Essays on the Coinage of Alexander the Great - Alfred R. Bellinger by Sonjce Marceva

Generated for anonymous on 2015-02-15 20:24 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015008384649 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#cc-by-nc-sa-4.0

ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

ALFRED R. BELLINGER

NUMISMATIC STUDIES

No. ii

THE AMERICAN NUMISMATIC SOCIETY

NEW YORK

1963

THE AMERICAN NUMISMATIC SOCIETY

NEW YORK

PRINTED IN GERMANY AT J. J. AUGUSTIN, GLUCKSTADT

Generated for anonymous on 2015-02-15 19:43 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000055037786 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#cc-by-nc-sa-4.0

NUMISMATIC STUDIES

No. ii

CONTENTS

Preface v

Abbreviations vii

The King's Money i

The King's Finances 35

The Successors and the Cities 80

The Sequence of Events 94

Bibliography 114

Index to the Plates 131

PREFACE

The study of Alexander's coinage has been pursued for a long time and has

interested a number of eminent numismatists. It is, of course, merely a part

of the study of Alexander and a part which omits or only slightly illumines the

most famous aspects of that famous man. Yet the coins have some things to

show which the texts pass over in silence and their evidence is as yet far from

exhausted. The prodigious number of coins still in existence which bear his

name and types has made it natural that a large part of the interest of those

who have dealt with them should be devoted to trying to determine where they

were struck and when. Much has been accomplished in this primary task of

arrangement but much is still to be done. And beyond this question is the more

fundamental one of what part the coinage played in the total functioning of

Alexander's empire. We need to know not only where the coins were struck and

when but by whose agency, in what quantity, with what purpose and to what

effect. These pages raise and discuss some facets of the problem. They are

essays only and far from a definitive treatment. In some cases they are pre-

mature, propounding questions which further evidence will presently resolve,

and sometimes new evidence has accumulated during the time the book was

being composed. I must beg the reader's indulgence on the plea that what I am

trying to do is not to settle questions so much as to raise them in the hope that

they may ultimately be settled by the combined efforts of many with new

material at their command and with different points of view which may sup-

plement or invalidate my own. I have set down the phenomena that seemed

to me most important from the beginning of Alexander's coinage to the end of

its imitations. If the essays should attract new students to the Alexandrine

coinage and somewhat advance the understanding of the experts they will,

I believe, have justified their existence.

The book has been a pleasure to write. It was begun and finished at the

Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, for me certainly the ideal place

for such a composition. The thought of my colleagues there and in the American

Numismatic Society will always color these essays with the happiest memories.

As in other cases, I have submitted my ideas to my most valuable mentors:

E. S. G. Robinson, Henri Seyrig and Margaret Thompson, not always con-

vincing them but always profiting by their counsel.

ABBREVIATIONS

BCH

BMC

Beloch

CAR

CIA

CIG

Cohen

Demetrius

Demanhur

ESM

Gaebler

JHS

JIAN

JRS

Kyparissia

Myriandros

NNM

Noe

OGIS

Olympia

REG

RIC

Reattribution

SNG

Sicyon

Sidon and Ake

Sylloge

Tarsos

Traite

WSM

ZfN

Bulletin de Correspondence hellenique.

Catalogues of Greek and Roman Coins in the British Museum.

Karl Julius Beloch, Griechische Geschichte IV. 1, Berlin, 1925.

Cambridge Ancient History.

Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum.

Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum.

Henri Cohen, Description historique des Monnaies de I'Empire romain.

E. T. Newell, The Coinages of Demetrius Poliorcetes.

E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards II. Demanhur 1905.

E. T. Newell, The Coinage of the Eastern Seleucid Mints from Seleucus I to

Antioch'.is III.

Hugo Gaebler, Die antiken Miinzen von Makedonia und Paeonia.

B. V. Head, Historia Numorum.

Inscriptiones Graecae.

Journal of Hellenic Studies.

Journal international d'Archeologie numismatique.

Journal of Roman Studies.

E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards I. Introduction and Kyparissia Hoard.

Museum Notes American Numismatic Society.

E. T. Newell, Myriandros Kat'isson.

Numismatic Chronicle.

Numismatic Notes and Monographs American Numismatic Society.

Numismatische Zeitschrift.

S. P. Noe, A Bibliography of Greek Coin Hoards Ed. 2.

Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae.

E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards IV. Olympia.

Revue des Etudes grecques.

Roman Imperial Coinage.

Revue numismatique.

E.T. Newell, The Reattribution of Certain Tetradrachms ofAlexanderThe Great

Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum.

S. P. Noe, The Alexander Coinage of Sicyon arranged from Notes of Edward

THE KING'S MONEY

Alexander's coins are inscribed AAEEANAPOY or AAEEANAPOY

They are the king's money. Not in the way that the laws are the king's laws:

abstractions of which he is the responsible source with the same relations to all

men. Nor in the way that his sword and horse are the king's: by personal,

absolute right, capable of being modified only by himself through gift or loan.

Without the king's act, entirely without his knowledge, a man may acquire

title to coins exactly as he can to any other piece of property. Doubtless the

king could take them away from him, as he could take away his cattle or his

house or his wife. Legally a man's money is no more vulnerable than any of his

other possessions. There may have been a time when coins were the property

of the king in an immediate and personal sense. Recently the interesting

suggestion has been made that they were not originally intended for currency,

but for payment of the Lydian king's mercenaries and that circulation was an

incidental and unforeseen consequence.2 It is interesting to guess at the process

by which the secondary function absorbed the primary one.3 It must have

been early, for the silver of the Greek cities was surely intended as currency

from the beginning. In any case, by Alexander's time all thought of personal

connection between the king and his money had long since been forgotten.

To one of his subjects the genitive on gold and silver must have meant that

the coins were struck by authority of the king, from his metal and that they

were the medium by which his government paid his obligations and received

his dues. They would be legal tender wherever his power extended, for both

types and weights were uniform.

Their bullion value was supposed to equal their nominal value: a silver

tetradrachm was taken to be four drachmae of silver. Yet, if that had been

1 The earliest issues have the name only without the title. At some mints, e.g., Sidon and Ake,

the title is not used at all. Its adoption is not simultaneous in the cities where it occurs and it

evidently has no constitutional significance, for sometimes an issue with the title will be succeeded

by one without (e.g., E. T. Newell, Myriandros-Alexandria Kat'isson, New York, 1920, p. 33,

nos. 21, 22). The order and placing of the words vary.

2 R. M. Cook, "Speculations on the Origins of Currency," Historia 1958, pp. 257-262.

8 Scholars writing about currency will remember with pleasure the dictum of Aristotle that

the theory of finance is a liberal study but the practice is not. Politics I,4. 1. He had no doubt

that philosophers could be rich if they wanted to but "that is not what they are interested in."

1,4.5.

2 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

strictly true, the whole expense of manufacture would have been borne by the

king. Originally that may have been so. A man who was accustomed to receive

his pay in electrum by weight (and by metal content if that was determined)

would hardly be satisfied with a less amount simply because it bore a device

when there were still unmarked dumps in circulation of full weight. There must

have been some critical point at which the cost of manufacture was transferred

from the minting authority to the user and there is no way of telling when that

came, but it was before Alexander. His tetradrachms were in competition with

those of Athens whose minting, as we know, was an important economic asset

of the state. She certainly would not consciously lose by the process, and the

simplest way to break even was to reduce the weight of each coin a little so

that the part subtracted should be metal equal to the cost of manufacture.

That is presumably what Athens did and what Alexander did also.4 How much

the deduction was we do not know. The tetradrachm was supposed to weigh

17.62 grams.5 Four drachmae of silver must have weighed somewhat more,

but while the coins themselves conform to standard very well, such other

weights as are preserved are not nearly so uniform, so that the attempt to find

the weight of the official non-monetary drachm is not likely to be successful.

No doubt it was all governed by law and the difference a matter of record. We

know, from a much later period, what precautions the Athenians] took to keep

their weights and standards true; we know also that they were perfectly

acquainted with a coin weight which was different from the commercial

4 The term "seigniorage" is an anachronism, but we are driven to employ it because we do not

know what word the Greeks used. The amount of seigniorage in mediaeval and modem times

might be enough not only to cover costs but to provide a revenue for the sovereign (the Bureau of

the Mint of the United States is reported to have made a profit of over $45,000,000 in 1957). But

that is under conditions where the coinage does not have to compete with others whose bullion

content is higher. Leaving out of consideration all other Greek coinages, Athens and Alexander

were alike in the intention that their coins should be accepted widely and if they were to invade

territory accustomed to an economy of barter it must be because their bullion value was only

slightly lower than their face value. Athens presents the conditions where it would be easiest to

calculate the expense of striking, and where that expense would be least: invariable types and

the use of each die until it was worn out. The Alexander coinage was almost as simple: the types

were invariable but the varying symbols on the reverse meant that occasionally, at the end of an

official's term, there may have been reverse dies which were not worn out but which must be

abandoned or recut for the use of his successor.

5 A. S. Hemmy, "The Weight-standards of Ancient Greece and Persia," Iraq 1938, pp. 65-81,

gives a statistical analysis of a number of series and calculates standards of which the following

are of importance to us: Persian daric 8.43 grams, siglos 8.52 grams or 8.26 grams (two standards);

Philip gold stater 8.68 grams, tetradrachm 14.70 grams; Alexander stater 8.66 grams, tetradrachm

17.62 grams.

THE KING'S MONEY 3

weight.6 If the Macedonian citizens were aware that the government was

issuing coins of less than full weight they probably cared very little. The

conveniences of a money economy were worth much more than the amount

involved.

The king's money was struck in three metals and in a variety of denomin-

ations of which the following are the most important:

Gold Stater

Head of Athena right in crested Corinthian helmet

Rev. Winged Nike standing left, holding wreath in right hand, stylis in

left PLATE I, 5

Silver Tetradrachm

Head of young Herakles right in lion's skin headdress

Rev. Zeus seated left on throne, eagle on outstretched right hand, with

left hand leaning on long scepter. PLATE I, 1

Bronze Unit

Head of young Herakles right in lion's skin headdress

Rev. Bow in case and club PLATE I, 29

All these normally bear symbols on the reverse which distinguish the mints

and the issues.

