THE FINANCIAL HISTORY of ANCIENT CHIOS. THERE Is At
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE FINANCIAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT CHIOS. THERE is at present an unfortunate hiatus between the study of Greek history and the science of Greek coins. The historians, if we except Holm have not had familiarity with Greek coins, and the numismatists have seldom gone into larger questions; they have mostly been occupied with minute details, which no doubt in their way are important. Yet coins give the investigator most exact and trustworthy information ; and in matters or ' commerce and finance are first-hand authorities. My History of Ancient Coinage was meant to do something towards filling the hiatus; but much remains to be done. At present I propose to treat briefly of the financial history of Chios as exhibited in the coins. I select that city for two reasons. In the first place the importance and wealth of the city, and its close connection with the main stream of Greek history, give it a claim to preference. In the second place the coins of Chios have been so fully and satisfactorily treated of by numismatists that I need not enumerate or discuss them in detail. Mr. J. Mavrogordato in a series of papers in the Numismatic Chronicle x has arranged them in an order which I am able to accept, and I am justified in building in confidence on the foundation which he has laid down. The coin-type of the island, the Sphinx, is so closely adhered to, that it is scarcely varied, save in style. The meaning of this type, and of the amphora which commonly goes with it, is beyond doubt Dionysiac. At all times Chios has been noted for wine, a fame which still persists. From the trade in wine the wealth of the island, on which Thucydides dwells, was mainly derived. But the island had another natural product. It consists largely of marble, marble of a fine white texture, which is scarcely to be distinguished from that of Paros. Through the sixth century there persisted a family of sculptors who were known far and wide, and were indeed some of the earliest marble workers of the Aegean. The founder of the family, Micciades, lived about B.C. 600, his son Archermus may be given to about 570, and his grandsons Bupalus and Athenis to about 540, being contem- poraries of the poet Hipponax. Pliny'2 cites this date (01. 60) and adds that 1 Num. Chrou. 1915, 1916. Compare Miss Ou/cl n6vov aratyvhriai. Xlos fi.eya\i>verat oXvi\s Agnes Baldwiji in the Journal of the American 'AAAa KUI yApxip/J-ov vaiuw eV evwaKi/xois. Numismatic Society for 1914, and the great or epyatrlrt renear. treatises of Head and Babelon. If this restoration be correct, we may not 2 Nat. Hist, xxxvi. 12. This distich I only add two new poets to Parnassus, at the would venture to restore as follows :— rate of one line apiece, but also recover what is perhaps the oldest of poetical advertisements. THE FINANCIAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT CHIOS 161 they inscribed on some of their statues the distich that Chios was not famed for vines only, but also for the works of the sons of Archermus.3 Another source of wealth at Chios was less honourable. The people were notorious slave-dealers, and we learn from Herodotus4 that one of them, Panionius, did not content himself with importing barbarian slaves into Greece but sold handsome young Greeks at Ephesus and Sardis for service in Persian harems. At all periods the slave trade was the most important and lucrative branch of Greek commerce. The slaves came partly from the barbarian lands in the neighbourhood of Greek cities, Scythia, Phrygia, Thrace, and partly from Greek cities which were from time to time conquered,when as a general rule the inhabitants, or at all events the women and children, (the men being slain) were sold to the dealers who regularly followed Greek armies, to provide supplies and purchase spoil of all kinds. Certain places in particular had markets well supplied with slaves. Strabo tells us6 that at Delos, in Roman times, tens of thousands of slaves changed hands and were shipped off in a day. Chios, Corinth and Aegina at an earlier time were great emporia of slaves. The wealth of Chios makes it not at all surprising that coinage should have begun early there, both in electrum and in silver. The electrum was struck on the South Ionian standard of Miletus, staters of 216-220 grains (grm. 14-14-25) which belong to the early part of the sixth century. Mr. Mavrogordato observes that, while in other cities of Ionia fractions of the stater, thirds and sixths, were issued in electrum, this was not the case at Chios, the lower denominations being struck in silver. Whereas in issuing