THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

GREEK COINS
with the heads of Apollo or Pallas, (ii.) The civil
currency having, as it is thought, ceased, and the Mar-
seilles and other mints closed, about b.c. 50, the coins
circulating in the four usual divisions of Gaul thenceforward
to the Merovingian era were either the Roman
money or the barbarous imitations of it side by side
with those of the Greek stater of Macedon and other
ancient models, which may be referred back to the third
century b.c, and survive in large numbers in various
metals, with types seldom intelligible or (except by con-
jecture) capable of localisation. This description of
currency extended over the whole of Gaul and Belgium
and parts of Britain and Spain.
Britannia. — This section concerns Greek numis-
matics, as we have just said, no further than the copies
of the Macedonian stater or degraded imitations of
Gaulish reproductions of it. We have offered a few
remarks on this subject under another head, to which
the ancient money of Britain may perhaps be more
properly referred.
Italia.—Of the coins of Graeco-Italian origin we have
those in gold and silver (the latter often uniface) of
Etruria, which sometimes bear marks of value, and
appear to have followed the decimal system, and in
bronze. The gold is of two standards and the silver of
three, both more or less coexistent and local, those of
the Euboic-Syracusan one being usually uniface. The
types are numerous and varied : obverse, head of Hermes,
Gorgon's head, seahorse, Sic. ; reverse, a wheel, circle,
crescent, sphynx, &c. The bronze series is large, inte-
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