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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, incised circles on the upper surface indicating the unit of measurement. Other forms are the duck and the bull's head. An octopus weight from Minoan Cnossus weighs 29 kg. (64 lb.) and the average weight of nineteen copper ingots from Agia Triada is 29.132 kg. (64 lb. 4 oz.) Several standards appear to have been current, extant Minoan weights (see MINOAN CIVILIZATION) having been related to the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Phoenician systems. Mycenaean texts from Cnossus, Pylos, and Mycenae (see MYCENAEAN LANGUAGE) allow an approximate table of values to be created:

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. The typical weight of historic Greece is a square plaque of lead with a badge, and sometimes the denomination, 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 with half-tortoise as one-eighth). There were many other forms, as caprice or local custom dictated. Roman weights show less variety, the common form being a spheroid of stone or metal, with flattened top and 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 the Aeginetic (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 natural units, e.g. in the Attic-Euboic system on the barley-corn, of which twelve went to the obol. Extant weights often show considerable variations from the norm, which creates difficulties in defining the actual weight of any single unit. A theoretical Greek table is:

Attic-Euboic standard Aeginetic standard The obol, or metal spit 0.72 g. The drachma, bundle of six spits The mina, 100 drachmae The talent, 60 minae 431.00 g. 25.86 kg. 630.00 g. 37.80 kg. 4.31 g. 6.30 g. 1.05 g.

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

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and silver items apparently made to a Persian unit of measurement. Some of the gold objects from the Parthenon inventories, although weighed in Attic drachmae, seem to have been made to a round number of darics. Likewise silver items can be read in round numbers of sigloi. This is not to say that the objects are necessarily Persian, but rather that these units of measurement were used outside their immediate geographical areas. Key Persian weights are:

siglos

c.5.205.49 g. c.5.405.67 g. (later standard)

daric

8.258.46 g.

karsha 83.3 g. Silver plate from Thrace seems to have been made to another local standard. The Roman system was based upon the pound, libra, of 327.45 grammes = 0.721 of the pound avoirdupois, which was divided into 12 ounces, unciae. The names of, and the symbols applied to the subdivisions, are:

libra or as deunx dextans dodrans bes septunx semis quincunx triens quadrans sextans sescuncia uncia semuncia sicilicus sextula

1 pound I 11 oz. 10 oz. 9 oz. 8 oz. 7 oz. 6 oz. 5 oz. 4 oz. 3 oz. 2 oz. 1 oz. oz. oz.
1/ 6

S== S== S= S= S S == == = =

1 oz.

oz.

semisextula 1/ oz. 12 scriptulum 1/ oz.

24

A. J. Evans, 'Minoan Weights', in Corolla Numismatica (1906), 336 ff.; E. Michon, in Dar.Sag., 'Libra', 'Pondus'; O. Viedebandt, Antike Gewichtsnormen (1923); W. Ridgeway, The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards (1892); J. Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, 2nd edn. (1973); M. Lang and M. Crosby, Weights, Measures and Tokens, Athenian Agora 10 (1964); F. Hultsch, Reliquiae Scriptorum Metrologicorum ([17745] 1864 and 1866); M. Vickers, AJArch. 1990, 613 ff.; M.

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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
(Oxford Classical Dictionary - Third Edition)

measures of length, capacity, and weight were linked to water weight in ancient systems of mensuration. 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 fractions like finger and palm and for multiples like pace and arm-span. Pylos tablets designate tables as sixfooters (we-pe-za) or nine footers (e-ne-wo-pe-za); whether this is a measure or description of supports is uncertain. Homer is acquainted with the foot-standard, but the length of his foot is unknown. In historic Greece many standard feet are found, the absolute values for which are derived from surviving stadia (preserved with starting and finishing lines; see STADIUM) ), and literary evidence providing correspondences with the Roman foot. The Olympic foot, said to have been taken from that of Heracles, was of 320 mm. (12.6 in.); it is surpassed by other standards, e.g. the Pergamene of 330 mm. (13 in.), and the so-called Aeginetan of 333 mm. (13.1 in.). The latter correspond with the pes 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.) Subdivisions of the foot are taken from the fingers: thus

2 finger-breadths, djtukoi = 1 jmdukor, middle joint of finger 4 8 10 12 16 " " " " " " " " " " = 1 pakaist (or dqom), palm = 1 diwr or lipdiom half-foot = 1 kiwr, span of thumb and first finger = 1 spihal, span of all fingers = 1 por, foot.

