In an enquiry into the connexions between the new form of government and the new form of wealth that both arose at the opening of the classical epoch Lydia has a special interest and importance for the reason that both coinage and tyranny are said on good authority to have been of Lydian origin. Considering how much Lydia was then in the background of the Greek world this fact by itself is suggestive. It becomes important to determine the dates, and connexions if any, of the first Lydian tyrant and the first Lydian coins. It should be said at once that no Lydian ruler has been credited with the invention of coinage, and that no very definite conclusions can be drawn from the available material. The evidence is however sufficiently suggestive to repay a careful examination.

Both the date and the place of the final evolution of a metal coinage are the subject of much dispute. Among writers of a generation or more ago the question of date was mainly a matter of speculation as to how long an interval was required between the earliest silver coins with a type in relief on both sides, which on grounds of style, epigraphy, and circumstances of find can be dated with fair accuracy to about the middle of the sixth century, and the primitive electrum pieces punched on one side and striated on the other (fig. 19. a) that probably belong to the earliest issues of Lydia. Most of the leading numismatists allowed some three or four generations and assigned the earliest coins to the earlier part of the seventh century^[665]. But more recently facts have come to light which point to the possibility of an earlier and perhaps a considerably earlier date. A round dump of silver weighing 3·654 grammes was found by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos in a stratum that cannot, he says, be dated later than the twelfth century B.C., and two similar dumps of gold weighing 4·723 and 4·678 grammes along with a third of elongated shape weighing 8·601 were found during the British Museum excavations at Enkomi in Cyprus, a site which according to Evans must be dated equally early^[666]. These few Cretan and Cyprian dumps are no argument against the mass of material which points to a great numismatic development at a date not so very far removed from 700 B.C. But they do shift the balance of probability backward and make a date in the eighth century as likely as one in the seventh. The same conclusion is suggested by the recent British excavations of the famous temple of Artemis at Ephesus^[667]. There, below the temple erected in the days of Croesus and to which he contributed the sculptured column now in the British Museum, the excavators found remains of three earlier structures. While clearing out these early buildings they found 87 electrum coins. Twenty of these were extracted from between the slabs of the earliest of the three buildings, five (including four of the lion type) were extracted from underneath the foundations of the second building, and all low down within the area of these three early structures. The total evidence points to all the 87 coins being not later than the time of the first of the three buildings, i.e. well before the time of Croesus. The series begins with the striated type (above fig. 19. a) that is generally regarded as the most primitive of all, while far the commonest type (42 coins) is the lion’s head of the style usually attributed to Alyattes^[668].

From the latest building to the earliest coin means a considerable period, and may well take us back into the eighth century. General historical considerations are however against going back too far into the eighth century. It was only in the course of that century that brigandage and piracy gave place to trade and commerce and the first traces can be discovered of the great renaissance that led to Classical Greece. If the earliest coins were struck by Lydia they are more likely to have been issued in the second half of the century than the first, since the establishment of the second Assyrian empire in 745 B.C. probably gave a great impetus to Lydian trade. This, however, is assuming the claims of Lydia to the “invention.” They have been frequently challenged and before proceeding it is necessary briefly to examine them.

The Lydians are only one of several peoples and cities that were credited by the ancients with the invention of coinage. This uncertainty was inevitable. Coinage was not invented but evolved^[669]. But it is probable that in the final stage of the evolution some one state was a little ahead of the rest, and put in this form the Lydians have a good claim to the invention. They have in their favour our two best and oldest witnesses, Xenophanes and Herodotus^[670], the latter of whom recognized their outstanding position as traders and plainly sees in it the explanation of their leading position in the evolution of coined money^[671]. The facts as far as we know them bear these authorities out. Lydia contains Mt Tmolus and Mt Sipylus and the river Pactolus, the main sources of the supply of the metal in which the most primitive coins were struck. It was probably just about this period that the Lydian electrum mines began to be worked^[672] and the electrum of Sardis gained the fame it still enjoyed in the days of Sophocles^[673]. The kings of Lydia from the beginning of the seventh century onward were famous for their wealth^[674]. The touch-stone used by the ancients for testing the precious metals came likewise from Mt Tmolus, and was called “Lydian stone^[675].” Furthermore, the Lydians occupied a unique position for purposes of trade. Sardis, their capital, was the place where the great trade-route from the further East, the “royal road,” as Herodotus calls it^[676], branched out to reach the various Greek cities on the coast^[677].

