Greek Coins

The 5th century saw the beginning of one of the finest and most interesting series of silver coins, that of Elis. From about 471 when Elis became a city to its conquest by Macedon in 322 the staters form a continuous series. The whole land was sacred to the Olympian Zeus and his symbols, the thunderbolt or eagle clutching its prey, are usual types along with a Victory in various attitudes—running to crown a victor, standing or seated with outspread wings—the latter type was copied by Pistrucci for the Waterloo medal in 1815. At a later period the head of Zeus appears as does that of Hera and also the fine head of the nymph Olympia. The legend is always FA for (F)aleion and the long obsolete digamma survived to the end of the coinage in the middle of the 1st century B.C. The types and the additional legend 0/ymkikon occasionally found show a close connection with the Olympic games which the Eleians claimed to control. There is an interesting numismatic record at Pisa of the successful effort on the occasion of the Io4th Olympiad by the Pisatans to regain their ancient right of controlling the games which they had lost when the Eleians destroyed their city in 572 B.C.

Italy and Sicily.

It is in the west in Italy and Sicily that work of the finest period is seen in greatest profusion. In Italy, Tarentum, the capital of Calabria, continued its type of Taras on a dolphin on its silver. In the middle of the 5th century the agonistic type of a horseman appears and Taras is relegated to the reverse; the celebrated Tarentine cavalry are thus commemo rated down to the middle of the 4th century. About 34o Tarentum issued a series of very beautiful gold coins with a head of Persephone and, reverse, the infant Taras appealing to Zeus enthroned. These gold coins, like sudden issues of gold elsewhere, were really a money of necessity.

In Lucania, Heraclea, founded in the middle of the 5th cen tury, issues fine staters with a helmeted Athena and Heracles seated, strangling, or wrestling with a lion. Metapontum inter rupts the monotony of its ear of corn type with a most striking head of its founder Leucippus. Other mints of the time are Neapolis, with its types the siren Parthenope and her father, the manheaded bull Archelous; Velia, with its head of a nymph and reverse the eastern type of a lion attacking a bull; Thurium, with its unusually fine head of Athena and the powerful bull on the re verse, and Terina, remarkable for its beautiful treatment of the Victory type.

It is in Sicily, particularly in Syracuse, that the engraver's art reaches a perfection never attained elsewhere before or since; from the middle of the 5th to the middle of the 4th century every coin is the work of an artist. In the 5th century Syracuse

began to dominate the politics of Sicily as Athens was doing in the Aegean, and her artists spread the influence of her coin-types everywhere. The coins of Syracuse showed many varieties of the heads of Arethusa and Persephone and the chariot of the reverse was found capable of very varied treatment. After the middle of the 5th century her artists began to sign their work and we can thus prove, what is frequently obvious, that other towns bor rowed engravers from Syracuse. The Syracusan coinage is mainly silver. During the siege by the Athenians, beautiful little gold coins were struck with reverse Hercules strangling a lion (Pl. I.

22). With the prosperity following the enemy's defeat, Syracusan art reaches its zenith. As the Demareteion commemorates the defeat of the Carthaginians so the great series of decadrachms perpetuates the victory of 412. The agonistic types and word athla on some of them show that they were distributed at the games held to celebrate the victory; their types were widely copied and their engravers Kimon and Euainetos—otherwise quite un known—have gained a place among the world's greatest artists.

In the 4th century the coinage becomes somewhat stereotyped and has no longer any originality. We may note the issues of electrum by Dion in 357-353 and of gold by Timoleon who intro duced the Pegasus type from Corinth on his coinage.

Among other cities of Sicily we may note the fine series of Agrigentum of the 5th century with its beautiful double eagle type and the Camarina type of the river god Hipparis and the nymph Camarina on a swan ; Himera before its destruction in 408 issued some very interesting types such as the nymph Himera sacrificing while Silenus beside her bathes at the thermal spring for which Himera was noted,—or Pelops in his chariot, referring to a victory of a Himeran at the Olympic games which Pelops is said to have founded. Segesta, Eryx and other cities already Carthaginian, use Greek types and artists but have Punic legends. The nymph Segesta and the river god Crimissos are the best types of Segesta while Selinus abandons its parsley leaf and issues a number of very remarkable types, notably that of Apollo and Artemis in their quadriga with reverse the god Silenus sacrificing at an altar, a type which refers to the cessation of the plague as a result of appeals to Apollo as healer. In conclusion we may mention the wonderfully realistic Silenus with his wine-cup at Naxos.