to the proportion suited to the mutual wants and ability of the buyer and seller. It became absolutely necessary, therefore, to have recourse to some general medium in commerce, and that medium varied according to the produce of the country in which it was carried on. In some it consisted of shells, in others of cocoa-nuts, in others of leather or paper; so that, if the reader will excuse the joke, we see a paper-currency was established in the earliest ages. Such was the first rude money, a word which explains itself, being derived to us from moneta, since it advised one of the price of an article.

The cowries, or white shells, at this day used as currency in India, and the small Siamese coins, in form resembling nuts, are, in all probability, relics of this ancient usage before metals were so generally adopted as the representative signs of the value of articles of commerce. It was the beauty, firmness, and durability, of metals, that occasioned them to be so adopted, but it was many ages before they were stamped with any impression descriptive of their weight or value. It was the custom of the merchant, as in fact is still practised in China, to carry a certain portion of gold or silver into the market, and, having previously furnished himself with proper instruments and scales, he cut off and weiged out, before the vender of the

commodity wanted, as many pieces as were
proportioned to the purchase of it. The great in-
convenience and delay occasioned by this mode
of carrying on commerce, soon induced the
merchant to bring with him pieces of money,
already portioned out, of different weights and
value, and stamped with the marks necessary
to distinguish them. There is very great rea-
son to believe that the earliest coins struck were
used both as weights and money; and indeed
this circumstance is in part proved by the very
names of certain of the Greek and Roman coins:
thus the Attic mina and the Roman libra equally
signify a pound; and the σraτng
of the Greeks,
so called from weighing, is decisive as to this
point. The Jewish shekel was also a weight as
well as a coin, three thousand shekels, accord-
ing to Arbuthnot, being equal in weight and
value to one talent.* This is the oldest coin of
which we any where read; for, it occurs in
Genesis, ch. xxiii. v. 16, and exhibits direct
evidence against those who date the first coinage
of money so low as the time of Croesus or
Darius; it being there expressly said, that
Abraham weighed to Ephron four hundred shekels
of silver, current money with the merchant.

Having considered the origin and high antiquity of coined money, we proceed to consider * Arbuthnot on Ancient Coins, p. 39.

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the stamp or impression which the first money bore. The primitive race of men being shepherds, and their wealth consisting in their cattle, in which Abraham is said to have been rich, when, for greater convenience, metals were substituted for the commodity itself, it was natural for the representative sign to bear "impressed the object which it represented; and thus accordingly the earliest coins were stamped with the figure of an ox or SHEEP. For proof that they actually did thus impress them, we can again appeal to the high authority of Scripture; for there we are informed that Jacob bought a parcel of a field for an hundred pieces of money. Genesis, ch. xxxiii. v. 19. The original Hebrew term, translated pieces of money, is KESITOTH, which signifies LAMBS, with the figure of which the metal was doubtless stamped. We have a second instance of this practice in the ancient Greek coin, denominated B, the ox; and we meet with a third in the old brass coins of Rome, (whence I before observed the public treasury was called ærarium) stamped, before that city began to use ,gold and silver money, with the figure of a sheep, whence the Latin name pecunia. Signatum est notis pecudum; unde et pecunia appellata.* In process of time, when empires were formed, and men crowded into cities, coins came to be

* Plinii Nat. Hist. lib. xxxiii. cap. 3.

impressed with different devices, allusive either to the history of its founder, some remarkable event in the history of the nation, their accidental situation, or the predominant devotion of the country. Thus the shekel of the Jews had Aaron's rod budding, with a smoaking censer. The Tyrians had their Petræ Ambrosiæ, and serpentine emblems, of which some curious examples may be seen in the plate of coins engraved in Vol. vi. The Athenian coins bore impressed an owl, and Palias. The maritime race, who inhabited the Peloponnesus, had a testudo, or shell, as their symbol; the Persians, practised in the use of the bow, an archer, which is the constant device on the Darics; the Thessalians, a horse; the Byzantines, situated on the Thracian Bosphorus, a dolphin twisted about a trident.

Although I have combated the idea of the Lydian or Persian money being the first that was ever coined, I am induced, by the general and united attestation of ancient classical writers, perfectly to acquiesce in the judgment of medallists, that the coins of those nations were the first stamped with the effigies of the reigning prince; and the priority of coining money is, with great propriety and probability, assigned to Croesus, the wealthiest monarch of Asia, when his capital was invaded and taken by

Cyrus, who forbore to plunder that rich city, on the express condition, that both the monarch and the inhabitants should, without reserve, bring forth their whole amassed wealth, which must have amounted to a prodigious and almost incalculable sum. This conquest gave the Persians, who were before an indigent people, without any gold or silver currency, and pent up within the contracted limits of the province properly called Persia, not only the possession of a vast treasure, but of a wide and rich territory, and laid the foundation of their future grandeur. The coined moneys of Croesus, from the effigies of that monarch being impressed upon them, were called Croesei; but, as it seemed improper that they should continue current with that impression, after the conquest of Croesus and the subjugation of his kingdom, Darius, that is, Darius the son of Cyaxares, and the first of that name, under whom Cyrus then acted only as general-in-chief of the Persians and Medes, though afterwards their sovereign; that Darius,

I

say, it is conjectured, recoined the Crosei with his own effigies, though he did not think it prudent to alter either the weight or value of a coin, then so generally diffused through Asia as the medium of commercial transactions. Thus recoined, and stamped with his own head, they henceforth took the name of their new