Higher dimensions are taken from the arms; thus

18 djtukoi = 1 pucl, short cubit, elbow to start of fingers 20 24 27 " " " = 1 pucm, short cubit of Homer and Herodotus, elbow to end of knuckles of closed fist = 1 pwur, normal cubit, elbow to tips of fingers = 1 pwur basikior, royal cubit.

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For longer distances:

2 feet = 1 bla, pace 6 feet = 1 *qcuia, fathom, stretch of both arms 100 feet = 1 pkhqom, breadth of the cgr, acre. 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 the plough, contained 600 feet, no matter what the length of the foot might be, and its exact length is therefore often doubtful (see R. Bauslaugh, JHS 1979, 16). The paqasccgr (parasang) of 30 stadia was adopted from Persia.

Roman
The Roman foot (pes) of 296 mm. (11.65 in.) was generally divided into 12 inches, corresponding to the 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:

5 pedes 125 paces

= 1 passus, pace = 1 stadium

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

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 the pkhqom (plethron), measuring 100 100 = 10,000 square 'Greek' feet. Another unit, the ldilmor, found in Sicily and in Cyrenaica, represented the amount of land that could be sown by a medimnus of wheat. (Similarly, Mycenaean land measures seem to have been expressed by volumes of grain.) The Romans employed the actus quadratus, a square of 120 feet, two of which formed the iugerum of 28,800 square Roman feet. Two iugera 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 (ltqa ngq, ltqa cq), corresponding to the primary products, corn and wine, of ancient agriculture. In the Mycenaean system the two divisions share the same symbols and ratios for the smaller measures; absolute values are not certain. In historic Greece the kotyle, which is basic to both wet and dry, is made up of six kyathoi or four oxybapha; its absolute value in various local systems ranges from 210 ml. to more than 330 ml. (7.411.6 fl. oz.), the most usual being 240 and 270 ml. (8.5 and 9.5 fl. oz.). The dry measures are:

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4 kotylai 6 hekteis

= 1 womin, at Athens a day's corn ration for a man = 1 ldilmor.For liquid measure the table continues:

8 choinikes = 1 jter

6 kotylai = 1 lwour 12 kotylai = 1 wor 12 choes = 1 letqgtr, or wine-amphora.

Roman
The basic unit in the Roman system is the sextarius (546 ml.: 19.2 fl. oz.), which is equivalent to the Greek dikotylon; its components are:

48 cochlearia 12 cyathi 8 acetabula 4 quartaria 2 heminae. For dry measures the higher denominations are:

8 sextarii = 1 semodius 16 sextarii = 1 modius. For liquid measures:

12 heminae 8 congii

= 1 congius = 1 amphora

20 amphorae = 1 culleus. The amphora was the unit by which the burden of ships was determined (e.g. Livy 21. 63). See H. T. Wallinga, Mnemosyne 1964, 1 ff. See also WEIGHTS. VentrisChadwick, Docs.; O. Viedebantt, Forschungen zur Metrologie des Altertums (1917); F. Hultsch, Reliquiae Scriptorum Metrologicorum (1882); P. Tannery, Dar.Sag. 'Mensura'; M. A. Powell, Reallexikon der Assyriologie 9 (198790), 457517, 'Masse und Gewichte'.

