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Table of Contents

1. weights.

2. measures.

3. coinage, Roman.

4. coinage, Greek.

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1. weights

(Oxford Classical Dictionary - Third Edition)

weights Weights of the Greek bronze age are usually flattened cylinders of stone or metal, incisedcircles on the upper surface indicating the unit of measurement. Other forms are the duck and thebull's head. An octopus weight from Minoan Cnossus weighs 29 kg. (64 lb.) and the average weightof nineteen copper ingots from Agia Triada is 29.132 kg. (64 lb. 4 oz.) Several standards appear tohave been current, extant Minoan weights (see MINOAN CIVILIZATION) having been related to theEgyptian, Babylonian, and Phoenician systems. Mycenaean texts from Cnossus, Pylos, and Mycenae(see MYCENAEAN LANGUAGE) allow an approximate table of values to be created:

The typical weight of historic Greece is a square plaque of lead with a badge, and sometimes thedenomination, the name of the issuing city, or other official guarantees on the top in relief. The

principal types on the most widespread series of Attic weights are the astragalos (stater), dolphin(mna), amphora (one-third stater with half-amphora as one-sixth), tortoise (one-fourth stater withhalf-tortoise as one-eighth). There were many other forms, as caprice or local custom dictated. Romanweights show less variety, the common form being a spheroid of stone or metal, with flattened topand bottom; the denomination is generally expressed in punctured characters on the top.

Several weight standards were used in the eastern Mediterranean; the principal ones were theAeginetic (cf. AEGINA), traditionally associated with Pheidon of Argos, and the Euboic (cf. EUBOEA),said to have been introduced by Solon into Attica. This latter standard tended to oust the Aeginetic.The historical origin of these standards is disputed; the Greeks held that they were based on naturalunits, e.g. in the Attic-Euboic system on the barley-corn, of which twelve went to the obol. Extantweights often show considerable variations from the norm, which creates difficulties in defining theactual weight of any single unit. A theoretical Greek table is:

Analysis of temple inventories in Greece, and especially at Athens, has shown the presence of gold

Unit 1 c.30 kg.

Unit 2 c.1 kg.

Unit 3 c.250 g.

Unit 4 c.20.8 g.

Unit 5 c.3.4 g. or less.

Attic-Euboic standard Aeginetic standard

The obol, or metal spit 0.72 g. 1.05 g.

The drachma, bundle

of six spits 4.31 g. 6.30 g.

The mina, 100

drachmae 431.00 g. 630.00 g.The talent, 60 minae 25.86 kg. 37.80 kg.

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Vickers, in B. F. Cook, The Rogozen Treasure (1989), 101 ff.

F. N. P.; M. L.; D. W. J. G.

Copyright The Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxford University Press 1996, 2000

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2. measures


measures of length, capacity, and weight were linked to water weight in ancient systems ofmensuration. The basic units are recorded in near eastern sources from the early third millennium BC.

1. Measures of length

1. Measures of length

Greek

Measures of length were based on parts of the human body, with the foot as unit both for fractionslike finger and palm and for multiples like pace and arm-span. Pylos tablets designate tables as six-footers (we-pe-za) or nine footers (e-ne-wo-pe-za); whether this is a measure or description ofsupports is uncertain. Homer is acquainted with the foot-standard, but the length of his foot isunknown. In historic Greece many standard feet are found, the absolute values for which are derivedfrom surviving stadia (preserved with starting and finishing lines; see STADIUM) ), and literaryevidence providing correspondences with the Roman foot. The Olympic foot, said to have been takenfrom that of Heracles, was of 320 mm. (12.6 in.); it is surpassed by other standards, e.g. thePergamene of 330 mm. (13 in.), and the so-called Aeginetan of 333 mm. (13.1 in.). The lattercorrespond with thepes Drusianus of Gaul and Germany in the 1st BC (330 mm.). They were

presumably based on a shod foot; contrast the Attic foot of only 295.7 mm. (11.64 in.) Subdivisionsof the foot are taken from the fingers: thus

Higher dimensions are taken from the arms; thus

2 finger-breadths, djtukoi = 1 jmdukor, middle joint of finger

4 " " = 1 pakaist (or dqom), palm

8 " " = 1 diwr orlipdiom half-foot

10 " " = 1 kiwr, span of thumb and first finger

12 " " = 1 spihal, span of all fingers16 " " = 1 por, foot.

18 djtukoi = 1 pucl, short cubit, elbow to start of fingers

20 " = 1 pucm, short cubit of Homer and Herodotus, elbow to end of knuckles ofclosed fist

24 " = 1 pwur, normal cubit, elbow to tips of fingers27 " = 1 pwurbasikior, royal cubit.

