Historia numorum : a manual of Greek numismatics / by Barclay V. Head.

  • Barclay Vincent Head
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Historia numorum : a manual of Greek numismatics / by Barclay V. Head. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    85/908 page 81
    M A NUAL OF GREEK NUMISMATICS. HISPANIA. [Heiss, Monnaies antiques cle VEspagne. Paris, 1870. Delgado, Medullas autonomas de Espa.ua. Seville, 1871-1876. Zobel de Zangrdniz, Estudio histdrico de la moneda antigua Espanola. Madrid, 1879.] The ancient coins of the Spanish peninsula are of the following classes: Greek, Phoenician, Hispano-Carthaginian, Romano-Iberian, and Roman. Before circ. n.c. 350. Uncertain mints. The earliest coins struck in Spain consist of small divisions of the Phocaic drachm, Thirds, Sixths, Twelfths, and Twenty- fourths, weighing respectively about 18, 9, 45, and grains. These coins are of the class which appears to have been current in various Greek colonies along the north-western coasts of Italy, and those of Liguria. The varieties found in Spain are, however, less archaic in style than those discovered in 1867 at Auriol in the Department of the Bouches-du-Rhone, and at Volterra in Tuscany (Revue mimismatique, N. S. xiv. 348-360, and Periodico di Numismatica, 1872, 208). For the most part these little coins have archaic heads on the obverse and incuse reverses. Emporiae was founded by Phocaeans of Massilia in the first half of the fourth cent. B. c. It was situated near the north-eastern extremity of Spain, and it soon rose to be one of the chief ports in the western basin of the Mediterranean, supplanting the neighbouring town of Rhoda. Circ. b.c. 350-250. Among the uncertain coins of Spanish origin above mentioned are some with types on both sides bearing the legends E, EM, or EMP. They bear on the obverse either a head of Persephone or a head of Pallas, and on the reverse a cock, one or two ivy-leaves, three astragali, a cuttle-fish, a two-handled vase, a bull’s head facing, a wolf’s head, an owl, a man-
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