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

Copyright The Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxford University Press 1996, 2000

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3. coinage, Roman
(Oxford Classical Dictionary - Third Edition)

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 Roman empire, and finally its fragmentation into the coinages of the successor kingdoms in the west and the Byzantine empire in the east. Rome under the kings and in the early republic managed without a coinage, like the other communities 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 substituting public law for private retribution; this stage of Roman monetary history is reflected in the Twelve Tables. The progressive extension of Roman hegemony over central Italy brought booty in the form of gold, silver, and bronze; the means to create a coinage on the Greek model were at hand. The stimulus was probably provided by Roman involvement with the Greek cities of Campania, with the building 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 worth two (probably) drachmas, with the legend ROMANO, otherwise indistinguishable from the Greek coinages of the south. But the continuing irrelevance of coinage to Rome emerges from the fact that there 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 also taken to produce a cast bronze coinage, the unit (or as) of which weighed a pound; this coinage is now known as aes graue, though the Latin writers who spoke of the bronze coinage of early Rome as aes graue probably had little idea of what was involved. Bronze currency bars were also cast for a short time, in the period of the Pyrrhic and First Punic Wars, now very misleadingly known as aes signatum (to a Roman, this phrase simply meant 'coined bronze'). It is striking that even now the coinage of Rome remained on a relatively small scale, compared with those of Carthage and the Greek cities of Italy. The silver coinage with its token coinage in bronze (changing the ethnic in due course from ROMANO to ROMA) and the heavy cast bronze coinage went on side by side down to the outbreak of the Second Punic War in 218 BC. It is probably in this period that Roman coinage penetrated the territories of the peoples of the central Apennines for the first time; and it is likely that, just as military needs may explain much of the production of Roman coinage in this period, so it was returning 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 heavy cast bronze coinage, an emergency issue of gold and finally the debasement of the silver coinage. The first coinage system of Rome collapsed and in or about 211 BC a new system was introduced; it included a new silver coin, the denarius, which remained the main Roman silver coin until the 3rd cent. AD. The issue was financed initially by unprecedented state levies on private property, thereafter by booty as the war went better for Rome. The unit (or as) of the bronze coinage by this stage weighed only about two ounces (54 g.: 2 oz.), the denarius (or 'tenner') was worth ten of these; there were subsidiary denominations in both silverincluding a piece known as the victoriatus, without a mark 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 by other Italian communities; and coinage other than Roman on the whole disappeared rapidly from circulation in Italy. When the Italians produced a rebel coinage in 9088 BC, it was modelled on the denarius, 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 Roman monetary system for some years; a belief similar to those held by M. Porcius Cato (1) even led to the virtual suppression for a decade of the silver coinage, a symbol of increasing wealth and of declining public morality. But the consequences of Rome's conquest of the world could not be suppressed for ever; the booty in silver inter alia which flowed into Rome from 194 BC onwards and the mines in Macedonia which Rome controlled from 167 BC found expression in a vastly increased issue of silver coinage from 157 BC. It became normal for Rome to coin in a year as much as a Greek city might coin in a century; and it was only with Sulla that the mint abandoned the practice of producing a large part of what was needed each year as new coin; the mint then went over to what remained standard practice, to top up revenues already in the form of Roman coin with issues largely from newly mined metal. In the years after 157 BC, the coinage came accurately to reflect the position of Rome as ruler of 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 the as and to the production of its fractions on a very reduced weight standard; and in about 141 BC the bronze coinage was effectively devalued when the denarius was retariffed as the equivalent of 16, not 10, asses; its name, however, remained unchanged. By the end of the 2nd cent. BC, victoriati in circulation weighed only about half a denarius; and halves of the denarius, or quinarii, were henceforth 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 coinage came to be the coinage of the whole Mediterranean world. The denarius rapidly became the silver coin of Sicily, flanked both by Roman bronze and by bronze city issues. In Spain, the Romans permitted 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 own purposes the local monetary unit, equivalent to half-a-denarius, and indeed on a number of occasions struck such a unit for those areas. By way of contrast, the Greek east remained largely uninfluenced by Roman monetary structures until the 1st cent. BC. But as more and more of the Mediterranean world came under direct Roman rule and became involved in the civil wars that brought the republic to an end, so the use of Roman monetary units and Roman coins spread, to Africa, Greece and the east, and Gaul. Only Egypt, incorporated in 30 BC, remained monetarily isolated from the rest of the Roman world. The military insurrection of Sulla in 84 BC had seen the production of a gold as well as a silver coinage, 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 gold derived as booty from Gaul and Britain were converted in 46 BC by A. Hirtius into the largest gold issue produced by Rome before the reign of Nero; by 44 BC the distribution of gold coins, or aurei, to the troops was a normal occurrence. Caesar's rival Pompey had become from the exploitation of the provinces of the east the wealthiest man of his time; in attempting successfully to outdo him in wealth as 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 of metalsincluding bronze on more than one standardby most of the rival contenders; unity of minting authority and uniformity of product returned when the last survivor of the civil wars finally suppressed 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 accurately the 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 by the coinage for self-advertisement gradually became apparent during the 2nd cent. BC and by the last third of the century the issue produced by a moneyer