THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

THE COLLECTOR SERIES
Peesis (capital, Persepolis) enjoyed a l)rief interval
of regal autonomy in the third century is.c., and to this
circumstance, due to the temporary weakness of the
Seleucid dynasty in Syria, we owe certain tetradrachms
and gold staters of Athenian and Macedonian patterns,
but of barbarous work and with indistinct legends.
One of the silver types exhibits a king worshipping
before a fire-altar. The coins of the Sassanidae, which
extend from the third to the seventh century a.d., and
represent the product of thirty reigns, and those of
Characene in Susiana, constitute other departments of
the Greek school of work, to which, as being almost
outside the strict lines, it is impossible to do more than
refer in the present case ; and the same is predicable of
the Persian series of gold darics and silver sigloi; the
main Hellenic feature of interest about the former
being that about n.c. 331 Alexander the Great is sup-
posed to have first struck the double darics, of which
specimens, once extremely rare, are now more or less
readilv procurable. The ordinary coin is remembered
by the anecdote of Agesilaus and the thirty thousand
archers, who had driven him out of Athens—allusively
to the figure on the coin.
Bactbia and Northern India.—The line of succes-
sion of the princes of this region, and the extent and
distribution of their authority, are still unsettled and
incomplete, although the rich fruit of excavations in
Afghanistan and the Punjaub has placed our knowledge
of the coinage on an entirely new footing. The
series is at present known to have extended from about
100