In the face of this evidence it is hardly necessary to examine in detail the arguments of the modern sceptics who have disputed Lydia’s claim. In many cases they start from the baseless assumption that so remarkable an invention cannot but be due to the quick-witted Greeks^[678]. True, the earliest electrum coins are said to have been found mostly along the Eastern shore of the Aegean, but it does not follow that that is where they were all struck. Gold pieces were common enough in Greece in the first half of the fourth century B.C., but they had nearly all been struck in Persia. 30,000 Darics (fig. 8) were distributed among the Greeks by the Great King’s agents in one single year^[679]. The two staters of gold that each of the Delphians received from King Croesus^[680] were undoubtedly Croeseids^[681].

Again, the modern market for ancient coins has been largely restricted to the coast. Because a coin was bought in Smyrna it does not follow that it was found there. Of Sardis itself we still know too little to speak with any assurance^[682]. But the absence of finds, even at Sardis, would not be decisive, since on Radet’s theory the Lydian coinage was intended mainly for export, just as appears later to have been the case with the silver tetradrachms of Smyrna, Myrina, Cyme, Lebedos, Magnesia ad Maeandrum and Heraclea Ioniae, which are rarely found near their place of origin, but with few exceptions are brought from different parts of Syria^[683].

More serious are the criticisms which do not altogether reject Xenophanes, but explain him away by means of an interpretation of Herodotus I. 94 first put forward by J. P. Six and later developed by Babelon^[684]. Six maintained that when Herodotus there states that the Lydians were the first to strike and use coins of gold and silver, the reference is to the concurrent issue of coins in the two separate metals, or, in other words, to the coinage of Croesus (fig. 19. b), who is generally admitted to have been the first to give up electrum in favour of separate issues of gold and silver. But though it is true that “coins of gold and silver” cannot mean “coins of electrum,” it by no means follows that Herodotus is referring to the beginnings not of coinage but of bimetallism. Babelon is right in insisting on the exact words used by Herodotus, but in his interpretation of them he takes perhaps too little account of the type of fact usually recorded by the historian. Which is Herodotus more likely to give us? An inaccurate version of a fundamental fact like the invention of coined money? Or a pedantically accurate statement about an experiment in bimetallism that was after all of quite secondary importance? Other things being equal we should surely always prefer the interpretation which gives us the former, and there is nothing to prevent us from doing so in the present case. Assume that Xenophanes means what he says and that his statement represents the prevalent tradition, and it is easy to see how Herodotus came to use the precise words that he did.

“The Lydians,” he begins, “were the first to strike and use coins.” We must remember who it was that he was writing for. His readers would be found mainly in the free cities of European Greece. Down to the days when he ended his history these European Greeks had coined almost exclusively in silver. On the other hand the coinage of Lydia and the other Persian satrapies of Asia Minor consisted of Darics of gold and shekels of silver, and people in those parts doubtless remembered that this coinage in the two metals went back to the days of the Lydian kings. It is a fundamental principle with our historian never to omit any fact that he can possibly insert. In this case an extra fact can be inserted in three words, ???s?? ?a? ???????, and almost inevitably the words go in. Possibly he had forgotten for the moment the primitive pieces of electrum: it is equally possible that accuracy was sacrificed to fulness of information. Another way of meeting Babelon’s difficulty is suggested by Babelon’s own article. It is generally assumed that the first coins struck in Asia Minor were all of electrum, and that electrum later gave way to gold and silver. But Babelon^[685] quotes an example of what is generally regarded as the earliest Lydian electrum type (ob. striated, rev. three small stamps as on silver spoons) that appears from its specific gravity to contain 98 per cent. silver and weighs 10·81 grammes. This latter is the unit of the so-called Babylonian standard, which is employed almost exclusively for silver, the only exception being a gold issue of Croesus. It is true that the coin has a yellow tint, and that it may contain more than 2 per cent. gold, if the light specific gravity is due partly to the presence of copper^[686]. There are cases too of what seem to be unquestionable electrum coins with a very low percentage of gold, e.g. Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins of Ionia, p. 47, nos. 2, 3, Ephesian thirds of the normal Phoenician standard, one with only 14 per cent. gold to judge by the specific gravity, the other actually with only 5 per cent. But the combined evidence of weight and specific gravity gives strong support to Babelon’s view that the coin must have been intended to pass as silver^[687]. Babelon assigns this piece to Miletus, but on no sufficient grounds. As he himself points out^[688], the weight is exactly that of the silver coins of Croesus, a weight which in Ionia prevailed only at Colophon and Erythrae in the fifth century and at Miletus in the third^[689], and in these three cases was borrowed from the Persian siglos (shekel), which latter was the direct successor of the silver coins of Croesus. The earliest silver coins assigned by Head to Miletus are struck on the Aeginetan standard (185 grains)^[690]. In short, if it seems probable that this piece is silver, a fortiori is it probable that it is Lydian, and if, as the evidence all tends to show, this is the case, the importance of the piece at once becomes obvious. It means that from the earliest period of their coinage the Lydians struck not only in electrum but also in silver. Now for Herodotus electrum was only a variety of gold. His name for it is “white gold” (?e???? ???s??), and he appears to regard it as gold of a particular quality, just as Bonacossi does the gold of China when he describes it as “pÂle, mou et ductile^[691].”

