The types of Greek coins; an archaeological essay

Front matter

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Preface

This book contains the substance of twelve lectures delivered at Cambridge in the Lent term of 1882. It is primarily addressed to students of Greek archaeology, for whom I have tried to extract from the results of numismatic research such parts as may be of special interest and use to men who have begun the serious study of Greek artistic remains, but whose time does not allow them to enter into the details of numismatics.

With this view I have selected from the cabinets of the British Museum and some other collections a number of representative coins bearing interesting types or devices. These are reproduced in the plates and discussed in the text; not from every point of view, but especially on the side of mythological interest and artistic style. Historical and metrological discussions I have avoided, except in the brief 6 Historical Introduction.’ I have endeavoured thus to produce something like an elementary reading-book of Greek art, for which purpose coins are especially fitted, as is shewn in the chapter headed ‘ Coin-types and Archaeology’: and at the same time to render numismatic testimony more familiar to archaeologists.

The task has not been easy, for in spite of the works of numismatists who were also archaeologists such as Leake, Mill ingen, and some men now living, numismatics has hitherto been very imperfectly co-ordinated with other branches of classical archaeology. Few archaeological writers have had the free and continual access to collections of coins without which these cannot be fully understood : numismatic writers on the other hand have in many cases had a very imperfect knowledge of other classes of remains. I merely state a general rule, to which there have

VI

PREFACE.

been brilliant exceptions. Of late Professor Overbeck, with the invaluable aid of Dr Imhoof-Blnmer, has inserted in his Kunstmythologie chapters on coins which are as complete as excellent, and so far as they go leave little to be desired. But the Kunstmythologie advances but slowly ; and in it coins are arranged under their subjects, and not with reference to period. I on the contrary have adopted that scheme of arrangement under periods and districts which has already been used in the British Museum Guide to Ancient Coins; only that my classes are distributed in a different manner from that adopted by Mr Head in the Guide. Thus in spite of the labours of many valued predecessors, references to whose works will be found at the foot of most of my pages, much yet remained to be done, and I frequently have had to break new ground sometimes a dangerous venture.

A full discussion of the multitudinous types in the plates and a comparison of them with other treatments of the same subjects in sculpture and painting would have required the accumulation of immense material and the production of a very voluminous work, which would have been necessarily clumsy and arranged in inconvenient order. This course being out of the question, I was obliged to adopt the only alternative, which consisted in practising great caution and reticence, confining myself in most cases to a statement of facts, excluding mere theories, and only occasionally referring to monuments of other classes. Thus I have often been obliged to stop on the threshold of interesting subjects, when their fuller discussion would have led me too far away from the immediate subject.

1 have had kind assistance in reading proofs from Mr Poole, Mr Head, and Mr Wroth: and the excellence of my plates is due to the care and skill of Mr Sawyer of the Autotype Company.

British Museum,

January , 1 88:1

>EPvCY CARD NEB.

Contents

I. Historical Introduction.

CHAP.

I. Origin and Spread op Coinage.

CHAPTER I. Origin and Spread of Coinage

Pollux, in his valuable chapter on coins1, which in fact contains nearly all the information handed down to us from antiquity on the subject, says that it was among the Greeks a disputed point which was the first nation or prince to strike coins. Some, he says, ascribed the invention to the Athenians, some to the Naxians, some to Pheidon, king of Argos, some to Demodice, wife of the Phrygian Midas, some to the Lydians. We are able now, better than Pollux, better even than Aristotle, who was one of his principal authorities, to determine the respective claims of these pretenders. The Naxians certainly issued coin early, but both in type and weight it is only a copy of that of Aegina. Of the coinage of Athens no specimens which have reached us are of earlier date than the reforms of Solon, about b.c. 560, and it is almost certain that there were coins in Greece before that time. As to Midas we can only say that we do not know of any early Phrygian coinage. The Lydians and Pheidon, king of Argos, remain, and the claims of both to the invention of coinage are supported by grave authorities.

