Excerpt from Coins of Magna Graecia: The Coinage of the Greek Colonies of Southern Italy The works hitherto published on Creek Coins have been written by experts, and therefore it may seem fitting that some apology should be offered by one who, not being of that number, yet ventures to publish a work on this subject. The author offers this volume in the hope of supplying those who have but few books and little knowledge of the Classics with sonic help in the study of the Hellenic art and thought connected with coin-types. The coins issued from the Greek cities of Southern Italy may be used as a means of introducing some readers to a new world full of life, beauty, and suggestive thought, - the realm of Greek imagination. A coin may mean more, and suggest more to us, than can be expressed in a simple description of its types, its date, or its weight, and those who try to see more than is given by the description in a catalogue will look kindly on this attempt to aid them. It is too often forgotten that when these coins were being modelled, more than two thousand years ago, the artists were still making use of forms and ideas belonging to the childhood of the race. When an ancient Greek spoke of a mountain torrent as a rushing bull, and drew the bull to express the idea in his mind, he was no more confused intellectually than the child who cries out in his play "I'm a wolf" or "I'm a bear." It is necessary to the understanding of our children and of the childhood of the race that we should be not unmindful of our own childhood. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.