was as far as its types were concerned effectively 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 to display his portrait, an overtly monarchical symbol; even Brutus, the self-styled Liberator, portrayed on his last issue two of the daggers which had murdered Caesar on one side and his own portrait on the other side. In striking contrast to M. Antonius (2) (Mark Antony), the future Augustus gradually suppressed on his coinage any reference to his lieutenants; and the coinage with which he paid the troops who defeated Antonius and Cleopatra VII at the battle of Actium was already a coinage which displayed only the portrait and attributes of a single leader. One important change in the structure of this coinage took place under Augustus: the silver fractions of the denarius, which had filled the gap between the denarius and the as, were largely replaced by orichalcum multiples of the as, the sestertii and dupondii which are among the most familiar components of the Roman imperial coinage. At the same time, the as and the smallest denomination now struck, the quadrans, or quarter, were produced in pure copper. The most probable view is that the 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 the revaluation 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 not necessarily so: it is likely that between Augustus and the changes under Nero most of the precious metal coinage was struck in Gaul. In addition, the empire continued in the east to produce coinages modelled 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 the shift of minting from Gaul to Rome began a process of concentration of minting which lasted till the Severans (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 ebbs and flows in the pattern. And the base metal coinage of the east consisted for a long time not of the familiar sestertii, dupondii, asses, and quadrantes of the mint of Rome, but of a range of provincial bronze coinages. The kaleidoscopic variety of the coinage of the empire was completed by hundreds of 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 even mainstream 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 with the 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 to calculate that in normal times perhaps 80 per cent of the imperial budget was covered by tax revenues, 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; and despite attempts under the Flavians (Vespasian, Titus, Domitian) to reverse the trend, the next century and a half saw a slow decline in the silver content of the denarius, paralleled by a similar or worse decline in that of the provincial 'silver' coinages. Commodus further reduced the weight of the denarius 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 laurel wreath of the denarius, the coin may have been known as a 'radiate'. The tax-paying population of the Roman empire was not to be deceived and the state found its revenues increasingly arriving in the form 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 barbarian pressure increased led from AD 238 onwards to the complete collapse of the silver coinage: the denarius ceased to be produced and by AD 270 the antoninianus had ceased to contain more than a trifling percentage of silver. The weight even of the gold unit fluctuated, presumably as emperors divided what was in the kitty by the number of aurei it was necessary to pay out. In a sense, all that happened was that what had always been the underlying reality was revealed: an agricultural surplus supported an army and a bureaucracy. For on the whole taxes and payments were slow to catch up with the declining value of the coinage; and as the monetary circlelevies of taxes, payments to soldiers and others, payments to cultivators for grain for soldiers and others, providing the source for yet further levies of taxesbecame increasingly meaningless, so it became ever more apparent that the 'real' wage of a soldier, for instance, was his ration of corn. And the institutional structures of the empire slowly changed to accommodate this fact. At the same time, the sheer bulk of coinage produced and its appalling quality facilitated the production of imitations: the nummularii, whose profession it had been to test for forgeries, could not cope. A large part of the hoards of the late 3rd cent. AD, particularly in the west, is made up of coins known 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 marked WWI or JA (in Greek), to indicate 5 per cent silver content; and there followed coins marked WI or IA (in Greek), to indicate 10 per cent silver content. The next major reform is that of Diocletian, who stabilized the gold 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 as the nummus, and also small bronze pieces, doubles with a radiate head and no silver content, the ultimate descendants of Caracalla's double denarius, and singles with a laureate head. The gold unit was henceforth known as the solidus. Further adjustment was necessary in AD 301, the year of the Prices Edict, when Diocletian issued a revaluation edict, attested by the coins and by one of the two texts on a fragmentary inscription from Aphrodisias. Diocletian also consolidated the distribution of production in twelve to fifteen mints distributed through most of the Roman empire; their products on the 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 to wreck the system completely; his gold coin remained standard for many centuries. A pure silver piece, however, never again played a major part in production or circulation, except to a certain extent between about AD 350 and 400. Nor did the Diocletianic nummus really survive, though some of the bronze issues of his successors approach it in diameter. Rather the coinage of the late Roman empire consists essentially of solidi and vast quantities of small bronze denominations of changing face value. There is a long series of reforms and revaluations, until some sort of stability is finally achieved 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 is initially replicated by the coinages of the successor kingdoms of the west, before they develop the silver coinages characteristic of the Middle Ages. In the east, the coinages of the Arab successors to much 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 the Roman Republic (1985), and JRS 1970, 408, 'Money and Exchange in the Roman World'; MattinglySydenham, RIC (192367; 2nd edn. 1984 ); H. Mattingly and others, BM Coins, Rom. Emp. (1923 ); A. S. Robertson, Roman Imperial Coins in the Hunter Coin Cabinet 15 (196282) (much bibliography); D. R. Walker, The Metrology of the Roman Silver Coinage 13 (19768); A. Bay, JRS 1972, 11122, 'The Letters SC on Augustan aes Coinage'; K. Hopkins, JRS 1980, 10125, 'Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 BCAD 400)'; R. Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire (1994); M. Amandry, A. M. Burnett, and P. P. Ripolls, Roman Provincial Coinage (1992); C. J. Howgego, Greek Imperial Countermarks (1985); C. M.

