In the famous temple of Hera, the Argive Heraeum, that lies between Argos and Mycenae, there was preserved a dedication that was said to have been made by Pheidon in commemoration of his coinage. The notice is preserved only in the mediaeval _Etymologicum Magnum_. It runs: “Pheidon the Argive was the first of all men to strike a coinage in Aegina, and on account of this coinage he called in the spits (ὀβελίσκοι) and dedicated them to the Hera of Argos.” There is nothing suspicious in this notice. The word drachma means a handful, and according to Plutarch a drachma is a handful of obols (spits or nails), which in early times were used as money[834]. In modern times nails are said to have served as a coinage in both Scotland and France[835]. Plenty of evidence is to be found in antiquity for offerings of disused objects to the gods[836]. The ultimate source for the statement of the _Etymologicum Magnum_ may well be the official guide at the Heraeum itself. Temple traditions are not always above suspicion. All the same the indications of a Pheidon tradition preserved in the Argive Heraeum are valuable, because they show a source from which Ephorus might very well have supplemented Herodotus far older and more valuable than his own imagination. [Illustration: Fig. 21. Bundle of spits found in the Argive Heraeum.] This however does not end the evidence of the Argive Heraeum. Some thirty years ago the site was excavated by the American School of Archaeology at Athens. Among the finds was a bundle of iron spits or rods about four feet long (fig. 21) which Svoronos[837] has plausibly associated with the ὀβελίσκοι of the _Etymologicum Magnum_. The Americans ascribed the foundation of the Heraeum to the Mycenaean period, so that the dedication of the spits could be put anywhere in the three centuries that form the limit of controversy as to Pheidon’s date. But more recently this dating has been shown to be mistaken by the Germans who excavated Tiryns. Whole series of miniature vessels which the Argive Heraeum excavators had regarded as Mycenaean were shown by the Tiryns excavators to be seventh century or later, and when one of them, Frickenhaus, visited the Argive Heraeum, he found fragments of Geometric and proto-Corinthian pottery in positions which proved the sherds to be older than the temple foundations. From this fact he argues conclusively that the abundant series of dedications at the Heraeum begin in the seventh century. Pheidon’s ὀβελίσκοι cannot therefore go further back than that[838]. The Mycenaean objects from the Argive Heraeum site must all come from a small secular settlement that preceded the temple. The latter becomes possibly contemporary with Pheidon himself.