Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c9.20.2

c9.20.2

Prof. Ridgeway’s main contention is that while mythological and religious subjects do occur on Greek coins, it can be shown that certain coins, even in historical times, were regarded as the representations of the objects of barter of more primitive times.¹ I will cite one typical instance. It is well known that the tunny fish continually passes in vast shoals through the sea of Marmora from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. This fish must therefore have formed the staple commodity of the communities that lived in those regions, and we know that the article which forms such a staple commodity forms money in the age of barter. Now, the city of Olbia, which lay on the north shore of the Black Sea was a Milesian colony, and was the Greek emporium in that region. There are bronze coins of this city which are shaped like fishes and inscribed with θυ which is taken to be the abbreviation of θύννος, *i.e.* tunny, the fish. When we recall the Chinese bronze cowries, the Burmese silver shells, the silver fish hooks of the Indian Ocean, etc., we are constrained to believe that in these coins of Olbia, shaped like fish, we have a distinct proof of the influence on the Greek mind of the same principle which has impelled other peoples to imitate in metal the older object of barter which a metal currency is replacing. Take now the case of the city of Cyzicus, situated on the coast of Asia Minor.