VI

ANCIENT NUMISMATICS

THE year now under review has seen the publication of one complete work of first-rate importance-Wroth's Byzantine Catalogue. This is a field that has lain fallow too long, but compensation for the delay will be found in the richness of the harvest. The two handsome volumes, with their imposing array of seventy-nine collotype plates, provide the student of the period with a full, lucid, and reliable account of the numismatic data, while a workmanlike introduction summarises all the historical and other facts that are required to make the coins intelligible. A warm welcome must likewise be extended to the second instalment of the Recueil général des monnaies grecques d'Asie Mineure,2 which is being produced under the auspices of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. The material for this great enterprise was originally collected by the late M. Waddington. It is being sifted, supplemented, and prepared for the press by Babelon and Th. Reinach, in a fashion well calculated to render the book a worthy memorial of the distinguished scholar to whom it owes its inception. The contents, which include succinct geographical and historical notices, are marshalled with a clearness that leaves nothing to be desired; the type is admirable; and there is an abundance of excellent illustrations. The recently issued fascicule covers a large portion of Bithynia, the most in

1 Catalogue of the Imperial Byzantine Coins in the British Museum, pp. cxii. +688, with 79 plates (£2, 15s.).

* Pp. 182, with 35 plates, Paris (Leroux), fr. 40 (£1, 12s.).

teresting section being that which deals with the coinage of the Bithynian monarchy. Dr J. N. Svoronos is also to be congratulated on reaching the end of his Ptolemaic Corpus, -a truly Herculean labour. Unfortunately the fourth and final volume, owing to causes quite beyond the author's control, has had to be produced with a speed that was incompatible with the carrying out of the original plan. Even so, however, it contains much that is interesting. The central feature is a supplementary list of coins, with four exceedingly good plates; a German translation of the introduction to vol. i. will be particularly useful to readers unfamiliar with modern Greek; and the usual indexes are reinforced by a comparative table of dates, as well as by a list of the current market-prices of all recorded varieties. special appendix by Hultsch on the thorny question of Ptolemaic metrology contains a good deal of valuable matter, but is far from being the last word upon the subject. Written with a dying hand, it is practically a revision, in the light of Svoronos's earlier volumes, of an article contributed by the author in 1903 to the Proceedings of the Royal Saxon Academy of Sciences.

Turning now to the scattered articles that have appeared in various learned periodicals, we are confronted by a quite exceptional display of activity. One new journal entirely devoted to ancient numismatics has been successfully launched, if indeed "journal" be a proper term to apply to a publication which reserves complete freedom as to the intervals at which the parts are to appear. The opening number contains inter alia a critical examination of Regling's monograph on the staters of Terina, an alternative chronological arrangement being proposed. Some suggestive conjectures as to the significance of certain Sicilian mintages have been put forward by Dr A. C. Headlam,3 while C. H.

1 Die Münzen der Ptolemaeer, vol. iv., pp. xxxiv. +334+39, with 4 plates, Athens (Beck and Barth) fr. 35 (£1, 8s.).

Nomisma, edited by H. von Fritze and H. Gaebler, Berlin (Mayer and Müller), pt. i., pp. iv. +28, with 3 plates, 3 marks 50 pf. (3s. 6d.). 3 Num. Chron. 1908, pp. 1 ff.

Dodd is responsible for a serious attempt to reconcile what we learn from literary sources regarding the Samians at ZancleMessana with the apparently contradictory evidence of the coins. A new solution of a long-standing Sicilian puzzle has been offered by Froehner. Certain not uncommon bronze pieces, invariably found in the island but having Celtiberian types and on the reverse the legend Hispanorum, bear on the obverse an inscription from which no intelligible meaning has hitherto been extracted. Froehner now proposes to decipher it as L. Juni. Leg. Sic., possibly L. Junius Silanus, who may have been appointed legatus in Sicily by Sextus Pompeius in 43 B.C., a date which would tally with the style of the coins. Taking as his text a well-known inscription of Sestos, H. von Fritze has drawn some important deductions, both as to the administration of ancient mints in general and as to the detailed arrangement of the coinage of this city in particular; thus, he has made distinctly clearer the meaning of eμeλnévтos and ἐπιμεληθέντος αιτησαμένου. Earle Fox has recognised the initial coinage of Corcyra in the primitive triobols, trihemiobols and hemiobols usually ascribed to Phocis; he bases his conclusion on fabric, weight, type, and probable provenance-a singularly compact foundation. A useful summary of the numismatics of the two Corcyrean colonies of Apollonia and Dyrrhachium has been compiled by A. Maier, who gives complete lists of all the known varieties of silver-165 for Apollonia, and 492 for Dyrrhachium.5

Since the publication of Head's Coins of Attica, there has been no advance in our knowledge of the money of Athens at all comparable in extent with that accomplished by Sundwall in his Untersuchungen über die attischen Münzen des neueren Stils. An exhaustive review of all the material -numismatic, epigraphic, and astronomical-is made the

1 J.H.S. xxviii. pp. 56 ff. Nomisma, pt. i., pp. 1 ff. 5 Num. Zeit. 1908, pp. 1 ff.

2 Rev. Num. 1908, pp. 15 ff.

• Num. Chron. 1908, p. 81.

• Finska Vetenskaps-Societens Förhandlinger, xlix. 1. (Helsingfors, 1908); also separately printed, pp. 242, 5s.

H

occasion for some illuminating inferences, a few of which may be noted here. The third 'magistrate,' whose name appears on the coins during the greater part of the second century B.C., was a special commissioner or ἐπιμελητής, appointed by the Areopagus. Even in the nomination of the first two 'magistrates,' that august body seems, for a time at least, to have had a considerable voice. Their office, moreover, was not an apxý in the ordinary sense of the term: they were elected, not chosen by lot, and the service carried with it a XeTovpyia. This explains why we find among them members of the richest and noblest families, even foreign princes like Antiochus Epiphanes and Mithridates the Great. Another line of evidence leads up to the confirmation of an hypothesis originally suggested in the pages of the Numismatic Chronicle nine years ago; certain irregularities in the correspondence between the name of the third 'magistrate' and the letter denoting the month of issue acquire a new and important significance if we realise that, while the month denoted by the letter is the ordinary lunar month (kar' apxovra), the third 'magistrate's' term of office was regulated by the corresponding subdivision of the solar year, the month κarà Ocóv. The coins of the New Style thus fall into line with the two or three second-century inscriptions that bear double dates, and wide possibilities are opened up of throwing fresh light on the dark places of the Athenian calendar. As it is, Sundwall shows cause for believing that Kirchner and others are a year too early with their list of Athenian archons. Finally, his systematic examination of all the groups of names mentioned on the coins enables him to determine the precise dates of some of the series, and to fix tentative chronological limits for many others. This part of his work will inevitably call for revision from time to time as additional testimony comes to light; but the principles applied in it are sound and valuable. Incidentally he has made it probable that at least the smaller denomination of silver continued to be issued at Athens sporadically down to the early years of Augustus;1 it used 1 Cf. Z. f. N. xxvi. pp. 273 f.