When therefore Herodotus speaks of the Lydians as the first to coin in gold and silver he may well mean white gold and silver and be referring, like Xenophanes, to the original “invention” of coined money. But even if Babelon is right, there is still no decisive reason why we should not ascribe to the Lydians the original “invention” as well as the first bimetallic development. Thus Xenophanes and Herodotus may be regarded as pointing to Lydia as the first country to strike coins, and after all they were in a fairly good position for ascertaining the facts^[692]. Certainty is perhaps hardly attainable. But that does not justify a completely sceptical attitude. It is the reverse of scientific to treat an epoch illuminated by many half lights as though it was one of total darkness. The safest course in such a case is to operate with probabilities.

The claim of Lydia to have been the original home of tyranny is based on similar evidence that needs to be similarly used. The earliest authority for it is Euphorion (third century B.C.), who says that the first ruler to be called tyrant was Gyges, who began to reign in the XVIIIth Olympiad (708–704 B.C.)^[693]. The statement has been doubted as being perhaps only an inference from Homer and Archilochus drawn by later writers^[694]. Homer does not use the word t??a????. It first appears in Archilochus, and apparently the tyrant that Archilochus had in mind was his contemporary^[695] Gyges:

But even if only an inference from this source the statement may still be of some value. The word tyrant is not Greek and may be Lydian^[697]. A new title does not necessarily imply a new form of government; but if there is independent evidence for thinking that a new form of government arose just at this time, then that evidence will be corroborated by the appearance of a new title; and if that title has a particular local origin, it becomes of particular interest to examine the history of the rulers of the region where the change arose.

As our evidence leaves it uncertain whether Gyges was the first ruler of his kind to arise in Lydia or merely the first to find a prominent place in Greek literature and as further we find unusual steps for securing the throne attributed to Lydian rulers of about the middle of the eighth century it will be well to begin at this earlier date.

According to the story told by Nicolaus Damascenus^[698], Damonno, the wife of Cadys, whose reign is ascribed to the middle of the eighth century^[699], after her royal husband’s death won over by her wealth a large number of Lydians, expelled her brother-in-law Ardys, and then married her lover Spermos and proclaimed him king. When banished by Spermos and Damonno, Ardys goes into business at Cyme as a waggon-builder (?a??p????) and is keeping a hotel (pa?d??e???) there when called back to the throne of Sardis. He is brought back by a tavern-keeper or retail trader (??p????) named Thyessos^[700], who as his reward asked and received that this inn or shop (?ap??e???) should be exempt from paying dues (?te???) and after a time became rich from his shop-keeping (?ap??e?e??) and as a result established near it a market and a shrine of Hermes^[701]. The part played in this story by innkeepers may, at first sight, seem odd. But as pointed out by Radet^[702] in discussing the word ??p????, innkeeper was probably synonymous with merchant in the days of Ardys (766–730 B.C.)^[703], when Lydia was already becoming a great highway of commerce between Further Asia and the Aegean^[704]. The Lydian merchants of the period must have seen the advantage of providing food and shelter for the members of the caravans with whom they traded. Waggon-building, which was one of the occupations of the banished Ardys^[705], is part of the same activity, connected with the famous road that did as much to make the fortunes of ancient Lydia as railways will some day do to revive them in the future.

If the narrative of Nicolaus is to be believed, then, as recognized some time ago by Gelzer^[706], the Lydian leaders of the period appear as great merchants and men of business, and more than that, it is as such that the rulers secure the throne, and a not unnatural inference is that it was the spread of this new type of merchant prince from Lydia Westward over the Greek world that caused the spread at the same time of the Lydian title. There is nothing improbable in the assumption that Lydian history of this period was preserved in a fairly authentic form. True our extant authorities are late and their sources uncertain, and the story of Spermos has perhaps an excessive resemblance to that of Gyges and the wife of his predecessor Candaules^[707]. In both cases the usurper marries the wife of his predecessor and owes to her his throne. The close relations between Ardys and the Greek Cyme recall those between the house of Gyges and the tyrant house of Melas at Ephesus, which latter is very plausibly explained by Radet^[708] as based on their common business interests. But these resemblances do not prove that the two narratives are not both true. The two queens may have responded in the same way to similar semi-matriarchal surroundings, and the two princes have found similar solutions for the same commercial problem. If the Damonno Ardys story is not history we have no Lydian history of that age. But even so it is of value as reflecting conditions that prevailed at the beginning of the seventh century and possibly went back to the period to which the story is ascribed.