The types of the gold have occasioned much comment. They are new to the

Macedonian coinage and are usually, though not universally, regarded as

having an Athenian origin. To be sure, their general propriety to Alexander is

sometimes held to be sufficient explanation without closer investigation into

details. Percy Gardner represented this point of view:7 the types of Philip's

gold (PLATE I, 1) "were by no means suited to the ambitious and soaring

mind of Alexander," who therefore selected Pallas "the patroness of the

besiegers of Ilium" and a warlike Nike with a "trophy-stand." The curiosity

of other scholars, however, has not been so easily satisfied, and a considerable

literature has grown up about the identification of Pallas and Nike. In 1847

6 IGII1,476.1013. Attic Decree on Measures and Weights, end of 2nd century—beginning of

1st century B.C. August Boeckh has an elaborate commentary on this in Staatshaushaltung der

Athener, 3rd ed., pp. 318-332, which was accepted by all subsequent writers until Louis Robert,

£tudes de Numismatique grecque, Paris, 1951, pp. 105-135, proved that lTE9avT|96pou Spaxucrf

which had caused much learned discussion were coins of the Athenian New Style. It was un-

fortunately not part of Robert's plan to deal with the arithmetical aspects of the inscription which

make nonsense as it appears in IG. (Indeed, he added a small item of confusion by printing SKOT&V

8p«xnAsinstead of SKorr6v7revT^KovTa6poxiJiAs in the last line of the text on p. 116). O. Viedebantt,

"Der athenische VolksbeschluB iiber MaB und Gewicht," Hermes 1916, pp. 121-144, has taken

heroic means to make sense, inserting two lines which we must assume the Abbe Fourmont missed

in making the copy which is now our only witness to the text.

7 The Types of Greek Coins, Cambridge, 1883, p. 188.

4 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Charles Lenormant8 deduced from comparison of the staters with the heads

of Athena on vases and the later bronze coins of Athens that the goddess was

Athena Promachus, Pheidias' heroic bronze statue which stood on the Acropolis

between the Erechtheium and the Propylaea, a dedication, according to

Pausanias,9 from the spoils of the Persians defeated at Marathon. In 1890

Ernest Babelon10 was quite willing to accept this and Charles Seltman11

regarded the head as probably a free adaptation of Athena Promachus, perhaps

convinced by the hearty support of this solution by Philip Lederer.12 Considering

the uncertainties in regard to this celebrated statue, a positive identification

is hardly safe,13 but the other suggestions that have been made are not persua-

sive.

1) Prokesch-Osten,14 followed by E. J. Seltman,15 put forward as a possible

original the ancient Palladium of Pella. This is met by Lederer16 with the

objection that Alexander's coins had and were intended to have an ecumenical

importance and an obscure local deity would not suit his purpose at all.17 It

may be added that when Pallas appears on the obverse of Pella's own coins18 it

is in the form of Athena Parthenus in obvious imitation of the New Style silver

of Athens.19

2} Babelon, recanting his previous acceptance of Athena Promachus be-

8 "Lettre a M. J. de Witte sur trois nouvaux Vases historiques," Annali dell' Institute

Archeologico 1847, Pp. 348-407.

â&#x20AC;˘ I. 28.2.

10 Les Rots de Syrie, Paris, 1890, p. xxvi.

11 Greek Coins, London, 1933 and 1955, pp. 204f.

12 "Ein Goldstater Alexanders des GroBen," ZfN 1922, pp. 185-205.

18 Gisela Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, New Haven, 1930. It is true that

Behrendt Pick, in discussing much later representations of a bust of Athena ("Die 'Promachos' des

Pheidias und die Kerameikos-Lampen," Mitteilungen des deutschen archaologischen Instituts,

Athenische Abteilung 1931, pp. 9-74) says (p. 61) "One can think of no original for a head in

Corinthian helmet at Athens except the Promachos"; but to appeal to this for support of the

identification involves a petitio principii: what proves that the original of Alexander's Pallas was

at Athens?

14 NZ 1871, pp. 52 f.

16 "Rare Gold Staters with Types of Alexander III," NZ 1913, p. 205.

19 Op. cit., p. 197.

17 This is not to deny that the type might have had local significance in various places, but

its significance must not have been local only.

18 Hugo Gaebler, Die antiken Munzen von Makedonia und Paionia, II, Berlin, 1935, PI. XVIII,

26; XIX, 4.

19 There is a fighting Athena on the reverse of a late bronze of Pella which is one example of

a type introduced by Seleucus I. How insecure is the ground for identifying this as Athena Alkis

or Alkidemos is made clear by Leon Lacroix, Les Reproductions de Statues sur les Monnaies grec-

ques, Liege, 1949, pp. 12of.

THE KING'S MONEY 5

lieved that the type was Pallas "des monnaies de Corinthe"20 in which he was

followed by Svoronos21 who thought that the adoption of "Pallas Corinthien-

ne" may have resulted from a decision of the Council of Corinth and who could

not believe that relations between Athens and Alexander were such as to make

his borrowing a device from her possible. This is a good example of an attempt

to exalt likelihood into evidence. If there were no documents this might be

regarded as an interesting possibility which, from frequent repetition, would

come to be accepted as a fact. But here there is evidence, and one only has to

compare the heads of Athena on the coins of Corinth (PLATE II, 1) and of

Alexander to see instantly that it is impossible that the latter should be derived

from the former. If Alexander's goddess had been supposed to be the same

person as that on the Corinthian silver she would have been made to look the

same. What other way would there have been for men to recognize her?

3) In a recent study of the whole problem of Alexander's imperial currency

Gerhard Kleiner22 urges, on grounds of historical probability, that the goddess

is Athena of Ilium and that it was not until after his visit to Ilium that Alex-

ander began to strike his own types on gold.23 Kleiner's work is a connected

whole and cannot fairly be disposed of piecemeal; it will be treated more

thoroughly presently. But it may be said here that, on purely numismatic

grounds, his suggestion is a weak one. Athena Ilias, as she is known to us from

many coins (PLATE II, 2,3), was a deity of very special appearance: she wore a

polos, over her shoulder she held a filleted spear, and in her other hand was a

distaff; that is, she was an Anatolian deity with more oriental than Greek

features. If Alexander had had her in mind he could have produced a head

with a polos. Now it is true, as Kleiner says, that on later coins of Ilium the

head of Athena has other forms, one of which is like that on the staters. But

the first coins have on the reverse the cult statue of Athena Ilias; on the

obverse a head of Athena with a round Attic helmet (PLATE II, 3). These were

issued under Lysimachus; the head in Corinthian helmet comes later under

Seleucus I, again with Athena Ilias as a reverse type. To assume that there

was an image at Ilium of the appearance of Athena Promachus is purely

gratuitous; there were two forms of Athena known earlier on the coins and one

of them is clearly named Athena Ilias on the 2nd century silver24 (PLATE II, 2).

20 "Le Stylis, Attribut naval sur les Monnaies," Melanges numismatiques, 4, Paris, 1912, p. 213.

21 "Stylides, Ancres hierae, Aphlasta, Stoloi, Akrostolia, Embola, Proembola et Totems

marins," JIAN 1914, pp. 115 f.

22 Alexanders Reichmiinzen, Berlin, 1949, p. 19.

23 This theory had already been advanced by Esprit Marie Cousinery, Voyage dans la Mace-

doine, Paris, 1831, Vol. I, p. 231.

24 Cf. A. R. Bellinger, Troy. Supplementary Monographs 2, The Coins, Princeton, 1961.

6 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

A user who knew both Athena Promachus and Athena Ilias must conclude

that Alexander's type referred to the former and not to the latter.25 An Athenian

model for the obverse of the gold is therefore still the most likely.26

The reverse is quite as worthy of remark. Nike has a long and interesting

career on ancient coins, but none of her previous appearances has any connec-

tion with Macedonia. This in itself raises no difficulty, and when the object in

Nike's left hand was thought to be the frame for the erection of a trophy, it

seemed a most appropriate augury of the future to which Alexander was

entitled if any man ever was. But it was early noticed that the object assumed

a great variety of forms and Babelon presently showed that it was, in fact,

a stylis,27 which he took to be an instrument for propping up the aphlaston

on the stern of a Greek ship. The naval significance was accepted by Ernst

Assmann28 who asserted however that what was represented was actually a

Phoenician standard, borne on the admiral's ship. Some part of his argument

was met by G. F. Hill in the same number of the Zeitschrift fur Numismatikw

25 Indeed, Kleiner in a later passage (pp. 31 f.) seems to me to compromise his position

strangely: Harpalus the treasurer must have been influential in the choice of types; Harpalus

may have become acquainted with Athens on his first mysterious flight to Megara in 333 and he

was inclined to benevolence toward Athens by the celebrated Athenian hetairai Pythionike and

Glykera; he was therefore probably responsible for the Athenian character of the gold types.

"Durch Harpalos wird es auch am ehesten moglich, die Goldstatere mit Athen in Zusammenhang

zu bringen." But then why introduce the Trojan episode at all?

26 There is an interesting detail of the obverse type. The bowl of the helmet of Athena, when

it is decorated, may carry one of four different kinds of ornament which have been discussed by

G. F. Hill ("Alexander the Great and the Persian Lion-Gryphon," JHS 1923, pp. 156-161). The

first, and much the commonest, is a serpent in which Lederer saw a symbol of Athena (ZfN 1922,

p. 195). The second is a remarkable animal with straight wings, the body of a lion and the head

of a bird. This type of gryphon belongs to the period after Alexander's death and to Asia Minor,

Phoenicia and Babylon. A rarer variant has the head of a lion, which is sometimes horned, with

curved wings. "The lion-gryphon" says Hill, "was conceived by the Greek as the enemy par

excellence of the Persian." It appears at Ace-Ptolemais and Tarsus, at Sidon (or perhaps Damascus)

and possibly in Cyprus, and its dates suggest that it may have been used for a short time as a

symbol of the destruction of the Persian power. The rarest ornament is a Greek sphinx, used at

Babylon and perhaps elsewhere in the East. If it is symbolic its significance is now lost.

Professor Machteld Mellink of Bryn Mawr whose attention I called to this material points

out that the horned lion-headed griffin occurs by itself in contexts where it is surely apotropaic

and so can hardly be called "the enemy par excellence of the Persians." At the same time it ap-

pears to be unknown outside Persian art so that on Alexander's coins it shows familiarity with

a Persian art form. Of the other animals, all traditional as decorations on Athena's helmet, the

most striking thing is the galloping pose of the bird-headed griffin. But there is no sure explanation

of the significance of any of them.

27 Melanges numismatiques, I, Paris, 1892, pp. 203-217.

28 "Das Stabkreuz auf griechischen Miinzen," ZfN 1906, pp. 215-226.

28 "Nochmals das Stabkreuz," ibid., pp. 331-334.