electrum staters Chios merely stood in line with Miletus and Lydia, in issuing silver in the early sixth century, the city stood apart. The origin of silver coin in Asia is worth tracing. In the seventh century B.C. the people of Aegina issued the earliest silver coins struck in Greece on a standard of their own, thence called Aeginetan. The idea was at once taken up by other states. The chief islands of the Aegean main, Paros, Ceos, Naxos and others, at once copied the silver coins of Aegina. That they should have copied their fabric, and the rough incuse square of their reverse, was no doubt natural. But they went further, they imitated the tortoise in the types of their obverse, not actually adopting that type but using others such as the cuttle-fish which nearly resembled it. And they adopted the Aeginetan weight, so that their money passed with the Aeginetan in commerce and is found mingled with it in hoards. But not only in the islands were the coins of Aegina copied. In the same class with the island didrachms we must place coins of Chios which bear the •type of a sphinx seated not in an upright but in a crouching attitude, with two incuses on the reverse, one larger and one smaller. Their weight is that of an Aeginetan didrachm, 192 grains or 12'44 grammes. That they belong to Chios has been disputed. Mr. Head and Mr. Mavrogordato alike accept this attribution. Miss Agnes Baldwin disputes it.6 3 ATJJ. xxxvi. 11. 6 American Journal of Numismatics, 1914, 4 viii. 103. 5 xiv. COS. vol. xlviii. p. f>5. 162 P. GARDNER And it must be confessed that alike the fabric and the incuse are different from those later usual at Chios. The incuse is that found on coins bearing a crab as type, and usually given to Cos, and on others of Gnidus. As these latter coins were struck at the same period as ours of Chios, and under the same influence, their resemblance to it rather confirms than disproves my attribution. These were probably the earliest silver coins issued in Asia. As Asia Minor was the fountain-head of gold and electrum coins for the world, so was Greece Proper the fountain-head of silver coins. Some of the cities of the west coast of Asia Minor followed suit. Besides Chios, such cities as Cyme, Miletus, Teos, Phocaea, Iasus, and Lindus, issued, before the middle of the sixth century, coins on the Aeginetan standard. Now several of these cities were at the time striking staters of electrum, and it is natural at once to raise the question in what relation as regards value the silver coins of Aeginetan weight stood to those staters. The ordinary proportion of value between electrum and silver at the time was ten to one. But at that rate the new silver coins would not fit in with the electrum at all. It seems almost certain, strange as it may appear to the more business-like people of modern days, that cities of Asia struck these imitations of the Aeginetan silver staters without considering how they would fit in with their electrum issues. It is not difficult, however, to find modern parallels. The English Government, at the time of the Abyssinian war, struck copies of the old dollars of Maria Theresa of Austria, because they were readily accepted in Africa, though they belonged to a different monetary standard from the sovereign and the shilling. It is probable that the reason for the innovation was that the staters of Aegina had made their way as currency both in Greece Proper and in the Euxine region. At all times the commerce of the Euxine was the most important of Greek spheres of trade, and when Miletus and Aegina were rivals in that sea, Milesian electrum and Aeginetan silver might well jostle one another in the markets, electrum being more in favour in Lydia, and silver in Pontus. When they met, and came into competition one with the other, their relative values would be decided by what Adam Smith calls ' the higgling of the market.' As coins were then a novelty, and the precious metals had hitherto circulated by weight only, this would not be nearly so inconvenient as a modern economist might fancy. When a bargain was made, it would usually be part of the bargain to state in what particular currency the price was to be paid, and thus ambiguity would be avoided. However, the Chians soon gave up so awkward an arrangement, and began a regular issue of silver coin on a standard of their own. As the details of ancient commerce have never been thoroughly worked out, anyone who treats of ancient coins, not from the special or numismatic but from the broad or historic point of view, comes at once upon a number of questions to which it is very difficult, or even impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, to find an answer.