AND JOSEPH N. T. LEVICK, EDITORS: CHARLES E. ANTHON, President of the Society, Honorary Member of the Boston Numismatic Society, and of the GENERAL AGENT, EDWARD COGAN, 100 William Street. Treasurer of the Society. N. B.-Correspondents will have the goodness to address all scientific or literary communications to Prof. Anthon, College of the City of New York EDITORS: CHARLES E. ANTHON, President of the Society, Honorary Member of the Boston Numismatic Society, and of the AND JOSEPH N. T. LEVICK, Treasurer of the Society. GENERAL AGENT, EDWARD COGAN, 100 William Street. PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY BY J. M. BRADSTREET & SON, 18 BEEKMAN STREET. JOURNAL OF NUMISMATICS, AND Bulletin of the American Numismatic and Archæological Society. VOL. III. NEW YORK, MAY, 1868. DUCATS. "How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead.” Hamlet, Act III., Sc. IV. "" The writer of the Article "Numismatics in Poetry ", in last November's Number of the JOURNAL, seems to have forgotten altogether Shakespeare's frequent mention of the "Ducat". Independently of the striking passage quoted as our motto, the whole plot of "The Merchant of Venice turns on the "three thousand ducats" which Antonio, the Merchant, borrows from Shylock. They are therefore repeatedly mentioned in the play. Jessica too gives a ducat to the "merry devil " Launcelot, and robs her father of his ducats, who thereupon bewails his loss most tragico-comically: "My daughter!-O my ducats!-O my daughter! Of double ducats, stol'n from me by my daughter!" No. I. The Ducats of Venice, however, were always called "Sequins" (Zecchini), a name, some say, derived from "Zecca", a Mint. But this etymology is quite incorrect, indeed an example of "husteron-proteron", or what is called in Anglo-Saxon English "putting the Cart before the Horse". The word "Zecchino" is a corruption of "Cyzicenus", meaning "a gold coin of Cyzicus". This Mysian city, situated on the Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, was famous in antiquity for its gold "stateres", which circulated widely under the name of " Cyziceni". There is a wood-cut of one of them in that indispensable companion of the numismatist, Dr. Wm. Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography". Hence the "Zecca" was so called from the "Zecchino", first struck by the Venetians in 1280, as a substitute for the Cyzicene gold coin, and not the "Zecchino" from the "Zecca". Edmund Flagg, in his interesting "Venice; the City of the Sea", gives the same explanation. But the " Ducat" proper had begun to be issued in another part of Italy more than a century before. Roger II., king of Sicily (1101-1154), in his capacity of Duke of Apulia, had caused it to be coined as early as 1140. It bore the figure of Christ, together with a legend which was transferred to the Sequins of Venice, was continued on them down to the extinction of her independence under the doge Ludovico Manin in 1797, and was even adopted by the cynical Austrians till they ceased, in 1822, the emission of the piece. This legend, which, on the reverse of the Sequins, surrounds a Saint encompassed by stars in an oval, is: "Sit tibi Christe datus quem tu regis iste ducatus", To thee, O Christ, be given this duchy which thou rulest. The obverse of the Sequins, or Venetian Ducats, represents St. Mark delivering to the kneeling doge the standard of the cross. While the name given to these latter indicates the intimate commercial relations of the great north-Italian port with the Byzantine empire, the appellation "Ducat ", attributed to a similar piece of money by the southern Italians, was simply derived from the last word in the inscription which it bore. The origin of the Ducat has been traced by others to Longinus, exarch of Ravenna in the sixth century (568-584), who was the first of a series of such viceroys sent out from Constantinople while the greater part of Italy was possessed by the Lombards. However this may be, it was the adoption of these coins by the republic of Venice which brought them into general favor, and the Genoese and the Hungarians imitated them from the Venetians. In the legend, as above cited, may * Vol. I., p. 100, n. † L'Art de Vérifier les Dates, Pt. II., Vol. IV., p. 372. |