Here had come Herakles driving homeward the unruly oxen of Geryones, here had he wrestled with gigantic Eryx, and after victory had refreshed his weariness in the springs of Himera. While here, too, in the dim twilight of still more ancient myth and legend, Pallas Athene and Artemis had each her chosen spot; and here, "where ocean breezes blow round the island of the blessed, and golden flowers blaze, some on the ground, some on resplendent trees, while others on soft-shimmering waters float; with necklaces of which the happy ones intertwine their hands and heads", fair Persephone - -Kore the maiden — innocently gathering violets near her favorite Henna, had been seized by fierce Aidoneus and borne off, from the midst of her companions, to his kingdom, the nether world; and along these same unresponsive shores had she been sought with bitter lamentations by the bereaved mother Demeter; Ætna's fires flaming for her torch.

The eastern coast, rising up as a barrier across the path of the Greek mariner purposely westward bound, or driven in the same direction before unfavorable gales, naturally became the scene of the earliest Greek settlements, in that eighth century B. C. when there sprang into renewed life and activity the old restless spirit of adventure and colonial enterprise which was soon to make the Mediterranean in large part a Greek sea. Thus Dorians and Ionians, taking small heed of the aboriginal Sikans and Sikels who had hitherto peacefully held this land, vied in founding coast cities; and we find Naxos, Syracuse, Leontinoi and Katane firmly established several years before any signs of Greek settlement appear on the Magna Graecian mainland, where in fact towns such as Sybaris and Kroton were to attain the height of their glory and prosperity at a much earlier period than their island neighbors.

The first two centuries of Sicilian history, however, the art of coinage being yet unknown- do not demand our attention as students of numismatics; and when we meet with the earliest coin issues (about the middle of the sixth century) one city had already begun to show in Sikeliot affairs evidences of the wide influence which was later to expand into a general and overwhelming predominance. In fact for about three centuries the story of

Syracuse seems to embrace, more or less fully, the history of all Sicily; where no city was so great or so insignificant as to feel secure from the savage cruelty of the Syracusan tyrants; and where, equally, all could rejoice at the approach, or at the success of the Syracusan "deliverers."

And if we seek historical pictures, what Sicilian city can show such variety in government and dominion as Syracuse in the fourth century? To the cruel, faithless, but brilliant and powerful Dionysios the Elder succeeds his unstable and vicious son, first the willing, docile pupil of Plato, then with weak self-assertion rushing to every excess of tyrannical vice, and, when at last forced to flee before the wrath of his outraged subjects, retiring to Corinth to end his days peacefully as a schoolmaster. Meanwhile, and in large part instrumental in this event, have come in turn the deliverers; able, haughty, unfortunate Dion; and Timoleon, pure, true-hearted, courageous hero and patriot, the noblest figure of Sikeliot story. And then, with startling suddenness, in less than two decades we see the rise of another tyrant, more savage, more energetic in ill-doing than even Dionysios; and the century closes with the power and magnificence, the treachery and blood-rage of Agathokles.

The variety and splendor of Syracusan coinage, reflecting for three centuries the changes of civic fortune, give to successive issues an overwhelming interest, historical and artistic. The most skillful coin-engravers celebrated the city's victorious achievements by beautiful and appropriate designs, which excited the admiration no less of contemporaries, than of art-lovers in all succeeding ages; and whose wide-spread influence appears in coinages as far removed as Gallia and Asiatic Kilikia. In copiousness no autonomous coinage equals, and few royal series surpass that of this city: —an abundance attested by the number of my own Syracusan specimens, which comprise above one-eighth of the entire collection; not an unusual proportion in cabinets formed to give a comprehensive view of this subject. Such a marked pre-eminence, historical, artistic, geographical, and numismatic, must surely justify my choice of this city's coinage for these opening papers on Sicilian issues.

A word must be added on the subject of one peculiarity in the coinages of Sicily; namely, the uniformity of their weight-standard, which,— with the exception of some early issues of the Chalkidic colonies, such as Naxos, Zankle and Himera, where the Aiginetic standard prevailed,-was Attic; the full tetradrachm weighing 270 grains, and the didrachm 135, with its subdivisions in the same ratio.

For two hundred years after 734 B. C., when Corinthian Archias, with his followers, founded Syracuse - destined to become the mightiest of the Doric colonies - the energy of its inhabitants was confined to a gradual and natural extension in the neighboring unoccupied portions of Sicily, until the entire southeastern corner of the island had come under Syracusan dominion. A gradual evolution in civic government, common to all Sikeliot towns, where the supreme power, retained in the hands of descendants of original settlers, tended as a consequence more and more towards a close oligarchy, had meanwhile been taking place at Syracuse; and in the latter part of the sixth century we find a ruling aristocratic class, the Gamoroi, or Landowners, to whose period should be assigned the earliest Syracusan coinage.

