THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

GREEK COINS
perceptible ; and when we place the regular examples
of Roman workmanship side by side with those of
republican and Hellenic origin, we have no difficulty
in estimating the disparity between the two schools of
sentiment, art, and design.
Of all the classes of ancient money which engage the
attention of numismatists and amateurs, there is pro-
bably none on which they are more apt to fix at the
outset, and to which they more frequently revert and
remain permanently loyal. In comparison with all
other European systems, the Greek excels in its undy-
ing interest as a faithful reflection of the religious cults,
the social feelings, the popular usages, and the political
transactions and vicissitudes of an unique nationality,
which once made its influence sensible over a great part
of the civilised world, and yet not only could not
transmit its peculiar genius to other succeeding com-
munities, but survived sufficiently long to witness the
decline of its own glory as a nursery and mistress of
the arts. Beyond the services which these precious
archives have rendered to other departments of know-
ledge, we have to consider the obligations under which
we lie to their survivorship for our acquaintance, de-
rivable from no other sources, with long dynasties of
forgotten rulers and the lost sites of cities formerly
populous and powerful.
The agencies which most influentially contributed to
the formation of style, and, on the other hand, to the
periodical changes and vicissitudes in the character of
ancient Greek money, were primarily a deep and widely
51