Why did the Ancient Greeks strike ?

John Melville-Jones

Why the ancient Greeks struck coins Colin Kraay, came to the conclusion that is not as simple a question as it seems. In coinage was not invented just to support fact, it contains within it several different either internal or external trade but to questions with different answers. The first facilitate the management of such things way in which we may approach it is to ask: as the payment of harbour dues, fines, the ‘Who struck the earliest Greek coins, and employment of experts from outside the why were these coins issued?’ citizen body, the undertaking of large scale Early numismatists were content with building projects which required payment pointing to the descriptions of the nature for labour and materials, and the hiring of of coinage that had been given by mercenary soldiers.2 and and they made assumptions Another more recent investigation of which were to a great extent based on the this question was made by CJ Howgego situation that existed in their own times. in 1990.3 In the last few years, books on They did not address the question of the the nature of early Greek coinage have exact place and circumstances in which also been published by David Schaps and coinage came into being, but rather the Richard Seaford and collections of essays theoretical advantages which were gained have been edited by Miriam Balmuth, from its introduction, and if they tried to and by Andrew Meadows and Kirsty locate this event they leaned on a passage Shipton.4 from the Histories of , which is If these recent studies have anything quoted below, and gave the credit to the in common, it is that they all move in Lydians. the direction of recognising that coinage In recent years more basic questions is only one form of money; that before have been asked and more varied answers the introduction of coinage many other have been suggested. Two major studies forms of transaction existed, and that after should be mentioned. The first is an coinage had come into use in some places article which was published in 1964 in the other forms of money continued to be Journal of Hellenic Studies.1 I remember employed. Coinage was therefore struck it very clearly because I had just begun to when circumstances made it necessary study coinage and this most or useful to do so, rather than because it thought-provoking study made many of was the only way of facilitating trade and the things that I had been reading obsolete employment. or at least obsolescent. The article was Against this background, what is the entitled ‘Hoards, Small Change and the evidence for the ‘invention of coinage’ or, Origin of Coinage’. Its author, the late to be more precise, the addition of coinage

JNAA 17 2006 21 John Melville-Jones to other forms of money in the ancient that he touched into gold. Erichthonius Greek world? In the first place we may and Lycus of belong to the misty examine the written statements of ancient period before anything that we might Greek writers, although none of them call historical can be documented and, if was contemporary with this event. The they existed, they lived long before the answers that are provided by these ancient development of coinage. The historian written sources are varied. For example, Aglaosthenes was a Naxian, so it is not coinage was attributed to a number of surprising that he should have claimed the different people in a statement made by invention of coinage for his own island. one writer, Julius Pollux, who approaches But this is a bad guess. The earliest known the question directly. Pollux lived and coins of are of the last quarter of wrote at in the second century the sixth century BC, about a century after AD, long after coinage had begun to be the time when we believe that coins began used, and what he wrote is a collection of to be produced in Asia Minor, and were rumours. He asked (Onomasticon IX, 83): struck in silver, not in which …whether Pheidon of Argos was the was the metal used for the earliest coins. first to strike coins, or Demodice of The Lydians are the only group in this list , wife of the Phrygian Midas and who might be thought worthy of a second daughter of Agamemnon king of Cyme, glance. or the Athenians Erichthonius and Lycus, The Phoenicians, whose main base was or the Lydians, as Xenophanes says, in what we should nowadays call Lebanon or the Naxians, which is the opinion of and , and who operated trading Aglaosthenes… establishments around the Mediterranean, Of these, Pheidon of Argos (a shadowy were also suggested as possible originators figure whose date is disputed) is also of coinage. A work entitled Odysseus, mentioned by the ancient Greek historian which is ascribed to the fourth century BC Ephorus, who says that he struck coins rhetorician and sophist Alcidamas, contains on the island of , a statement this statement (26–7): which is at first hard to understand, Did not the Phoenicians, the most because there is no reason to suppose that learned and intelligent of foreign nations, Pheidon had political control over Aegina. discover coinage? For they divided up an It is, however, possible to interpret the equal portion of beaten metal, and set a statement satisfactorily if we understand stamp upon it according to whether it had it as an attempt to reconcile the known a greater or lesser weight. fact that European silver coinage was first Again, this is a bad guess, although it is produced on that island with the tradition not illogical, since the Phoenicians were the that claims that Pheidon, the ruler of Argos, major trading nation in the Mediterranean had reorganised the system of weights and until their bases were conquered by measures that was used in the area under and the Romans. But his control. The choice of Demodice and the earliest coinage that we can attribute to Midas is probably inspired simply by any Phoenician group belongs to the fifth the myth that Midas turned everything century BC, long after the introduction of

