r as this worship was spread, from India to the North of Europe,
and the great demand for it for sacred uses gave the metal much of its
preciousness in the markets of the world. It was worn by the living and
was buried with the dead; so that if humanity had not refined its
conception of the divine, it would have come to be the case at length
that every particle of gold in the soil would have had mortal ashes
sleeping beside it.

Gold and silver were rendered sacred and precious in early times by
being devoted to purposes of worship. The temples were the safe places
of deposit, and in these were hoarded the treasures of the world. Partly
from this circumstance it became the case that when gold and silver were
first coined, the temples were the mints, and the earliest mint-masters
were the priests. Naturally, the devices stamped upon the coins issued
under such auspices would be sacred emblems. We find them such from
whatever source they came. There was sound policy in this course, as
well as good reason for it. If coins were to circulate among people who
had previously been accustomed to paying out and receiving the precious
metals by actual weight, it was necessary to have the value of these
pieces certified to in the most solemn manner. To this end the effigies
of the gods, together with the tokens of their attributes and sacred
offices, were stamped upon the coin. If we could trace coinage to its
earliest use, perhaps to its origin, among the people who lived about
the AEgean Sea, it would not be unreasonable to expect to find that at
first gold coin was issued under the patronage of Apollo, that silver
bore the stamp of Zeus, and that copper coins were dedicated to
Aphrodite, as the nearest representative among Greek divinities of that
Phoenician goddess who presided over trade in the ports and markets of
the East. But among the coins that remain--and some of these are shown
to be of early date, they are so rude in execution--we do not find this
distinction kept. It is certain that at an early period the emblems of
the several divinities were mixed, apparently with a view to giving a
more weighty sanction to the stamp impressed upon the coin.

The earlier Greek coins were struck by hand. A single die was employed
in the process, so that an impression of device or of legend appeared
only on one side. The other side bore an indent which is known as the
punch-mark. This mark is commonly a square figure divided into four