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For longer distances:

Beyond this Homer uses phrases such as the cast of a stone or quoit or spear. The later Greek unit, the

stdiom (stadion, stade, see STADIUM), originally the distance covered by a single draught by theplough, contained 600 feet, no matter what the length of the foot might be, and its exact length is

therefore often doubtful (see R. Bauslaugh,JHS1979, 16). Thepaqasccgr (parasang) of 30stadia was adopted from Persia.

Roman

The Roman foot (pes) of 296 mm. (11.65 in.) was generally divided into 12 inches, corresponding tothe division of the libra into 12 unciae; the names of the subdivisions are the same (see WEIGHTS).There was also a division into 16 digiti, similar to the Greek system and possibly derived from it.

For longer distances:

2. Measures of area

2. Measures of area Measures of area in both Greece and Rome were based on the amount ploughed

in a day by a yoke of oxen. The Greek unit is thepkhqom (plethron), measuring 100 100 =

10,000 square 'Greek' feet. Another unit, theldilmor, found in Sicily and in Cyrenaica,represented the amount of land that could be sown by a medimnus of wheat. (Similarly, Mycenaeanland measures seem to have been expressed by volumes of grain.) The Romans employed the actusquadratus, a square of 120 feet, two of which formed the iugerum of 28,800 square Roman feet. Twoiugera formed a heredium, 100 heredia a centuria.

3. Measures of capacity

3. Measures of capacity

Greek

Measures of capacity fall into two divisions, dry and wet (ltqangq,ltqacq),corresponding to the primary products, corn and wine, of ancient agriculture. In the Mycenaeansystem the two divisions share the same symbols and ratios for the smaller measures; absolute valuesare not certain. In historic Greece the kotyle, which is basic to both wet and dry, is made up of sixkyathoi or four oxybapha; its absolute value in various local systems ranges from 210 ml. to morethan 330 ml. (7.411.6 fl. oz.), the most usual being 240 and 270 ml. (8.5 and 9.5 fl. oz.). The drymeasures are:

2 feet = 1 bla, pace

6 feet = 1 *qcuia, fathom, stretch of both arms

100 feet = 1 pkhqom, breadth of the cgr, acre.

5pedes = 1 passus, pace

125 paces = 1 stadium

1,000 paces = 1 Roman mile (1,480 m.: 1,618 yds.).

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F. N. P.; M. L.; M. V.


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3. coinage, Roman


coinage, Roman There are two related stories about Roman coinage, the one of its internal evolution,the other of its progressive domination of the Mediterranean world, its use throughout the Romanempire, and finally its fragmentation into the coinages of the successor kingdoms in the west and theByzantine empire in the east.

Rome under the kings and in the early republic managed without a coinage, like the othercommunities of central Italy, with the episodic exception of some Etruscan cities; bronze by weight,aes rude (see AES), with a pound of about 324 g. (11 oz.) as the unit, served as a measure of value,

no doubt primarily in the assessment of fines imposed by a community in the process of substitutingpublic law for private retribution; this stage of Roman monetary history is reflected in the TwelveTables. The progressive extension of Roman hegemony over central Italy brought booty in the formof gold, silver, and bronze; the means to create a coinage on the Greek model were at hand. Thestimulus was probably provided by Roman involvement with the Greek cities of Campania, with thebuilding of the via Appia in the late 4th cent. BC; Rome had struck a diminutive coinage of bronze at

Neapolis after 326 BC, with the legend QYLAIYM; she now struck a coinage of silver pieces worthtwo (probably) drachmas, with the legend ROMANO, otherwise indistinguishable from the Greekcoinages of the south. But the continuing irrelevance of coinage to Rome emerges from the fact thatthere was nearly a generation before the next issue, probably contemporary with the Pyrrhic War.(See PYRRHUS.) From this point, there is a virtually unbroken sequence of Roman coinage to the end

of the Roman Empire in the west.

To the basis of silver didrachms was added a token coinage in bronze; the curious decision was alsotaken to produce a cast bronze coinage, the unit (or as) of which weighed a pound; this coinage isnow known as aes graue, though the Latin writers who spoke of the bronze coinage of early Rome asaes graue probably had little idea of what was involved. Bronze currency bars were also cast for ashort time, in the period of the Pyrrhic and First Punic Wars, now very misleadingly known as aessignatum (to a Roman, this phrase simply meant 'coined bronze'). It is striking that even now thecoinage of Rome remained on a relatively small scale, compared with those of Carthage and theGreek cities of Italy.

The silver coinage with its token coinage in bronze (changing the ethnic in due course fromROMANO to ROMA) and the heavy cast bronze coinage went on side by side down to the outbreakof the Second Punic War in 218 BC. It is probably in this period that Roman coinage penetrated theterritories of the peoples of the central Apennines for the first time; and it is likely that, just asmilitary needs may explain much of the production of Roman coinage in this period, so it wasreturning soldiers who carried it to Samnite and other communities.