22 JNAA 17 2006 Why did the Ancient Greeks strike coins? coinage elsewhere; and it must be assumed and based on agriculture and the pasturing that until and even after that time their of animals, rather than on commercial trade was conducted by barter rather than activities. There is no reason why coinage by the use of coined money. should have been invented by them for the The statement which has generally sake of any internal activity. received the greatest prominence in modern There is, however, one major reason books was made by Herodotus, who wrote which might have led to the production (Histories, I, 94): of coins for, and perhaps by, the Lydians, The Lydians...have approximately the whether they actually invented it or not. same customs as the Greeks, except that This is (as Kraay saw) the employment of they prostitute their female children; mercenary soldiers, who would have had and they were the first people of whom to be paid at the end of their service with we have knowledge who struck and used something that was of high worth, easily coinage of gold and silver, and were the portable and made up of units which were first who became retailers. clearly of the same value, so that each The obvious way in which we can soldier could see that he was receiving interpret these words is as a clear statement: his fair share. Here a fragment (partially that the Lydians, a non-Greek people living preserved on a scrap of papyrus) of a lost in the interior of Asia Minor, were the poem composed by the poet Alcaeus of inventors of coinage. But there are two Lesbos may be relevant: difficulties in this interpretation: in the first O Father Zeus, the Lydians angry at place, the earliest coins were not made what has happened, have given us two of gold and silver, but in an alloy of the thousand , if we can enter the two metals. We call this electrum, as the ?holy city...5 Romans did, but the Greeks called electrum Alcaeus was probably active from ‘gold’, because this is what it was to them, c.610 BC, and this fragment of a poem, simply one form of gold as opposed to which mentions ‘staters’, is perhaps the pure gold (it was sometimes called ‘white earliest surviving reference to coinage. The gold’ because of its paler colour). The word ‘’ in this context seems to mean Lydians were, however, definitely the first the standard major unit of coinage, as it to produce coins in pure gold as well as in did later in this area. The context suggests pure silver. We may guess therefore that that the Lydians are paying Greeks to when Herodotus composed this sentence, attack a city. An incomplete word at the he (or the source that he was copying) was end of the third line may, as the editors thinking of the pure gold and silver coinage suggest, be completed to read ‘holy’ (as which began to be issued more than half in the translation printed above), a word a century after the first electrum coins sometimes used at this time to describe appeared. cities; on the other hand, it may be the The second difficulty that we have in beginning of the name of a city, Hiera or attributing the invention of coinage to the Hira, which we are told was one of the Lydians is that their society was a monarchy, cities on the island of Lesbos, the home ruled by a king supported by an aristocracy, of Alcaeus. The fragmentary nature of the