Let us first consider what precise meaning is to be attached to the phrase ‘invention of coinage.’ A coin is, of course, a lump of any precious metal of fixed weight, and stamped with the mark of some authority which guarantees the weight and fineness of the coin, and so its value. The so-called leathern money of the Carthaginians, if it ever existed, did not consist of coins, because not of metal ; a lump of gold or silver, such as still constitutes currency in China, is not a coin, because it is not stamped by authority. Before coins were invented we know on the sure authority of the wall paintings of Egypt that

1 Translated, with notes, in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1881, p. 282.

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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

there was in Western Asia a currency passing from hand to hand of rings of gold or silver of defined weight, though probably not stamped. In Greece proper the place of these rings of precious metal was according to the tradition1 taken by bars or spits (d/IeXicr/coi) of bronze or iron. It is probable, though not certain, that in Lydia and the coasts of Asia Minor small bars or lumps of electrum were in use. Electrum, white gold as Herodotus calls it, is a mixture of gold and silver which is found in the bed of the Pactolus and other rivers of Western Asia, and which the Greeks supposed to be a separate metal, reckoned by them at about three-fourths of the value of gold, and about ten times that of silver. Thus, as Syrian rings, Greek obelisks, and Lydian pellets were all adjusted to a fixed weight, it is likely that for long before the introduction of coinage proper, purchases in Western Asia and even Greece were made not so much by the clumsy method of weighing the precious metals as by counting out a certain number of units of value. The official stamp was all that was required to make coin.

It has been disputed among modern numismatists and metrologists what nation first took this capital step. Their arguments are based partly on the apparent antiquity in fabric and type of the coins which reach us from various districts of the Levant, partly on metrological grounds. In the former matter any trained eye can judge with some degree of accuracy, only we must remember that some districts of the Levant were at every period more advanced in the matter of art than others. In antiquity as in all times Asia was slower to move than Europe. The metrological argument is so complicated that I cannot venture to enter upon it here.

The writers of the greatest authority have come to the opinion that the earliest coins are Asiatic, and that it is probably to the Lydians that we must give the credit of their production. This agrees with the testimony of Herodotus2: AvSol irponoL dvOpoj-rrojv, tojv Typets iSpev, vopucrpa y pvcrou kclI dpyvpov Koi/zapei'oi iyp-qao.vTo. But the earliest Lydian coins were not made either of gold or silver, — in this Herodotus seems to be mistaken, — but of that electrum which was at the time the current metal in Lydia, the white gold of which I have already spoken, and which Croesus presented in such quantities to the Delphic temple3. About the seventh century, after the fall of the Assyrian empire, Lydia rose under the dynasty of the Mernmadae to a high pitch of power and prosperity, and ruled Western Asia Minor up to the gates of Ephesus and Miletus. It is during this flourishing period of their history that the Lydians began to mint coins, and the invention was at once adopted by the Ionian cities of the coast, by Miletus, Abydos, Clazomenae, Samos and the rest. Hence arose an electrum coinage current over all the Asiatic side of the Levant.

1 Plutarch, Lysander , I 7. 2 i. 94. 3 Herod, i. 50.

ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF COINAGE.

It is necessary to say a few words as to the monetary standard followed by these coins1. There were, as nearly as we can make out, at the time of the invention of coinage, three standards in use in Western Asia for the weighing of the precious metals ; of which standards one was applied to gold and the remaining two to silver. The weight universally used for gold had

a unit of 130 grains, about 10 grains heavier than our English sovereign. This unit was the sixtieth part of the lighter Babylonic mina, and lineal ancestor of all Greek gold coins whatever. And this same unit of 130 grains was also sometimes used for weighing silver. But there was an awkwardness about this. The relation in value of gold to silver in Asia generally in Persian times was, as we know from the testimony of Herodotus2, 13 to 1. Mommsen and Brandis maintain, on inductive grounds, that this relation would be more

