THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

GREEK COINS
and the gold ingots of Lampsacus, attributed to the
fifth century B.C., may be the most ancient memorials in
existence of the bold and free treatment which we see
at length carried to such perfection during the best
period of Art.
The portraiture on Greek coins is undoubtedly, as a
rUe, less realistic than that on Roman money ; and it
rmy be true that the lineaments found on urban or
municipal pieces were intended to personify the tutelary
genus of the locality. But at the same time numerous
are the instances where the likeness stamped on an
anciait Greek coin carries with it a conviction that it is
neither more nor less than an idealised transcript of the
face of the sovereign in whose name the money was
struck Numismatists are very steadfast in their adher-
ence to the contrary view ; but it seems to us one of
those points which are eminently open to discussion,
and which may be settled hereafter on a new footing.
The utmost which strikes us as capable of being urged
ii support of the existing theory is that the early en-
graver aimed at investing the personage whom it was
Hs business to portray with a kind of divine afflatus
cdculated to impress the popular fancy. With the
eiception of certain cases where the portrait on a Greek
oin is almost obviously a vera effigies, as in the Syrian,
Igyptian, Bactrian, and some of the Macedonian series,
tie heads must be accepted, we think, as flattering
resemblances of the rulers themselves, as we see in the
toman imperial currency, and in that, coming much
liter down, of Napoleon I. But we have modern
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