JNAA 17 2006 23 John Melville-Jones poem does not allow any certainty, but it should be remembered that at the time purpose of exchange.’ when the poem was composed, about 600 ‘Certainly.’ BC, the mainland opposite Lesbos was This description of coinage is an under the control of the Lydians. My own invention, based on the situation that guess, and it can be no more than this, existed in Athens (the most economically is that coinage was invented in order to advanced city in the Greek world) in distribute pieces of electrum of a standar- Plato’s time, some two and a half centuries dised weight among Greek mercenaries after the earliest coins had been produced. who were fighting for the Lydians, after A similar account of coinage is given by their period of service had been successfully Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics (V, concluded in the terms of the contract v, 10): under which they were employed. It is All things which can be exchanged more likely that the Greeks were the ones need to be compared. For this purpose who devised this method of distribution coinage has come into being, and is a than the Lydians, whose society was regal, medium, as it were. It measures every- with everything owned by the king. This thing, including the relative superiority is a much more credible explanation than and inferiority of things, such as the the alternative suggestion, that the earliest number of shoes that are equal to a coins might have been used to pay fines house or to a certain amount of food. or harbour dues, because these could have Again, this statement was true for continued to be paid in other ways, in the more economically advanced cities metal objects or a proportion of the goods of Aristotle’s own time, but it shows no handled, a practice which was already well knowledge of the actual situation at the established. time that the first coins were produced. This explanation, that the first coins The implication of these passages, that were invented for a specific purpose in coinage was invented for the purpose of a specific situation, is much more useful conducting retail trade, is clearly wrong, than the theorising of the philosophers, for since the earliest electrum coins were example the imaginary dialogue conducted produced in a very valuable metal and even between (the first speaker) and the smallest fractions would have been too his ‘feed’ (in stage terms), Adeimantus, in valuable to use for small purchases. It is in Plato’s Republic (II, 371b): fact clear that coinage was invented for a ‘Well then; in the city itself how will they small number of specific situations and its exchange with one another what they use then spread more widely. make? It was, after all, for this purpose In addition, it is becoming increasing- that we created a community and founded ly clear that in the ancient world coinage a city.’ was only one form of money and that the ‘Clearly’, he said, ‘by buying and other forms that preceded its invention selling.’ continued to exist after coinage began to ‘And from this there will come into being be used. Many ancient Greek cities never a market, and coinage as a token for the

24 JNAA 17 2006 Why did the Ancient Greeks strike coins? issued coins (remember that there was other Greek states to the Spartans during never any universal ancient Greek coinage, the first stage of the , only the issues of individual states, leagues and this includes contributions in silver and rulers) and of those that did issue coins of Aegina and Persian gold Darics, coinage, some did so only rarely and then two of the principal international coinages only in special circumstances. of the time.6 This shows that the Spartans It is not possible to say exactly how could, and did, use coinage, even if they many communities in the ancient Greek did not produce it in their own name. world were sufficiently advanced for them The coinage of the small island to have considered issuing coins on some of Syros, situated in the middle of the occasions. The number may be estimated Aegean, presents us with a quite different at between two and three thousand. On picture. By contrast with , we do not the other hand, the number of these that know much about its history. It issued a issued coins continuously for long periods small number of coins in small denomina- was quite small and the total number that tions of silver and later in bronze. These minted coins at any time, sometimes only coins of low value look like the sort of a few small issues in the course of their money that might have been created for history, was between twelve and thirteen a specific purpose, for example to pay hundred, about a half of those that might foreign workmen, who were not slaves have done so. and needed to be able to buy food while Let us consider the different situations they were working on the island. But early that existed among the Greek states that in the second century BC, the island issued did not regularly. The earliest coinage some large silver . This might that can be attributed to the Spartans was suggest that a large payment had to be produced late in their history, in the reign made to some outside authority, because of King Areus I (309–265 BC). Greek by this time tetradrachms of tradition attempted to explain this lack were the standard component of interstate of coinage as the result of an attempt by . The coins of Syros, however, an early lawgiver, Lycurgus, to remove are rather lighter in weight than the silver temptation from the citizens by ordaining coins of Athens or of Alexander and his that the only kind of currency permitted successors, the weights of which were, at Sparta should be bars of iron, too large to judge from the surviving specimens, to be hidden from sight and too heavy to quite accurately controlled. So the island be easily transported if any large payment had some reason for making a special and needed to be made. But this is a moralising unusual issue of coins of high value, but invention designed to explain the absence without further information we have no of coinage in that city. Before any coinage way of knowing what the circumstances was produced by the Spartans, they must were that led to these coins being minted. have used coinage produced by other We may guess that soldiers had to be paid cities. We do in fact have the remains of off at the conclusion of a period of service, an inscription dated to 427/6 BC which but there is no evidence that would make records financial contributions made by this more than a conjecture.