The enormous strain of the war against Hannibal led to a reduction in the metal content of the heavycast bronze coinage, an emergency issue of gold and finally the debasement of the silver coinage. Thefirst coinage system of Rome collapsed and in or about 211 BC a new system was introduced; itincluded a new silver coin, the denarius, which remained the main Roman silver coin until the 3rdcent. AD. The issue was financed initially by unprecedented state levies on private property, thereafterby booty as the war went better for Rome. The unit (or as) of the bronze coinage by this stageweighed only about two ounces (54 g.: 2 oz.), the denarius (or 'tenner') was worth ten of these; therewere subsidiary denominations in both silverincluding a piece known as the victoriatus, without amark of value, weighing three-quarters of the denarius, but with a low and erratic silver contentand

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bronze and a short-lived issue of gold. The end of the war saw the virtual cessation of minting byother Italian communities; and coinage other than Roman on the whole disappeared rapidly fromcirculation in Italy. When the Italians produced a rebel coinage in 9088 BC, it was modelled on thedenarius, apart from a single issue of gold, in which they anticipated L. Cornelius Sulla (see below).

Despite the creation of the denarius, bronze remained the most important element in the Romanmonetary system for some years; a belief similar to those held by M. Porcius Cato (1) even led to thevirtual suppression for a decade of the silver coinage, a symbol of increasing wealth and of decliningpublic morality. But the consequences of Rome's conquest of the world could not be suppressed forever; the booty in silver inter alia which flowed into Rome from 194 BC onwards and the mines inMacedonia which Rome controlled from 167 BC found expression in a vastly increased issue of silvercoinage from 157 BC. It became normal for Rome to coin in a year as much as a Greek city mightcoin in a century; and it was only with Sulla that the mint abandoned the practice of producing a largepart of what was needed each year as new coin; the mint then went over to what remained standardpractice, to top up revenues already in the form of Roman coin with issues largely from newly minedmetal. In the years after 157 BC, the coinage came accurately to reflect the position of Rome as rulerof the world by omitting the ethnic: no identification was needed.

The relative unimportance of the bronze coinage after 157 BC led to the cessation of production of theas and to the production of its fractions on a very reduced weight standard; and in about 141 BC thebronze coinage was effectively devalued when the denarius was retariffed as the equivalent of 16, not10, asses; its name, however, remained unchanged. By the end of the 2nd cent. BC, victoriati incirculation weighed only about half a denarius; and halves of the denarius, or quinarii, werehenceforth intermittently struck, often for the Po valley (see PADUS) or Provence (see below).

The period after the Second Punic War saw the beginning of the process whereby Roman coinagecame to be the coinage of the whole Mediterranean world. The denarius rapidly became the silvercoin of Sicily, flanked both by Roman bronze and by bronze city issues. In Spain, the Romanspermitted or encouraged the creation of silver and bronze coinages modelled on the denarius coinage,

probably in the 150s BC. In the Po valley and in Provence, the Romans accepted for their ownpurposes the local monetary unit, equivalent to half-a-denarius, and indeed on a number of occasionsstruck such a unit for those areas. By way of contrast, the Greek east remained largely uninfluencedby Roman monetary structures until the 1st cent. BC. But as more and more of the Mediterraneanworld came under direct Roman rule and became involved in the civil wars that brought the republicto an end, so the use of Roman monetary units and Roman coins spread, to Africa, Greece and theeast, and Gaul. Only Egypt, incorporated in 30 BC, remained monetarily isolated from the rest of theRoman world.

The military insurrection of Sulla in 84 BC had seen the production of a gold as well as a silvercoinage, the availability of the metal combining with an urgent need for coinage to pay his soldiers;

the precedent of Sulla was followed by Caesar in this if in no other respect: the vast quantities of goldderived as booty from Gaul and Britain were converted in 46 BC by A. Hirtius into the largest goldissue produced by Rome before the reign of Nero; by 44 BC the distribution of gold coins, or aurei, tothe troops was a normal occurrence. Caesar's rival Pompey had become from the exploitation of theprovinces of the east the wealthiest man of his time; in attempting successfully to outdo him in wealthas well as in prestige, Caesar in effect superseded the state as a minting authority.

The civil wars which followed the death of Caesar saw the production of coinage in a variety ofmetalsincluding bronze on more than one standardby most of the rival contenders; unity ofminting authority and uniformity of product returned when the last survivor of the civil wars finallysuppressed the institutions of the free state and established an autocracy. The coinage of Caesar

Octavianus (see AUGUSTUS) became the coinage of Rome.

