The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

BRITANNIA ON PHGENICIAN COINS 57

colonies she sometimes holds a sceptre! or a standard Cross (see Fig. 16), or a caduceus,? which latter ensigns of authority were presumably the source of the Neptune trident now given to her in her modern British representation. And she sometimes carries a torch ‘ as in the representation of the ‘‘Sun-god”’ Mithra, the torch of the Sun, which explains the lighthouse figured beside Britannia on the old pennies

Fic. 16—Phecenician Coin of Barati or Britannia from Sidon. (After Hill)? Note she holds a Cross as standard and a rudder amongst the waves.

This beneficent marine and earth tutelary goddess of Good Fortune has not usually her name stamped on the coins bearing her effigy, and has been surmised by modern numismatists to be the late Greek goddess of Fortune (Tyché), the “ Fortuna” of the Romans, a goddess unknown to Homer, * and who first appears in Greek classics in the odes of Pindar (about 490 B.c.). In this regard it is interesting to note that the first traditional statue of this goddess of Fortune (or Tyché) is reported to have been made for the people of

1H.C.P., 116,297; H.C.C. ona“ Barata "’ coin she carries a palm branch of Victory and ears of corn. PI. 1, Fig. rf.

*H.C.P., 116.

*H.C.P., 2907; H.C.C. xxvi, 68, No. 14; in Pl. 1, Fig. 2, she carries a spear.

“Coins of Syracuse, Brit. Museum, post-card series, xxiv, 5a reverse. Syracuse was an ancient colony of the Phoenicians.

*She does not appear in the Iliad and Odyssey, but only in the apocryphal Hymn to Demeter Ch. 4, 7-20; and see P.D.G. 4, 30; and Liddell and Scott, Greek Dict. under Tyche.