GAMOROI.

60. Tetradrachm, wt. 263 grs. Sixth century B. C.. (Pl. V: 1.) Obv. YPA (archaic forms). Quadriga to right, horses walking. Rev. Female head to left, of archaic style, in incuse circle; around which, quadripartite incuse square, granulated. (From the Montagu sale.)

Had we commenced our study of coinage with the still more ancient issues of Hellas, prototypes of this reverse would have been examined among those archaic Corinthian coins which, as already mentioned, circulated widely in the western Greek world before the art of coining money had penetrated thither; and which naturally would be almost exclusively used in this daughter city of the Isthmic metropolis. It is easy to trace in the peculiar shape of the incuse square,- especially when the specimen is somewhat worn, a reflection of the swastika, which was the reverse type of Corinth

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for this sixth century; but the included head was doubtless that of the local nymph Arethousa, whose spring bubbling up-as it still does - on the sea-margin of Ortygia, was the inspiration of one of the most charming of Sicilian legends. This relates how in Elis of old Greece, the nymph pursued by the river-god Alpheios, was changed by Artemis (quickly responsive to her maiden's prayer) into a fountain, which flowing under the sea, welled up again in Ortygia. Not even thus, however, could she wholly escape her ardent lover, whose stream, likewise disappearing and taking the long undersea journey, in similar strange fashion poured -and yet pours - forth its fresh and copious waters amid the salt waves of the harbor near by.

Sicily was celebrated for the beauty and speed of its horses, — the "unwearied steeds" of Pindar,- and perhaps this obverse type is descriptive of some especial pride on the part of the Syracusans. The quadriga is represented in the conventional method so common for the first century of Sicilian coinage, the engraver depicting two horses clearly and the other two simply by outlines; an artifice also employed for the pair of horses on No. 6 of this plate. No Nike, proffering victorious wreath, hovers over these steeds, so that we cannot here, as we shall shortly, trace any reference in this type to a victory in one of the great Hellenic games.

Like all oligarchies, the Gamoroi became in time overbearing and oppressive in their rule of the common people, who by immigration and natural increase were gradually growing more numerous and ungovernable. Finally, in the early years of the fifth century B. C., they rose in successful revolt, and driving the Landowners from the city established in their stead a pure democracy.

Meanwhile a new ruler, destined to become one of the most celebrated of Sicilian tyrants, had by fair or foul means established himself over neighboring Gela; and Gelon, son of Deinomenes, was prayed by the banished Gamoroi to restore them to their government of Syracuse. His mercenary forces found in the capture of this city, now weakened by its internal dissensions, an easy and congenial task; but the result was far different from that anticipated by his allies. The victorious general made himself absolute ruler

of them and of the people, transferred from Gela to Syracuse his seat of government, and to increase the population of this new capital transplanted thither one half of the citizens of his native Gela, as well as all the inhabitants of smaller adjacent towns, which he then destroyed. Gelon further strengthened his position by alliance with other Sicilian tyrants, notably Theron of Akragas; whose daughter Damareta, taken in marriage to cement this powerful friendship, was destined, as we shall find, to exercise a distinguishing influence on Syracusan coinage. These events took place in 485 B. C., with which year the Syracusan issues enter upon a fresh period, illustrated by the following coins:

GELON.

61. Tetradrachm, wt. 263 grs. B. C. 485-478. (Pl. V: 2.) Obv. <YPAYOZION Head of nymph to right, diademed, of archaic style; around, four dolphins. Rev. Quadriga to right, horses walking and crowned by Nike running with outspread wings: border of dots.

(From the Bunbury sale.)

This rare coin, which probably initiated the coinage of Gelon, is of double interest, emphasizing as it does in art and treatment a marked departure from the preceding issue, and presenting the prototype after which were fashioned a large proportion of Syracusan silver coins.

We find that the types have changed sides; the head of the nymph Arethousa as worthy of the highest dignity now distinguishing the more honorable obverse, while the quadriga-scheme, representing earthly associations as contrasted with divine, marks the less important reverse. The process of evolution further appears in the transformation of the four swastikalike corners into an equal number of dolphins, which swimming around the head of the nymph always henceforth symbolize the island nature of Ortygia, the sea-encircled foundation of earliest Syracuse.

This head from its greater size displays more clearly than in the case of our Italiot incuse specimens the characteristic archaic method of representing hair by minute dots arranged in rows. The features stiff and severe, yet