accurately expressed by the relation 13-| to 1 or 40 to 3. This may or may not be the case, but anyhow the proportion was awkward. As gold and silver circulated in bars, if both had been made of the same weight, 1 3-3- bars of

silver, or 13 on the other supposition, would have gone against one of gold. A desire naturally arose to have the relative values of gold and silver bars brought into more easy and convenient relations. And it is evident that this could only be done by means of introducing a new standard for silver, and making the bars of that metal of a different weight from the bars of gold. Now the value in silver of a bar of gold weighing 130 grains at the rate of 13 to 1 is 1690 grains; and the tenth of this weight being 169 grains, it is clear that if bars of silver of the weight of 169 grains were in use for

currency, ten of these would exactly pass as equivalent to one bar of gold of 130 grains. And this actually happened; 169 grains as the normal weight of a bar of silver was adopted in Mesopotamia and the inland parts of Asia Minor. It is called by Brandis the Babylonian silver standard or ten-stater standard, as ten silver bars minted according to it passed for one of gold.

But meantime in Phoenicia another mode of bringing bars of gold and silver into relations had been adopted. In that region the gold bars or rings of fixed weight which were in circulation seem to have been usually double, that is, to

1 The history of Greek weights was a chaos until the time of Boeckli. His Metrologische

Untersuchungen first introduced order and method into the subject; but he fell into certain grave errors which have since been corrected. The discovery of inscribed weights by Sir H. Layard in Assyria introduced a new epoch in the discussion, and it has now been clearly made out that all Greek monetary standards save the Aeginetan come from Nineveh and Babylon. The standard works on Greek metrology are now the following : — Hultsch, Metrologie and Metrologici Graeci : Mommsen, Geschichte des Romischen Miinzwesens (translated into French) : Brandis, Das Munz-

Mass- und Gewichts-wesen in Vorderasien bis auf Alexander den Grossen. An excellent resume by Mr B. V. Head in the Journal of the Bankers' Institute,, and his Coinage of Lydia and Persia.

1 9

JL Ll

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

have weighed 260 grains instead of 130. Now a gold bar of 260 grains was equivalent in silver, at the same rate of 13 to 1, to 3380 grains. Now the tenth of this, 338 grains, was rather too heavy a weight to be convenient, so the Phoenicians took, instead of a tenth, a fifteenth. In this way they reached for silver a unit of or about 224 grains. This unit was spread far and

wide by the Phoenicians in the course of their trading expeditions. Brandis called the system on which it was issued the Phoenician or Graeco-Asiatic, and sometimes the fifteen-stater standard, because under it fifteen bars of silver went for one of gold.

We reach, then, the following results. In Mesopotamia and Asia Minor a gold unit of 130 grains (£1. Is. 8 d.) and a silver unit of 169 grains (is. 9A)1 were in use early in the 7th century before our era; and at the same time in Phoenicia the standard units were for gold 260 grains (£2. 3s. id.) and for silver 224 grains (2s. id.).

Now it is a remarkable fact that almost all the early electrum coins of Lydia and Ionia are minted not on the gold but on the silver standards. And this fact is not inexplicable. Electrum, although merely a mixture of gold and silver, was regarded by the ancients as a peculiar and somewhat less valuable variety of gold. And there is reason to believe that they estimated its value as tenfold that of silver, and three-fourths of that of gold, this being in fact not far from the truth, as the better sort of electrum does contain about three-fourths of gold and one-fourth of silver. Thus, an electrum coin of the weight of a bar of silver would pass current for exactly ten of those bars. If on the other hand electrum had been struck on the gold standard, one bar would have passed for either three-fourths of ten or for three-fourths of fifteen bars of silver, which would have been far less convenient. And here we get at once a reason, not only for the minting of electrum on the silver standard, but also for the choice of electrum for purposes of coining. It was so extremely convenient to have as medium of exchange a metal which was, weight for weight, exactly ten times the value of silver. Moreover, electrum being hard and not well adapted for any other purpose except for a medium of exchange, it would be in less danger of being melted down when issued in jDellets of fixed weight, than would either gold or silver. The bars of gold and silver were so continually cut up, melted and remoidded, that it did not seem worth while to stamp them for circulation ; but electrum, once stamped, might be expected to pass from hand to hand uninjured for a long time. Thus we reach an explanation of the fact that electrum was chosen for the earliest coins, and a reason why the Lydians, who had almost a monopoly of electrum, which was found

Reckoning silver at the old normal rate of five shillings an ounce.

ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF COINAGE.

a nowhere so freely as in Lydia', should have been the inventors of the wondrous art of coinage, whereas they originated scarcely any other valuable system or device.

The early electrum of Lydia is minted both on the Babylonian and the Phoenician silver standard. Mr Head has with probability conjectured2 that the pieces of Babylonian weight were intended for the inland trade in the direction of Mesopotamia and the old Hittite city of Carchemish, and those of Phoenician weight intended for the trade along the coast and with the islands. At any rate it may be regarded as reasonably certain that the two standards made their way into Lydia thus, the one by land from Babylon, the other by way of the sea from Phoenicia. The Phoenician standard no doubt reached Sardis from the great Greek cities of the coast, for these, as soon as they began striking money of electrum, used this standard almost exclusively. We have here another interesting testimony to the commercial activity of the Phoenicians in the Levant in the pre-historic ages of Greece. From them the Asiatic Greeks adopted the weights of gold and silver, one of the surest of proofs that they learned from them the secrets and art of commerce.

The only rival in Asia in pre-Persian times of the Lydian and Ionian electrum was the gold of Phocaea. For half a century before the destruction of this city by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus, it was in a high state of wealth and prosperity. It took to issuing gold pieces on the double or heavy gold standard of about 2G0 grains, which circulated widely in the early part of the sixth century B.C., and in some places even superseded the Milesian electrum.

This brings us down to the days of the wealthy and powerful Croesus, who introduced a complete reform of the Lydian coinage. For some reason unknown to us he abolished the issue of electrum, and reintroduced a currency of gold and silver, or rather substituted gold and silver coins for the bars of those metals, which were probably still in frequent circulation. This gold coins weigh about 130 grains, and his silver pieces about 1(38 grains; his standard being in both cases the Babylonic rather than the Phoenician. And for ages the denominations introduced by him dominated the coinage of Asia. After the Persians destroyed his kingdom his plentiful coin continued to circulate, and it is still dug up in large quantities in the neighbourhood of his capital of Sardis. Darius, in his great reorganization of the Persian empire, issued Persian gold coins, called after him darics, or to^otcu, from their type of a royal archer, of the same weight as the Croesean staters : and the Persian, silver coins, called also sigli, were of almost precisely half the weight (86 against 168 grains) of the Croesean silver pieces. Until the times of Alexander’s conquests the darics and sigli constituted the basis of the whole Asiatic coinage, and exercised, in

2 Coinage of Lydia and Persia, p. 11.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

the form of bribes, far too great and pernicious an influence on the politics of Greece. There is however this difference to be noted between the issue of gold and that of silver in Persia. While the great King did not allow any interference with his monopoly of issuing gold coin, whether by cities or individuals, he on the other hand allowed silver on the standard of the siglos to be issued by Greek cities within his dominions, and even by his Satraps when engaged on military expeditions.