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Kraay, in Essays in Roman Coinage presented to Harold Mattingly (1956), 11336, 'The Behaviour of Early Imperial Countermarks'; A. Wallace-Hadrill, JRS 1986, 6687, 'Image and Authority in the Coinage of Augustus'; M. H. Crawford, 'From Metal to Coinage in the Roman Empire', forthcoming, and ANRW 2. 2. 56093, 'Finance, Coinage and Money from the Severans to Constantine'; M. H. Crawford and J. M. Reynolds (eds.), The Revaluation Edicts from Aphrodisias (forthcoming); J. P. C. Kent, in Essays . . . Mattingly, 190204, 'Gold Coinage in the Late Roman Empire'; M. F. Hendy, JRS 1972, 7582, 'Mint and Fiscal Administration under Diocletian, his Colleagues, and his Successors, AD 30524', Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy (1985), and Viator 1988, 2978, 'From Public to Private: The Western Barbarian Coinages as a Mirror of the Disintegration of Late Roman State Structures'. Bibliographical surveys appear twice yearly in Numismatic Literature; quinquennial surveys in connection with the series of International Numismatic Congresses. M. H. C.

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4. coinage, Greek
(Oxford Classical Dictionary - Third Edition)

coinage, Greek

Definitions
Definitions Coinage to the Greeks was one of the forms of money available to measure value, store wealth, or facilitate exchange. Coins were made from precious metal such as gold or silver, or from a copper 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 as the legal equivalent of some value previously expressed in terms of other objects, including metal by weight. Merchants and others therefore were expected to accept it in payment. A coin of precious metal might weigh the same as the equivalent value of bullion, but would normally weigh less, to cover minting costs and, in varying degrees, to make a profit for the mint: in other words, coins were overvalued relative to bullion (see WEIGHTS). The scope of Greek coinage is wide, both geographically and chronologically. In the Archaic and Classical 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 bear images and inscriptions appropriate to their traditions, were in general inspired by Greek models, and they tend to be catalogued as part of Greek coinage. After 334 the conquest of the Persian empire by Alexander (3) the Great inaugurated a massive extension of the area covered by coinage, in particular in the successor kingdoms, Syria, Egypt and so on. In effect the term Greek coinage includes most of the 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 western Anatolia, at the point of contact between Greek cities on the Aegean coast and the Lydian kingdom in the interior. The first coins were of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver occurring naturally in the river Pactolus, which flowed into the Hermus to the west of Sardis, the Lydian capital. A date of c.600 BC or a little later for their introduction fits their appearance in a miscellaneous deposit of jewellery 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 of electrum were followed in Lydia by coins of pure gold and silver, with the type of confronting foreparts of a lion and of a bull. Such coins have traditionally been attributed to the Lydian king Croesus (c.561547), but hoard evidence suggests that most, if not all, are later than his reign and were part of the coinage issued in the area by the Persians.

