var. Hist., XII. 10), and the Parian Chronicle all agree in adopting the more commonly received tradition, that Pheidon, King of Argos, first struck silver coins in the island of Aegina. These two apparently contradictory assertions modern research tends to reconcile with one another. The one embodies the Asiatic, the other the European tradition; the truth of the matter being that gold was first coined by the Lydians, in Asia Minor, in the seventh century before our era; and that silver was first struck in European Greece about the same time. Earliest and later Methods of Coining. - The earliest coins are simply bullets of metal, oval or bean-shaped, bearing on one side the signet of the state or of the community responsible for the purity of the metal and the exactitude of the weight. Coins were at first stamped on one side only, the reverse showing merely the impress of the square-headed spike on which the metal bullet was placed after being weighed, and then heated to make it sufficiently soft to receive the impression of an engraved die. The bullet of hot metal would then be placed with a pair of tongs on the top of the spike, which served the purpose of an anvil, and held there while a second workman adjusted upon it the engraved die. This done, a third man with a heavy hammer would come down upon it with all his might, and the coin would be produced, bearing on its face or obverse the seal of the issuer, and on the reverse nothing whatever except the mark of the anvil spike, an incuse square. This simple process was after a time improved upon by adding a second engraved die beneath the metal bullet, so that a single blow of the sledge-hammer would provide the coin with a type, as it is called, in relief, on both sides. The presence of the unengraved incuse square may therefore be accepted as an indication of high antiquity, and nearly all Greek coins which are later than the age of the Persian wars bear a type on both sides. Scientific Value of Greek Coins. - The chief scientific value of Greek coins lies in the fact that they are original documents, to which the experienced numismatist is generally able to assign an exact place in history. The series of the coins of any one of the cities of Greece thus forms a continuous comment upon the history of the town, a comment which either confirms or refutes the testimony which has been handed down to us by ancient writers, or where such testimony is altogether wanting, supplies very valuable evidence as to the material condition, the political changes, or the religious ideas of an interval of time which, but for these dumb witnesses, would have been a blank in the chart of the world's history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com