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We therefore need to realise that themselves and their families and take any when the ancient Greek cities issued coins, surplus home when the task was finished. they often issued them for specific reasons, We should remember that many rather than because every member of ancient Greek communities which were every community had a need for them. politically independent never minted coins The first likely reason must have been at all, or only rarely (presumably when warfare, because coins represented a they were involved in a war, or in some portable form of wealth, which a soldier major public building project). We do not could take home when his service had know exactly how many ancient Greek ended. But we can refine on this, because communities would have been described separation payments would be in large by the name of ‘’, which was the denominations, silver coins worth four word that the Greeks used to describe a drachmas or more, or gold coins, whereas politically independent unit of their society soldiers who were marching through large enough to have considered issuing friendly territory might be given coins in coins, but at a rough guess, if we include small denominations to buy food or other foundations created during the time of the things from the local inhabitants. This is a , the number might have pattern that is very evident in the coinage been about three thousand and, as has of Alexander the Great: drachmas and already been said, less than half of that fractions were minted in areas through number issued coinage. To reinforce this which his army passed without waging statistic, I can report a small investigation war on their inhabitants, but the great bulk that I undertook a little while ago. I counted of high value coinage was produced when the number of entries appearing under the he had been successful and was disbanding letter alpha in the surviving epitome of his forces. For example, we may ask why the Ethnika of Stephanus of , he minted coins of high value in , an author of the 6th century AD, who but when we realise that some of the crews compiled an alphabetical list of Greek that manned his fleet came from that place names. Of the 539 names in this island, the reason is immediately clear. list, only 215, less than half, are known The next reason for minting coins to have struck coins at any time and most must have been to pay for public works of this number did not engage in anything (not completely divorced from warfare, like continuous minting. This will give because the public works might include an indication of the extent to which most the building of warships or fortification ancient Greek communities engaged in this walls). When men were taken from their activity. farms or other occupations, or brought On the other hand some cities minted from some other community to work, it continuously for long periods. This may was necessary to recompense them in have been because of their commercial some way and paying them with coins will activities; Corinth would be a good example have been one of the best ways of doing of this. On the other hand, the little island this, since they could use the coins to feed of Aegina, not far from Athens, produced a

26 JNAA 17 2006 Why did the Ancient Greeks strike coins? very large volume of coinage in the sixth coins of the Greek cities overwhelmingly and early fifth centuries, far more than show designs that advertise the major could possibly have been demanded by the religious cult, or some other symbol commercial requirements of its citizens. associated with the city in question. Hoards show that this coinage was Then there is the idea of profit: exported in large quantities to parts of the making money by making money. This Mediterranean world, notably and could be done in various ways. The the , which were deficient in silver. earliest electrum coinage was produced In this case, therefore, the silver coinage very accurately, so far as the weight of the that the island produced was a commodity coins was concerned, but the proportions as much as a currency. The silver seems of gold and silver in individual coins to have come from the island of Siphnos, varies quite markedly. It was suggested which in this respect was like Australia, by Sture Bolin half a century ago that this exporting its resources to another place showed that the coins were overvalued.8 so that they could be processed into a The mathematical calculations that he different form. presented to support this thesis have not Are there any other reasons which been generally accepted. Neverthless, it would lead an ancient Greek city to issue seems probable that the general principle coins? If we leave on one side the purely was sound and that coins in electrum were commercial motives, or the specific tariffed at a value higher than the value of circumstances requiring large expenditures, the metal that they contained. There is also which might have led an ancient Greek evidence which shows that at a later date city to strike coinage, there are two other electrum was valued more highly in the reasons which can be suggested. We have area in which it was issued than outside an interesting inscription from Sestus, a (electrum being 2/3 of the value of pure city on the south-east coast of the Gallipoli gold in the area under the control of the peninsula, carved about 120 BC, which minting authority, but only 1/2 of the value refers to a decision to strike a coinage of gold outside it).9 in bronze, and gives the reasons that lay This is the background against which behind this decision: a very interesting inscription dated to …and when the people had decided to c.400 BC should be studied. It records use the city’s own bronze coinage, so that a treaty between the mainland city of the city’s coin type might have currency, Phocaea on the west coast of Asia Minor and that the city might receive the profit and Mitylene, the principal city of the that would accrue from a revenue of this island of Lesbos, concerning the arrange- kind...7 ments which would govern the striking In these few words we can see two of electrum coins in alternate years by very different ideas. The first is that a city these two neighbouring cities.10 The most could advertise itself by striking coins that interesting section of the treaty reads as showed something to the viewer that could follows: be associated with its history or religious ...The one who mixes the gold is to be cults. This is obviously true, because the legally responsible in both cities. As