THE KING'S MONEY 7

and Babelon also answered him in a discussion much extended from his first

essay30 which proved that the object was not purely Phoenician. Its function,

however, was hardly adequately treated until 1914 when Jean Svoronos31

argued with a wealth of illustration that the stylis was an image of the protect-

ing deity set up on the stern of a ship. Whatever interpretations may be

advanced in the future, one thing is clear: what Nike holds in her left hand

has a naval significance. That does raise a difficulty, for it is well known that,

at his accession, Alexander had no fleet and therefore no reason to select a type

that meant victory at sea.

There are three ways in which this dilemma is met: 1) by assuming that

Alexander looked confidently ahead to victory at sea; 2) by assuming that he

did not strike this gold at the beginning of his career but at a later time when

it would have been appropriate; 3) by assuming that the stylis was part of the

original on which Alexander's type was based and that he copied it as it was

without concerning himself about its propriety in detail.

1) Is by its nature incapable of proof, but certainly not very likely unless

at the beginning of his career he expected to have the help of some other naval

power. We do not know of any plans of his looking to control of the sea.

2) Has been argued more than once. Its acceptance means either that

Alexander struck no gold in the first years of his reign or that he continued to

issue the types of his father (PLATE I,1-3). There is, I think, no defender of

the first alternative now, for it is clear that Alexander cannot have conquered

Asia Minor without money, and the mines of Macedonia were still providing

gold. We may assume that the second alternative is the only one which needs

to be argued. It is generally assumed that the capture of Tyre is the point at

which such an announcement of naval supremacy would become appropriate.

That is Assmann's theory in the article referred to: in 332 Alexander found

himself in the position of the Phoenician admiral and could adopt his insignia.

In replying to Assmann, Babelon makes the interesting observation that by

332 there had been no sea battles (for the capture of Tyre can hardly be con-

sidered such) whereas the army of the Great King had been defeated at Issus

and one would be inclined to expect that the real victory would be commemo-

rated on any device adopted then rather than a strategic situation which was

not, in fact, of capital importance to his great conquests.

Assman is not the first to have put forward the theory that Alexander's

coinage does not begin at the beginning of his reign. It appears as early as

E. M. Cousinery in whose Voyage dans la Macedoine (Paris, 1831) there is a

section, "Monnaies d'Alexandre" (pp. 229-270). It is naive and careless in

30 Melanges numismatiques, 4, pp. 199-237.

31 JIAN 1914, pp. 81-152, esp. 115-118.

8 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

detail (particularly in regard to the correspondence of text and illustrations)

but it advances the doctrine which has had fuller and abler treatment since:

that the first coins struck by Alexander were not those with his own types but

a posthumous continuation of those of his father. "Nous ne pouvonsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;nous

refuser a croire qu'en entrant dans 1'Asie, il ne soit borne a mettre en emission

la monnaie de son pere dans les trois metaux" (pp. 230f.). This is rejected by

Miiller32 but has been revived in an impressive presentation: Kleiner's Alex-

anders Reichmunzen. It will be well, however, to deal first with Cousinery's

earlier and less important treatment, though this will make it necessary to

anticipate our discussion of the silver.

Cousinery's theory is founded on two convictions: first, that the head on

the obverse of the silver is invariably a portrait of Alexander. "Cette tete ne

presente rien d'ideal" he says (p. 236); he finds complete uniformity not only

on the coins struck during Alexander's lifetime but also with the head in

elephant-skin headdress issued by Ptolemy (PLATE II, 4) and that with the

horns of Ammon issued by Lysimachus (PLATE II, 5), which he rightly recogni-

zes as likenesses not of the kings who minted them but of their deified leader.

Of these he gives engravings, but none of the Alexander types to let the reader

judge whether they are of invariable style. He does, indeed, remark that

the flans of the coins of Macedonia after its division by the Romans are

thinner and broader, but there is no indication that he used this or any other

criterion to distinguish the epochs to which Alexander coins belong. Apparently

he found the same face on the earliest Macedonian silver and on the spread-flan

tetradrachms which succeeded the collapse of the Seleucid power. His second

conviction is the surprising one that it was the Greek cities, grateful for their

deliverance from the Persians, which selected the types and manufactured the

coins. A modern numismatist would hardly feel called on to refute this but, of

course, if it were true it would mean that the silver types could not have begun

until the cities had been freed. The gold, as already remarked, he thinks was

subsequent to Alexander's visit to Ilium. The appearance of Athena on the

obverse would be a natural consequence of the devotion there paid to her by

the conqueror; the Nike of the reverse appears to be no problem to the author.

After the Granicus Alexander could use Persian gold and silver, but he

continued to issue his father's types "soit par respect pour sa memoire, soit a

cause du credit que ces monnaies avaient acquis partout ou le nom de Philippe

etait parvenu. Ce que nous le prouve c'est la grande quantite de ces pieces

qu'on ne cesse de decouvrir dans toute 1'Asie" (p. 231). This last remark is the

only appearance of what can fairly be called evidence in a fabric of conjecture,

and it is evidence which we can test to some extent. It is essential to distinguish

32 L. Miiller, Numismatique d'Alexandra le Grand, Copenhagen, 1855, p. X4. n. 24.

THE KING'S MONEY 9

between the gold and silver. The gold of Philip achieved a great success as an

international medium and its popularity was such that it certainly was issued

posthumously.33 The wide currency of the staters is shown by the hoards in

which they occur. There are 19 such hoards listed by Noe:34 they come from

Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Syria, Egypt, Italy and

Sicily.35 Philip's silver, on the other hand, had a more restricted territory.

Among the barbarians of the north it was well received, so that from the mint

of Amphipolis these types also were issued posthumously.36 The great number

of Celtic imitations, much commoner than those copied from Alexander, is

testimony to the success of the originals in that direction. But if the crossing to

Asia and the early campaigns there were financed with Philip's silver as well as

his gold, which is essential to Cousinery's theory, the hoards containing his

silver should be conspicuous in Asia Minor. There are 24 such hoards, and they

come from Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Sicily.37 It cannot be said that there

is any lack of evidence from the territory with which we are concerned. From

Asia Minor, the adjacent islands, and north Syria Noe's list has 140 hoards,

and of these there are no less than 17 which contain silver of Alexander.38 And

not one silver coin of Philip! This is surely enough to justify us in asking "If

Philip's silver was used in the first campaigns, where is it?"

Kleiner deals with Alexander's coinage as a whole, which nobody had done

since Miiller. He has a familiarity with the literary sources which numismatists

in general would do very well to match. He has supported his thesis with great

learning and ingenuity, assembling much material on iconography with which

also numismatists should be better acquainted than they are. It is quite im-

possible to do justice to the work in any resume since it is a large body of related

details but, though I feel called upon to disagree with him, I should like to do

him as little injustice as possible.

Kleiner's thesis is that the imperial coinageâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;silver as well as goldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;was

inaugurated at the festival at Tyre in the spring of 331 after Alexander's return

33 Margaret Thompson and A. R. Bellinger, "A Hoard of Alexander Drachms," Yak Classical

Studies, XIV, 1955, pp. 3-45, the conspectus of the Alexander mints of Lampsakos, Abydos,

Teos, Kolophon, Magnesia and Sardis (pp. 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 27).

34 Sydney P. Noe, A Bibliography of Greek Coin Hoards, 2nd ed. (NNM 78), New York, 1937.

The hoards are cited by his numbers.

36 Bulgaria, 526, 980; Romania, 46, 624; Greece, 267, 339, 455; Asia Minor 637, 841; Cyprus,

600; Syria, 133, 882; Egypt, 89, 322, 430; Italy, 1045; Sicily, 170, 1093, 1098.

36 E. T. Newell, Reattribution of Certain Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great, New York,

1912, pp. 12-23.

37 Bulgaria, 38,192, 446, 447, 481, 526, 866, 980; Romania, 286; Greece, 49, 69, 339, 461, 466,

533. 592. 595, 669, 783, 834, 844; Sicily, 21, 170, 1164.

38 20, 29, 30, 31, 40, 51, 67, 79, 82, 475, 488, 603, 846, 925, 926, 991, 1033.

1o ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

from Egypt.39 It was at that time that Harpalus, induced by Alexander to

return from his flight to Megara, was reinstated as treasurer. It is, of course, an

attractive idea that so large and important a system should have been planned

in advance and put into operation all at once, and the second visit to Tyre

would certainly be an appropriate moment for such an innovation. But Kleiner

does not rely on this appropriateness alone. Like others, he maintains the im-

probability of Alexander's using Nike as a device before the capture of Tyre

(pp. 12, 20, 21); he denies that Pallas is a probable deity for him to have

honored in the earliest years of his reign, before his visit to Troy (pp. 18, 19);

and he adds a more complicated psychological argument. In 197 B.C., to

celebrate the freeing of the Greeks, gold pieces were struck with the portrait

of Flamininus on the obverse, and on the reverse, with the inscription T. QVINCTI,

an imitation of Alexander's Nike with a palm substituted for the stylis (PLATE

II, 6).40 Kleiner regards this to be a presentation of Flamininus the Liberator

as an equivalent for Alexander the Liberator. But he believes that if this type

had been employed by Alexander at the beginning of his reign it would have

been remembered as the money of Alexander the Destroyer of Thebes and so

altogether unsuitable for the model of a type in honor of emancipation, whereas

if it had been introduced after his freeing of the Greek cities of Asia Minor

there would have been no such objection (pp. 5, 6).41

These arguments, to my mind, are based on probability only and are

therefore bound to fail if confronted with evidence to the contrary. And we

have contrary evidence in three places. The first is the absence of Philip's

silver in hoards from Asia Minor, already discussed in connection with Cou-

sinery. The other two are alike. In discussing the Alexander coinage of Tarsus42

and Myriandrus43 Newell shows how directly it was based on the coinage of the

Persian satrap Mazaeus which preceded it. Now Alexander entered Tarsus

September 3, 333 and won the battle of Issus November 12 of the same year.44

If coins were issued from those mints as soon after falling into Alexander's

hands as dies could be cut, obviously the theory that the first appearance of his

39 Arrian III, 6.

40 Gaebler, Die antiken Miinzen von Makedonia und Paionia, II, PI. XXXVI, 17, 18.

41 There is a parallel argument affecting the use of his silver types by Greek cities celebrating

their liberation from Seleucid domination after 189 B.C.

42 Tarsos under Alexander, New York, 1919. The point had been made long before by J. P.

Six, "Le Satrap Mazaios," NC 1884, pp. 97-159. P. 101, "les premieres monnaies d'Alexandre,

frappees en Asie, font immediatement suite a celles de Mazaios;" p. 102, "La done ou finissent les

emissions de Mazaios, commencent celles d'Alexandre. II n'y a pas de lacune apparente."