Meanwhile, the types displayed by the Roman republican coinage had also come to mirror accuratelythe escalating internal conflict of the nobility. By 211 BC, the production of coinage was in the hands

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of men called moneyers, young men at the beginning of a political career. The possibilities offered bythe coinage for self-advertisement gradually became apparent during the 2nd cent. BC and by the lastthird of the century the issue produced by a moneyer was as far as its types were concernedeffectively a private concern; a moneyer might recall his town of origin, the deeds of his ancestors,eventually the contemporary achievements of a powerful patron; with Caesar, the coinage began todisplay his portrait, an overtly monarchical symbol; even Brutus, the self-styled Liberator, portrayedon his last issue two of the daggers which had murdered Caesar on one side and his own portrait onthe other side. In striking contrast to M. Antonius (2) (Mark Antony), the future Augustus graduallysuppressed on his coinage any reference to his lieutenants; and the coinage with which he paid thetroops who defeated Antonius and Cleopatra VII at the battle of Actium was already a coinage whichdisplayed only the portrait and attributes of a single leader.

One important change in the structure of this coinage took place under Augustus: the silver fractionsof the denarius, which had filled the gap between the denarius and the as, were largely replaced byorichalcum multiples of the as, the sestertii and dupondii which are among the most familiarcomponents of the Roman imperial coinage. At the same time, the as and the smallest denominationnow struck, the quadrans, or quarter, were produced in pure copper. The most probable view is thatthe letters SC on the new base metal coinage of Augustus reflect the fact that the new structure was

endorsed by a decree of the senate (s(enatus) c(onsultum) ); the reform perhaps involved therevaluation of surviving republican asses, heavier than Augustan asses, as dupondii.

The mainstream coinage of the Roman empire, then, consisted of aurei and denarii, at a ratio of 1 : 25,and base metal fractions. Although at all periods much, even most, was struck at Rome, this was notnecessarily so: it is likely that between Augustus and the changes under Nero most of the preciousmetal coinage was struck in Gaul. In addition, the empire continued in the east to produce coinagesmodelled on the earlier coinages of a number of areas, for instance cistophori in Asia till the 2nd cent.AD, tetradrachms in Syria till the early 3rd cent. AD, tetradrachms in Egypt till Diocletian. But theshift of minting from Gaul to Rome began a process of concentration of minting which lasted till theSeverans (see ROME, HISTORY). Thereafter, the evolution of the empire saw an inexorable tendency

for more and more of the mainstream coinage to be produced in the provinces, though there were ebbsand flows in the pattern. And the base metal coinage of the east consisted for a long time not of thefamiliar sestertii, dupondii, asses, and quadrantes of the mint of Rome, but of a range of provincialbronze coinages. The kaleidoscopic variety of the coinage of the empire was completed by hundredsof city coinages, in the west till Claudius, in the east (the so-called 'Greek imperials') till the 3rd cent.AD. All these coinages, however, were probably based on, or compatible with, Roman monetary units.It is less clear how far the empire formed a single circulation area: the most probable view is that evenmainstream coinage, once it had reached an area, tended to stay there, even in the 1st and 2nd cents.AD; but there is no doubt that the compartmentalization of circulation became even more marked withthe shift from a monetary to a natural economy in the third century AD (see below).

The monetary system of the Roman Empire always operated on very narrow margins. It is possible tocalculate that in normal times perhaps 80 per cent of the imperial budget was covered by taxrevenues, the rest by the topping up of what came in with coins minted from newly mined metal.Prudent emperors managed; the less prudent did not.

In AD 64 Nero reduced the weight of the aureus and the weight and fineness of the denarius; anddespite attempts under the Flavians (Vespasian, Titus, Domitian) to reverse the trend, the next centuryand a half saw a slow decline in the silver content of the denarius, paralleled by a similar or worsedecline in that of the provincial 'silver' coinages. Commodus further reduced the weight of thedenarius and Septimius Severus drastically reduced its fineness; while Caracalla chose to issue a coin,known to modern scholars as the antoninianus, with the weight of about one and a half denarii, but

(probably) the face value of two. Since the imperial portrait bore a radiate crown, not the laurelwreath of the denarius, the coin may have been known as a 'radiate'. The tax-paying population of theRoman empire was not to be deceived and the state found its revenues increasingly arriving in theform of recent issues of poor quality, while older issues of better quality were hoarded or melted

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down. The combination of this process with the increasing demands on the empire as barbarianpressure increased led from AD 238 onwards to the complete collapse of the silver coinage: thedenarius ceased to be produced and by AD 270 the antoninianus had ceased to contain more than atrifling percentage of silver. The weight even of the gold unit fluctuated, presumably as emperorsdivided what was in the kitty by the number of aurei it was necessary to pay out. In a sense, all thathappened was that what had always been the underlying reality was revealed: an agricultural surplussupported an army and a bureaucracy. For on the whole taxes and payments were slow to catch upwith the declining value of the coinage; and as the monetary circlelevies of taxes, payments tosoldiers and others, payments to cultivators for grain for soldiers and others, providing the source foryet further levies of taxesbecame increasingly meaningless, so it became ever more apparent thatthe 'real' wage of a soldier, for instance, was his ration of corn. And the institutional structures of theempire slowly changed to accommodate this fact.