Chronologically we ought next to deal with Gyges himself. Unfortunately his history, and more particularly the part that tells how he won the throne, has been much obscured by legend. We shall examine it with a better prospect of disinterring the facts if first we review certain later incidents of Lydian history.

The century that followed Gyges is for this purpose not very illuminating. A great part of it is taken up with the national struggle against the Cimmerian invaders. The kings of the house of Gyges appear to have led this struggle well, and as a natural result their power was seldom called into question. It is only before the accession of Croesus, the last king of the line, that active steps appear to have been necessary to secure the throne. The reason was not any anti-monarchic movement, but rivalry between two sons or possibly grandsons of the old and perhaps senile King Alyattes. None the less, the steps taken by the rivals are not without significance. "Financial dealings of Croesus before he became king." The story is told^[709] that shortly before Alyattes’ death Croesus, the subsequently successful rival, had borrowed largely from a very rich man^[710] in Ephesus in order to appear before the old king with a levy. Before resorting to the rich Ephesian, Croesus had appealed to a certain “Sadyattes the merchant, the richest man in Lydia,” who had refused to lend to him for the reason, as it subsequently turned out, that he was backing the other candidate for the throne, Croesus’ half-brother, the half-Greek Pantaleon^[711]. Croesus’ poverty, we are informed, was due to spendthrift habits. But it is doubtful whether his lavishness at this period was simply youthful dissipation, and not rather part of a systematic policy.

Only a few years later Peisistratus of Athens “rooted his tyranny” on revenues from mines. Reasons have been given above^[712] for thinking that he was already endeavouring to do so. May not Croesus have been pursuing a similar course? Later in his career, when he wanted to win the special favour of Delphi, “he sent to Pytho, ascertained the number of Delphians, and presented each one of them with two staters of gold^[713].” The staters of Croesus (above fig. 19. b) were among the most famous coins of antiquity^[714]. Reference is made in the Mirabiles Auscultationes to gold mines that he worked^[715]. His wealth was proverbial^[716]. Most of it he inherited from his predecessor^[717]: but the wise old Alyattes knew that it was the root of his power and clung to it till his death. For the rivals it is a question who can secure it first and in the meanwhile carry on best without it. Both try to borrow on a princely scale, and to judge by the issue Croesus was the more successful. “As a result of that proceeding he got the upper hand of his calumniators^[718].” He became king, and his government is described by Radet^[719] as “une puissante monarchie rÉgnant par la force de l’or.”

This is all conjecture, but it is borne out alike by Croesus’ own behaviour and by the advice to Cyrus that is put into his mouth after he has become the captive and the counsellor of the Persian king.

The first thing that Croesus did after securing the throne was to put Sadyattes to death and to confiscate his possessions^[720]. By itself this might be taken simply as part of something corresponding to a normal process of attainder. But the Sadyattes incident must be read in the light of the advice that Croesus is represented as having subsequently given to Cyrus, the gist of which is that Cyrus is to beware above all things of the richest of his subjects^[721]. "Croesus bids Cyrus to suspect a rival in the richest of his subjects." The speech is of course pure fiction: so too is very possibly the whole story of the intimacy between Croesus and his conqueror^[722]. But all the same Croesus is Herodotus’ embodiment of the wise and experienced ruler of the sixth century, the century during which the historian’s father was born only a little way from the borders of Croesus’ kingdom. If in the pages of Herodotus he is made to regard wealth as the basis of political power, it must be because the historian believed such to have been in fact the case. Of the evidence that may have led him, and with good reason, to this belief, one item may have been derived from the colossal tomb of Croesus’ predecessor Alyattes, which according to the account given by Herodotus was constructed by the tradesmen and artizans and prostitutes (?? ????a??? ?????p?? ?a? ?? ?e????a?te? ?a? a? ??e??a??e?a? pa?d?s?a?)^[723]. "The tomb of Croesus’ father had been erected by tradesmen, artizans, and “working girls.”" Presumably these were the classes who had most benefited or at least been most affected by Alyattes’ rule, and on whose support he had mainly depended^[724]. The largest part of the tomb is said by Herodotus to have been built by the “working girls” (= prostitutes) but too much attention need not be paid to this typical instance of Herodotean “malignity.” Strabo’s report that the tomb was said by some to be that of a harlot (p?????) is equally suspicious. It may possibly have arisen from the obscene symbols that appeared on various parts of the monument, including its summit. Possibly the builders of the tomb got mistaken for its occupant. The reverse process is less likely, as it leaves the tradesmen and artizans unaccounted for^[725].