43 Myriandros Kat'isson, New York, 1920.

44 Marcel Dieulafoy, "La Bataille d'lssus, analyse critique d'un travail manuscrit du Com-

mandant Bourgeois," Memoires de I'Institut national de France, 1914, pp. 41-76.

THE KING'S MONEY 1

types was in the spring of 331 must be abandoned. Newell does not undertake

to prove that the Greek coins follow the Persian ones immediately, though he

certainly believed it.45 But there are only two other possibilities: either the

mints were idle from 333 to 331 or, conformable to Kleiner's general theory,

there were intervening issues bearing Philip's types. In the first case, some

reason ought to be alleged; in the second, the issues ought to be identified.

Unless or until these conditions are met, Newell's hypothesis holds the field.46

Account should also be taken of the arrangement of the issues of Amphipolis

in Newell's study of the Demanhur Hoard.47 They extend from "circa 336 B.C.

to circa 318 B.C.," the latter being the date of the hoard's burial (p. 135); they

are put in groups A to K. This arrangement the author justifies on pp. 68f.:

"The dates here assigned the various groups of the Amphipolis coinage are,

perhaps, to a certain extent approximate. But even so, they cannot be in error

by much more than a year either way." He points out that important con-

firmation for the dating of the earlier groups comes from a hoard buried at

Kyparissia in 328 or 327.48 Kleiner's theory, which does not affect the date of

burial of the Demanhur Hoard, would force us to compress this material by

five years, reducing the groups from eleven to six. How is it to be done? It may

be urged that Newell himself had revised an earlier arrangement, and so he

had, and in important respects.49 There has been much new information made

45 Tarsos, p. 15 "it is interesting to note in how many instances the customs and peculiarities

of a local coinage will reappear on the succeeding issues of Alexander for the same district. This

shows clearly how the personnel, appliances and traditions of a mint were all retained for the

production of the new coin. The coinage of Tarsos is no exception to this rule and the issues bearing

the name and types of Alexander the Great are seen to be the direct successors of the local coins

of the Persian Satraps." Myriandros, p. 31, "This fact immediately suggests that the following

group of Alexander coins, very similar in style and character to his Tarsian issues, was really

struck at Myriandros in immediate succession to the Persic issues of Mazaios emanating from the

same important Syrian mint."

46 Reattribution, pp. 27-30. The problem of Sidon and Ake (Newell, The Dated Alexander

Coinage of Sidon and Ake, New Haven, 1916) Kleiner has met by revising Newell's dating (pp.

24-29) which I need not discuss. If the principle is established by Tarsus it is superfluous to argue

other instances, such as Kition and Salamis in Cyprus whose coinage Newell would begin "circa

332" ("Some Cypriote 'Alexanders'" NC 1915, pp. 294-322). But in the case of Sidon Kleiner's

revised date is made impossible by the existence of a Ptolemaic tetradrachm of the year 22 which

cannot have been struck in 311/10 as Kleiner's calculation would make it. (Bellinger "An Alex-

ander Hoard from Byblos" Berytus 1950-1, no. 140; G. K. Jenkins "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard

from Phacous" MN 1960, pp. 27 f.).

47 Alexander Hoards II. Demanhur, 1905 (NNM 19), New York, 1923.

48 E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards I (NNM 3), New York, 1921, pp. 18, 19.

49 In his earlier work, Reattribution, he identified the chief mint as Pella instead of Amphipolis,

concluded that the date of burial was 308 instead of 318, dated the first appearance of "Basileus"

to 317 instead of 325.

12 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

available since his second study and that needs to be worked through; a

particular need is the systematic treatment of the issues of Philip II. But it is

not enough to say that this arrangement is fallible. It is founded on careful

study and unless or until a better arrangement is proposed, we are not justified

in lowering the beginning of the coinage by five years.50

Finally, I cannot see that Kleiner has done justice to the evidence of style.

The difference between the earliest Heracles heads from the different mints is

made much of in the article by Gebaur to be discussed below.

3) Such being the weaknesses of our second possibility, we are left with our

third: namely, that Alexander's Nike is copied from one with which the stylis

belongs. An Athenian origin was an obvious possibility to those who believed

that Pallas on the obverse was Athena Promachus, but Babelon made the

suggestion very specific by pointing out51 that Nike with a stylis upon a

column beside Athena Promachus was painted on a Panathenaic vase of 336/5,

the archonship of Pythodelos.This seemed to him more than a coincidence and

he concluded that the two Nikai were related documents of a time of cordiality

between the monarch and the city. Hill defended him against Assmann on

matters of fact, but was not convinced by the suggestion that Alexander had

borrowed from Athens.52 Neither was Svoronos who, as already remarked,

could not believe that at this time Alexander would have had any reason to

flatter the Athenians as Babelon thought. Instead, he suggested that it was

the other way around and that the Nike on the Panathenaic vase was copied

from "les types dÂŁsormais historiques des stateres qu' Alexandre venait de

f rapper des son ret our en Macedoine."53 This was dismissed by Lederer as im-

possible because there was not enough time for the coins to have been struck

and become so well known as to invite imitation in the year 336/5 after Alex-

ander's return from the Congress of Corinth.54 On the other hand, he produced

as evidence of the connection with Athens a newly discovered gold stater on

which the type of Nike was accompanied by Nike also as a symbol bearing an

aphlaston and an obscure object which he thought might be a stylis. This un-

precedented use of the same figures as both major and minor device he regarded

as certainly calculated. Stylistically the coin belongs to Alexander's earliest

50 The arguments used are based rather on the silver coins than on the gold. The date of the

earliest gold at Tarsus is not particularly investigated; it is assumed to begin in 333 (Tarsos,

pp. 22,26), but in the case of Amphipolis there is gold directly connected with the silver series: e.g.,

Miiller 104f. with Demanhur 327-331 (331 B.C.) and Miiller 192f. with Demanhur 254-265 (333/2

B.C.).

51 Melanges numismatiques, 4, pp. 210-213, PI. XIV, 3.

62 Historical Greek Coins, London, 1906, p. 105, n. 2.

63 JIAN 1914, pp. 116f.

54 ZfN 1922, pp. 185-205.

THE KING'S MONEY 13

issues; Lederer believed that it was the very first die cut for the new king's

gold (and possibly cut in Athens itself). Moreover, he made more specific an

idea that had already been advanced by Babelon. Golden Nikai had been

dedicated in Athens in the latter half of the 5th century, but in the critical days

of 407/6 they had, with one exception, been melted down into money. One was

restored in 374/3 B.C.,55 others by Lycurgus in the late 4th century. In this case

we have a literary tradition and inscriptional evidence as well. The pseudo-

Plutarchian Lives of the Ten Orators (841 D and 852 B) and Pausanias I, 29 both

record the fact that Lycurgus, who was notable for the extent to which he

restored her ancient riches to Athens, had presented to the goddess on the

Acropolis, among other things, golden Nikai. Two inscriptions, IG2 II, 333 and

1493 testify to that fact. Now when the gift was dated in 336, as understood by

Babelon, a connection between Athens' and Alexander's Nike is an obvious

possibility, and Lederer (p. 202) definitely holds the coin to be inspired by

those restored statues. One item that makes this attractive is the fact that

the figure is not at all what we should expect from the 4th century, whereas it

is perfectly appropriate to a restoration of a 5th century original.56 Unfortu-

nately for the theory in this form, the two inscriptions are now dated 334/3.57

It has been rescued, however, by a daring conjecture of Homer A. Thompson:58

to wit, that the restoration of 336/5 was an act of munificence of Alexander

himself, whose selection of the type would then commemorate an act of

generosity toward a city for which he had recurring moods of affection. We

have only to read the speeches of the later Attic orators to find that not all

Athenians were his enemies; doubtless he had more friends than we know, and

perhaps he thought he had more friends than he did. It is obvious that the only

real objection to this solution is skepticism as to such cordial relations between

Alexander and Athens in 336.59 If that can be accepted, all difficulties are met.

But we should have the candor to admit that the choice would not have been

expected and is foreign to general historical probability.

As to the obverse type of the silver, we are met with a different kind of

question. The head of young Heracles with a lion's skin covering had ample

65 Dorothy Burr Thompson, "The Golden Nikai Reconsidered," Hesperia 1944, pp. 173-209.

S6 D. B. Thompson, op. cit., p. 189.

67 Accepted by W. S. Ferguson, The Treasurers of Athena, Cambridge, 1932, pp. 122f., n. 2.

68 "A Golden Nike from the Athenian Agora," Athenian Studies presented to William Scott

Ferguson, Cambridge, 1940, pp. 183-210.

59 It might be asked, if relations later deteriorated, why was not the type changed? But this

admits of an easy answer. It is obvious that what Alexander wanted for his new currency was

stability. No event and no sentiment was allowed to affect his types once they had been chosen.

It is possible that there was, in his lifetime, variety in the appearance of the minor denominations,

but there was none in the coins that did the main fiscal work of the empire.

14 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

precedent on Macedonian coins, having appeared under Archelaus I, 413-399,

Amyntas III, 389-383, 381-369, Perdiccas III, 364-359 and Philip II, 359-336.60

The legend of the descent of the Macedonian kings from Heracles, whenever

it was invented, had been very useful to their claim to admission among the

first families of the Hellenic world and no reason beyond tradition was needed

for the adoption of the hero's portrait as a device. Kleiner, whose theory re-

quires that the silver as well as the gold should have been inaugurated in 331,

argues that Alexander's interest in Heracles was not conspicuous until the

episode of Tyre, after which his heroic ancestor assumes great importance in

his life,61 but the conclusion is open to the same objections that have already

been discussed in regard to the gold. The simplest explanation is that the new

king adopted an old type but for a new denomination.

It is natural that the question should have been repeatedly asked: "is the

Heracles head a portrait of Alexander himself ?" There are really two independ-

ent questions, not always distinguished by investigators. Was it the intention

of the die-engravers to produce a likeness (which might be true without any

effect on the general public, most of whom would not have seen the king at

close enough range to judge) ? Was it the general persuasion that the head was

a likeness of the king (which might be true without any such intent on the part

of the die-engravers)? We have sundry bits of evidence that the second was

true in later tradition.

1) A very interesting tetradrachm was issued in the 2nd century B.C. by

Agathocles, king of Bactria, one of a number honoring his predecessors. The

obverse has the familiar head in lion's skin with the inscription AAEEANAPOY

TOY (DiAirmOY (PLATE II, y).62 Here Heracles is altogether ignored and the

portrait is meant to be not that of the deified conqueror but of Agathocles'

royal but human precursor.

2) At Alexandria-ad-Issum bronze coins were struck in the 1st century A.D.

