Lectures on the Coinage of the Greeks and Romans: Delivered in the University of Oxford

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J. Murray, 1832 - 238 pages
 

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Page 215 - Dedimus profecto grande patientiae documentum; et sicut vetus aetas vidit quid ultimum in libertate esset, ita nos quid in servitute, adempto per inquisitiones etiam loquendi audiendique commercio. Memoriam quoque ipsam cum voce perdidissemus, si tam in nostra potestate esset oblivisci quam tacere.
Page 16 - Athens, in all probability, was afraid materially to change that style and appearance by which their money was known and valued among these people. A similar proceeding in the state of Venice throws the strongest light on the practice of the Athenians. The Venetian sechin is perhaps the most unseemly of the coins of modern Europe: it has long been...
Page i - LECTURES ON THE COINAGE OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS, Delivered in the University of Oxford. By Edward Cardwell, DD, Principal of St. Alban's Hall, and Professor of Ancient History. 8vo, cloth, 4s. (original price bs. 6d.) A very interesting historical volume, and written in a pleasing and popular manner.
Page 88 - We have, for instance, a series of gold and silver coins of Philip and Alexander, preserving a strict correspondence with each other, and being specimens, doubtless, of the money so often mentioned by ancient authors under the names of those illustrious sovereigns. We have also a long series of Athenian tetradrachms, varying somewhat, as we might naturally expect, in their actual weight, but maintaining a constant resemblance to each other, and extending apparently from the earliest times down to...
Page 74 - English reader, that a cock has the misfortune to be called in Latin by the same word that signifies a Frenchman, as a lion is the emblem of the English nation.
Page 10 - ... thought a mystery : those employed in the mint must, by their places, be supposed to penetrate deepest into it. It is no impossible thing, then, to imagine, that it was not hard, in the ignorance of past ages, when money was little, and skill in the turns of trade less, for those versed in the business and policy of the mint, to persuade a prince, especially if money were scarce, that the fault was in the standard of the mint, and that the way to increase the plenty of money, was to raise (a...
Page 218 - ... dedisti quam populus accepit. Paulo minus, patres conscripti, quinque milia ingenuorum fuerunt, quae liberalitas principis nostri conquisivit, invenit, adscivit. Hi subsidium bellorum, ornamentum pacis publicis sumptibus aluntur, patriamque non ut patriam tantum, verum ut altricem amare condiscunt.
Page 33 - ... of his talents and of their admiration, his successors would still retain his name and impress long after he was dead. We find too, even on a slight acquaintance with numismatic antiquities, that many cities of Greece and Asia did in fact adopt the badges chosen by him for the coins of Macedon, and that they continued to be in use to an advanced period of the Roman empire. Still if the coins, that I am considering, had given us no further tokens of their date, we should probably have assigned...
Page 205 - ... conflict for rare brass, where the gold and silver are too common to be prized. But this kind of valuation by rarity alone, exclusive of interest or workmanship, sometimes leads the connoisseur astray — convinced too late that coins, * Dr. Cardwell (p. 207) expects to find these yet in plenty : — ' It is possible that the senate may never have issued any brass coin with the insignia of Otho, and may have supplied the wants of Rome by continuing to use the dies of his predecessor ; but it...
Page 7 - It may readily be supposed that the lead h , which was found together with the silver in the mines of Laurium, was not always perfectly separated from it by the ancient process of refining: but the quantity of that metal which has hitherto been discovered in the silver coin of Athens is not likely to have been added designedly ; and copper...

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