Remembering the valuable and interesting private museums I had discovered in some of the remotest of the Russian towns, I inquired if there were no private collections in Santiago. “Yes, we have one,” was the reply, “it is in the house of Señor Ricardo Blanco Ciceron”; and through the kindness of Señor Cabeza Leon I soon received an invitation from Señor Ciceron to inspect the treasures which he had gathered together during some forty years. Señor Ciceron is a wealthy Santiago merchant, his comfortable house is filled with antique furniture and other _objêts d’art_, but besides these he has a couple of rooms filled with curios of every description and of every period of Galicia’s history. Here I saw some fine specimens of Roman mosaic, Roman pottery, and Roman metal work. I was struck with a beautifully preserved glass vase, which had been discovered in a brick-tomb three feet beneath the surface of the ground, by railway navvies, near Astorga. But the real value of this museum lies in the collections of ancient coins, and the collection of _torques_. Among the coins I saw a great many Phœnician, and a still larger number of Visigothic coins (very small, and as thin as wafers). Numismatologists tell us it is an ascertained fact that the Carthaginians did not begin to mint for themselves until three or four years later than their Greek neighbours.[212] Dr. Macdonald remarks that among the ancients themselves there was a difference of opinion as to where the first coins were struck. Herodotus thought that the Lydians were the first people to strike and use gold and silver coins. There seems to be no proof that they were in circulation earlier than 700 B.C.[213] Before the introduction of a metallic standard the universal unit of value was the ox, and it is the opinion of some students that when the primitive system of currency was superseded by a metallic one, a picture of the article that had formerly served as money was very naturally impressed upon the coins. There have been found in Galicia a number of coins with an ox or other animal represented. Among the Celtiberic coins I noticed one on which was depicted a man on a galloping horse; on its reverse was the head of a man wearing a helmet. There were also a goodly number of Roman coins from the time of Augustus to that of Nero. All these had been coined at Rome, but we have already seen that several of the Roman colonies in Galicia were permitted to strike their own money until about the middle of the first century A.D., when the privilege was withdrawn both from Gaul and Spain. It seems very probable that long before coins were current in Galicia the natives used their jewellery as money. Señor Ciceron is the happy possessor of the finest collection of golden torques in existence, and every one of these was dug up in Galicia. Their great weight, and the purity of their metal, indicate that they were used for more purposes than that of ornament alone.