The passage just quoted describes not a theory of Lenormant’s but the actual practice of the Chinese empire[734]. A similar currency of ingots stamped by merchants or bankers has been used in many other parts of the world, _e.g._ Japan[735], Java[736], India[737] and Russia[738]. Reversions to the practice of private coinage have been frequent in America[739]; “for a long time the copper currency of England consisted mainly of tradesmen’s tokens,” used largely by manufacturers to pay the wages of their workpeople[740]. The earliest coins of Asia Minor are regarded by the French savants as private issues of a similar kind to those just quoted. The small stamps of which several often appear on an early electrum coin (_e.g._ above fig. 19. _a_ right) are regarded by them as marks or countermarks of bankers or merchants. Babelon[741] points out that these stamps cannot be identified as the types of towns or kings; that in one case no less than six of them are found on a single coin[742]; and that they continue to be put on to the state coinage of Darius. The case for Lydia therefore rests largely on analogies, and analogies can never be quite conclusive. Some even of these must be used with caution, _e.g._ those from Russia and Merovingian France, where it is difficult to be sure that they do not represent a stage of decadence rather than development. But decadence is often another name for reversion to type, and some of the instances already quoted, _e.g._ those from China and India, are sufficiently remote to be safely trusted. The total effect of the evidence marshalled by Lenormant and Babelon is impressive, and certainly no other view offers so satisfactory an explanation of the distinguishing features of the earliest Greek coins. Their view has already won partial acceptance[743]. There are of course gaps in the evidence, notably as to the circumstances of the nationalization of the coinage. But this is not very surprising if, as the stories of Damonno and Ardys suggest, it was in a succession of financial struggles for the throne that the control of the mint came gradually to be synonymous with the kingship. When the two were finally equated is a matter of conjecture. The chief part in the process may perhaps have been played by the tradesman king Ardys, but on the whole it seems likely that it was Gyges who completed the evolution of metal coinage by making it the prerogative of the state after he had first used it to obtain the supreme power. [Sidenote: Gyges.] His career falls early enough to make this possible[744], and the gold of Gyges attained proverbial fame[745].