The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

194 NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE.
On the whole question of the constitution of the Boeotian
League the evidence is only too scanty. All that we are
able to affirm with confidence is that the more important
cities were autonomous members of the League, and that
the smaller towns and villages were comprised in the
territories of the larger and subject to their jurisdiction.
The probability is, therefore, that those cities of which we
possess the larger denominations of the silver money of
any given period, were during that period the principal
members of the Boeotian League.
With regard to the coins of Orchomenus the case is
somewhat different. Of all the cities in Boeotia Orcho-
menus is the only one of which the coinage does not, in
early times, bear the shield, the type of all the contemporary
federal money of the other allied cities, but its own
peculiar and distinct type, the grain of corn, referring, as
a religious symbol, to the extraordinary productiveness of
the Orchomenian plain, the fertility of which even in our
own days is so remarkable that Leake was able to count as
many as 900 grains in a single ear of corn. The stem of this
plant is very strong and large, and when plastered with
mud forms the most common material of the present
cottages near the Cephissic marshes. (Leake, N. Greece,
p. 158.)
The fact that none of the early coins of Orchomenus are
of the Federal type would seem to indicate that Orcho-
menus, still perhaps the richest town in all BoBotia, con-
tinued to stand aloof from the confederacy.
On the other
hand, as there are no large silver coins of Orchomenus of
the sixth and fifth centuries, it is probable that this inde-
pendence of Orchomenus was not complete. The city
doubtless retained certain privileges, forms rather than