Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1910 — EARLY GRECIAN COINAGE. [ARTICLE]

EARLY GRECIAN COINAGE.

Die Sinking of Greek/* Remain* Standard To-Day. The Invention'of coinage Is due to the Greeks, to the hankers of Halicarnoßsoß and adjacent Asia Minor, Greek colonies, who toward the end. of the eighth century B. C. began stamping small gold and electron Ingots, which passed through their hands as currency with a mark of some sort Intended to guarantee the weight and purity of the metal; suph ingots very soon assumed’a round and more regular shafts, which we find already In old silver coins from Aegina, nearly contemporary with Asia Minor “beans.” Curious to say, none of the surrounding, peoples with whom the Asiatic and European Greeks were in constant communication, political or commercial, took up the wonderful Invention, which at present seems to us or much obvious necessity that we scarcely realize how the civilized world of old got on without it. As a matter of fact, however, neither the Phoenicians, with their practical commercial Bense, nor the Lydians or the Persians, who claimed 'the supremacy over the cities where the new currency was initiated, nor, of dburse, the Egyptians, ever had coinage, till the conquest of Alexander disseminated the Greek civilization through the Eastern world. The Romans came to know it through the Greek cities In Sicily and Magna Gracia, and ( began striking silver coins toward the beginning of the third century B. C. In the meantime, with the Greeks die sinking, like everything else, had fallen within the domain of art, and their coins remain forever a standard of beauty for the artist and a model of perfection to the die sinker.—Saturday Review.