But it is time to pursue the history of the invention of coinage across

the sea to Greece proper. To do so we must return to an earlier time than

that of Darius. In the seventh century before our era Athens had as yet given scanty promise of the greatness to which she was one day to attain. She was still disputing with Megara the lordship of the island of Salamis, and neither Pisistratus nor Solon had arisen. The greatest commercial cities of Greece in that age were Aegina and Corinth, and Chalcis and Eretria in Euboea. Corinth had already begun to dominate the western sea, Chalcis had planted a multitude of Hellenic cities on the Macedonian coast, the people of Aegina were the traffickers and pedlers of all Peloponnese. We shall find, as might indeed have been expected, that all these cities preceded Athens in the use of a coinage. In Greece proper there is no coinage of electrum, for the very

sufficient reason that electrum is not found in Greece. Silver, on the other

hand, is abundant, especially in certain districts of Epirus and Thrace. Thus the normal and original coinage of all cities of Greece proper is in silver. There are indeed a few pieces of electrum of Asiatic style still extant which are attributed with some hesitation to Thrace, Aegina and Euboea. But such issues if they ever existed soon came to an end, and Greece proper, until the days of Philip of Macedon and the Chalcidian league, possessed no regular coinage in gold or electrum.

Pollux, as we have seen, says that many supposed Pheidon, king of Argos, to have been the first to issue coin. Ephorus, as quoted by Strabo1, says that he struck silver money in the island of Aegina. Herodotus states that he regulated the weights and measures of the Peloponnese. Coupling these statements with the fact that the most abundant and early-looking of the archaic silver coins which have come down to us are the Aeginetan coins bearing the type of a tortoise, writers have usually concluded that it was Pheidon of Argos who introduced into Greece the custom of issuing coin. But the whole history of Pheidon, his policy, his deeds, and even his date, are matters of extreme difficulty and obscurity. The statements of various writers as to his age and character are entirely inconsistent one with another. Prof. Ernst Curtius has made him a comprehensible character with a definite anti-Dorian policy, but it may be

ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF COINAGE.

very much doubted whether this brilliant writer has not gone somewhat beyond the sober facts of history. Several writers have supposed that there was more than one Pheidon. In order to restrict ourselves within narrow limits I will pass by the fascinating discussion as to the political tendencies of Pheidon, and mention only one or two of the most definite statements as to his acts which have reached us. The first of these is the assertion of the trustworthy Pausanias

that he presided, with the assistance of the Pisatae, at the eighth Olympian celebration. This would make his age, according to the common reckoning, the middle of the eighth century b.c. The next is the assertion of Herodotus1 that among the suitors of Agariste, daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon, was Leocedes of Argos, the son of Pheidon, that Pheidon (adds Herodotus) who regulated the weights and measures of Peloponnesus, and was the most impious of the Greeks, and who, expelling the Eleian Agonothetae, himself celebrated the Olympian festival. Now the date of Cleisthenes can be with reasonable certainty fixed at about b.c. 600 — 570. Therefore if Herodotus may be trusted, and if he cannot

we shall drift into unlimited scepticism, the true date of Pheidon was a little earlier than this, say about 620 — 600 b.c. This is evidently quite irreconcilable with the statement of Pausanias. Weissenborn2 has tried to reconcile the authorities by assuming that it was the 28th and not the 8tli Olympiad which Pheidon celebrated, but this conjecture is purely arbitrary and would have been unworthy of mention had it not been followed by Curtius.

I have introduced this brief discussion of the date of Pheidon because it is important if we wish to fix the date of the introduction of coinage into Europe. For it seems most likely that this was the work of Pheidon. And it is important to observe that all the evidence which can be gathered from coins themselves is in favour of the Herodotean date of Pheidon. We have no reason to believe that even the Lydians minted coin at an earlier date than the beginning of the seventh century, and the invention was not likely to be at once adopted in Europe. Further, as we shall presently see, none of the extant coins of Athens are of an earlier period than the legislation of Solon, about b.c. 596, and it is not likely that the Athenians would be more than 30 or 40 years behind other cities in the adoption of so useful an art as that of coining. For these and for other reasons we must maintain that the ruler who first introduced coins into Europe, and who was probably Pheidon of Argos, cannot have flourished much earlier than the beginning of the sixth century b.c.

