Each series may be again subdivided into an enormous number of classes,
as will be seen when we come to examine the Greek and Roman series to
which the following pages will be devoted.
In the outset a few brief remarks on the uses of a cabinet of antique
coins may not be out of place. Of these the first and foremost is the
undoubted fact that these “strange face to face vestiges of vanished
æons” (to use an expression of Carlyle’s) bring our minds into
immediate contact with the life and history of antiquity as no mere
book-study can ever do. Not that we would depreciate the value of a
knowledge of history; on the contrary, this is the one study which is
all important for a collector of coins. Without it a man may indeed
become familiar with the look of ancient coins, and he may gain much
practical knowledge of the prices which they usually fetch at sales,
but he will never be a true Numismatist. If he possess the artistic
sense he may admire them as works of art, but beyond this they will be
to him as a sealed book.