Purpose
Purpose In the modern world the role of coinage in everyday buying and selling is clear, but this does 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 by various factors, including the diversity of weight-standards in the Greek world. For example, the weight of the drachma differed in cities as close together as Aegina, Corinth, and Athens. As for small transactions, few early coinages included the necessary range of small denominations. It is true that one 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 hypothesis that they were issued to make a large number of uniform and high-value payments in an easily portable and durable form, and that the authority or person making the payment, perhaps to mercenaries, was the king of Lydia. For the original recipients coins were simply another form of movable wealth, but many pieces might thereafter be exchanged for goods or services and so pass into general circulation as money. But the progress towards a monetary economy was by no means straightforward or immediate. The fact that many of the early electrum coins are covered in small punch-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 from metal of the required quality the blanks, or flans, of suitable shape and correct weight. Blanks were normally made by casting, that is, pouring the molten metal into moulds. (In the Greek world coins themselves were rarely made by casting.) To convert the blank into a coin it was struck with dies made from either toughened bronze or iron, and hand-engraved in negative (intaglio). One die, which was 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 its top was struck with a hammer. On the earliest coins the butt simply reproduced its own rough surface on the reverse; at a later stage, in many places by the end of the 6th cent., the practice arose of engraving 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 modern study of its products. At the preparatory stage great care was generally taken to ensure both the purity of the metal and the accurate weight of the blanks: modern methods of non-destructive metal analysis can detect any significant differences in the composition of a metal alloy and thus help to classify the coins or to signal a change of monetary policy. Sometimes it was notfor whatever reason convenient to prepare fresh blanks, and new types were overstruck on old coins. In cases where the undertypes were not totally obliterated by the restriking process, such 'overstrikes' can provide valuable evidence for relative dating and for the circulation of coins. When the blanks were being struck, the alignment of the two dies might be fixed or it might be variable: similarities or differences in the patterns of alignment may again help to classify or date some coins. Studies of the dies employed 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 immeasurably enhanced when two or more coins can be shown to have been struck from the same die(s). Coins sharing dies in this way must normally have been struck at the same place and at approximately the same time. Furthermore, since in practice the punch dies were more exposed to wear and/or damage than anvil dies and tended to be discarded more frequently, it is often possible to build up a sequence of issues sharing either an obverse or a reverse die. Finally, die-studies form the basis of attempts to estimate the size of a coinage. Using a variety of statistical methods, it may be possible to work out from a sample of dies the total number of dies used to produce a given coinage. To estimate the amount of bullion required, that total must be multiplied by the number of coins that were struck from each die. But in any individual case, that figure is elusive. There is no means of telling when a particular 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. The size 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 their variety makes it difficult to assign them to a specific minting authority. The commonest type, a lion's head, 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 not usually reinforced by any letter or inscription. On one coin from the Artemision with the type of two lions' 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 these persons 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 $li sla 'I am the badge of Phanes'. The identity of the Phanes referred to is not known (a mercenary captain of that name from Halicarnassus employed in Egypt in the 530s is too late for the coin), but with a different name and device the formula occurs on an archaic seal-stone probably from Aegina (J. Boardman, Archaic Greek Gems (1968), no. 176). The analogy makes clear the origin of a coin 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 might be introduced (as a koppa on coins of Corinth or Athe on those of Athens), and in course of time the tendency was to lengthen the inscription. When written out in full it was frequently in the genitive case, 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 an attribute. Even some of the types illustrating a local product belong in this category: for example an ear of barley can symbolize Demeter, goddess of crops. Many types refer to local myths or religious traditions, 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 preference of Greek art in general for the allusive and symbolic, rather than for direct and literal references to political matters.

