THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

GREEK COINS
In the settlement of the order of sequence the prin-
ciple followed by Dr. Head has been mainly adhered
to ;
it appears to be to a large extent that approved by
Ecklel ; but the present writer would have preferred
to change the relative positions assigned in the Historia
Numorum to Greece and some of its European colonies,
and to Lydia and a few other Asiatic centres belong-
ing to the First Epoch. The title of Britain to
admittance into this section solely rests on the imita-
tion by its moneyers of the Macedonian stater in a
progressively degraded form.
It will be sufficient to glance at the Historia Numorum
to make it immediately clear that what here follows is
merely a general sketch, sufficient to prepare any one
to estimate or gauge the extent and nature of the task
which he may have before him either as a collector or
as a student. Perhaps Dr. Head has passed over rather
too lightly the bronze coins, which constitute in a high
state of preservation at once a beautiful and an inex-
pensive branch of study or pursuit, and may be confi-
dently recommended to amateurs on these grounds.
But purity of condition is here of the first importance.
Hispania.—(i.) Greek coinage, 4th-3rd century B.C.
Mints: Emporiae, Rhoda, Gades, Ebusus. Types: imi-
tations of the archaic Phocaean drachma, with the
divisions into thirds, sixths, twelfths, and twenty-
fourths, and various emblems or symbols : a cock, a
cuttlefish, a bull's head, &c. The coins of Rhoda have
a rose, those of Gades or Cadiz the head of the Tyrian
Herakles, and the Ebusus series Kabeiros with a hammer
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