THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

THE COLLECTOR SERIES
analogy on our side to assist in shewing that even
allegorical and emblematical figures on a coinage are
generally traceable to an actual individual, and were
adopted by the artists as the objects nearest at hand.
The portraits on the staters and tetradrachms of Philip
of Macedon and on the silver money of his son Alex-
ander the Great possess a verisimilitude which is very
persuasive, and the prevailing character of the held
on the more or less coeval tetradrachms of Alexander
strike us as far more likely to have resembled the king
than that on the posthumous /Esillas piece.
Of the metals employed by Greek engravers, electrum,
silver, and bronze were the most usual. The two latter
were at all times the most widely diffused ;
the elettrum
money was restricted to particular districts where this
natural amalgam of gold and silver, prized as Larder
than the more precious ore for these purposes, was found.
Gold was, in a comparative sense, sparingly used ; and
the Greek series in that metal bears a very small pro-
portion to those in the other three mineral substances.
Modern discovery has added a good deal to our know-
ledge of the electrum coinages of Cyzicus and other
localities. For gold, subsequently to the Archab
period, we have to look to Attica, Macedonia, Thessalj,
Epirus, Thrace, Sicily, and Egypt ; and the Athenian
stater and its divisions are among the rarities and pre-
blems of Greek numismatics, since very few genuim
specimens are extant, although the currency is suppose!
to have had a duration of about half a century (b.c
394-350).
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