forget the possibility that the name may have been the source of the stories[664]. The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. A merchant prince may be proud of his origin: but that fact will not always prevent other people from telling good unofficial stories about his early days. Chapter V. _Lydia_ “Yes, ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.”—BYRON. [Sidenote: Tyranny and coinage both said to be of Lydian origin.] In an enquiry into the connexions between the new form of government and the new form of wealth that both arose at the opening of the classical epoch Lydia has a special interest and importance for the reason that both coinage and tyranny are said on good authority to have been of Lydian origin. Considering how much Lydia was then in the background of the Greek world this fact by itself is suggestive. It becomes important to determine the dates, and connexions if any, of the first Lydian tyrant and the first Lydian coins. It should be said at once that no Lydian ruler has been credited with the invention of coinage, and that no very definite conclusions can be drawn from the available material. The evidence is however sufficiently suggestive to repay a careful examination. [Illustration: Fig. 19. Coins of (_a_) Gyges (?), (_b_) Croesus.] [Sidenote: Date of the earliest coins.] Both the date and the place of the final evolution of a metal coinage are the subject of much dispute. Among writers of a generation or more ago the question of date was mainly a matter of speculation as to how long an interval was required between the earliest silver coins with a type in relief on both sides, which on grounds of style, epigraphy, and circumstances of find can be dated with fair accuracy to about the middle of the sixth century, and the primitive electrum pieces punched on one side and striated on the other (fig. 19. _a_) that probably belong to the earliest issues of Lydia. Most of the leading numismatists allowed some three or four generations and assigned the earliest coins to the earlier part of the seventh century[665]. But more recently facts have come to light which point to the possibility of an earlier and perhaps a considerably earlier date. A round dump of silver weighing 3·654 grammes was found by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos in a stratum that cannot, he says, be dated later than the twelfth century B.C., and two similar dumps of gold weighing 4·723 and 4·678 grammes along with a third of elongated shape weighing 8·601 were found during the British Museum excavations at Enkomi in Cyprus, a site which according to Evans must be dated equally early[666]. These few Cretan and Cyprian dumps are no argument against the mass of material which points to a great numismatic development at a date not so very far removed from 700 B.C. But they do shift the balance of probability backward and make a date in the eighth century as likely as one in the seventh. The same conclusion