In conformity with the policy that Herodotus puts into the mouth of Croesus, Cyrus was careful before he returned from Lydia to Persia to separate the political and financial power in his new conquest:

Sardis he entrusted to Tabalos, a Persian gentleman, but the gold both of Croesus and the other Lydians he gave to Pactyes, a man of Lydia, to look after (????e??).... But when Cyrus had marched away from Sardis, Pactyes caused the Lydians to revolt from Tabalos and Cyrus, and going down to the sea, as was but natural since he had all the gold from Sardis, he proceeded to hire mercenaries and persuaded the population by the sea to join his expedition^[726].

In the days of Xerxes the richest of all the Lydians was Pythes the son of Atys. After Xerxes himself, Pythes was the richest man known to the Persians of that day. His wealth amounted to 2000 talents of silver and 3,993,000 golden Darics^[727]. He held some sort of rule under the Great King at Kelainai in Phrygia and owed his enormous wealth to his mines, in which the citizens of his dominions were forced to labour. When Xerxes reached Kelainai on his way to invade Greece, Pythes offered to present the whole of this immense sum to the king^[728]. So stupendous a present requires a special explanation. It is not like “the gold plane tree and the vine” that Pythes had given earlier to King Darius. It looks as if he had suddenly discovered with intense alarm that Xerxes, like Cyrus before him, feared nothing so much as a man of extraordinary wealth, and as if this present was a desperate attempt to disarm the Great King’s suspicions. The father of Pythes bore the same name as one of the sons of Croesus, and Pythes himself has been thought by some modern scholars to have been the grandson of Croesus^[729]. The name Pytheus (Pythes) might be due to Croesus’ relations with Delphi^[730].

The evidence so far adduced has pointed to the following conclusions: metal coinage reached its final evolution in Lydia, probably in the second half of the eighth century B.C.; the title tyrant reached Greece from Lydia probably early in the seventh century; from the middle of the eighth century down to the end of the age of the tyrants all the rulers or would-be rulers of Lydia of whom we have any relevant information regarded money as the basis of political power. "Radet suggests that the first coins were struck by the first tyrants," In the face of these facts it is not surprising that Radet, the scholar who has devoted most attention in recent years to this period of Lydian history, should have expressed the opinion that the earliest tyrants were also the first coiners^[731].

The rest of this chapter will be devoted to examining and very tentatively developing this suggestion.

Radet attributed the earliest coins to Gyges and imagined them as having been struck when Gyges was already on the throne^[732]. He wrote however before Enkomi, Knossos, and Ephesus had suggested the possibility of an earlier date for the earliest coins, and he does not consider the possibility that it may have been quite as much a case of the coins making the tyrant as the tyrant making the coins. No certainty is to be looked for on this point, but for arriving at the greatest available probability it will be well for a moment to turn to the brilliant and convincing account of the last stages in the evolution of metal coinage published by Lenormant and developed by Babelon. Lenormant’s account of the circumstances in which stamped pieces of precious metal of definite weight first came into circulation cannot be given better than in his own words:

Pour la commoditÉ du commerce, auquel ils servent d’instrument habituel d’Échange, on donne À ces lingots des poids exacts... de ½ À 10 taels en or, de ½ À 100 taels en argent. Mais leur circulation et leur acceptation n’ont aucun caractÈre lÉgal et obligatoire. L’autoritÉ publique n’a point À y intervenir et ne leur donne aucune garantie. Ces lingots ne portent aucune empreinte si ce n’est en certains cas un poinÇonnement individuel, simple marque d’origine et de fabrique, qui quelquefois inspire assez de confiance pour dispenser de la vÉrification du titre du mÉtal, lorsque c’est celle d’un nÉgociant assez honorablement connu. La facilitÉ avec laquelle on accepte le lingot À tel ou tel poinÇon tient donc entiÈrement au crÉdit personnel de celui qui l’a marquÉ^[733].

