temple of Athena at Athens, that of Apollo at Delphi, and that of Juno Moneta at Rome. The temple priests of Delphi and other rich shrines had at their command large stores of the precious metals, which in the earliest times doubtless were in the shape of small ingots or bullets, such as the gold talents mentioned in the Homeric Poems.
The temple shrines of Delphi and Olympia, Delos and Dodona were centres not merely of religious cult, but likewise of trade and commerce, just as the great fairs of the Middle Ages grew primarily out of the feast day of the local saint, merchants and traders taking advantage of the assembling together of large bodies of worshippers from various quarters to ply their calling and to tempt them with their wares. The temple authorities encouraged trade in every way; they constructed sacred roads, which gave facility for travelling at a time when roads as a general rule were almost unknown, and what was just as important, they placed these roads and consequently the persons who travelled on them under the protection of the god to whose temple they led in each case, thus affording a safe conduct to the trader as well as the pilgrim; again at the time of the sacred festivals all strife had to cease, the voice of war was hushed, and thus even amidst the noise of intestine struggles and international strife, peace offered a breathing space for trade and commerce. Hence the probability is considerable that the art of minting money, that is, of stamping with a symbol the ingots or talents of gold or silver which had circulated in this simple form for centuries, first had its birth in the sanctuary of some god.
On the whole then we may assume that the bullet-shaped coins of Aegina, which are undoubtedly the earliest coins of Greece Proper, are the Pheidonian currency mentioned in the ancient authors and on the Parian Marble. As silver was probably not at all plenty at Argos, but was brought to Aegina by the traders, Pheidon had every motive for minting at Aegina instead of at his own capital. The fact that the Romans struck