King Cunobelin seems to have exerted all his influence in order to Romanize his subjects by other means, and also by adopting not only Roman letters, but also the Latin language on his coins. He thus paved the way for the conquest of his dominions and the death and capture of his sons, who were unable successfully to repel an invasion far less formidable than that conducted by the great Julius against their predecessor Cassivelaunus.

An examination of the various symbols impressed on the Gallic uninscribed coins has been conducted with great skill and caution by Mr. Lambert, and serves to throw new light upon the theology of the Pelasgian race in earlier times, before temple priests and poets, skilled in art, had peopled heaven with new denizens, whose beauty, wisdom, and power, embodied in the human form, tended not to raise man to heaven, but to bring down the gods to earth.

The time has not yet arrived for undertaking a similar examination of the British unlettered coins, and of instituting a comparison between their symbols and those of ancient Gaul and Greece. I agree with Mr. Lambert in holding that the famous coin of Philip of Macedon had no reference to any Olympic victory, but bore on its face religious symbols which could easily be recognized in countries which still preserved the purer traditions. Plutarch's authority on the question has no weight, as he was much fonder of retailing scandalous anecdotes than of inquiring into the truth of them. The chariot races in the Roman Circus were not derived from Elis, but were transmitted from the earliest times, as a necessary part of a great religious drama which was connected with the ancient doctrines respecting the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. It would be very difficult to prove that the elegant coin of Syracuse, which is supposed to have been copied from the biga of Philip of Macedon, had not, on the contrary, served as a model to the Macedonian artist, who might easily have omitted the Sicilian triquetra. (See Coin, No. 2.)

There is an archaic coin of Syracuse which exhibits on the

reverse the punch-mark, impressed with a small head of Proserpine (see Coin, No. 3); on the obverse it has a figure conducting a biga. It is generally assigned to the end of the fifth century, about 490 B.C., long before Philip the Second ascended the Macedonian throne.

There is another rare coin of Syracuse (see Coin, No. 4). "It is," writes Noel Humphreys, " of a curious and interesting period of archaic Sicilian art, and is one of the earliest specimens of a complete coin, when the punch with which the reverse was struck had become a perfect die like that of the obverse. In this instance, the small head of Proserpine in the punch-mark of the preceding piece has become a large and well-executed head, surrounded by dolphins, one of the principal emblems of the Syracusans, and has the full inscription. It now forms the obverse, while the biga is removed to the reverse. It is supposed to be of the period of Gelo I.,

who died 478 before Christ."

Should any one compare the figure of the driver on this coin with the Macedonian auriga, he will clearly see that the latter was borrowed from the former. Above the horses hovers a winged female, and below them there is a lion running.

The "bigati stateres" of Philip presented to the Western world no new religious symbols, but such as were long before looked upon as sacred, and had been impressed upon Sicilian coins while the intercourse between the Greeks of Sicily with the southern provinces of Gaul was, as yet, free from the hostile prohibitions of Carthage.

It is true that the staters presented the original symbols in a less corrupted form than that in which they appear in the Syracusan coins; and that might have been one reason why. the Druids of Gaul had so eagerly adopted them, both as current coins and as models for imitation. But this was done in violation of the primary rules of their religion, which required the absence of all engraved figures and letters from all their public monuments. The imitations of the figures were soon followed by the introduction of inscriptions upon the

coins of all the states who were in a hurry to become Romans.

The Armoricans alone, who had admitted the figures, refused to adopt the letters, and, as I firmly believe, altogether renounced the art of coining as a culpable innovation and incompatible with their religious principles, and that their example on this point was followed by their co-religionists in Great Britain. Without admitting this, it would be impossible to account for the non-appearance of Celtic coins in Ireland, where the Druidical body found a safe asylum from Roman persecution, and where they so successfully organized that Celtic party which eventually drove the Romans from Great Britain.

The symbols on the famous Macedonian coin were extremely simple, and of a primitive character. The laurelled head of Apollo was the type of the material sun, which itself was supposed to be the best representative of the one creative spirit ; and the biga and its driver represented the moon, which, in its turn, was supposed to be a sufficient type of the Duad, or the passive principle, which Greek philosophers named Quais, and the Latins natura, and which mythology has designated by a thousand myths. It was, however, as movers, and as the two visible sources of light, that they were supposed principally to cause life and generation, as being those

Cœlo qui ducitus annum,

and brought on in regular order the four seasons, and the other changes of which the creating spirit had made them the instruments most apparent to man. The carmen sæculare of Horace embodies the popular ideas respecting the worship and praise due to the two great luminaries, for the benefits which they were supposed to confer upon mankind, and forms one of the best hymns composed by the Roman muse.

But the Druids of Gaul did not long content themselves with the mythical symbols impressed upon the Macedonian coin. They innovated greatly upon the original design. And here again let Mr. Lambert speak for himself (p. 69):

"But this state of things did not continue long, since we

discover at an early period the biga reduced to a single horse, and the conductress exchanging her whip or goad for certain mysterious symbols. Then commences the veritable transformation. The conducting guide, having quitted the car, places herself above the steed (see Coin, No. 5), and seems to whirl through space as an ethereal traveller; sometimes it assumes the form of a simple horseman armed with sword and buckler (see Coin, No. 6), and rapidly gallops along, until at last it is replaced by the eagle (Coin, No. 7), the emblem of swiftness, or even by a dragon (Coin, No. 8).

"I have already said that Selene, the conductress of the moon, is seen on certain Gallic coins. All know that the ancients regarded her as a divinity, and that the Greeks raised altars to her. In the eighth Orphic Hymn she is described as the guide of peaceful nights; but her name is only one of the epithets of Diana, commissioned to give light to the world during the night-Diana Lucifera or Phaesphorus is the same as the moon. She is the sister of Helios, or the sun, and is represented as sitting in a car

et tuas lentè Remeare bigas, pallida Phœbe.

"It is commonly believed, on the testimony of Plutarch, that the gold coin of Philip had its origin in the Olympic victories of that prince. But is it certain that Plutarch was not mistaken on the subject? There may, perhaps, be some reason to suspect this, when we look at the beautiful Philippian stater in the king's cabinet (see Coin, No. 2), having on one side the laurelled head of Apollo; and on the other a figure in a biga, holding in her right hand a baguette, and in her left the reins, and having below a radiant head of the sun. It will probably be objected to us, that here the head of the sun is a mint variety, as on the other specimens there are to be found a thunderbolt, a victory, a diota, the flower of the Balaustium, a helmet, and the triquetra. I can, however, quote in support of my own opinion, a fragment of beautiful Gallo-Roman pottery, red and fine, picked up among the ruins of the ancient

city of the Viducasses at Vieux, near Caen, on which is seen Diana Luna mounted on a biga directing the two steeds, preceded by the evening star. This appears to me to approximate closely to the Philippian coin, and I give a representation of both of them side by side, that they may be better compared.

However that may be, I feel myself authorized in concluding, that was the way in which the Druids understood the type on the Macedonian coin, because I can now produce a handsome gold coin (see Coin, No. 9) from the cabinet of Mr. Drouot of Mans, which, with the laurelled head of Apollo on one side, presents on the other a single horse conducted by a figure with a fantastic head, having below a circle with rays, thus indicating the advance of the noctural luminary to replace the light of the setting sun. This intention of the Gallic artist cannot be mistaken, seeing he has placed above the horse's ears a crescent, in order to complete the myth."

But the Druids, as we are distinctly told by Strabo, were not only professors of natural philosophy, but also moral teachers. They held with the true philosophers, that there was