The front or face of a coin is called the _obverse_. Obv.
The back is called the _reverse_. Rev.
The principal device or object represented on a coin is called the
_type_.
The area or space between the type and the circumference is called the
_field_.
The lower portion of the area of a coin beneath the type and separated
from the rest of the field by a horizontal line is called the
_exergue_. Ex.
Small objects represented either in the field or the exergue as
adjuncts to the main type are called _symbols_.
Portions of a coin which are sunk below the level of the surface are
said to be _incuse_.
§ OF THE TYPES OF GREEK COINS.
The types of Greek coins were from the earliest times down to the age
of the successors of Alexander almost exclusively religious. The reason
for this is not far to seek. In an age of simple faith the head of a
god upon the coin was the best of all guarantees for purity of metal
and good weight. The gods were, so to speak, invoked by the State to
vouch for the good quality of its currency, in the same way as State
decrees often began with the formula “_In the name of the gods_.” There
is, moreover, some reason to think that the earliest coins were struck
within the sacred precincts of the Temple treasuries, as being holy
places, secure from plunder and inviolable.
In the most ancient period the principal or obverse type is generally
some animal or object sacred to or emblematical of that god whose
worship was prevalent in the city in which the coin was issued.
Subsequently the head of the deity himself was usually placed upon the
obverse of the coin, while the reverse side was occupied by the object
emblematical of his worship. Frequently, too, the head of one principal
deity appears upon the obverse, and, either the entire figure or the
emblem of some other, generally local divinity, on the reverse.
The chief exceptions to the above rule are the so-called _agonistic
types_, or types referring to the games such as the victorious quadriga
on the money of various Sicilian cities. These types are commemorative
in a general way of victories in the Olympian or other local games, but
it is hardly ever possible to refer them to any particular victory.
Victories in war and political revolutions are never directly referred
to on Greek coins, although the unintentional records of such events
may often be traced in a sudden change of coin-types. Thus, for
instance, at Syracuse when the Corinthians succeeded in liberating
that city from the tyranny of the Dionysian dynasty, the coinage of
Syracuse is for a time assimilated to that of Corinth; a still clearer
indication of restored freedom at the same time (B.C. 345) being seen
in the first introduction of the head of Zeus “the Liberator” upon the
coins of Syracuse.
All through the history of free and independent Greece, the original
idea of the religious character of the coinage may be traced. The
coinage was everywhere placed under the auspices of the gods, and
gods, heroes, and their emblems, were alone considered worthy to be
represented upon it. No tyrant, however despotic, not even the great
Dionysius of Syracuse, would have dreamed of placing his own head upon
the coinage of the State. Even Philip of Macedon, when he had united in
his single hand the whole of Northern Greece, and when he reorganized
the coinage of his empire on a new model, placed on his gold money the
head of Apollo and on his silver that of Zeus.
It was reserved for the successors of Alexander the Great, when
the political centre of the Greek world was no longer to be found
in Greece itself, but in the various capitals of the powerful
semi-oriental monarchies which arose out of the ruins of the Persian
empire--Alexandria, Antioch, etc.--it was reserved for these
self-constituted kings and their descendants to substitute their own
heads for those of the gods.
Such an innovation as this, such a complete upsetting of the ancient
deeply rooted idea of the connection between the gods and the coinage
could not be introduced all at once. It had to be effected by degrees.
Alexander the Great even in his lifetime gave himself out as the son
of Zeus Ammon, and after his death the idea of his divinity gained
ground year by year. The first step towards the new fashion of placing
the king’s head upon the coinage was made by Lysimachus of Thrace, who
introduced on his money the portrait of the deified Alexander in the
character of the son of Ammon with the ram’s horn over the ear.
Ptolemy Soter, king of Egypt, the first of the dynasty which ruled
Egypt for two centuries and a half after the death of Alexander, was
the first monarch who placed his own head upon his coins. By slow
degrees his example was followed, first in Asia and finally in Europe,
where Philip V. of Macedon, B.C. 220, was the first king whose portrait
in the character of a mortal, and not disguised as a demi-god, appears
upon the coinage.
The influence of the old religious beliefs nevertheless maintained so
firm a hold on men’s minds that the reverses of Greek coins continued
to bear sacred types throughout the Roman Imperial period; and even on
the money of the Byzantine emperors when Christianity had become the
State religion, the figures of Christ and the Virgin, or the sign of
the Cross, still bear witness that the same religious sanction in a new
form continued to be invoked for the coin of the realm.
§ THE GODS AS REPRESENTED ON THE