Contemporary with the issue of coins at Aegina were the issues from the mints of Euboea and Corinth. And all these three places or districts had coinstandards of their own, as to which we must say a few words. The Aeginetan, Euboic and Corinthian standards are the three in use in historical times in 1 vi. 127. 2 A full discussion of the subject in Philologies, Vols. xxvm. xxix.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

Greece, Italy and Sicily. The origin of the Aeginetan standard is doubtful. We learn that it was introduced by Pheidon, who regulated the weights of Peloponnese, but the question whence he obtained it remains in spite of discussions still obscure. Its stater1 weighed about 196 grains, rather more than two of our shillings, and was divided into two drachms of 98 grains, each of which contained six obols of about 16 grains each. The Euboic standard was identical with that in use for gold in Asia, the unit or stater weighing 130 grains, the drachm 65, and the obol 11.

The ordinary student of archaeology will scarcely find it profitable to give time and attention to the subject of monetary standards, as it is too perplexed and intricate for any but specialists. I will here avoid speaking of them as much as possible. But nevertheless we should not do justice to the historical part of our subject unless something were said about a few of the chief monetary systems. I must therefore very briefly recount the history in Greece of the Euboic and Aeginetan systems of weight, as a light will probably be thereby thrown on some aspects of Greek history.

The Aeginetan system, which we may call the Greek heavy system of weight, spread rapidly over the whole of Peloponnese and Northern Greece ; while the Euboic, which may be termed the light Greek system of weight, was at first confined to Euboea, Samos and other islands. Then there arose at Corinth and at Athens a conflict between the two, the issue whereof is interesting. The result of the conflict at Corinth was the adoption of the Euboic unit, the Corinthian stater being of 130 grains weight in the earlier period. But in order probably to facilitate intercourse with the neighbouring states which held to the Aeginetan standard the people of Corinth divided their stater, not like the Euboeans into two drachms, but into three drachms of 45-40 grains each, which apparently at a later period passed as Aeginetan hemidrachms. Thus the Corinthian coins, while they could pass current as didrachms in countries using the Euboic scale, might pass as a drachm and a half in countries using the Aeginetan.

At Athens also, towards the beginning of the sixth century, the Aeginetan standard was in use ; and, curious as it may appear, it is yet more than probable that the Athenians at that time had no coins of their own, but used the Aeginetan money marked with a tortoise, the very money to which they afterwards took such a dislike that they would not even mention the name Aeginetan drachm or obol, but used the phrase heavy drachm or obol2. This '

was the state of matters at the time of the legislation of Solon. That great lawgiver, as Plutarch informs us, introduced, among his other reforms, a measure

1 Gr. (TTarfjp, the standard or principal coin of a mintage, as the sovereign in England, the dollar in America.

2 Pollux ix. 76.

ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF COINAGE.

for the relief of debtors. His plan was this : to issue new drachms considerably lighter than those which had hitherto been in use, and to ordain that debts contracted under the old system of drachms should be discharged by means of the new, the debtors thus making a considerable saving. The relation between the old and the new drachm was, according to Plutarch, as 100 to 73 ; that is to say that 73 of the old drachms were made into 100 new ones, the gain to the debtors being 27 of the new drachms per cent. But this practically amounted to giving up the Aeginetan for the Euboic standard ; the new Solonic standard, which was thenceforth known as the Attic, being very nearly equivalent to the Euboic. The difference between the staters of the Attic and the Euboic standard is indeed about five grains, the Attic didrachm weighing about 135 and the Euboic, as we have seen, about 130 grains. Why Solon did not go a very little further in his reduction and make his new stater exactly equivalent to the Euboic we cannot say. By so doing he would have given still greater relief to the debtors, and at the same time accepted a generally recognized scale of weight. But there can of course be no doubt that he had reasons for doing exactly as he did, though at this distance of time we cannot recover them. One curious effect of his proceeding was this : as he would not come down to the Euboic level, the Euboic standard rose to the level which he fixed. The staters of Euboea, Corinth and other places shew just at the time of Solon, or a little later, a slight but distinctly perceptible rise in weight, in order, probably, to bring them on terms with the money of the now rapidly rising city of Athens.