The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

78 NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE.
as forming a collar round the neck of the goddess, with
the two serpents proceeding from it ;
an addition that is,
so far as I have observed, wholly unknown on the silver
coinage of Athens, and is, indeed, very rarely found on
Greek coins of an early period at all. The SDgis is, how-
ever, introduced in the usual form, as an ornament on the
breast of the goddess, upon some of the later copper coins
but these belong to the period of the Roman
of Athens ;
Empire. On the present coin, as is so often the case with
archaic works of art, it is rather indicated than represented,
the body of the aegis being reduced to a mere
collar around the neck, the meaning of which would
not be suspected but for the two serpents that proceed
from it.
I purchased this coin in 1861, at Thebes, from an
Athenian coin dealer, who had just been making a tour
through the villages of Boeotia, in the course of which, in
addition to this interesting tetradrachm, he had procured
the fine coin of Haliartus (with the legend APIAPTION)
that was afterwards sold in England in November, 1861,
at the sale of Mr. Merlin's coins. I had subsequently an
opportunity of showing it to the Baron Prokesch Osten,
who had enjoyed almost unrivalled opportunities of col-
lecting Athenian coins during his long residence in the
Levant, but he had never seen a similar specimen.
Before passing to the later coins of Athens, it may be
worth while to mention that I possess a very well pre-
served specimen of the didrachm of the usual style, or
middle period of the coinage.
The extreme rarity of this
denomination is well known. Baron Prokesch Osten,
indeed (writing in 1854), speaks of only four specimens
as then known to him. That in my collection is precisely
similar to the one figured in the Museum Hunterianum,