The passage just quoted describes not a theory of Lenormant’s but the actual practice of the Chinese empire^[734]. A similar currency of ingots stamped by merchants or bankers has been used in many other parts of the world, e.g. Japan^[735], Java^[736], India^[737] and Russia^[738]. Reversions to the practice of private coinage have been frequent in America^[739]; “for a long time the copper currency of England consisted mainly of tradesmen’s tokens,” used largely by manufacturers to pay the wages of their workpeople^[740]. The earliest coins of Asia Minor are regarded by the French savants as private issues of a similar kind to those just quoted. The small stamps of which several often appear on an early electrum coin (e.g. above fig. 19. a right) are regarded by them as marks or countermarks of bankers or merchants. Babelon^[741] points out that these stamps cannot be identified as the types of towns or kings; that in one case no less than six of them are found on a single coin^[742]; and that they continue to be put on to the state coinage of Darius. The case for Lydia therefore rests largely on analogies, and analogies can never be quite conclusive. Some even of these must be used with caution, e.g. those from Russia and Merovingian France, where it is difficult to be sure that they do not represent a stage of decadence rather than development. But decadence is often another name for reversion to type, and some of the instances already quoted, e.g. those from China and India, are sufficiently remote to be safely trusted. The total effect of the evidence marshalled by Lenormant and Babelon is impressive, and certainly no other view offers so satisfactory an explanation of the distinguishing features of the earliest Greek coins. Their view has already won partial acceptance^[743]. There are of course gaps in the evidence, notably as to the circumstances of the nationalization of the coinage. But this is not very surprising if, as the stories of Damonno and Ardys suggest, it was in a succession of financial struggles for the throne that the control of the mint came gradually to be synonymous with the kingship. When the two were finally equated is a matter of conjecture. The chief part in the process may perhaps have been played by the tradesman king Ardys, but on the whole it seems likely that it was Gyges who completed the evolution of metal coinage by making it the prerogative of the state after he had first used it to obtain the supreme power. "Gyges." His career falls early enough to make this possible^[744], and the gold of Gyges attained proverbial fame^[745].

Herodotus indeed seems to discountenance the view that Gyges was ever a merchant or banker, since he describes him as serving as a guardsman a???f????, d???f???? under his predecessor Candaules^[746]. But Schubert^[747] is probably right in putting only a limited confidence in this part of our account of his career, which he shows to have been derived from Delphi. He even suggests^[748] that Gyges had bought up Delphi before, with a view to his accession, just as Croesus endeavoured to purchase the favour of Apollo before his attempted conquest of Persia^[749]. If there is any truth in this plausible suggestion, then the guardsman part of the story may well have been a half-truth emphasized to hide Gyges’ commercial antecedents, and Gyges may have secured the throne mainly through his wealth.

It is true that Gyges as tyrant fought against the Cimmerians who at this time were sweeping over Asia Minor, and that later in his reign he rebelled against Assyria^[750]. From time to time he invaded the Greek cities on the coast. He may even have taken military measures to secure the throne, if, as Radet argues^[751], his accession meant the overthrow of a Maeonian domination and the substitution for it of a Lydian. All this however is no proof of particular militarism. The wars against the Cimmerians were defensive. The revolt from Assyria was an indirect result of the Cimmerian wars. If Gyges took the aggressive against the Greeks^[752], his motive was probably commercial. He wanted “to secure for the Lydian caravans a free and sure outlet for their goods^[753].” These Greek wars were seldom carried to extremes^[754]. As regards the fighting by which he is said to have seized the throne, note that his troops, in part at least, were Carian mercenaries^[755].

Immediately after establishing himself by these violent means Gyges “sent for his various friends and enemies. Those whom he thought would oppose him he did away with; but to the rest he gave presents and made them mercenaries^[756].”

A confirmation of this same view as to the origin of Gyges’ power is possibly to be found in the story of Gyges and his ring. In this famous story, as told by Plato^[757], Gyges was a shepherd who discovered in the earth a magic gold ring, which gave him the power of invisibility and enabled him to enter the palace, slay the king, and procure his own accession. As happens so often when a story of the order of the Arabian Nights is applied to a historical personage, the immediate problem is to discover not the origin of the story, but the points about the historical character that caused the story in question to get attached to him. We may begin by dismissing the shepherding, since Gyges belonged to an ancient and princely family^[758].

