The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

304 NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE.
And more clearly, Eubulus, in the Pamphilns
" First,
taking from him the two coppers (xoAxi'w), 69 he sponged
the rust from his hand." And so Oratinus, in the
Thracian Women, seems to have called gold xP l>
" Because they stopped the crows stealing the gold (xp^o-ia)
from Egypt." 70 (92.) The copper was a small coin, as we
see from Demosthenes 71 "Not even a single copper yet
up to this day." But common and popular usage calls
the silver coin a copper, as " I have not a copper," "I owe a
copper." This is found, too, in the Persae of Epicharmus
" Owing gold and copper." Perhaps in case of necessity (?)
one might quote as an instance of the same use in Attic
writers the passage of Aristophanes referring to money in
the Ecclcsiazusae, when he
"
says I came away with my
mouth full of coppers;" (93) but what follows is clear
"
enough The crier proclaimed that none should in future
receive copper ;
for we use silver."
Thucydides 73 calls some staters Phocaean, and there
was a kind of coin so called. At any rate Callisthenes
says in his Apophthegtns, that he was surprised by the poet
Persinus writing, when, neglected by Eubulus the Atar-
nian, he had gone away to Mytilene, that he could change
poor from the artistic point
of view: it is evident that the
Athenians kept their types unimproved from generation to
generation from a commercial prejudice against any innovation
in a currency which passed in all Greece and Western Asia. It
does not appear that any of the copper pieces used for a short
time during the Peloponnesian War are extant.
" * See above, p. 291.
70 These would probably be the Daric staters, the only gold
coins allowed to circulate in any part of the Persian Empire.
71 In Meidiam.
72 1. 818.
73 IV. 52.