Ancient History from Coins - Notes

Approaching the Ancient World: Ancient History from Coins

Christopher Howgego's "Ancient History from Coins" explores the use of coins as a valuable historical source for understanding ancient history, from approximately 600 BC to the reign of Diocletian. While acknowledging the interpretive challenges associated with numismatics, the book aims to demystify the subject and demonstrate how coinage illuminates major historical themes, including state finance, economic history, imperial domination, and political propaganda.

Series Overview: Approaching the Ancient World

Edited by Richard Stoneman, this series addresses the complexities of studying the Greek and Roman world's diffuse and diverse sources. It offers introductions to various methodologies, ranging from literary analysis to numismatics, epigraphy, archaeology, legal evidence, art, and statistical methods.

Contents Overview

  1. Money: Discusses the history of coinage and its impact, particularly in Athens and Rome.

  2. Minting: Explores the production of coinage, including metal sources, mint operations, issue sizes, and the reasons behind coin striking.

  3. Empires: Examines the relationship between coinage and imperialism, focusing on Athens, Persia, Philip II and Alexander, the Seleucids, Ptolemies, Attalids, and Rome.

  4. Politics: Analyzes coin types and their connection to political representation in Greece and Rome, covering themes of power, imagery, and language.

  5. Circulation: Investigates the movement of coins, its limitations, and reasons for coin movement during the Archaic, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.

  6. Crisis: Studies coinage under pressure, focusing on monetary manipulations and causes of inflation during crises in Athens, Rome, and the third-century crisis.

Plates Included

Plates are located between pages 170 and 171 with a detailed key on pages 162-70. They cover a range of ancient coin types, including:

  • Archaic and classical coins

  • Coins from Western Asia Minor, Italy, Sicily, and Mainland Greece

  • Coins of the Persian Empire, Philip II, and Alexander

  • Hellenistic coinage from various regions (Balkans, Asia Minor, Egypt, and North Africa)

  • Roman Republican, Bronze, Western Celtic, and Roman Imperial coinage

Figures Included

  1. Approximate spread of minting up to 500 BC (page 5).

  2. Amount of silver in the denarius of the mint of Rome (page 116).

  3. Weight of gold or silver in aurei, 'antoniniani,' and denarii (page 117).

Preface and Scope

The book aims to demonstrate the relevance of coinage to ancient history students and teachers. It covers the period from the invention of coinage (c. 600 BC) to the reign of Diocletian, occasionally extending into the fourth century AD for comparative purposes. The focus is thematic, emphasizing historical topics rather than numismatic methodology.

Chapter 1: Money – The History of Coinage

Coinage is defined as pieces of metal conforming to a standard and bearing a design. The book primarily focuses on the Greek tradition of coinage, which extended to India and Britain. Although coinage likely originated in Lydia, the book highlights its rapid spread throughout the Greek world. Key points include:

  • The earliest coins, made of electrum, are linked to Lydia, but their archaeological context is in the Greek city of Ephesos.

  • Theories suggest coins served to pay mercenaries or for state payments, but limited written evidence makes definitive conclusions difficult.

  • Early coins featured types like a lion’s head (associated with Lydia) and inscriptions, possibly indicating personal or mint names instead of kings names.

  • Electrum coinage was eventually replaced by gold and silver, although the exact reasons are unclear.

  • The value of electrum denominations varied, with the smallest being one ninety-sixth of a stater. Some silver fractions were also incredibly small, suggesting efforts to create coins for minimal retail use.

  • Fractional coinage was more common than previously thought, as evidenced by finds in Western Asia Minor.

  • The development of base metal coinage gained traction through North Etruscan traditions.

  • Opposition existed to the introduction of bronze coinage, but it ultimately gained acceptance. Athens adopted bronze coinage in the third quarter of the fourth century BC.

  • Persian gold darics and Cyzicene electrum served as international currencies.

  • Alexander's conquests significantly broadened the use of coinages and silver imitations in the Persian empire.

Chapter 1: Money – What Difference Did Having a Coinage Make?

Coinage serves various functions: storing wealth, measuring value, and facilitating payment and exchange. While metals and grains previously fulfilled these roles, coinage offered a more efficient form of money. Main arguments include:

  • Measures of value were present in early literate societies like Babylonia and Egypt.

  • Silver and grain were used not only as a measure of value but means of exchange particularly in Mesopotamia.

  • Silver form was used as money cut up and inscribed according to identifiable standards.

  • Homeric society was dominated by reciprocity and hierarchical redistribution with limited exchange; gifts included metal objects cattle and women

  • Anthropological and economie theories explore the emergence of money from marriage, vengeance and gift exchange, but it's not certain that money developed out of barter.

  • Dowries, fines, and gift exchange seem inadequate to account for coinage being struck by the state, and from its introduction, coins circulated between states.

Chapter 2: Minting

Metals were converted into coinage as a mint where gold silver and electrum restruck. They were also obtained as indemnities and gifts.

  • Scientific lead and isotope analysis, while useful, is premised on assumptions of a single source of metal.

  • The title of mint workers and functionaries at a roman mint hint at various factors, organization, contracting, quality and bankers.

  • Production was distributed into workshops and offices but it may have been for regular and regular enterprises.

  • There were identifiable traits to certain mints, but given the sporadic production of smaller mints not all can be easily identified.

  • Die-sharing between cities doesn't mean that all their issues were produced in the same place.

  • Understanding the die studies is crucial for insight into issue sizes and the role of coinage.

  • Other possibilities exist instead of state-controlled production, whether expenditure was the only consideration in decisions.

  • Considerations other than state expenditure includes the requirements of state expenditure, led to fractional coinage production

Chapter 3: Empires

Coinage as a symbolic aspect of empires from territorial expansion, extraction of tributes from subjects, expression to rule; or as instruments of political or economic subordination.

  • Granting permission to coin may be seen not only as important negotiations through various media between imperial powers and subjects.

  • Autonomy in reaction in in Jewish revolts led to coinage that evoked nationalistic coinages with eras.

  • Demonstration of polis status, Greek and Roman values through the demonstration a hellenization through coinage under Roman Empire.

  • Single coinage use promoted common language for coinage at two levels, one with actual coin, other one showing imagery and typologies, as propaganda used worldly coins

  • Implementation varied; some policies were aggressive while some were laizze fair.