At the same time, the sheer bulk of coinage produced and its appalling quality facilitated theproduction of imitations: the nummularii, whose profession it had been to test for forgeries, could notcope. A large part of the hoards of the late 3rd cent. AD, particularly in the west, is made up of coinsknown to modern scholars as 'barbarous radiates'.

By a series of reforms, the details of which remain obscure, Aurelian and the immediately subsequent

emperors attempted to reform and stabilize the coinage. Aurelian produced coins markedWWI or JA

(in Greek), to indicate 5 per cent silver content; and there followed coins markedWI or IA (in Greek),to indicate 10 per cent silver content. The next major reform is that of Diocletian, who stabilized thegold coinage at 60 aurei to the Roman pound, restored a pure silver coinage at 96 units to the pound,and produced in addition a large bronze denomination with some silver content, known at the time asthe nummus, and also small bronze pieces, doubles with a radiate head and no silver content, theultimate descendants of Caracalla's double denarius, and singles with a laureate head. The gold unitwas henceforth known as the solidus. Further adjustment was necessary in AD 301, the year of thePrices Edict, when Diocletian issued a revaluation edict, attested by the coins and by one of the twotexts on a fragmentary inscription from Aphrodisias. Diocletian also consolidated the distribution ofproduction in twelve to fifteen mints distributed through most of the Roman empire; their products onthe whole circulated in the areas where they were struck.

Constantine (1) reduced the weight of the solidus to 72 to the Roman pound, but managed not towreck the system completely; his gold coin remained standard for many centuries. A pure silverpiece, however, never again played a major part in production or circulation, except to a certain extentbetween about AD 350 and 400. Nor did the Diocletianic nummus really survive, though some of thebronze issues of his successors approach it in diameter. Rather the coinage of the late Roman empireconsists essentially of solidi and vast quantities of small bronze denominations of changing facevalue. There is a long series of reforms and revaluations, until some sort of stability is finallyachieved in the 5th cent. AD, with the emergence of very small bronze nummi, followed by the

substantial 'reforms' associated with the names of Anastasius and Justinian. It is this pattern which isinitially replicated by the coinages of the successor kingdoms of the west, before they develop thesilver coinages characteristic of the Middle Ages. In the east, the coinages of the Arab successors tomuch of the territory of the Byzantine empire are likewise of silver. See FINANCE, ROMAN.

M. H. Crawford,Roman Republican Coinage (1974), Coinage and Money under theRoman Republic (1985), andJRS1970, 408, 'Money and Exchange in the RomanWorld'; MattinglySydenham,RIC(192367; 2nd edn. 1984 ); H. Mattingly andothers,BM Coins,Rom. Emp. (1923 ); A. S. Robertson,Roman Imperial Coins in the

Hunter Coin Cabinet15 (196282) (much bibliography); D. R. Walker, The Metrologyof the Roman Silver Coinage 13 (19768); A. Bay,JRS1972, 11122, 'The Letters SC

on Augustan aes Coinage'; K. Hopkins,JRS1980, 10125, 'Taxes and Trade in theRoman Empire (200 BCAD 400)'; R. Duncan-Jones,Money and Government in the

Roman Empire (1994); M. Amandry, A. M. Burnett, and P. P. Ripolls,RomanProvincial Coinage (1992); C. J. Howgego, Greek Imperial Countermarks (1985); C. M.

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Kraay, inEssays in Roman Coinage presented to Harold Mattingly (1956), 11336, 'TheBehaviour of Early Imperial Countermarks'; A. Wallace-Hadrill,JRS1986, 6687,'Image and Authority in the Coinage of Augustus'; M. H. Crawford, 'From Metal toCoinage in the Roman Empire', forthcoming, andANRW2. 2. 56093, 'Finance, Coinageand Money from the Severans to Constantine'; M. H. Crawford and J. M. Reynolds(eds.), The Revaluation Edicts from Aphrodisias (forthcoming); J. P. C. Kent, inEssays .. .Mattingly, 190204, 'Gold Coinage in the Late Roman Empire'; M. F. Hendy,JRS1972, 7582, 'Mint and Fiscal Administration under Diocletian, his Colleagues, and hisSuccessors, AD 30524', Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy (1985), and Viator1988, 2978, 'From Public to Private: The Western Barbarian Coinages as a Mirror of theDisintegration of Late Roman State Structures'.

Bibliographical surveys appear twice yearly inNumismatic Literature; quinquennialsurveys in connection with the series of International Numismatic Congresses.

