Golden crescents of various sizes were among the most primitive forms of money. Ancient coins frequently bore the likenesses of popular deities or their symbols, and of the latter the crescent appears to have been the one most commonly employed.[47] It was the usual mint-mark of the coins of Thespia in the early part of the fourth century B. C.;[48] is seen on the coins of the reigns of Augustus, Nero, and other Roman emperors; and on the silver pieces of the time of Hadrian is found the _Luna crescens_ with seven stars.[49] A crescent adorned the head of the goddess Diana in her character of Hecate, or ruler of the infernal regions. Hecate was supposed to preside over enchantments, and was also the special guardian and protectress of houses and doors.[50] The Greeks not only wore amulets in the shape of the half moon, but placed them on the walls of their houses as talismans;[51] and the Romans used _phalĕræ_, metallic disks and crescents, to decorate the foreheads and breasts of their horses. Such ornaments are to be seen on the caparisons of the horses on Trajan’s Column and on other ancient monuments, in the collection of Roman antiquities in the British Museum, and in mediæval paintings and tapestries.[52] In the portrayals of combats between the Romans and Dacians on the Arch of Constantine, the trappings of the horses of both armies are decorated with these emblems,[53] as are also the bridle reins of a horse shown in a French manuscript of the fifteenth century representing “gentlefolk meeting on horseback.”[54] Charms of similar shape, made of wolves’ teeth and boars’ tusks, have been found in tumuli in different parts of Great Britain. A sepulchral stone, which is preserved among other Gallo-Roman relics within the château of Chinon, France, bears the effigy of a man standing upright and clad in a large tunic with wide sleeves. Above the figure is a crescent-shaped talisman, a symbol frequently found in monuments of that period.[55] But the use of these symbols, although so ancient, is by no means obsolete; the brass crescent, an avowed charm against the evil eye, is very commonly attached to the elaborately decorated harnesses of Neapolitan draught-horses, and is used in the East to embellish the trappings of elephants. It is also still employed in like manner in various parts of Europe and in the England of to-day. In Germany small half-moon-shaped amulets similar to the ancient μηνίσχοι or _lunulæ_ are still used against the evil eye. In Sweden and Frisia, bridal ornaments for the head and neck often represent the moon’s disk in its first quarter; and it is customary to call out after a newly married pair, “Increase, O Moon.”[56] Elworthy remarks that the horse-shoe, wherever used as an amulet, is the handy conventional representative of the crescent, and that the Buddhist crescent emblem is a horse-shoe with the curve pointed like a Gothic arch.