The fact or facts that caused Gyges to be associated with the story probably had some connexion with the magic ring and its discovery in the earth. It has for instance been suggested that the real magic of the ring of Gyges lay in the signet that serves as a passport and reveals or conceals a man’s identity according to the way he wears it. Radet^[759] pictures Gyges as a sort of major domo to Candaules, and the ring as the emblem of his power. Explanations of this kind are not without plausibility; they are right in taking notice of the signet^[760]; but they ignore one essential detail of the story namely the marvellous discovery of the ring, nor do they go to the root of the matter, if, as the story plainly implies, the ring of Gyges is to be equated with the real source of his power. From this last point of view it becomes probable that Radet has come very much nearer the truth in another passage, where he says: “GygÈs et ses successeurs ont possÉdÉ un merveilleux talisman: la science Économique^[761].” "explained by Radet as “la science Économique.”" There is a point about the ring story that tells strongly in favour of some explanation on the lines of this second suggestion of Radet’s. The hero of the story is not always Gyges: in Pliny^[762] it is Midas the king of Phrygia who was overthrown by the Cimmerians a generation before they overthrew Gyges^[763]. It is of course possible that Pliny is merely making a mistake about the name. But it is equally possible that a genuine tradition attributed the ring to Midas. Midas has much else in common with Gyges and the points of resemblance deserve to be noticed. His kingdom, like that of Gyges, was famous for its precious metals^[764]. Like Lydia it occupied an important part of the great caravan route^[765]. Midas was the golden king still more than Gyges. His touch turned all things into gold until he was freed from this disastrous power by bathing in the Pactolus, the river from which the Lydians got so much of their electrum^[766]. According to one account coins were first struck by “Demodike of Cyme, daughter of Agamemnon king of the Cymaeans, after her marriage with Midas the Phrygian^[767].” Midas, like Gyges, sent rich presents (bribes?) to Delphi^[768]. In short the great point of resemblance which Midas bears to Gyges lies in his enormous wealth and the ways in which he appears to have acquired and used it^[769]. It may be that this implied the possession of the magic ring^[770].

The circumstances of the find recall two anecdotes in the Mirabiles Auscultationes^[771], located the one in Paionia the other in Pieria, in which, as in the Gyges story, we have the rains, the chasms, the find of gold and the taking of it to the palace. In at least one of the two cases the find is treasure trove, like the ring of Gyges. But the point to be noticed is that both Paionia and Pieria are in the famous mining district that played so great a part in the history of Athens and Macedonia. Considering the fame of the mines of Lydia it is natural to ask whether they did not play their part in the evolution of the story of the ring. Stories of men buried in the mines of Lydia did actually exist. One of them, told in the Mirabiles Auscultationes, shows that in Lydia, as in the region of Mt Pangaion and the river Strymon, chasms containing skeletons and gold were not unlikely to be mine shafts, and the power secured by their discoverer to be simply the power of suddenly and perhaps secretly acquired wealth.

As to the date at which Tmolus was first mined nothing is known except that the workings were disused in the days of Strabo^[772]. It may well have been worked from the earliest days of Gyges if, as is probable, he mined at Pergamus and further afield^[773]. Lydians mining in those regions would hardly be neglecting mines so near their own capital, the more so as they would be directed to them by following the golden stream of the Pactolus^[774].

In the face of these facts it is tempting to go one step further than Radet when he explains Gyges’ talisman as economic science. "Rings as money." We are reminded of Byron’s description of the most potent of talismans:

Gyges, it is true, discovered a ring, not a lamp, but the particular form of his talisman only adds point to the Byronic interpretation. Till somewhere about the time of the story rings were probably ready money in the literal sense of the phrase^[776]. In many parts of the world before the introduction of a regular stamped coinage trade had been conducted largely by means of rings of specific weight^[777].

Much of the evidence for this use takes us back well into the second millennium. Some of the localities where it is known to have prevailed earliest were connected with Lydia at this time. Egypt was the ally of Gyges, the Hittites were the predecessors of the Lydians in the land of Lydia. Troy probably formed part of Gyges’ dominions^[778]. The book of Genesis specifically associates ring money with caravans^[779]. It is therefore probable that rings circulated in Lydia itself until they were supplanted by the new stamped coins, which may have owed their shape to its convenience for stamping. "With Gyges’ ring cp. perhaps Pheidon’s spits, the Attic obol and drachma, and the Roman as." In Argos, according to a tradition which is defended in the next chapter, the stamped coinage was preceded by a currency of metal spits (below, fig. 21): if the tradition is to be trusted, these spits remained permanently associated with the name of the tyrant who displaced them by coined money. Have we a parallel in the case of the Gyges story? Is its hero the inventor of the new stamped coinage and has his name become associated with the rings that he displaced? It is perfectly possible that the new coins were at first regarded as so many rings’ worth of precious metal. The name ???sa implies that the stamped coin had won general acceptance; it would of course be quite appropriate to a currency in rings or kettles or cows; but there is no evidence of its use previous to the introduction of a stamped metal coinage, and it was probably the general acceptance of this latter that gave rise to the word. To call the earliest Lydian coins rings (da?t?????) would be precisely like calling the earliest coins of Athens spits (?e???) or bundles of spits (d?a?a?) or the earliest coins of Rome bars (asses). If obol and drachma and as survived while da?t????? did not, the fact is sufficiently accounted for by the histories of Athens, Rome, and Lydia.

