46o History of Art in Antiquity. as yet unknown would have furnished artificers and coiners of little or no value, but where currency had been in common use for a hundred and fifty years, not only could trained artisans be obtained, but they would be found subservient to the wishes of the master, and ready to execute any work presented to them. The style and the types engraved upon their matrices, however, would remain unchanged. Hence it is that the royal coins of the Achsmenidae have a less distinct Oriental appearance than engraved stones. To consider the style of their fabrication alone, they should be classed with the series of the archaic coined money of Phoenicia and Greece. The fact that they have a national character and are Persian, is due to the device Darius caused to be engraved upon them, a device they retained to the last days of the monarchy, and even for some time afterwards.* The type referred to is that of the king in his character as indomitable archer. The sculptors both at Behistlin and Persepolis have shown us the king carrying the bow ; but on the great com- memorative sculpture, as upon the sepulchral facades, the king does not use it as an offensive weapon. In the one instance he is supposed to have overcome all resistance and to reap the fruit of his triumph, whilst in the other he is understood to have accomplished the work allotted to him in life, so that his attitude before the sacred fire, under the eye of his god, is one of prayer and meditation, and therefore in either group the bow is at rest (Figs. 189, 112). But on the coins the king is represented in a bellicose posture. In order to take a sure aim, he kneels to bend the bow, and the arrow he is about to shoot will reach his foe and that of his people, flee he never so swiftly. The Greeks, who had substantial reasons to remember the darics, call them familiarly and simply
- ' archers.'* We have already adverted to the joke of Agesilaus.
who, being forced to retire from an invasion of Persia by the bribery used by the Great King to instigate the Athenians and Thebans against Sparta, said that "ten (?) thousand archers had defeated him.** * The successful advance of the Spartan general in Lydia and Phrygia foreshadowed the conquests of Alexander. The vast extent of the empire favoured the success of the new coinage, and inasmuch as it fkcilitated the ordinary transactions of commerce, the latter was induced to use a currency which the
- Fx* Lemoruant, Za mmmtie Jans Vvitiquite^ torn, il p. 19.
- Plutarch, Ag^Uaus^ xv.
o Google
