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III.—On Bird and Beast in Ancient Symbolism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2012
Extract
The following essay, except for one or two slight corrections and additions which I have since interpolated, was read before the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh in June 1894. Very shortly thereafter, M. Jean Svoronos published in the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique (Janv.–Juillet, 1894) a learned paper “Sur la signification des types monétaires des anciens,” in which he demonstrated with an elaborate wealth of illustration the astronomic significance of many coin-types, the precise point that the greater part of this essay of mine was written to prove. Beginning with coins on which a beast- or bird-emblem is figured together with the symbol of a star, and passing on to others where the star-symbol is omitted, M. Svoronos shows clearly that in a very varied series of coin-types, the Lion, the Bull, the Eagle, the Horse, and so forth, represent not merely these creatures themselves, but their stellar namesakes: in short, that, in more or less obscure and occult shapes, astronomic emblems are imprinted on a vast range of ancient coins, just as in open and acknowledged forms they are visible, for instance, on the coins of Antoninus Pius. So clearly is all this put forward by M. Svoronos that my paper might well have remained unpublished were it not that I think I take the case somewhat further than he does. For, whereas M. Svoronos is content to demonstrate the symbols of individual constellations, I have attempted also in certain cases to show that the associated emblems correspond to the positions relative to one another of the heavenly bodies, in some cases to the configuration of the sky at critical periods of the year or at the festival seasons of the cities to which the coins belong. In some other respects, also, I have attempted to carry to a further issue the general considerations suggested by the astronomic hypothesis.
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- Research Article
- Information
- Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , 1897 , pp. 179 - 192
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- Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1897
References
page 180 note * I am indebted for the loan of this engraving to Messrs Macmillan & Co., and for that of the Lion and Bull on p. 182 to Mr John Murray; the other engravings are all the gift and handiwork of Mrs W. R. H. Valentine, Dundee.
page 183 note * Cf. Head, Hist. Numorum, pp. 131, 152, 236, &c.
page 183 note † Cf. Dupuis, Origine de tous les cultes, i. p. 191, &c. From this learned and original work, oftener quoted, as Creuzer says (Symb., iv. p. 696), than acknowledged, I have got great help, not in the inception but in the elaboration of my theory.
page 186 note * For further remarks on this obscure and difficult myth, see my Glossary of Greek Birds, pp. 31, 32.
page 186 note † Schol. Il., xviii. 486; Ideler, Sternnamen, p. 317.
page 187 note * As well as on a gem figured by Imhoof-Blumer and Keller, pl. xx. fig. 18.
page 188 note * As also in the Circus Maximus at Rome; cf. Juv. vi. 590, Dion. Cass. xlix. 43.
page 188 note † The study of what I take to be the lunar symbolism of the exclusively silver coinage of Attica, and other considerations of a like nature, have led me to the discovery of a singular and suggestive coincidence. We are told by Herodotus (iii. 89) that the values of gold and silver in ancient currency stood to one another in the ratio of 13 : 1; but Mommsen (Hist. Mon. Rom., ed. Blacas, i. p. 407; cf. Head, Hist. Numorum, p. xxxv.) and others have shown that this statement is only approximately correct, and that the true ratio was 13·3 : 1. There is no evidence that there were the same fluctuations between the relative values of the two metals which are now so common (Head, l.c.). Two problems are here presented to us for solution; first, How was this ratio kept steady and unchanged during many centuries of antiquity; and, second, how or why was it chosen and established in the first instance? Now, it seems to me more than a mere coincidence that 13·3 : 1 :: 365 : 27·4, the last number being precisely the period in days of the Moon's revolution round the earth. In short, the ratio of gold to silver, established and maintained, I fancy, by astronomic science and astrological superstition, was simply and precisely the ratio of the solar year to the lunar month, the natural relation of the metal of the Sun to the metal of the Moon.
If this speculation be justified, it may further throw some light on the use of electrum as a standard of currency. This metal was an alloy of gold and silver in the proportion of 73 to 27; and it has been pointed out by Hultsch that its value according to this scale would be to silver as 10 to 1, when gold was to silver as 13·3 to 1:—that is to say, gold : electrum : silver :: 13·3 : 10 : 1. It is generally assumed by numismatists that electrum was a native alloy, coined for convenience to avoid the trouble of separating the silver from the gold. This explanation is in my opinion altogether inadequate. The very fact that the ancients knew accurately the composition of the alloy is enough to indicate that the separation of the two metals presented no serious difficulties to them: moreover, I do not believe that an alloy of so precise a composition ever existed in large quantity or widely distributed : and, lastly, though some such alloy undoubtedly did exist native, we are twice told by Pliny (H. N. ix. 65, xxxiii. 23) that it was made or imitated artificially. It seems probable to me that electrum was an alloy ingeniously devised and skilfully manufactured to form a new standard in simple decimal relation with silver, to take the place of the old, complex and inconvenient astronomical standard of gold. And the ingenious framing of a 
in place of a 
ratio and standard would form a parallel case to the splendid adaptation by which the Babylonians divided the circle into 360 degrees, thus, by a slight and simple change, co-ordinating with a sexagesimal notation, the old 365 or 365¼ degrees into which the Chinese still divide the circle, as the Sun divides the circle of the year.
page 190 note * Cf. Virg., G., i. 244 (supra cit.); Ovid, Met., iii. 44; Id., F., iii. 107; Lucan, iii. 219, viii. 173, ix. 539; Sil. Ital., Pun., iii. 192, 665, xiv. 456; Val. Fl., i. 17, v. 69, vi. 40, &c.