Rev.-TPO. Bird, feeding from circular altar. Æ. 5.

DARDANUS, TROADIS.

93. Obv.-Naked figure with double plume (?) head-dress, riding on horseback, left.

Rev.-AAP. Cock standing, left, above, the whole in incuse square. R. 75; wt. 72.7 grs. Pl. V.

fig. 10.

This coin is attributed to Mania, the wife of Zenis, satrap of Eolis under Artaxerxes Mnemon, by the Duc de Luynes, Num. des Satrapies, p. 48. He describes the figure on horseback as female, and supposes it to represent Mania herself. He acknowledges, however, that it must have been struck during the lifetime of her husband Zenis, whose monogram, , it bears. His attribution to Mania rests, therefore, upon the supposition that the figure on horseback is female, and upon the fact that it was struck at Dardanus, which she appears to have made her headquarters after the death of Zenis. I confess that neither of these arguments seems to me to be of great weight, as we have no evidence that Zenis himself did not strike money at that city.

SKEPSIS AND DARDANOS.

94. Obv.-CKH¥[I]ON.

Bust of Serapis, right, wearing modius and richly-ornamented garment, left hand raised, right holding vase; border of dots.

Rev.-CKI VI

ΔΑΡ. Horseman, right, galloping, wearing chlamys and cothurni, and thrusting with a long spear, which he holds in his raised right hand. Æ. 75.

This coin is of a late period. Mionnet, tom. ii. p. 669, No. 251, publishes a coin from the cabinet of M. Cousinery, which would seem to bear much resemblance in type to the present specimen, with the singular exception that the bust on the obverse is that of a woman.

BARCLAY V. HEAD.

(To be continued.)

A

VII.

ΝΟΜΙΣΜΑΤΑ τῆς ΝΗΣΟΥ ΑΜΟΡΓΟΥ καὶ τῶν τριῶν αὐτῆς πόλεων ΑΙΓΙΑΛΗΣ, ΜΙΝΩΑΣ και ΑΡΚΕΣΙΝΗΣ. ΠΑΥΛΟΥ ΛΑΜΠΡΟΥ . ΑΘΗΝΗΣΙΝ . 1870.

Υπό

THE little island of Amorgos, one of the Sporades, lying to the south-east of Naxos, has not hitherto contributed much to numismatic history; nor indeed to history of any kind; except in so far that the iambic poet, Simonides, is by some said to have been born in the island, though according to others he was a native of Samos, and merely led a colony to Amorgos; and that the island was famous for the manufacture of a peculiar kind of fine linen, much affected by the ladies of Athens and Corinth. It was also considered rather an agreeable place of exile.

Goltz indeed published a coin of Amorgos in gold and silver (Insul. Tab. xxii.); and, after him, Pellerin a similar one in brass (Rec. iii. 27, 266); on which Eckhel (ii. 325) caustically remarks that the art, so anxiously sought after by others, was known by Goltz, namely, that of turning vile brass into the nobler metals.

The coins of Amorgos in genere are very rare. K. Lampros, in the interesting and exhaustive pamphlet

which stands at the head of this paper, mentions only two, one from Cadalvene (Rec. de méd. gr.inéd., p. 221, Tab. iii. No. 16), the other from Mionnet (Supp., tom. 4, p. 367, No. 1), both different from those mentioned by Goltz and Pellerin. Messrs. Rollin and Feuardent, in their catalogue, 1864, give a coin which is thus described: "4270 .Casque ou bonnet, de forme conique. Rev. AMO. Mouche." "1

It is, however, with reference to a peculiar type occurring frequently on the coins of Aigialê, one of the cities of the island, and occasionally on those of other places, that the present paper is written. M. Cadalvene (Rec., p. 226) appears to have been the first to call attention to this symbol, which Mr. Borrell afterwards (Num. Chron., v. 173) described more fully as "resembling

a vase without handles, reversed, a ring instead of a foot, as if it were intended to be suspended." Neither of these learned Numismatists could make anything of it; though the former, from finding it often associated on coins with a serpent, and occurring also as an adjunct on coins of Epidauros 2 surmised that it was some sacred vessel which was suspended in the temples of Asklepios.