(to judge by their style and fabric) on the obverse of which there is a Heracles

60 Gaebler, op. cit., Archelaos, hemiobols p. 156, 9, 10, PI. XXIX, 18, 19; Amyntas, hemi-

drachm, p. 159, 3, PI. XXX, 1, bronze, p. 160, 7-11, PI. XXX, 7, 9 (cf. the contemporary bronze

of Pydna, PL XX, 30); Perdiccas, didrachm, p. 161, r, PI. XXX, 14, bronze, pp. 161f., 2-5,

PI. XXX, 15-17; Philip, gold, half stater-eighth stater pp. 163f., 9-16, PI. XXX, 28, didrachm,

p. 166, 26, PI. XXXI, 1, octobol, p. 166, 27, bronze, p. 168, 37-39, 41, PI. XXXI, 10, 14-16, with

Heracles head left, p. 168, 40, PI. XXXI, 17.

61 Op. cit., pp. 11, 12. It should be remarked that his argument relies heavily on the non-

appearance of Heracles in the record of the early years, but surely, considering the nature of the

literary sources, the argumentum ex silentio is very risky. Also, some weight should be given to the

prominence of Heracles in Isocrates' Oration to Philip, especially sections 104-115.

62 Margarete Bieber, "The Portraits of Alexander the Great," Proceedings of the American

Philosophical Society 1949, p. 414, fig. 63.

THE KING'S MONEY 15

head in lion's skin which, considering the town, must be understood as a picture

of Alexander.63

3) A great many bronze coins were issued in Macedonia in the 3rd century

A.D. with the head of Alexander on the obverse identified by the inscription

AAEEANAPOY (PLATE II, 8).M The most favored portrait seems to be one with

diadem and flowing hair, obviously modelled on the coinage of Lysimachus,

but there also appears the head in lion's skin headdress,65 which shows that

at that period there was no doubt as to who was represented.

4) Apollonia Mordiaeum struck a bronze coin in the time of Caracalla on

which the Heracles portrait is identified by inscription as Alexander the Founder

of Apollonia.66

5) There is also an interesting mediaeval item in the De Thematibus of the

emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetus (945-959 A.D.).67 Speaking of the

Macedonian kings who considered themselves descendants of Heracles who

slew the Nemean lion, he reports that instead of taenia or crown or royal purple,

they crowned themselves with the skin of a lion's head which they prized more

than jewels. "Trustworthy proof of this is the coin of Alexander of Macedon

adorned with that kind of portrait." So there were Alexander tetradrachms to

be seen in the loth century and at so late a date the answer to the second

question is still that the head was commonly supposed to be that of Alexander,

and surely it is not very daring to guess that the same answer would be right

for a much earlier period, even the period of Alexander's own lifetime. But for

lack of a statement it cannot be proven.

The first question may be debated and has been. It is unnecessary to refer

to all the writers who have had their say, since some have nothing new to offer.

A few believed that the head is always intended to be Alexander. We have seen

that this is the position taken, for different reasons by Cousinery and by

Kleiner.68 It was supported also by some of the older numismatists writing in

63 BMC Lycaonia, Isauria and Cilicia, p. 29, nos. 2-4.

64 Gaebler, op. cit., Erste Abteiling., pp. 94-191. The illustrations of this part of the work are

so badly arranged as to be almost unusable, and the dating is very questionable.

65 Op. cit., p. 162, no. 175, PI. IV, 14.

66 BMC Lycia, Pamphylia and Pisidia, p. 202, no. 1, PI. XXXIII, 1.

67 Book II, Theme 2. The passage is quoted by the older numismatists, e.g., Joseph Eckhel

Doctrina Numorum Veterum, Part I, Vol. 2, Vienna, 1839, p. 99.

68 In 1959 there appeared an article by Kurt Lange, "Zur Frage des Bildnis gehaltes bei

Kopfen auf Miinzen Philips II und Alexanders III, des GroBen, von Makedonien," (Wissenschaft-

liche Abhandlungen des deutschen Numismatikertages inGottingen, 1951, Gottingen, 1959, pp. 27-33)

which accepted Kleiner's theories and sometimes exaggerated them. Lange believes that the

Heracles head was a portrait and was recognized as such, at the time as well as later, but he will

not say that every tetradrachm bears a true portrait, and the numismatic part of his article is

clearly the least successful.

16 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

a day before the resource of abundant illustration, so that their conclusions

could not be presented so as to convince the eye; nor, indeed, were their own

convictions based on wide and intimate visual acquaintance with the material.

Others have held that the head was never intended as a portrait. Such is

Eckhel's belief,69 supported by a bookish argument characteristic of his time.

He appeals to the words of Horace (Epistles II. 1. 239-41):

"Edicto vetuit, ne quis se praeter Apellem

Pingeret, aut alius Lysippo duceret aera

Fortis Alexandri vultum simulantia."

He might have added the passage from Pliny the Elder (H. N. VII. 37. 125):

Idem hie imperator edixit ne quis ipsum alius quam Apelles pingeret, quam

Pyrgoteles scalperet, quam Lysippus ex acre duceret; and the later passage

(XXXVII. 4. 1) where the authorization of Pyrgoteles seems to apply only to

carving in emerald.70 Even so fortified the argument does not amount to much.

The meaning of the edict (whatever form it took) must have been that the king

was not going to sit for his portrait to any artists except those three. He cannot

have hoped, or desired, to prevent the making of copies and copies of copies

by any who felt so inclined. Indeed we have ancient references to other por-

traits besides those of the official appointees.71 Die-sinkers could certainly

make portraits of the king without breaking the law.

Most of the discussions have been, of course, parts of more general inquiries

into the portraits of Alexander in all media, but whether other kinds are included

or not, the scholars have taken one of two positions, either denying that there

were any numismatic portraits of Alexander during his lifetime, or admitting that

certain coins might be so considered. The former view has the weighty author-

ity of Imhoof-Blumer,72 which is heartily supported by Theodor Schreiber.73

69 Loc. cit. (n. 67).

70 Eckhel does refer to Apuleius, Florida, I. 7. 2, who carelessly repeats Pliny but substitutes

Polycleitus for Lysippus. The weakness of the whole tradition is well exposed by Alfred Emerson,

"The Portraiture of Alexander the Great; a Terracotta Head in Munich," A]A 1886, pp. 408-413,

1887, pp. 234-260. Nevertheless, J. J. Bernoulli (Die erhaltenen Darstdlungen Alexanders des

Grofien, Munich, 1905, p. 28) does not hesitate to subscribe to the theory that the Alexander head

on Lysimachus' coins goes back to an original of Pyrgoteles. I can see no reason for this but

sentiment.

71 Margarete Bieber, op. cit., pp. 375f.

72 Portraitkopfe auf antiken Miinzen hellenischer und hettenisierter Volker, Leipzig, 1885, p. 14.

His opinion cannot be taken as proof. In the same place he asserts that the title BAIIAEQI is

almost without exception posthumous, but this is certainly untrue; the instance cited in n. 1

above is dated 328-326.

73 St^ien fiber das Bildnis Alexanders des Grofien, Leipzig, 1903, p. 166, "Alexander hat nie

mit seinem Bilde gepragt, sowenig wie sein Vater Philip." So also Hansjorg Bloesch "Personlich-

keit und Individuality auf antiken Miinzen," Winterthurer Jahrbuch 1960, p. 62.

THE KING'S MONEY 17

According to them portraiture was an invention of the Hellenistic age, and the

difference between one Alexander tetradrachm and the next is to be explained

by differences in time and place of striking and difference of die-sinkers.

Both authors look to the issues of Lysimachus (PLATE II, 5) and Ptolemy

(PLATE II, 4) for real evidence as to the appearance of the king their master.

But other scholars are not able to dismiss the differences so lightly and

maintain, with greater or less conviction, that here and there Alexander's own

face does appear under the lion's skin. It is noticeable that the numismatists

are mostly very cautions and show no disposition to cite specific examples.

Muller who, in his time, had studied a much larger body of material than anyone

else, lays down the general principle that the earliest Heracles heads of the

reign are like their predecessors on the coins of previous kings, but that some-

times later, and commonly after 323 a likeness appears, not as a result of any

command of the king but at the choice of the several magistrates or of the

artists themselves.74 But there is no indication of where to look for these

appearances. George Macdonald75 is very reticent: "Tradition, indeed, has it

that Alexander's features are to be discerned in the head of Heracles—even if

we grant that this is so, the very circumstance that portraiture was introduced

in covert fashion, lurking under the shelter of religion, is highly significant." And

Newell in a book where positive identification would certainly be appropriate,76

says only, "The silver coins invariably bear the head of the youthful Heracles

covered with a lion's skin—the features frequently resembling those of Alex-

ander himself."

There are those, however, who are willing to be more specific. E. Q. Vis-

conti77 finds indication of the king's features on tetradrachms of Rhodes and of

Ake. G. F. Hill, more daring than his fellow numismatists, publishes "a head

of young Heracles r., with features resembling Alexander's."78 The coin is from

Amathus in Cyprus.

Using Newell's plates as a basis, Kurt Gebauer has a full and careful stylistic

analysis of the coinage as the first part of his "Alexanderbildnis undAlexander-

74 Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand, pp. 12-15. It is strange to have Muller repeating the

tradition of the three approved artists as the reason why the making of his portrait on coins

cannot be attributed to the lifetime of Alexander.

75 Coin Types, Glasgow, 1905, p. 151.

76 Royal Greek Portrait Coins, New York, 1937, p. 13.

77 Iconographie grecque, Paris, 1811, Vol. II, Chap. II "Rois de Macedoine," § 1 "Alexandra le

Grand," pp. 28-52.

78 Historical Greek Coins, London, 1910, p. 103, no. 59, PI. VII (an enlargement of the

obverse is on PI. IX of Select Greek Coins). The mint is not identified by Hill; Newell was at first

uncertain of it (Reattribution, p. 54, no. 258, PI. 30. n) but later assigned it to Amathus "after

circa 325 B.C." (Demanhur, p. 45, nos. 2703-2707).

18 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

typus."79He argues that the first pieces from the mint of Amphipolis (PLATE I,

u) and, to a lesser extent, the first from other mints, show a head which is

perfectly characteristic of the mid-fourth century. Within the next half decade

there is a breaking with tradition and a greater freedom and individuality,

usually followed by a hardening into schematization. From this the Macedonian

mints never recover but those of Asia, farther from the artistic dominance of

the homeland, and inheriting the traditions of local schools of art, produce

essentially new portraits. From Sidon in 327 comes a die which he recognizes

as the first true likeness of Alexander on a coin (PLATE II, g), the effect of the

exciting news of his invasion of India upon the imagination of a gifted engraver.

