Samuel Butler

“ Still, the coin being there, I use it to answer those who demand some evidence external to the "Odyssey" itself. When they ask me where are my monuments, I answer that they are within the coin, circumscribed by the small cincture of an inch and a half at most. For a coin is a city in little; he who looks on one beholds a people, an evidence of title, a whole civilisation with its buildings of every kind. ”

“ Letting alone the testimony of Thucydides, surely an Ionian coin is no small historical document in support of an Ionian city. A coin will say more in fewer words and more authoritatively than anything else will. The coin in question cannot belong to an Ionian colony on Mt. Eryx or thereabouts recently established in 430 B.C. We should have heard of such a colony; how inconceivable again is the bringing in of the "Odyssey" on this supposition. If the city existed at all it can only have done so as a survival of the Phocæan settlement of which Thucydides tells us. ”

“ It seems to me, then, that though the theory that there was an Ionian city in the neighbourhood of Eryx which could claim connection with the "Odyssey" will stand perfectly well without the coin, the coin cannot stand without involving the existence of an Ionian city near Eryx which claimed connection with the "Odyssey." Happily, though the coin is unique, there is no question as to its genuineness. ”