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judges there are to be, for the one who must have made a profit by forcing the new mixes at Mytilene, more than half of the coins to be accepted at the same rate as the officials at Mytilene, and at Phocaea more old ones (many of which would have been than half of the officials at Phocaea, and taken out of circulation, melted down and an audit is to take place when a year has reminted with the addition of some silver). ended, within six months...and if anyone is The figures for a selection of some of these convicted of willingly mixing the gold too groups of coins are as follows12: weakly, he is to be punished with death, Group III: gold 93.5%, silver 6.5%. and if he is found not guilty of willingly Group IV: gold 73%, silver 27%, trace committing an error, let the court decide of copper. what is a fitting penalty for him to suffer Group V: gold 60%, silver 39%, copper or pay, and the city is to be guiltless and 1%. free from penalty. The Mytilenaeans drew Group VI: gold 45%, silver 54.5%, by lot the right to strike first… copper 0.5%. The results of analyses of seven late Group Xb: gold 35.6%, silver 64%, 6th century electrum hektai (1/6 staters) of copper 0.4%. Mytilene are as follows: There can be no doubt that this Gold content: 35% to 41%. decline of metallic value over a period of Silver content: 49% to 60%. a number of decades, although it may have Copper content: 2% to 15%.11 been partly caused by a shortage of gold, These figures show that at this in was mainly the result, at a time when the the archaic period the relative proportions issuing of coinage had become a more of all these three metals (copper, when not sophisticated process, of a decision to take an accidental impurity, was probably added advantage of the fact that successive series to darken the alloy and make it look more of coins could be issued at slightly lower like pure gold) was variable. Analyses metallic values, with their acceptance of later electrum coins of Mytilene and enforced, and the issuing authority could Phocaea, on the other hand, show a more either, to look at it one way, make a profit consistent alloy and this fact, taken together or, more probably, get more mileage out of with the inscription quoted above, suggests the existing supply of precious metal. that the electrum coinage of these mints We may also suspect that the gradual was being produced in a way that provided reduction of the weights of coins struck a profit for the minting authority. in pure silver that we see at some ancient Even better evidence for this practice Greek mints had exactly the same purpose: is provided later by the mint of Carthage. to make a profit for the city, or to make the The results of some analyses of ‘gold’ coins existing supply of silver go further (which of this mint in the fourth and third centuries would have the same effect). An excellent BC show that within each group of coins example of this is provided by the East the quality of the metal is consistent but Greek coinages of various mints, most that on several occasions, when a new notably and , which have series came to be issued, the proportion of given their names to weight standards; gold was reduced. In each case the mint although there is no ancient evidence that

28 JNAA 17 2006 Why did the Ancient Greeks strike coins? would show that these weight standards ancient Greek coins might have been issued: were anything but local reductions of a to commemorate a specific occasion. This standard which remained unaltered when motive is so apparent in the coinage of interstate transactions were being effected. the late Roman Republic and the early The situation that we meet again and again Roman Empire that it is easy to transfer in the documents is that payment of large it to the coinage of an earlier period and, sums, particularly when made outside the for example, to assume that when the circulating area of one city, is demanded Athenians issued decadrachms in the 460s in silver of Attic or Alexander weight BC, coins more than twice the weight and (two names for the same weight standard). much larger than the tetradrachms that had There are modern parallels for this: major previously been the largest coins that they payments are denominated in US dollars had minted, or when the Syracusans issued or euros, even when these are not the coins of the same denomination at about the official currency of the country in which same time, and produced another similar the transaction takes place. series in a more advanced style towards Again, when ancient Greek cities the end of the fifth century, these issues struck coinage in bronze, we are certain were commemo-rative and were created that the city made a profit from this activity, to celebrate victories. But this would have because when we compare the weights of been a new departure in the history of Greek the bronze and silver coins issued by any coinage and it is probably better to assume mint, in cases in which the relative values that these large coins were issued because of the metals and the relative values of the large payments had to be made and it was coins are known, it is clear that the bronze convenient to make them in as few coins coins were overvalued. as possible. In addition, although the earlier It seems therefore that some Greek and the later ‘’ coins of Syracuse mints issued coins that were worth more may be admired as supreme examples of or less the same as they were in terms of Greek numismatic art (and some of the later their silver content (allowing for a minting ones bear names that are probably those charge which might have been about five of the artists who engraved the dies from per cent). Others issued coins that were which they were struck, which shows that tariffed at a certain level, but might not have they were unusually highly regarded), it contained as much silver as other coins of is possible to take a cynical approach and the same nominal value, and followed this argue that the reason for employing the best by reducing the weights of the coins that artists on the largest coins was to ensure they produced over the course of a few that they would be almost impossible to generations; thus creating a small profit counterfeit and that, if coins appeared which for the city that issued the coins. So coins were judged to have been struck from dies were issued not only to meet the needs of made by a counterfeiter, the culprit would specific circumstances, but to advertise the not be hard to find. city that issued them and perhaps to make It is therefore not likely that Greek a profit. coins were struck to commemorate events There is another reason for which or living persons during the first few