The explanation just offered of the ring of Gyges omits one detail that is essential to the story as told by Plato. Plato’s ring is a signet ring, and it is the seal (sf?a???) that does the magic. Babelon holds that the seal makers (da?t???????f??) of the period were probably also the coin strikers. But if we are to follow one of our own leading numismatists, G. Macdonald, the connexion between seal and coin was closer than this. Originally, according to him^[780], coins were simply pieces of sealed metal.

The minting of money in its most primitive form was simply the placing of a seal on lumps of electrum that had previously been weighed and adjusted to a fixed standard: the excessive rarity of coins that have only a striated surface on the obverse proves that this primitive stage was of short duration^[781].

Greek seals were normally attached to rings^[782]. The definition of a coin as a piece of sealed metal was started by Burgon, who used it as an argument for the religious character of coin types and described the seal as “the impress of the symbol of the tutelar divinity of the city^[783].” Macdonald very rightly rejects the theory, so widely current before the appearance of Ridgeway’s Metallic Currency, that all coin types had a religious origin. But he himself proceeds to hang on to the seal theory views of his own that are equally untenable, at least in the sweeping form in which he states them. He assumes that the seal must be always that of a state or king or magistrate, and that the device is usually heraldic. The latter point does not concern us here^[784]: the former does, since it is incompatible with the views of Babelon and Lenormant that the earliest coins were not state issues. But the seal theory does not depend on the nature either of the seals or of the sealers. There is no reason why we should not accept Babelon and Lenormant on the private character of the earliest coins simultaneously with Burgon and Macdonald on the character of the first coin types as being simply seals. Indeed some of the evidence collected by Macdonald positively suggests that we should. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. at Athens public property was stamped with the public seal, t? d??s?? s???t??^[785]. The same practice was followed in the fifth century at Samos^[786], and perhaps at Syracuse^[787]. This use of public seals to stamp public property suggests corresponding private seals similarly used. At this point the literary evidence fails us, but archaeological documents come to our aid.

Metal was not the only material that the ancients stamped in this way. Wine jars, bricks, and tiles were similarly stamped. Thousands of these stamps have come down to us, and many of them bear city symbols and a magistrate’s name. But they often bear also the name of the maker, and the Danish scholar Nilsson^[788], who has made a thorough study of them, is inclined to regard them as essentially the seals of private manufacturers. The magistrate’s name may merely indicate the date: the state symbol may mean that the state was the consignee, or that the manufacturer enjoyed some sort of state protection, or was subjected to state taxation and control.

If then such was the history of the stamp as applied to bricks and wine jars, we have a further reason for thinking that stamps as applied to the precious metals may have originally been put on them by private owners. May we not here have the true explanation of the marvellous seal of Gyges’ ring? May not the owner of this ring have been the first person to use his signet for stamping coins of metal, and may not this fact be the origin of the stories about its marvellous powers?

Whether this person was Gyges is another question. His claim to the ring is not beyond dispute. We have seen already that it is sometimes attributed to Midas. Even in the story as told by Plato the MSS. make the hero “the ancestor of Gyges,” not Gyges himself, and the fact that in other writers and elsewhere in the Republic^[789] the ring is called the ring of Gyges is not in itself decisive. Both the ring and its magic powers may have passed from hand to hand. But if the evidence and opinions that have been adduced in this chapter have any value, our interpretation of the ring story does not depend on establishing Gyges as the original owner.

Let us now revert for a moment to the illuminating theory of Babelon that the striking of coins was at first a private undertaking of merchants or miners or bankers, and that the final step in the evolution of a gold and silver coinage was reached only when this business of stamping and issuing the pieces was taken over by the state. We are entirely without record of the actual transference that the theory implies. Babelon assumes that the government created the monopoly. This chapter suggests a modification of Babelon’s view in one important point, namely that it was not the government that made the monopoly, but the monopoly that made the government. As in the case of Babelon’s own main thesis, we are forced to trust largely to analogies. But the analogies are striking, and they strike in two directions. We have first the commercial or financial antecedents of the rulers of this period both in Lydia and in various Greek states: and secondly we have the history of later Lydian rulers and aspirants to the throne, notably Croesus and Sadyattes, Cyrus and Pactyes, Xerxes and Pythes. The moral of their stories is that no ruler could feel safe at Sardis until he had secured some sort of financial supremacy. When we further consider that Gyges was famous for his gold^[790], and that his gold and his tyranny are spoken of by Archilochus, probably in the same breath, then apart from speculative interpretations of the story of the ring, there is at least a clear possibility that the monopolist policy of Croesus and his successors goes back at least to Gyges and perhaps even a generation or so earlier, to some such ruler as Ardys or Spermos, and that it was the monopoly in stamped pieces of electrum that brought the first tyrant to the king’s palace and placed him on the throne^[791].