Note 743 — Chapter V · Lydia

Head, Hist. Num.2 pp. lvii. and 644–5, dates private issues 687–610; P. Gardner, Gold Coinage of Asia, p. 9, attributes the first state coinage anywhere to Croesus, against which view see the whole of the present chapter. Gardner’s own objection to his own theory, based on the ϝαλϝει coins, is not cogent. Alyattes might, of course, have struck coins as a private venture. The late King George of Greece traded largely in wine grown on the royal estates, but the wine was in no sense a state beverage; cp. also Cruchon, Banques dans l’Antiq. pp. 11 f. For Babelon himself see further Rev. Num. 1895, pp. 332–3, on the early electrum coin, obv. stag, φανος ἐμι σεμα; rev. one oblong incuse between two square, which Babelon ascribes to Ephesus and suggests was issued by “one of those rich bankers who lent to kings and whose safes were filled with precious metals”; see Hdt. VII. 27–29; but cp. Macdonald, Coin Types, p. 51. Against Babelon’s view has been urged the fact that his supposed collections of private marks on such coins as our fig. 19. a (p. 127) form in each case a single group all stamped together. But such a stereotyped grouping on the earliest extant specimens is no argument against his explanation of the origin of these curious marks, which on other very early coins occur in positions which show them to be counter-stamps: see e.g. that on the back of the tortoise of our fig. 20. b.