BABYLON AND PERSIA

LYDIA AND ASIA MINOR. 21?natural, as found in Lydia, or imitated artificially, asit has been at various times. Of this electron, whichwas cpnsidered inferior in value to gold, but superiorto silver, the first Lydian coins were made. Num¬bers of them, and also of pure gold and silver coins,have been found within a circuit of thirty milesround Sardis, and very rude they were, showing onlythe square punch mark. Only after a series of grad¬ual improvements, we see the well-drawn device ofroyal Lydia a lion's head, or a lion and bull makeits. appearance, under Gyges' fourth descendant, thecelebrated Kroisos. The invention, however, hasremained associated with the name of the former,and late Greek authors speak of ancient coins which.they call "gold pieces of Gyges." Thus it is thatof the half-dozen great inventions which, each inturn, can be said to have changed the face of theworid the alphabet, coining, printing, gunpowder,the use of steam and electricitywc owe two to re¬mote antiquity and to Oriental nations. *15. When the dynasty of the Mermnada; came tothe throne in the person of Gyges, the change madeitself felt at once in the greater energy, ambition,and sounder statesmanship which were exerted-, bothin foreign and domestic affairs. A steady policy ofterritorial aggrandizement was inaugurated by theannexation of Mysia. The blunder that had beenmade by former kings, in suffering the Greek settle-* Several writers, both .ancient and modern, claim the inventionof coining for the Greeks and attribute it to a Greek tyrant, PllEl-DON. oi' Argos, who seems to have been a contemporaiy of Gyges.The probabilities are that Plieidon was the first to appreciate the newinvention and to introduce it into his own country.