and put by the Samian exiles on their coins at Zancle. If the Greeks had been barbarians they would have slavishly copied the lion coins of Lydia, just as the Gauls copied the lion of Massalia, and at a later time the stater of Philip, and as the Himyarites of South Arabia, the “owls” of Athens24, and as in mediaeval times the Danes of Dublin copied the coins of the Saxon kings25. But the artistic genius of the Greeks could submit to no such trammels, and the lion type was varied and diversified according to the fancy of each community. The same holds good of the type of the cow and cow’s head. The Greek genius gave us these beautiful types such as the cow suckling her calf (Dyrrachium), the cow with the bird on her back (Eretria), the cow scratching herself (Eretria), the two calves’ heads seen on the coins of Mytilene, and the magnificent charging bull on the coins of Thurii. The cow or bull’s head on the early gold and electrum coins was the indication of the value. In later times when the connection between ox and coin was only traditional, the ox was put on coins simply as symbolical of money.
