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παραπλησίοισι. For the similarity cf. App. I, § 5. The statement as to the invention of coinage is usually accepted as in the main accurate (G. F. Hill, G. and R. C. p. 7, Hist. Gk. Coins, 1-2, 18-20; Head, H. N. 643). Pollux ix. 83 quotes Xenophanes (fl. circ. 540) for the same statement, but he quotes also four divergent views. Bars and rings of metal of uniform weight had been used in Egypt and Babylon, but these needed frequent reweighing; coinage begins when some authority issuing coins guarantees the value by a stamp. The invention was natural for the Lydians, who, as ‘the Phoenicians of the land’, held the outlets of the great Eastern trade-routes. So the Aeginetans, the ‘pedlars of Greece Proper’, were the earliest coiners there. P. Gardner, however (B. A. P. iii. 110 seq.), thinks the earliest coins were probably of Asiatic Greek origin, perhaps struck privately by temples or bankers. The earliest Lydian coins date from the reign of Gyges; cf. Γυγάδας χρυσός, Poll. iii. 87, vii. 98; both passages imply that Gyges struck coins of gold of peculiar purity; but the earliest coins were really of electrum (cf. 50. 2 n.); they were oval in shape, with a type on one side and punch-mark on the other. B. V. Head (in Hogarth, E. E.) considers that eleven of the seventyeight Lydian coins found at Ephesus in the temple deposit are at latest of the time of Gyges; but he thinks they were issued privately and not by the king; the earliest royal Lydian coins were those of Alyattes, whose name perhaps can be read on some of them (H. N. 645). Croesus introduced a gold and silver coinage, stamped with the confronting heads of a lion and a bull. The Aeginetans had anticipated him in silver (Hill, G. C. p. 20 and Pl. 1); but the statements of Ephorus, that Pheidon first coined silver in Aegina (Strabo, 376) and that he invented gold and silver coinage (Strabo, 358), are probably merely embellishments of H.'s statement as to his measures (vi. 127. 3 n.). H. then may well be right as to the priority of the Lydians, but he omits the early electron coins, in view of the more famous issues of Croesus, and he is wrong in saying the Lydians were the first to coin ‘silver’. For the standards cf. Hill, G. C. p. 18. κάπηλοι. This statement as to ‘retail trade’ is, taken literally, false; such trade was familiar in Egypt and Babylon much earlier; but the Lydians were proverbially a nation of shopkeepers; cf. the proverb Λυδὸς καπηλεύει (P. G. ii. 510). Radet, pp. 295 f., gives a brilliant picture of the wealth and vice of Sardis.
For this ethnic genealogy cf. c. 7. 3 n. For Tyrsenus Xanthus (fr. 1; F. H. G. i. 36) read Torrhebus. Cf. Introd. p. 23.
The same story was told of Palamedes at Troy (Soph. Fr. 380). For Greek games cf. W. Richter, Die Spiele der G. u. R. κύβοι differed from ἀστράγαλοι (marked on four sides only) in having pips on all six sides. Athenaeus i. 19 rightly corrects H.'s tale as to the Lydian invention of games; Nausicaa's ball play is familiar.
For a similar migration to relieve over-population, and determined by lot, cf. Livy v. 34 (the Gauls); it is a usual motive in primitive history.
The Umbrians are vaguely extended by H. iv. 49. 2 to the ‘river Alpis’, i. e. to the Alps. The story, here first given (cf. App. XV, § 6), of the Lydian origin of the Etruscans is familiar, especially from Horace (Odes, iii. 29. 1 et pass.). It was rejected with contempt in the early days of criticism (cf. Mommsen, R. H. i. 128 seq.), and the Etruscans were brought into Italy by land from the north. Modern archaeology is now accumulating evidence which confirms Greek tradition; it tends to show that native Italian civilization in the north developed without interruption from abroad, while Etruscan civilization in Central Italy was introduced by sea (like that of Carthage), and resembles that of the later Aegean periods, e.g. in its Cyclopean walls. (Cf. A. and A. pp. 304 seq. and (for a fuller statement of the evidence) App. I. 13.)
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