W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of Europe 445
I., 1306-38, at some period subsequent to 1310. The other
denominations were similar to those of the contiguous Italian
states. A testone of Guglielmo II. (1494-1518) reads
Gvlielmvs Mar Montferr, etc., on obverse, and on reverse
describes the marquis as Prince and Vicar of the Holy
Roman Empire a distinction claimed by several members
in common with others
of the house. The series is notable,
for the characteristic
belonging to the same period and region,
costumes. 1
As Ferrara so strongly relies on the house of Este, so it is
the Gonzage, Captains and Marquises of Mantua (i 329-1707),
who constitute the central point of interest here.
Mantua. T It is a long and elaborate series ;
but the
earlier stages, as we see to be generally the case, present
numismatic monuments of a primitive episcopal, democratic,
and seigniorial character in billon and silver of no value
beyond the denaro, while the Mantuan currency posterior
to Carlo II. and under imperial rule again recedes in volume
and character, until it survives in the copper sesino constantly
reissued down to the latter moiety of the eighteenth century.
The republican epoch
is answerable for the Virgilius type,
of which a specimen has been engraved above 2
it is
;
curious
in relation to the survival of the name of the great poet and
its choice as a legend, at a time when classical learning had
scarcely revived and the circumstance
; may form an additional
piece of evidence bearing on the romantic side
of the
history of the author of the ^Eneid. The middle time is
that to which we are indebted for the splendid pieces in
gold
and silver, and some interesting little
specimens in copper
toward 1660, of which we make mention elsewhere. It
would be an impossibility to form an unbroken succession of
the scudi in gold and silver, with the multiples of the former,
which were struck between 1564 and 1628 ;
but occasional
examples
the lower denomi-
present themselves, and among
1
See Thomsen, Rossi, and Remedi Catalogues (1873-84), and Revue de la
Numismatique Beige, 1866, 4th series, vol. iv. pp. 190-99. At the end of the
fifteenth century an engraver and die-sinker named Carotto seems to have been
working for the marquises.
2 Catalogue of Mints, v. "Mantua."