JNAA 17 2006 29 John Melville-Jones centuries of the existence of this form of 2. The last of these reasons had been suggested in money. But during the fourth century BC a smaller publication some years before by RM the situation changed and now we come to Cook of Cambridge University (‘Speculations on the origins of coinage’, Historia 7, 1958, the last reason which led to the striking of 257–62). coins by Greek mints. The coins of Philip 3. Howgego, CJ. ‘Why did Ancient States Strike II of Macedon, which began to be issued Coins’, The Numismatic Chronicle 1990, 1–25. a few years after his accession, bear types 4. Schaps, David M. The Invention of Coinage and which seem to advertise his victories at the the Monetization of , University of Michigan Press, 2004; R Seaford, Money Olympic Games. His son, Alexander, did and the Early Greek Mind: , Philosophy, not issue coins bearing his own portrait Tragedy, Cambridge, 2004; M Balmuth (ed.), (although he might not have been offended Hacksilber to Coinage: New Insights into the if he found that the youthful Hercules Monetary History of the Near East and Greece, whom he chose to place on his silver coins New York, 2001; A Meadows and K Shipton, was believed to represent him), but his Money and its Uses in the Ancient Greek World, Oxford, 2001. successors placed their portraits on the 5. Lobel, E and D Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum obverses of their coins where only gods Fragmenta D 11, lines 1–4. had been shown before, and it became the 6. Inscriptiones Graecae, V, 1, 1. normal practice for the coinage of a ruler 7. Orientis Graecae Inscriptiones Selectae 339. in this period (the , as it 8. Bolin, S. State and Currency in the Roman Empire to 300 A.D., Stockholm, 1958, pp 11–46. is called) to show the ruler’s head as the 9. I have argued this in my article ‘The Value of obverse type. Electrum in Greece and Asia’, in R Ashton and An outstanding example of a com- S Hurter (eds), Studies in Greek in memorative Greek coin (used in this case Memory of Martin Jessop Price, London, 1998, to advertise a foreigner in a way that the 259–68. coinage of his own country had not yet 10. Inscriptiones Graecae XII, 2, 1. 11. See JF Healy, Mining and Metallurgy in the attempted) is the gold stater that was Greek and Roman Worlds, London, 1978, 202. issued in the name of the Roman conqueror 12. These figures have been extracted from GK T Quinctius Flamininus, at some time Jenkins and RB Lewis, Carthaginian Gold and after his victory over the Greeks at the Electrum Coins, London, 1963. battle of Cynscephalae in 196 BC. This bears a portrait in Greek style of the John Melville-Jones has taught the conqueror on the obverse and—copying classical languages and lectured on Greek the coinage of Alexander the Great—a and Roman art at the University of Western Australia since 1957. He is the author of A figure of Victory, on the reverse. This kind Dictionary of Ancient Greek Coins and A of message, however, comes late to Greek Dictionary of Ancient Roman Coins. He has coinage. For the full development of a new also published a collection of ancient texts language, which used coins to commemo- relating to ancient Greek coinage under the rate events and to send political messages, title Testimonia Numaria (Volume I already we should look to the Romans, who took published, Volume II, the commentary, to be over this institution from the Greeks, as they published in 2007). took so many others. Notes 1. JHS 84, 1964, 76–91.

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