THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

GREEK COINS
B.C. 250 to about a.d. 250, and to embrace about thirty
reigns. It commences with Diodotcs, who made him-
self independent of Syria, and of whom we have staters
and tetradrachms, as well as copper- or bronze -money,
of good work. His successors produced some fine
examples of portraiture down to Menander, but not
uninterruptedly, as many of the intervening rulers shew
coins of inferior execution, and in nearly all the reverse
types are unequal to the obverse. The inscriptions are
often bilingual, and the fabric of the tetradrachms is
usually widespread ; among the smaller denominations
there are pieces of square form. The mythology is
partly Greek and partly Indian. We allude elsewhere
to the unique 20-stater piece of Eukratides, to the
unique tetradrachm of Plato, king of Bactria, and to
another with the busts of Eukratides, Heliocles, and
Laodice. The tetradrachms of Heliocles vary in their
style, owing, no doubt, to the mint or circumstances.
AFRICA
tEgypt, like Bactria, Parthia, and so many other
States which acquired independence between the middle
of the fourth and that of the third century B.C., was a
kingdom originally founded by Ptolemy, one of the gene-
rals of Alexander the Great, and to this source we are
indebted for a lengthened, rich, and varied series of
coins in all metals down to Roman imperial times.
The money of the Ptolemies themselves, more particu-
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