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The small size of old coins and medals attracted the attention of collectors as well as antiquaries throughout the long eighteenth century. Whereas the metallic substance of numismatic objects often provoked narratives of moral decline and decay, the objects’ smallness proved to be a means of reinvigorating the influence they may have exerted on the Enlightenment’s historical imagination. This chapter pays particular attention to the emphasis John Evelyn placed on the smallness of old coins and medals in his influential treatise, Numismata (1697). For Evelyn, the smallness of numismatic objects ensured their historical preservation and enhanced their collectability as well as their usefulness as metaphors of mind, aides-mémoires, and didactic devices. Accordingly, coins’ and medals’ smallness also corresponded to the power they had to circulate and accumulate. The kinds of scale produced by the vast quantities of small numismatic objects that had amassed throughout history stands as a refrain throughout Evelyn’s Numismata, which transforms numismatic objects’ smallness and innumerability into long and far-reaching logics of association.
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