The Spread of Coinage

The Spread of Coinage (Archaic and Classical) Electrum, with its variable content of gold and silver, did not last long as the primary metal for coining, and in the second half of the 6th cent., with a few exceptions such as Cyzicus, Phocaea, and Mytilene, the coin-producing cities of Asia Minor turned exclusively to silver. Coinage in gold became a rarity both there and elsewhere, although from the early 5th cent. the Persians issued gold darics with the same type as their silver sigloi, a crowned figure representing the king of Persia. ('Darics' were so named by the Greeks after the Persian king Darius I; 'siglos' is a Greek form of the Semitic 'shekel'.) These coins were issued for use in those parts of the Persian empire in closest contact with the Greeks, and the institution of coinage did not initially 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 to communities close to the isthmus of CorinthAegina, Corinth and Athensand not much later had taken 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 of denominations, including the heaviest of all Greek silver coins, the double octadrachm. Such coins travelled 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, notably their changing types, their lack of any indication of origin, and the use of electrum as well as silver for some issues. In the later part of the 6th cent., perhaps under the tyrant Hippias (1), these issues were replaced 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 in the 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 the coasts of southern Italy and Sicily, France, and Spain. Early Corinthian coinage in particular influenced some of the first coinages in the west both in production technique and because imported Corinthian coins were often used as flans for overstriking. There was also a notable willingness to experiment: the first Italian coins were made using the sophisticated 'incuse' method, unique in the Greek world, in which the obverse type appears normally in relief, while on the reverse a closely similar version of the same type is struck in negative, the two types exactly aligned. To the western cities also belong the first bronze coins, at Thurii from c.440, at Acragas from c.430, and thus the development of the idea of fiduciary coinage in which the worth of a coin was not related to the intrinsic value of its metal content. The coins of the western Greeks attained the highest standards of artistic excellence and especially in the late 5th and early 4th cents. the careers of many of the artists can 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 and western Mediterranean to the ambitions of individuals and the growing power of Rome. In the east the exploitation by Philip (1) II of Macedon of the mines of Pangaeus after 356 left a rich legacy of coinage in gold and silver which was adapted and expanded by his son Alexander (3) the Great to cover 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, the currency system he had put in place remained remarkably stable. In the world of territorial states and kingdoms that emerged in the 3rd cent. only Ptolemy (1) I in Egypt introduced major innovations in the types and weights of his coins, to produce an autonomous system of coinage. The change to larger political units, kingdoms, states, and leagues was reflected in the coinage. Many individual cities coined from time to time, but mostly in bronze; only Athens and Rhodes coined continuously in silver down to the 1st cent. BC. Coins with Alexander's types played an important role as international currency, especially in Asia Minor, where 'posthumous Alexanders' were produced in quantity until 175 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, they rarely refer directly to historical events. The major innovation was the introduction of the portrait of a ruler. Few portraits of living persons have been recognized on Greek coins before Ptolemy I shortly after 305/4. A reverse of Abdera in the last quarter of the 5th cent. realistically depicts a male head which might be the portrait of an individual (Pythagores) named on the coin. In the 4th cent. fine portraits 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 images of royal power are often combined with realism and insight into character. On the far eastern fringes of the Hellenistic world the kings of Bactria are known to us largely through their brilliant coinportraits. See PORTRAITURE. In the last two centuries BC, as Roman power spread inexorably eastwards, Hellenistic coinage evolved new forms. League coinages had already played a leading role, for example those of the Arcadian 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 their obverse type of a cista mystica, a basket used in the celebration of the rites of Dionysus. After the battle 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 local types which were issued in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire (the so-called 'Greek imperials') until well into the later 3rd cent. AD are more Roman in appearance and conception; see COINAGE, 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 an authoritative 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, Greek Coins (1966); G. K. Jenkins, Ancient Greek Coins, 2nd. rev. edn. (1990). For Greek imperials 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.

Copyright The Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxford University Press 1996, 2000

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