# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Coin collecting - Part 1

COIN COLLECTING.
There is no taste more general than that for collecting coins, yet there is none which is pursued with less judgment. The picture-buyer knows a Flemish from a Spanish master, and can even discriminate between the schools of Italy; the coin collector, in general, merely buys for rarity or beauty, without any distinct notion of the importance of the object he acquires. If there were any real idea of the interest of coins this would be far otherwise. The historian would be curious to examine unimpeachable monuments marking the rise and fall of kingdoms, the changes of belief and manners, and the various vicissitudes of human affairs. The artist would never weary of studying the handiwork of the best Greek schools, not as shown in the few true Greek statues, and the many corrupt Græco-Roman copies and imitations, or in the little varied bas-reliefs, but in an almost countless number of authentic monuments, bearing designs of every kind, with no drawback but the minuteness of the field they occupy. Coins of all ages are of value to both historian and artist, but the Greek take the first place, both because they illustrate obscure and most interesting periods, and as higher in artistic merit than any others. In history, modern coins are sometimes dangerous guides. The famous medal of the first Napoleon, “frappée à Londres,” is as untrue as the less known dollar of Frederic William IV., of Prussia, “elected Emperor of the Germans,” struck at Frankfort. Nor can we say much of the art of modern coins, with the florin and the new brass money before us. In both particulars, mediæval coins take a higher place; yet even they must yield to the currency of antiquity, in which that of the Greeks is in all respects the most important. In this paper, therefore, I propose to give some instances of the aid to history afforded by ancient Greek money.
We all know the history of the exile of Themistocles, how he fled to the King of Persia, and had allotted for his maintenance the cities of Magnesia, Lampsacus, and Myus, in Asia Minor; but it has never been certain whether he was really a traitor to Greece, or only a pretended servant of her enemies. A late discovery probably throws new light upon his character, and aids us to determine this question. Two coins, struck by him at Magnesia, have been identified by Mr. W. H. Waddington. They show that he had such an authority that he could strike his own money, a right allowed to no Persian satrap, excepting on extraordinary occasions for the payment of troops, although conceded to powerful vassals and to cities; and one of them leads to a far more interesting inference. The latter, which is here engraved, with one side of the other specimen, is in the British Museum. It is remarkable as a plated coin, being of copper covered with a thick coating of silver. Ancient plated coins were intended to pass as silver pieces. They are in general either forgeries of well-known currencies, as of Athens, or else they were issued by authority, as seems to have been done by the Tarentines, judging from their coins, during the war with the Romans. The coinage of Themistocles could scarcely have been common enough to induce forgers to imitate it. This piece was, therefore, probably issued by him, and as the revenues of his territory must have been amply sufficient for his sustenance, there can have been no reason but covetousness for recourse to this expedient. Strange that after so many ages a coin of Themistocles should be unburied to add weight to the evidence against his honesty.
Artaxerxes.
Far different are the features of a more famous eastern king, the great Mithradates, for so his name is spelt on his coins, whose portrait is one of the most remarkable that antiquity affords. He was of Persian descent, for his house was one of those founded by the conspirators against the Magian Smerdis. His career was one of the most daring attempts to withstand the power of Rome, and in some of its particulars is almost an anticipation of our own conflict in India. As inhuman and unscrupulous as our opponents, he was unlike them in his generalship and courage, but his thoroughly Asiatic cruelty makes it impossible for us to feel pity as we read of his disasters.
Silver Coin of Mithridates.
The silver coin of Mithridates which we engrave is, on the head-side, an extremely fine work of a period at which Greek art had generally fallen very low. It was probably struck at his capital Panticapæum, the modern Kertch. The reason of the excellence of the head is, no doubt, that portrait-art, even ideal, flourished after purely ideal-art had decayed, and that, in this case, the engraver had to deal with a head full of character. The subjects of Greek coins were frequently copies of statues, and thus they show us the images as well as the temples of the places where they were issued. Pliny tells us that when Mithradates was conquered by the Romans, they took golden and silver statues representing him in chariots. The head on this coin may well be that of a driver urging horses to their utmost speed, the very best expression and attitude to give the highest ideal portrait of a face of this character. It shows in full exercise the fire, energy, and daring, that are the key to the career of the King of Pontus, and is quite unrivalled by the medallic portraits of modern times, in not one of which has any such ideal likeness in action been attempted.
Antony and Cleopatra.
It will be evident from these remarks how valuable an aid to history is afforded by the study of coins. ​We have not merely the satisfaction of knowing the faces of some of the chief characters of antiquity, but we can form clearer ideas of their mental and moral qualities, not only from the lines of their countenances, but also from the favourite symbols they used, and the evidence their coinage shows of their relations as rulers to their subjects. Each ancient coin either confirms some fact already known, or adds a fresh one to the treasure-house of discovery, and so by degrees our old knowledge is made more definite, and constantly augmented, not from the disputed statements of writers, often describing events that happened long before their days, but on the unquestionable authority of contemporary state-monuments.
Nor is it history alone in its great periods, as those of the contests of Greece and Persia, of Rome and the East, or the lives of such chief persons as those whose coins we have noticed, that are thus illustrated: the light equally falls upon obscurer times, and forgotten rulers; and as by clearer knowledge we can fill up gaps and supply details, the annals of antiquity are, by the study of ancient money, brought nearer to completeness.
I have but touched upon a single bearing of the subject. I might have shown what a wonderful commentary on much of ancient literature the coins afford, how curiously they illustrate local beliefs and the oldest religion of Greece, otherwise scarcely known to us; how they give us the complete history of a town, its changes of fortune, its rise and decay, sometimes, as in the case of our London for more than fifteen centuries, even telling us what rivers watered it, beneath what mountain it stood, and displaying the buildings and statues that adorned it; or I might have shown how the coinage of the Roman Republic bears types relating to the primitive myths of the City—the Wolf and the Twins, Tarpeia, and the heads of the old rulers and heroes, famous in her legends and her history. I could have spoken of the various schools of Greek medallic art, the rich school of the West, the truthful school of Greece Proper, severe at first as Phidias, animated afterwards as Lysippus, passing, like the school of sculpture which it worthily rivals, from repose to action, the hard school of the East, and the pictorial school of Crete, the ancient home of art; or I could have treated of the coins that illustrate our own annals from those of the once half-mythical Cymbeline, by them made quite historical, to the nobles of Edward III., commemorating his sea-victory off Flushing, and the medals of the great wars of our times. But I have at least proved that the study of coins, rightly pursued, offers a field of rich promise to the lover of history and art, sometimes restoring, from a worn and half-effaced piece of copper, some precious but long-forgotten fact in the history of our race, sometimes showing, in a copy of marvellous beauty, the traits of a master-piece of art, for ages thought to be irrecoverably lost.
Reg. Stuart Poole.