Mr. Borrell's paper, on this and other unedited Greek coins, was read before the Numismatic Society on the 26th May and 24th November, 1842; and in the same vol. of the Num. Chron. (p. 193) appeared another paper

The reverse is similar to that of the coin described by Mionnet, except that he gives no legend. K. Lampros suggests that the insect is a bee. The coin is no longer in the collection of Messrs. Rollin and Feuardent.

2 See Cadal. pl. iii., No. 17. See also Combe, Cab. Hunter. Tab. xxvi., No. 12.

"On the type of Aegiale and Epidaurus," by Mr. Birch, who examined the subject at greater length.

He says that the object in question, "never satisfactorily elucidated by any one who has described these coins, is illustrated by a monument of Jason, a physician, published by M. Panofka, in his 'Antiquités du Cabinet de Pourtalès Gorgier' (fol. Paris, 1834, pl. xxxv.), where this very instrument is represented by the side of the patient whom Jason is curing." This monument is now in the British Museum. The "instrument," as is usual in ancient works of art where an adjunct is employed as a type of the profession or occupation of a person, is out of all proportion to the two human figures. This instrument, Mr. Borrell continues, "is a utensil of the sudorific bath, called Laconicum balneum, or Laconian bath, which was a vaulted room, with the fire of the hypocaustum laid in tiles, with spaces beneath the floor. The heat of the apartment was regulated by an aperture in the roof, beneath which was suspended this clibanus, or cover, called by Vitruvius (lib. v., ed. of Marini, fol., Rome, 1836, pl. xcii. 5) an aeneus clypeus, and by Timarchus, as cited by Athenæus, in the Deipnosophista, the xalxoûs óμpaλòs (cited Marini, n. 21, p. 309, vol. i.), the brazen omphalos,' or 'navel.' It was raised or lowered by a cord attached to the ring at the apex, and the heat of the bath thus regulated."

Mr. Birch proceeds to discourse very learnedly on the omphalos; but there can be little doubt that he was mistaken in supposing that this was the utensil represented on the coins and on the monument of Jason.

It seems to have been reserved for K. Lampros, or rather for his son Ioannes, to discover the significance of this mysterious symbol. During a visit which they paid

to Italy in 1869, the latter noticed in the Museum at Naples six or eight small brazen instruments, of exactly the same shape as the symbol on the coins of Aigialê. On inquiry, he ascertained that these were cupping instruments, which had been found at Pompeii. This instrument, which is called Zikva or Zikvia in Greek, ancient and modern, and cucurbita in Latin, a word meaning primarily a gourd, from its likeness in shape to that plant, is represented in Ceci (Piccoli bronzi del Museo Nazionale di Napoli; Tav. vii. No. 29). There is a specimen in the British Museum, (Bronze Room, Wall Case 32), which came from Corfu. It is exactly like the specimens on the coins, except that it wants the suspending ring; this accessory, indeed, is not present in all instances on the coins. In the Medal Room are two coins of Aigialê, bearing the symbol in question, and which are like two of those figured by K. Lampros. The instrument, though frequently made of glass or of bone, was sometimes of brass,3 or even silver, though these latter, together with other costly instruments, were chiefly used, it seems, by unskilful physicians as a means of favourably impressing their patients.5

The head on the obverse of most of these coins, which had

Κεφ. 29.

3 Nikandros, Onpiakà, 5, 921; Celsus, II. 11. • Loukianos, Πρὸς τὸν ἀπαίδευτον κ.τ.λ. All these references are from K: Lampros. Our brother member, Mr. Percy Gardner, has kindly referred me to two passages in Aristophanes, where a similar instrument is spoken of as a κυάθος : ὑποπιασμέναι | απαξάπασαι (αἱ πόλεις) καὶ κυάθους προσκείμέναι. (Ειρηνη, 523, 4.)—εἴ τ' ἆρα . . . åpa τὴν χεῖρ ̓ ἄκραν | ταύτῃ προσοίσεις, κυάθον αἰτήσεις ταχα. (Λυσιστράτη, 443, 4. Ed. Bekker, Lond. 1828. See the notes on these passages.

* Οι ἀμαθέστατοι τῶν ἰατρῶν . . ἐλεφαντίνους νάρθηκας καὶ σικύιας ἀργυρὰς ποιούμενοι καὶ σμίλας χρυσοκολλήτους. It may not perhaps be uncharitably surmised that a young physician in our own days sometimes sets up a carriage from similar motives.