M. H. C.


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4. coinage, Greek


coinage, Greek

Definitions

efinitions Coinage to the Greeks was one of the forms of money available to measure value, storewealth, or facilitate exchange. Coins were made from precious metal such as gold or silver, or from acopper alloy; they were of regulated weight and had a design (type) stamped on one or both sides.Lumps of bullion too could be weighed to a standard and stamped with a design, but the stamp on a

coin indicated that the issuing authority, normally a state or its representative(s), would accept it asthe legal equivalent of some value previously expressed in terms of other objects, including metal byweight. Merchants and others therefore were expected to accept it in payment. A coin of preciousmetal might weigh the same as the equivalent value of bullion, but would normally weigh less, tocover minting costs and, in varying degrees, to make a profit for the mint: in other words, coins wereovervalued relative to bullion (see WEIGHTS).

The scope of Greek coinage is wide, both geographically and chronologically. In the Archaic andClassical periods many of the Greek communities established around the Mediterranean and Black(Euxine) Seas produced coins, and they often influenced their neighbours to do the same: Persians(see PERSIA) in western Asia Minor, Carthaginians (see CARTHAGE) in North Africa and Sicily,

Etruscans in Italy, Celts in western Europe. The coins of these peoples, although they usually bearimages and inscriptions appropriate to their traditions, were in general inspired by Greek models, andthey tend to be catalogued as part of Greek coinage. After 334 the conquest of the Persian empire byAlexander (3) the Great inaugurated a massive extension of the area covered by coinage, in particularin the successor kingdoms, Syria, Egypt and so on. In effect the term Greek coinage includes most ofthe non-Roman coinage of the ancient world issued between the Straits of Gibraltar and NW India.

Beginnings

Beginnings Literary and archaeological evidence combine to show that coinage began in westernAnatolia, at the point of contact between Greek cities on the Aegean coast and the Lydian kingdom inthe interior. The first coins were of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver occurring naturally in theriver Pactolus, which flowed into the Hermus to the west of Sardis, the Lydian capital. A date ofc.600 BC or a little later for their introduction fits their appearance in a miscellaneous deposit ofewellery and figurines discovered in the foundations of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, and also

the subsequent development of coinage in Asia Minor and the wider Aegean world. The first coins ofelectrum were followed in Lydia by coins of pure gold and silver, with the type of confrontingforeparts of a lion and of a bull. Such coins have traditionally been attributed to the Lydian kingCroesus (c.561547), but hoard evidence suggests that most, if not all, are later than his reign andwere part of the coinage issued in the area by the Persians.

PurposePurpose In the modern world the role of coinage in everyday buying and selling is clear, but thisdoes not mean that similar commercial reasons prompted its introduction. Coins were not necessarily

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advantageous in large transactions, and their usefulness in exchanges between cities was inhibited byvarious factors, including the diversity of weight-standards in the Greek world. For example, theweight of the drachma differed in cities as close together as Aegina, Corinth, and Athens. As for smalltransactions, few early coinages included the necessary range of small denominations. It is true thatone of these was the electrum coinage produced in the 6th cent. in Ionia, but even the lowest known

denomination (1/96

) represented a large sum. Given the nature of the earliest coinsin particular their

standardized weights and the lion's head that features on many of themit is a plausible hypothesisthat they were issued to make a large number of uniform and high-value payments in an easilyportable and durable form, and that the authority or person making the payment, perhaps tomercenaries, was the king of Lydia. For the original recipients coins were simply another form ofmovable wealth, but many pieces might thereafter be exchanged for goods or services and so pass intogeneral circulation as money. But the progress towards a monetary economy was by no meansstraightforward or immediate. The fact that many of the early electrum coins are covered in smallpunch-marks suggests that it was some time before such coins were universally acceptable.

Minting Technique: Implications for Study

Minting Technique: Implications for Study The first task of the Greek moneyer was to create frommetal of the required quality the blanks, or flans, of suitable shape and correct weight. Blanks werenormally made by casting, that is, pouring the molten metal into moulds. (In the Greek world coinsthemselves were rarely made by casting.) To convert the blank into a coin it was struck with diesmade from either toughened bronze or iron, and hand-engraved in negative (intaglio). One die, whichwas to produce the obverse, was set in an anvil. The blank was placed on top of it and the metal

forced into the die beneath by a short stout bar (waqajtq), its butt resting on the blank while itstop was struck with a hammer. On the earliest coins the butt simply reproduced its own rough surfaceon the reverse; at a later stage, in many places by the end of the 6th cent., the practice arose ofengraving the butt also with a device, thus creating a coin with types on both sides.