Thereafter there is no return to the impersonal and universal Heracles, though

the individual portrait too loses something of its original freshness. Another

essay in portraiture comes from Babylon in 316 (PLATE II, 10), this time

showing Lysippan influence. Gebauer regards the development of the head in

the years after Alexander's death as a combination of the conception of

Alexander as a god with that of Alexander as an historic ruler, the various

local streams finally merging in the full tide of Hellenistic art. The portraits

which appear on the first silver of Ptolemy and on both silver and gold of

Lysimachus are unmistakably identifiable as the deified Alexander.

The article has excellent, clear and well-chosen illustrations. Its tone is

logical and temperate and the case it makes is certainly a respectable one. Of

course, the language of aesthetic criticism is hard. There is so much that the

eye perceives that cannot be put into adequate words. And there are so many

times when two beholders will perceive different things as to matters of ex-

pression and emotion. The difficulties are increased when the argument is not

about single substantative works of art but, as here, about items selected as

examples from a large group which has its inner differences as well as its com-

mon characteristics. Perhaps another scholar, working with the same material,

might modify the course of this study and its conclusions. But it does seem to

me that the argument is probable as a whole and supported by its details. It

will be seen that it altogether rejects the idea that the broadcasting of his

portrait was part of Alexander's original plan, or, indeed, that he had any-

thing to do with it at any time. A priori it would be attractive to think that it

had been part of the plan for the imperial coinageâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that Alexander had anti-

cipated Ptolemy and Seleucus and Demetrius Poliorcetes in making use of his

money to spread his fame. It has been suggested that he himself had been

anticipated by his father and that the bearded head on Philip's silver was

79 Mitteilungen des deutschen archaologischen Institut, Athenische Abteilung 63/64 (1938/39),

pp. 1-106.

THE KING'S MONEY 19

intended at once for Zeus and for the king.80 But in this case we have no reliable

portraits of Philip preserved for comparison and the unproven possibility can-

not be used to strengthen the case for Alexander.

The different approach of Miss Bieber's "The Portraits of Alexander the

Great" leads to a similar result. As none of her predecessors had done, she

"distinguishes between the different periods in which the bewildering varieties

of Alexander portraits preserved for us have been created." Her only addition

to the numismatic material in Gebauer's article is the enlargement, as fig. 32,

of another coin of Sidon of about 320 B.C. (PLATE II, 11).81 She would apparently

not object to his theory that the first coin portrait came in 327, though she

does not mention it. But none of her pictures which may derive from originals

earlier than that time has any relation to the head on the first coins from

Amphipolis, Tarsos and Sidon, and of these the series from Amphipolis is surely

the first of all on the evidence of style.

Both of these studies assume, as do Miiller and Hill, that the appearance

of a real portrait is the achievement of an individual engraver or perhaps an

individual magistrate or satrap. On the other hand, Erik Sjoqvist, publishing

a head in the Boston Museum82 illustrates, as a parallel, a tetradrachm of

Sicyon (PLATE II, I2)83 which "shows Alexander's likeness in the traditional

Heracles iconography." This, he believes, is not merely the work of a single

gifted die-cutter but a document of the gradual process of the deification of

80 Kleiner, op. cit., pp. 39f., notes 12-14, nas a most interesting collection of material about

the portrait of Philip and his assimilation to Zeus. Lange, op. cit., is sure that both the bearded

rider on Philip's reverse and the Zeus head on his obverse are pictures of the king. But his

deductions are more striking than his proof.

81 She cites and copies as her fig. 33 Gebauer's PL 3. 17, the coin from Babylon. But she

describes it as "Lifetime, about 324 B.C." I cannot understand why. It is dated, as Gebauer says,

to about 316 by Newell (Alexander Hoards III Andritsaena, New York, 1923, p. 20) and that

seems quite certainly right.

82 "Alexander-Heracles: a Preliminary Note," Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,

June 1953, pp. 30-33.

83 It is the first tetradrachm according to The Alexander Coinage of Sicyon arranged from Notes

of Edward T. Newell with Comments and Additions by Sydney P. Noe, New York, 1950, p. 12, no.

3, 1. It is instructive for anyone having to work from printed illustrations to compare the life-size

collotype of the coin on Noe's PI. I with the enlargement of the same coin which is Sjoqvist's fig. 2,

to see the effect of difference in lighting. Sjoqvist dates it without argument to 330 B.C. This

simply follows Noe's dating of "330/25 to c. 318 B.C." and that, in turn is based on Newell's

remark (Alexander Hoards: Introduction and Kyparissia Hoard, p. 14) "about 330 B.C.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;and

certainly by 325 B.C.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a large issue of staters and tetradrachms bearing Alexander's types was

instituted at Sicyon." But, in discussing another piece in Group I (Demanhur PI. IV, 1 = Noe 13,

1b) Gebauer, pp.6, 7, says "Es hat mit den Munzen von Amphipolis und Pella eine gewisse

Verhaltenheit und Selbstverstandlichkeit des Ausdruck gemeinsam, der sie gegeniiber asiatischen

Munzen zusammenstellt," and dates it 325-315.

20 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Alexander during his own lifetime."It marks," he says, "the first decisive

step in the evolution of an iconography that was totally new to Greek art:

that of rendering an image of a deified ruler." He enumerates convincingly the

specific traits which make this seem to be an actual individual and not a mere

traditional convention, and he believes that the original is the official portrait

of Alexander in 332, probably by Lysippus. If we are dealing with an official

program the result ought to be that from this time on the coins show with

increasing frequency and success heads that are recognizably those of an

actual person, somewhat idealized to be sure, but not those of a conventional

hero. But do they? Comparison of the different specimens selected as likenesses

by the various scholars raises a certain uneasiness in the mind of the beholder

and a feeling that we need much more material than even Gebauer has pro-

vided.

There is a certain deceptive pattern in the situation. On the one hand there

are the coins earlier than Alexander with a beardless head of Heracles. These

cannot be portraits of him. They vary considerably in style but it is impossible

that they should be portraits of the various rulers who struck them.84 They

must be Heracles alone. On the other hand there are the heads generally agreed

to be posthumous portraits of Alexander, issued by Ptolemy and Lysimachus.

Between are the issues of Alexander himself which should be related to one

extreme or the other. But it is not quite as easy as this, for no one has yet

demonstrated the uniformity of the testimony of Ptolemy and Lysimachus.

Indeed, a glance at PI. IX of Hill's Select Greek Coins (Paris, 1927) which shows

enlargements of coins of Alexander and his two successors tempts us to wonder

whether we may not recognize the later heads because they bear the accessories

of divinization—the elephant's head and the ram's horns—and not because

they resemble each other. We must never forget that we are dealing with the

craftsmanship of many die-sinkers who varied greatly in skill and also—as

Professor Sjoqvist reminds me—in sympathy with the idea of divinization.

Alexander's mints never achieved, and probably never attempted the degree

of uniformity shown in the Athena heads of 5th century Athens. But what is

the proportion between the specimens which show conformity with an official

program and those aberrations of intent or execution which would seem to

deny its existence? An enormous task awaits some heroic scholar: analysis

which shall be not selective but inclusive of the dozens of dies of Heracles' head

84 For one thing, e.g., Amyntas uses the unbearded head on his small silver and bronze, a

bearded Heracles head on his large silver; for another, there would be no explanation for the

beardless head on coins of the Mainland Thasians and their successors the citizens of Philippi

(Gaebler, op. cit., PI. XX, 1-9). There are two entirely distinct styles here neither of which could

be regarded as a portrait of Philip II.

THE KING'S MONEY 21

to see what generalizations can be safely made. It must be done without pre-

conceptionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and it might well end in failure. Perhaps some guidance can be

provided by Cahn's synopsis of the elements which form style85 but it is a work

not to be undertaken by the impatient or the faint of heart.

For the present let us content ourselves with concluding that a traditional

type was selected by Alexander as suitable for an imperial currency, which

proved its acceptability in an empire wider than he could have imagined and

that, at some times and in some places, true likenesses of the king and his

commanding personality inspired the hands of his artisans so that men came

eventually to believe that he and Heracles were one.

The reverse type is invariable in its main features. Zeus is always seated to

the left, he has an himation over his legs but is undraped from the waist up, on

his outstretched right hand he holds an eagle, with his left he leans upon a long

scepter behind him. There are details, with which we shall deal presently, that

vary. He is sometimes called Zeus Olympics.86 Yet there are important differ-

ences from the statue of Zeus that was at Olympia in Alexander's time: the

great chryselephantine statue by Pheidias. They have deterred most scholars

from giving a title to Alexander's deity. One other identification was put

forward, but it cannot be seriously considered. Eckhel87 says "Jupiter hie

Nicephorus (a mere slip for Aetophorus) haud dubie est Bottiaeus ille seu cultus

in Bottiaea Macedoniae regione in qua sita Pella." Impressed by "haud dubie"

from so great an authority, Muller accepted the name,88 and, in his early work89

Newell contributed a rhetorical flourish which his maturer judgment allowed

to be forgotten: "on the reverse we see Zeus of Bottiaea, who had a famous

temple at Pella and was honored throughout Macedonia." But Bottiaean Zeus

is a very elusive figure indeed. The single ancient mention of him is by Libanius

in connection with a dedication of Alexander at Antioch-on-the-Orontes (or

rather where Antioch was later to be founded)90. Any connection with the

district of Bottiaea around Pella is conjecture and nothing more.

The divergence from Olympian Zeus is excellently stated by Cook in a

passage worth quoting in full.91 "When Alexander the Great placed upon his

85 Herbert A. Cahn, "Analyse et interpretation du style," Congres International de Numis-

matique, II, Actes, Paris, 1957, pp. 37-42.

86 E.g., Gardner, A History of Ancient Coinage, 700-300 B.C., Oxford, 1918, p. 426; Seltman,

Greek Coins, p. 205; Newell, Royal Greek Portrait Coins, p. 13, "a dignified representation of the

panhellenic god, par excellence, Olympian Zeus, enthroned and holding scepter and eagle."

87 Doctrina Numorum, Vol. II, p. 100.

88 Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand, p. 5, n. 12.

89 Reattribution, p. 28.

90 A. B. Cook, Zeus, Cambridge, 1914-1940, Vol. II, pp. 1187 f.

91 Op. tit., pp. 760-62.

22 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

silver coinage the design of a seated Zeus, it might have been expected that

he would choose for the purpose the great cult-statue at Olympia—and the

more so as Mount Olympos was a prominent feature of his own domain. In

point of fact, he did nothing of the sort. He set aside all the improvements

introduced by Pheidias and deliberately reverted to the old pre-Pheidiac type.

