nt divinities, with their attributes and titles, the
utensils and ceremonies of their worship, the costume of their
priests--in fine, everything which relates to their usages, civil,
military, and religious. Medals also acquaint us with the history of
art. They contain representations of several celebrated works of
antiquity which have been lost, the value of which may be estimated from
the ancient medals of those still existing, as the Farnese Hercules,
Niobe and her Children, the Venus of Gnidos, etc. Like gems and statues,
they enable us to trace the epochs of different styles of art, to
ascertain its progress among the most civilized nations, and its
condition among the rude.

The ancient medals were struck or cast; some were first cast and then
struck. The first coins of Rome and other cities of Italy must have been
cast, as the hammer could not have produced so bold a relief. The copper
coins of Egypt were cast. The right of coining money has always been one
of the privileges which rulers have confined to themselves. The free
cities have inscribed only their names on their coins. The cities
subject to kings sometimes obtained permission to strike money in their
own name, but were most frequently required to add the name or image of
the king to whom they were subject. The medals of the Parthians and the
Phoenecians offer many examples of this sort. Rome, under the
republic, allowed no individual the right to coin money; no magistrate
could put his name thereon, though this honor was sometimes allowed, as
a special favor, by a decree of the Senate. We can count as numismatic
countries only those into which the Greeks and Romans carried the use
of money; though some of the oriental nations used gold and silver as a
medium of exchange, before their time it was by weight. The people in
the northern part of Europe had no money.

The coins preserved from antiquity are estimated to be more numerous
than those we possess from the middle ages, in the proportion of a
hundred to one! Millin thinks that the number of extant ancient medals
amounts to 70,000! What a fund of the most curious and authentic
information do they contain, and what a multitude of errors have been
corrected by their means! There are valuable cabinets of medals in all
the principal cities of Europe; that of Paris is by far the richest;
Pillerin alone added to it 33,000 ancient coins and medals. The coins of
the kings of Macedon are the most ancient of a