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 507
possessed a conversance with the alphabet and the language
which they used, and with the art of engraving inscriptions,
but had lost the power, brought to such perfection by the
Greeks and Romans, of rendering the human lineaments,
which became in their hands puerile caricatures. No bronze
money
is known and it is
; fairly conjectured that the
Roman coins of the smallest module and denomination
served the purpose in ancient times, as they did at a
comparatively recent date, under the name of ocJiavos or the
eighth of the silver denarius just mentioned. The Suevic
monetary system, which partly preceded the Visigothic, and
partly ran parallel with it,
and copied its types, was much
on the same lines, and similarly included the triens and
denarius. There is a specimen of the latter with the bust
and titles of Honorius, and on the rev. Ivssv. Richiari. Reges. ;
this coin might or might not have been struck before the
death of the Emperor in August 423, but most probably is
to be referred to a date prior to that event between 410
and 423. The Suevic mints were Bracara and Emerita, of
which the latter was acquired by the Visigoths about 457,
and remained a seat of their coinage during some centuries.
The name occurs in full on a triens of Ervigius, 680-87,
when the Suevic power had entirely determined and disappeared,
and in the legend is followed by the word Pivs,
which may be understood, like other epithets found on these
pieces, as applying to the sovereign rather than the place.
The money of the Mohammedan princes, which was produced
both in Morocco and in Spain, must be regarded as
forming a branch of Oriental numismatic literature, but is
of general interest by reason of the unusually precise clues
which it affords in many instances to the place and period
of fabrication, and to the new localities which, under the
Almovarides and Almohades, were rising into prominence,
as we there first hear of such centres as Seville, Cordova,
Xeres, and Granada as seats of coinage, and are struck by
meeting with the mention of the Alhambra as a mint.
The domination of the Moors long survived the rise and
aggrandisement of states, professing Christian tenets, in