appear a horse's or stag's head, and a flower with four petals. Later
on the design was simplified, and contained only one, or at most two
figures--a hare squatting under a tortuous climbing plant, a roaring
lion crouching with its head turned to the left, the grinning muzzle of
a lion, the horned profile of an antelope or mouflon sheep: rosettes and
flowers, included within a square depression, were then used to replace
the stria and irregular lines of the reverse. These first efforts were
without inscriptions; it was not long, however, before there came to be
used, in addition to the figures, legends, from which we sometimes
learn the name of the banker; we read, for instance, "I am the mark of
Phannes," on a stater of electrum struck at Ephesus, with a stag grazing
on the right. We are ignorant as to which of the Lydian kings first made
use of the new invention, and so threw into circulation the gold and
electrum which filled his treasury to overflowing. The ancients say it
was Gyges, but the Gygads of their time cannot be ascribed to him; they
were, without any doubt, simply ingots marked with the stamp of the
banker of the time, and were attributed to Gyges either out of pure
imagination or by mistake.*

* The gold of Gyges is known to us through a passage in
Pollux. Fr. Lenormant attributed to Gyges the coins which
Babelon restores to the banks of Asia Minor. Babelon sees in
the Gygads only "ingots of gold, struck _possibly_ in the
name of Gyges, capable of being used as coin, doubtless
representing a definitely fixed weight, but still lacking
that ultimate perfection which characterises the coinage of
civilised peoples: from the standpoint of circulation in the
market their shape was defective and inconvenient; their
subdivision did not extend to such small fractions as to
make all payments easy; they were too large and too dear for