year we see Orpheus playing on his lyre while all the animals of the forest are listening, thus pointing out the return of the golden age.  In the eighth year we have the head of Serapis circled by the seven planets, and the whole within the twelve signs of the zodiac; and on another coin we have the sun and moon within the signs of the zodiac.  A series of twelve coins for the same year tells us that the house of the sun, in the language of the astrologers, is in the lion, that of the moon in the crab, the houses of Venus in the scales and the bull, those of Mars in the scorpion and the ram, those of Jupiter in the archer and the fishes, those of Saturn in the sea-goat and aquarius, those of Mercury in the virgin and the twins.  On the coins of the same year we have the eagle and thunderbolt, the sphinx, the bull Apis, the Nile and crocodile, Isis nursing the child Horus, the hawk-headed Aroeris, and the winged sun.  On coins of other years we have a camelopard, Horus sitting on the lotus-flower, and a sacrifice to Isis, which was celebrated on the last day of the year.

The coins also tell us of the bountiful overflow of the Nile, and of the goodness of the harvests that followed; thus, in the ninth, tenth, thirteenth, and seventeenth years, we see the river Nile in the form of an old man leaning on a crocodile, pouring corn and fruit out of a cornucopia, while a child by his side, with the figures 36, tells us that in those years the waters of the Nile rose at Memphis to the wished-for height of sixteen cubits.  From these latter coins it would seem that but little change had taken place in the soil of the Delta by the yearly deposit of mud; Herodotus says that sixteen cubits was the wished-for rise of the Nile at Memphis when he was there.  And we should almost think that the seasons were more favourable to the husbandman during the reign of an Antonine than of a Caligula, did we not set it down to the canals being better cleansed by the care of the prefect, and to the mildness of the government leaving the people at liberty to enjoy the bounties of nature, and at the same time making them more grateful in acknowledging them.

[Illustration:  112.jpg COINS OF ANTONINUS PIUS.]

The mystic emblems on the coins are only what we might look for from the spread of the Gnostic opinions, and the eagerness with which the Greeks were copying the superstitions of the Egyptians; and, while astrology was thus countenanced by the state, of course it was not less followed by the people.  The poor Jews took to it as a trade.  In Alexandria the Jewess, half beggar, half fortune-teller, would stop people in the streets and interpret dreams by the help of the Bible, or sit under a sacred tree like a sibyl, and promise wealth to those who consulted her, duly proportioned to the size of the coin by which she was paid.  We find among the Theban ruins pieces of papyrus with inscriptions, describing the positions of the heavens at particular hours in this reign, for