Minting was thus a relatively simple process, but at each stage there are implications for the modernstudy of its products. At the preparatory stage great care was generally taken to ensure both the purityof the metal and the accurate weight of the blanks: modern methods of non-destructive metal analysiscan detect any significant differences in the composition of a metal alloy and thus help to classify thecoins or to signal a change of monetary policy. Sometimes it was notfor whatever reasonconvenient to prepare fresh blanks, and new types were overstruck on old coins. In cases where theundertypes were not totally obliterated by the restriking process, such 'overstrikes' can providevaluable evidence for relative dating and for the circulation of coins. When the blanks were beingstruck, the alignment of the two dies might be fixed or it might be variable: similarities or differencesin the patterns of alignment may again help to classify or date some coins. Studies of the diesemployed are of fundamental importance in modern numismatics. A single coin in isolation can

provide a certain amount of information, but the significance of the information is immeasurablyenhanced when two or more coins can be shown to have been struck from the same die(s). Coinssharing dies in this way must normally have been struck at the same place and at approximately thesame time. Furthermore, since in practice the punch dies were more exposed to wear and/or damagethan anvil dies and tended to be discarded more frequently, it is often possible to build up a sequenceof issues sharing either an obverse or a reverse die. Finally, die-studies form the basis of attempts toestimate the size of a coinage. Using a variety of statistical methods, it may be possible to work outfrom a sample of dies the total number of dies used to produce a given coinage. To estimate theamount of bullion required, that total must be multiplied by the number of coins that were struck fromeach die. But in any individual case, that figure is elusive. There is no means of telling when aparticular die was under-used, though conversely there is frequently evidence for the use of dies in an

advanced stage of deterioration, and dies were sometimes recut, to repair them or to update them. Thesize of an issue of coins depended on many factors, not least the availability of bullion.

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Coin Types

Coin Types The type of a Greek coin is a mark of its origin, whether a community or an individual.The earliest coins, found in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, had types only on the obverse and theirvariety makes it difficult to assign them to a specific minting authority. The commonest type, a lion'shead, has been attributed to the kingdom of Lydia; others, such as a seal's head or a recumbent lion,

may belong to Phocaea and Miletus respectively. The significance of the earliest types was notusually reinforced by any letter or inscription. On one coin from the Artemision with the type of twolions' heads the inscription WALWEL has been read. This cannot refer to king Alyattes of Lydia(c.610560) since another name, KALIL, has been identified on a similar issue. The identity of thesepersons remains unknown. Rather more revealing are the inscriptions on two early coins showing a

stag. One has a simple name in the uncontracted genitive, Vamor, 'of Phanes', the other reads

Vamr$lisla 'I am the badge of Phanes'. The identity of the Phanes referred to is not known (amercenary captain of that name from Halicarnassus employed in Egypt in the 530s is too late for thecoin), but with a different name and device the formula occurs on an archaic seal-stone probably fromAegina (J. Boardman,Archaic Greek Gems (1968), no. 176). The analogy makes clear the origin of acoin type in the personal seal or badge of the authority responsible for its issue. Apart from these

examples coin legends are rare in the 6th cent. By its end the initial letter or letters of an ethnic mightbe introduced (as a koppa on coins of Corinth orAthe on those of Athens), and in course of time thetendency was to lengthen the inscription. When written out in full it was frequently in the genitivecase, signifying [a coin] of whoever the issuing authority was.

After an initial period of variation the types of individual cities settled down and changed little:familiarity encouraged acceptability. Most coin types are connected with religion in the widest sense.Sometimes a divinity is represented directly, in other cases indirectly, through an animal or anattribute. Even some of the types illustrating a local product belong in this category: for example anear of barley can symbolize Demeter, goddess of crops. Many types refer to local myths or religioustraditions, for example those connected with the foundation of a city. Only rarely do types refer to

historical events, at least in the Archaic and Classical periods. In this respect they share the preferenceof Greek art in general for the allusive and symbolic, rather than for direct and literal references topolitical matters.

The Spread of Coinage

The Spread of Coinage (Archaic and Classical) Electrum, with its variable content of gold andsilver, did not last long as the primary metal for coining, and in the second half of the 6th cent., with afew exceptions such as Cyzicus, Phocaea, and Mytilene, the coin-producing cities of Asia Minorturned exclusively to silver. Coinage in gold became a rarity both there and elsewhere, although fromthe early 5th cent. the Persians issued gold darics with the same type as their silver sigloi, a crownedfigure representing the king of Persia. ('Darics' were so named by the Greeks after the Persian kingDarius I; 'siglos' is a Greek form of the Semitic 'shekel'.) These coins were issued for use in thoseparts of the Persian empire in closest contact with the Greeks, and the institution of coinage did notinitially travel far to the east of its birthplace in western Asia Minor.

To the west and north the story was different. By c.550 coinage had crossed the Aegean tocommunities close to the isthmus of CorinthAegina, Corinth and Athensand not much later hadtaken root among the Greek cities and the tribes of the Thraco-Macedonian area (see THRACE;MACEDONIA). The rich metal resources of the latter gave rise to coinage in a remarkable range ofdenominations, including the heaviest of all Greek silver coins, the double octadrachm. Such coinstravelled far, especially to the east, and may have been made for export. The first Athenian coins, the

so-called Wappenmnzen, share some of the characteristics of the early coins of Asia Minor, notablytheir changing types, their lack of any indication of origin, and the use of electrum as well as silver forsome issues. In the later part of the 6th cent., perhaps under the tyrant Hippias (1), these issues werereplaced by the famous 'owls', with obverse helmeted head of Athena, reverse owl, and the

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abbreviated name of the city. These coins too travelled a long way, another example of the export inthe form of coin of silver mined in the territory of the issuing state.

