CHAPTER XI. The Lydian and Persian Systems.

“The Lydians,” says Herodotus, “were the first of all nations we know who struck gold and silver coin¹,” a tradition also attested by Xenophanes of Colophon, according to Julius Pollux². These statements of the ancient writers are confirmed by an examination of the earliest essays made in Asia in the art of coining; from which the best numismatists have been led to ascribe it to the seventh century B.C. and probably to the reign of Gyges, who from being a shepherd, by means of the “virtuous ring” became the founder of the great dynasty of the Mermnadae, and of the new Lydian empire as distinguished from the Lydia of a more remote antiquity. The first issues of the Lydian mint were rudely executed coins of electrum, being staters and smaller coins of the standards usually known as the Babylonian and Phoenician, of which the earliest staters weigh about 167 and 220 grs. respectively³. It is most likely that the Babylonian standard was intended for commerce with the interior of Asia Minor, and the Phoenician for transactions with the cities of the western seaboard, to coincide with the silver standards in use in these respective regions. The proportion of gold and silver in electrum is exceedingly variable: according to Pliny⁴ any gold alloyed with one-fifth of silver (and by implication any containing any higher proportion of silver) was called electrum. We shall soon find that the electrum staters of Cyzicus contained about an equal amount of either metal; but the analysis of Lydian electrum gives a proportion of 73 per cent. of gold to 27 per cent. of silver, or practically 3 to 1. As gold in the central parts of Asia Minor stood to silver as 13·3:1 in the reign of Darius and probably long before, we may not unreasonably assume that such also was the relation between them in the reign of Gyges, at least in the interior. In