A comparison of his tetradrachms on the one hand with the federal coins of

Arkadia (PLATE II, 13), on the other with the Olympian statue is instructive:

Arcadian Coins Pheidias' Statue Alexander's Coins

Right hand has eagle Right hand has Nike Right hand has eagle

Left hand has scepter Left hand has scepter Left hand has scepter

held high held low held high

Right leg is in Left leg is in Right leg is in

advance of left leg advance of right leg advance of left leg

Himation is wrapped Himation covers left Himation is wrapped

about lower limbs upper arm as well about lower limbs

only only

Throne has at first Throne has high back Throne has at first

no back no back

The inference is clear. Alexander, ignoring the idealized ruler at Olympia,

harked back to the more ancient and popular type of Zeus Lykaios. After all,

Mount Lykaion too was called Olympos. Yet so immense was the fame of the

Pheidiac figure that tetradrachms issued later in the name and with the

types of Alexander are increasingly influenced by it. The left leg is advanced

instead of the right, and the throne is manifestly assimilated to that of Zeus

Olympics—so even Alexander failed to arrest the moral evolution of Zeus." To

the resultant questions, "What motive led him to make the attempt? Why did

he select for his world-wide coinage the old eagle-bearer of Arkadia rather than

the newer and nobler creation of Pheidias?"—he has no answer to offer.92

But the particular form of Zeus was less important than the fact that, like

Alexander's other devices, he was easy for inhabitants of the various districts

92 Seltman had suggested to him that the model might be the Baal of Tarsos and its selection

an instance of Alexander's internationalism. But, as Cook recognizes (p. 762, n. 2) this conflicts

with the dating of the first Macedonian issues, a question that has already been discussed. It

might also be pointed out that while stylistically Baal on coins of Mazaeus at Tarsus just before

Alexander is very much like Alexander's Zeus from the same mint (Tarsos, passim), the designs

have important differences: on the Mazaeus silver the scepter is in front surmounted by an eagle,

on the Alexanders the scepter is behind and the eagle held on the open hand. Gardner had recog-

nized the differences which Cook lists. The Types of Greek Coins, p. 186, "The Zeus of Alexander's

coins is certainly not an imitation in any close sense of the great Olympian statue of Pheidias, but

the type is probably introduced in honor of the god represented by that statue."

THE KING'S MONEY 23

of the empire to accept as their own. Seltman has put the case clearly :93 'Though

introduced in 336 B.C. these types were destined to appeal equally to Greeks and

to Oriental subjects of Alexander as yet unconquered; for the Phoenician was

to see in the obverse type his own god Melqart, the Cilician was to regard the

seated deity as the god Ba'al of Tarsus, and the Babylonian, though he might

not be able to read the Greek name of Alexander, was to look on pictures that

might recall his own Gilgamesh, the lion-slayer, and the figure of Bel-Marduk,

god of Babylon. When it is realized that, next to Macedonia, the greatest

mints of Alexander were to be established precisely in Phoenicia, Cilicia, and

Babylon, the uncanny foresight that the king showed in the selection of these

types becomes apparent."

Cook recorded the fact that the earliest pose, with the legs stiffly parallel,

the right in front of the left, gives place to an easier position, more like that of

Pheidias' figure, with the right leg drawn back and the right foot appearing in

back of the left one (PLATE II, 10, 11). This change does not take place every-

where at the same time, but it is general and is an indication of date rather than

of place. But there are small differences which are useful for a more exact

placing of the issues in their respective mints. Not only does the throne some-

times have a back (as mentioned by Cook) but the back may be decorated with

little Nikai on the top, and the shape of the legs and the placing of the cross-

bars differ. The god is sometimes laureate; sometimes there are long locks on

the nape of his neck, sometimes short ones, sometimes none. There may be a

dotted exergual line beneath his feet, or a straight one, or a footstool, or

nothing. Together with these items also goes a constant modification of style

which is in itself sometimes sufficient to prove the relation between reverse dies

without more objective variants.

But far more important than other minutiae for the reverses of both silver

and gold are the little ancillary figuresâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the symbolsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or the letters or mono-

grams which, with very few exceptions, occur in the field of the reverse type.

They are not conceived as parts of the main design, as is evident from the fact

that the scales of the type figure and the symbol are quite unrelated. Scholars

were early convinced that symbols, monograms and letters alike were indica-

tions of the place of striking, and great ingenuity was displayed in recognizing

civic devices and deciphering cities' names. Some of the suggestions were good

and have been confirmed by later work with greater resources, though the

original discoverer is sometimes forgotten. Some were quite fantastic and

displayed an astonishing ignorance of ancient history and geography. It would

be amusing to list the impossible guesses that have been made, but no serious

93 Greek Coins, p. 205. The suggestion mentioned in the foregoing note does not appear in

either the first or second edition.

24 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

value would result. Any who are disposed to investigate this chapter in the

history of human error might start with Eckhel's list of his predecessors,94

noting his own selective and conservative suggestions as to mints, based

largely upon Pellerin "post infelices aliorum conatus."95

These early attempts have one common weakness: they do not distinguish

between the first coins and the later ones, some of them very much later. Such

differentiation is among the great merits of what is still the basic work in the

field: L. Miiller's Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand. To a volume which

discussed all aspects of the coinage of Alexander, with that of Philip II and

Philip III as well, was added an Atlas wherein is displayed in clear tabular form

all the varieties known to him (1735 for Alexander, 313 for the elder Philip, 142

for the younger) with drawings of the symbols and monograms, indication of

their placing on the coin and of its fabric.96 The fabric was arranged in seven

classes, the increasing breadth and flatness of whose flans was the sign of a

chronological development, and they are illustrated by engravings on the first

two plates. His discussion of them, on pp. 5-9, 97-104, allows for border-line

cases, and would not now be accepted in all its details, but it added an impor-

tant new instrument for the analysis of the huge number of coins with which

we have to deal.

Miiller treats of symbols and monograms more than once (pp. 35-49, 90-93,

116-122). He began with the conviction that they represented towns or districts

and in his Atlas the main headings are place names, with lists of Incerti for the

various districts, the length of which might have given him some cause for

doubt. Thus, in Macedonia he lists 15 towns followed by 61 varieties from

Incertae Urbes which, on the least reckoning, would amount to 1 1 more. He does

at one point admit that symbols might be those of magistrates,97 but he is sure

that the marks are generally those of towns.98 Of course, additions to his lists

were made, but I think there was no published questioning of his principle

until a quarter of a century later.

94 Elementa Rei Numariae Veterum sive Josephi Eckhelii Prolegomena Doctrinae Numorum,

Berlin, 1841, pp. 141-172. I would not, of course, suggest that the bad guesses stopped with

Eckhel.

95 Dodrina Numorum, Vol. II, pp. 100-103.

96 It was rightly thought to be worth while to issue a photographic copy of the Atlas in 1957

(Miinzen und Medaillen A. G., Basel).

97 P. 30.

98 He restated his position in "Remarks on the Classification of Some Coins of Lysimachus,"

NC 1870, pp. 1-1o: "In Numismatique d'Alexandre I only say (p. 37) that these symbols are in

general to be regarded as city symbolsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;It is possible that some of them have been the escutcheons

or signets of magistrates or mint mastersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but I have nowhere found sufficient reason for explain-

ing any of them in that way."

THE KING'S MONEY 25

In 1869 Edward H. Bunbury published" two tetradrachms of Lysimachus,

one (Miiller100 no. 112, Aenos) with caduceus and bee, the other (Miiller no. 445 a,

Chrysaoris in Caria) with torch and bee; they were both struck with the same

obverse die. "It appears to me, therefore," he said, "as certain as any con-

clusion can be, in a subject where we are necessarily left to inference, that the

two coins in question belong to the same part of the country, and can only be

referred to neighboring cities." This is as far as his disagreement with Miiller

went. But a much more serious doubt as to the validity ofMuller's method was

raised by von Sallet.101 He found three staters of Philip II with the same

obverse die. Two of them were Miiller no. 88 (Philippi) with K and tripod; the

third, the gold counterpart of Miiller no. 237 (Incerti) with K and a broad hat

but without the tripod. He concluded that these must all have come from the

same mint, and that the mint was not Philippi. The symbols, then, may be

those of magistrates or emissions and not of places. In reviewing this essay with

approval102 Head remarked, "It is becoming every year more and more ap-

parent that the whole edifice rests on a foundation of sand. The symbols,

however much they may resemble municipal devices or coin-types, are, as Dr.

von Sallet clearly shows, merely the signets of the monetary magistrates, and

only very exceptionally to be accepted as mint-marks." This was so much more

drastic than Bunbury's essays in revision that it drew a cry of distress from

him.103 Head, he protested, was destroying the whole foundation for a reason-

able arrangement of the Alexander coinage and leaving mere chaos. To this

Head replied in a brief note.104 He granted that Muller's Classes V, VI, and VII,

which were issued by free cities after the death of Alexander, bore symbols,

sometimes accompanied by initial letters, the devices of the cities which struck

them. But, for the earlier coins, he expressed his conviction that three fourths

of the signs were those of magistrates and not of cities. Head's doctrine con-

vinced Imhoof-Blumer, who appealed to it in support of his identification of the

mint of Babylon.105 Finally, in 1912, Newell, in his Reattribution of Certain

""On Some Unpublished Coins of Lysimachus," JVC 1869, pp. 1-18, esp. 5f.

100 L. Miiller, Die Miinzen des Thracischen Konigs Lysimachus, Copenhagen, 1858, a pendant

to his work on Alexander.

101 A. von Sallet, "Beitrage zur antiken Miinz- und Alterthumskunde," ZfN 1882, pp. 138

to 189, "Die Beizeichen auf den Miinzen Philipps II von Macedonien," pp. 152-154.

102 NC 1882, pp. 296 f.

103 "Additional Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great," NC 1883, pp. 1-17, esp. 14-17.

104 "Coinage of Alexander the Great. An Explanation," NC 1883, pp. 18f.

105 NC 1906, p. 19 in "The Mint at Babylon: a Rejoinder." Sir Henry Howorth, "Some Coins

attributed to Babylon by Dr. Imhoof-Blumer," NC 1904, pp. 1-38, had made an all-inclusive attack

on the proposed identification which must have seriously disturbed the Swiss scholar, for his

rejoinder appeared in German, NZ1905, pp. 1-8 and translated into English in the article quoted.

26 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great, produced such a wealth of evidence on

identical dies from the Demanhur Hoard that the hypothesis of a large number

of little mints had to be abandoned permanently.