From the Aegean area the medium of coinage spread rapidly to the western Greeks settled around thecoasts of southern Italy and Sicily, France, and Spain. Early Corinthian coinage in particularinfluenced some of the first coinages in the west both in production technique and because importedCorinthian coins were often used as flans for overstriking. There was also a notable willingness toexperiment: the first Italian coins were made using the sophisticated 'incuse' method, unique in theGreek world, in which the obverse type appears normally in relief, while on the reverse a closelysimilar version of the same type is struck in negative, the two types exactly aligned. To the westerncities also belong the first bronze coins, at Thurii from c.440, at Acragas from c.430, and thus thedevelopment of the idea of fiduciary coinage in which the worth of a coin was not related to theintrinsic value of its metal content. The coins of the western Greeks attained the highest standards ofartistic excellence and especially in the late 5th and early 4th cents. the careers of many of the artistscan be traced from their signatures on dies.

Hellenistic

In the 4th cent. the Greek world of independent city-states began to give way in the eastern andwestern Mediterranean to the ambitions of individuals and the growing power of Rome. In the east theexploitation by Philip (1) II of Macedon of the mines of Pangaeus after 356 left a rich legacy ofcoinage in gold and silver which was adapted and expanded by his son Alexander (3) the Great tocover the whole near east. He adopted the Attic weight-standard for both his gold and silver coinage,and struck coins with the same designs at more than one mint. After Alexander's death in 323, thecurrency system he had put in place remained remarkably stable. In the world of territorial states andkingdoms that emerged in the 3rd cent. only Ptolemy (1) I in Egypt introduced major innovations inthe types and weights of his coins, to produce an autonomous system of coinage. The change to largerpolitical units, kingdoms, states, and leagues was reflected in the coinage. Many individual citiescoined from time to time, but mostly in bronze; only Athens and Rhodes coined continuously in silverdown to the 1st cent. BC. Coins with Alexander's types played an important role as internationalcurrency, especially in Asia Minor, where 'posthumous Alexanders' were produced in quantity until175 BC and even later.

The types of Hellenistic coins, like those of earlier periods, are for the most part religious in content;and although they display a strong historical consciousness in line with the culture of the time, theyrarely refer directly to historical events. The major innovation was the introduction of the portrait of aruler. Few portraits of living persons have been recognized on Greek coins before Ptolemy I shortlyafter 305/4. A reverse of Abdera in the last quarter of the 5th cent. realistically depicts a male headwhich might be the portrait of an individual (Pythagores) named on the coin. In the 4th cent. fineportraits occur on the coins of Persian satraps or Lycian dynasts in Asia Minor (e.g. Pericles (2) ).

From the Hellenistic period we have a whole gallery of portraits of rulers in which idealized imagesof royal power are often combined with realism and insight into character. On the far eastern fringesof the Hellenistic world the kings of Bactria are known to us largely through their brilliant coin-portraits. See PORTRAITURE.

In the last two centuries BC, as Roman power spread inexorably eastwards, Hellenistic coinageevolved new forms. League coinages had already played a leading role, for example those of theArcadian and Achaean Confederacies in Greece. At Athens 'New Style' coinage began around 170,and Pergamum at about the same time began to issue cistophoroi, so called from the adoption as theirobverse type of a cista mystica, a basket used in the celebration of the rites of Dionysus. After thebattle of Actium (31 BC) Rome's control over the eastern Mediterranean was complete and Greek

coinage had virtually ceased. The subsequent plethora of city coinages with Greek legends and localtypes which were issued in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire (the so-called 'Greekimperials') until well into the later 3rd cent. AD are more Roman in appearance and conception; seeCOINAGE, ROMAN.

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The standard handbook of Greek coinage is B. V. Head,Historia Numorum, 2nd. edn.(1911). I. Carradice and M. Price, Coinage in the Greek World(1988), provides anauthoritative introduction to the field; for more detailed discussion see C. M. Kraay,

Archaic and Classical Greek Coins (1976), and O. Mrkholm,Early Hellenistic Coinage(1991). Good surveys, with fine illustrations, in: M. Hirmer and C. M. Kraay, GreekCoins (1966); G. K. Jenkins,Ancient Greek Coins, 2nd. rev. edn. (1990). For Greekimperials see: A. Burnett, M. Amandry, and P. Ripolls,Roman Provincial Coinage(1992); C. Harl, Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East(1987); C. Howgego,Greek Imperial Countermarks (1985).

N. K. R.


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ocd ancient measure

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