There are, to be sure, cases in which true mint marks do appear, and they

are not all confined to the posthumous issues (for example, K or K for Kition in

Cyprus, [$ for Paphos, A for Arados, II for Sidon) but the great majority, as

Head saw, stand not for places but for persons. Who these persons were we do

not know; they had supervision over particular issues, holding office for a term,

which would usually be a year after the regular Greek custom, seeing that the

official standards were maintained and being allowed to put their private marks

on the coins struck under their charge as a subordinate guarantee to the great

guarantee of the king's name.

The bronze was less common and is much less well known. The types refer

to Heracles, both obverse and reverse, though no one has raised any question

about the portrait. The positions of the bow and club vary, and there are letters

or symbols which will ultimately help in achieving an arrangement, but corre-

spondences with the symbols on gold and silver are spasmodic and it is likely

that the bronze issues were the care of separate officials. They were certainly

not struck with the frequency and regularity of the gold and silver. The serious

study of them has hardly begun.

Such are the essential aspects of the major coins which formed the inter-

national currency of Alexander's empire.

These denominations were supplemented at one time or another by the

following multiples and fractions:

Gold Distater

The same types as the stater PLATE I, 4

There are a considerable number of these which were evidently an important

element in the currency.

Gold Half Stater

The same types as the stater PLATE I, 6

Gold Quarter Stater

The same types as the stater PLATE I, 7

Gold Quarter Stater

Head of Athena right

Rev. Bow and Club PLATE I, 8

Gold Eighth Stater

Head of Athena right

Rev. Bow and Club PLATE I, 9

THE KING'S MONEY 27

These fractions are rare and do not seem to have played an important role.

Silver Decadrachm

The same types as the tetradrachm PLATE I,10

This also is rare and was probably confined to a single issue from Babylon.106

Silver Decadrachm

Alexander on horseback with a spear attacking Porus on an elephant.

Rev. Alexander standing left in a Persian cap, holding a thunderbolt

in his right hand, leaning upon a spear with his left. He wears a

sword and is crowned by a flying Nike. PLATE I,13

Not only is the denomination extraordinary, but the types, commemorating

the battle against Porus, make it obvious that these are rather medallions than

normal pieces of money. Their weights are proper for ten drachmae, but they

can hardly have been intended to be put in circulation.107

Silver Didrachm

The same types as the tetradrachm PLATE I,14

A rare denomination, perhaps confined to the first years of the reign.108

Silver Drachm

The same types as the tetradrachm PLATE I,15

These occur in large numbers. They certainly provided an important sup-

plement to the tetradrachms, though their issue seems to have been concentrated

in Asia Minor.109

Silver Hemidrachm

The same types as the tetradrachms PLATE I,16

Silver Obol

The same types as the tetradrachms PLATE I,17

Silver Hemiobol

The same types as the tetradrachms PLATE I, 18

Like the fractional gold, these silver denominations are rare.

Silver Tetradrachm of Phoenician weight (14.70 gr.)

Head of Zeus right laureate

Rev. Eagle right, looking left, on thunderbolt PLATE I,12

109 Seltman, Greek Coins, p. 213, n. 3.

107 British Museum Quarterly, 1926, pp. 36 f.; NC 1927, pp. 204-206; SNG Berry Collection

ANS Part I, PL 11, 295.

108 Newell, Reattribution, pp. I2f., XV, PI. 7, 1.

109 Thompson and Bellinger, "A Hoard of Alexander Drachms," Yale Classical Studies XIV,

1955. PP. 3-45.

28 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Imhoof-Blumer believed that this was Alexander's first issue from Mace-

donia, preceding the introduction of his own types.110 Head would attribute

it to an eastern mint, perhaps India, after Alexander's death111 and this was

accepted by Newell.112 Kleiner, however,113 returns to Imhoof-Blumer's theory

and is supported on that point by G. K. Jenkins in a review,114 and by Daniel

Schlumberger,115 but the argument of R. B. Whitehead116 for aBactrian origin

would seem conclusive. The point is not of much importance for us since the

coins are so rare that they cannot have played any significant part in the

financing of the empire (so far as I know there are none besides the three in the

British Museum).

Silver Drachm

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle right on thunderbolt PLATE I, 21

Silver Drachm

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle right, looking left, on thunderbolt PLATE I, 19, 20

Silver Tetrobol

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle right on thunderbolt PLATE I, 22

Silver Hemidrachm

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle right on thyrsus PLATE I, 23

Silver Hemidrachm

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle left on thunderbolt PLATE I, 24

Silver Diobol

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Two eagles, face to face, on thunderbolt PLATE I, 25

110 Monnaies grecques, 1883, pp. 118f., PI. D, 8.

111 "The Earliest Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian Coins," NC 1906, pp. 1-16, esp. 1-3,

PI. II, g;HNp. 225.

112 Reattribution, p. 13, n. 6.

113 Op. cit., pp. 7f.

114 JHS 1949, p. 121.

115 Appendix V, "Monnayage d'Etalon pr6sume 'Indien' ou 'Rhodien,'" Raoul Curiel and

Schlumberger, Tresors mondtaires d'Afghanistan, Paris, 1953, pp. 58-62.

116 "The Eastern Satrap Sophytes," NC 1943, pp. 60-72.

THE KING'S MONEY 29

Silver Obol

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Thunderbolt PLATE I, 26

These types may all belong to the early issues of Amphipolis.117 Two other

small fractional issues may be from Syria or Cilicia.

Silver Hemiobol

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Club and bow in case PLATE I, 27

Silver Quarter Obol

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Two clubs in reverse directions PLATE I, 28

Bronze Unit

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle right, looking left, on thunderbolt

Bronze Half

Head of long-haired Apollo, right

Rev. Thunderbolt PLATE I, 30

A common type of bronze unit is

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Bow in case and club PLATE I, 29

Of the whole list the only denominations of real imperial importance are:

distater, stater, tetradrachm and drachm.

To translate these pieces of money with any thoroughness into terms of

human existence would need far more information than we possess, but we

are not without some useful indications of value. The first point to be re-

membered is that Alexander, abandoning his father's choice of standard for

silver, coined on that of Athens according to which the drachm weighed

4.3 grams and was divided into 6 obols. There has been a good deal of discussion

as to why he made the change, and talk of bimetallism which is, I think, suf-

ficiently dealt with by Theodore Reinach who points out that the necessary

conditions for real bimetallism never existed in antiquity.118 What Alexander

did was to follow the example of Athens and strike a silver drachma of the

117 Reattribution, pp. 12-14.

118 "De la Valeur proportionelle de 1'Or et de 1'Argent dans l'Antiquit6 grecque," RN 1893,

pp. 1-26, 141-166.

30 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

same weight as the gold drachma of which two made the stater. Of the relation

of silver and gold we shall speak presently; the issuance of silver money on the

standard used by Athens was certainly not surprising considering the assured

reputation and universal acceptability of the Athenian owls. Schlumberger,

indeed, believes that his choice was influenced not only by their importance in

Greece but also by their imitations which had become so notable an element

in the currency of Persia. What Alexander wanted to do, he says, was to give

a generally recognized coinage to an empire which did not have one and to

extend the use of coinage to the whole territory.119 This largeness of view,

however, would only have been possible at a time when he could foresee the

eastern extension of his empire. It therefore fits Schlumberger's idea that the

imperial currency does not begin with the beginning of the reign. But with the

difficulties caused by this theory we have already dealt. In any case, Alexander

had silver drachms 20 of which were equal to one gold stater in value.

And what were they worth to their possessors ? Any attempt to answer this

question ought to be prefaced by a reminder that we have no evidence from

Macedonia itself. In the works of the orators and the comedians there is a con-

siderable amount of economic information about 4th century Athens, and this

has been carefully gathered by August Bockh in his book Die Staatshaushaltung

der Athener.iw There a great deal can be found out about the range of revenues

and expensesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;rents, dowries, wages, fines, loans, and such matters. But these

figures, while interesting and illuminating in themselves, must be used with

caution for the economy of Macedonia or Asia. Nevertheless, there is one figure

so basic that it seems safe to use it. In the latter part of Aristotle's Constitution

of Athens, which deals with the constitution of his own time, section 49 records

the fact that the Council considered the case of paupers, and any who were

found to have less than 3 minae capital and to be physically incapacitated

received 2 obols a day for food at the public expense. In 4th century Athens,

then, 2 obols a day is the level of bare subsistence. This is borne out by Demos-

thenes' proposal for an expedition against Macedon121 in which the foot soldiers

were to get 2 obols a day which would keep them alive even if they were not

supplemented by plunder. We know nothing of the cost of living in the country,

and Athens may well have been more expensive than any town in Macedonia,

but, if we keep that in mind, it is safe to calculate that a silver diobol was about

the minimum that a man could get along on for a day. Then a drachma would

support him for three days, a tetradrachm for 12.

119 Schlumberger, "L"Argent grec dans 1'Empire achemenide" op. cit., p. 27.

120 Third ed., Berlin, 1886. Translated by George Cornewall Lewis as The Public Economy of

Athens, 2nd ed., London, 1842.

lu First Philippic, Sections 28 f.

THE KING'S MONEY 31

This being the scale of values for silver, we need to convert it into gold and

bronze. Since the gold stater (of two gold drachmae) weighed just twice the

silver drachma, the ratio between gold drachma and silver drachma will be

exactly the ratio between the bullion values of the metals. Now the value of

gold and silver will vary according to supply and demand and will vary

differently except in those instances in modern times where government control

has produced a true bimetallism. Since in Greece the standard was silver the

result was an apparent fluctuation in the value of gold only, though sometimes

ancient writers recognized the interaction of the metals.122 There is evidence

that in the Persian empire there was a fixed official ratio of i^la: 1 ;123 an

Athenian inscription of 434/3 (IG II2. 352) gives a ratio of about 14: I; two

literary sources of the 4th century show that by then the proportion had sunk

to 11 or 12 : 1.124 In the middle of the 4th century the opening of the mines of

Pangaeus suddenly increased the available gold supply which appears to have

dropped the ratio to 10: I,125 and this seems to have been maintained for a

long time.126 It would be dangerous to suppose that it never varied during the

period of Alexander and his successors,127 but what testimony we have encour-

ages us to assume that 10 : 1 was the usual ratio.One gold stater, then, equalling

20 silver drachmae or 5 tetradrachms, would be subsistence for one man for

60 days, and a distater for twice as long.

122 Xenophon, Ways and Means, IV. 10, "When gold becomes plentiful it becomes cheaper

and makes silver dearer."

123 Theodore Reinach, op. cit. (n. 118), pp. 7-9, but cf. Schlumberger, op. cit. (n. 113), p. 16.

For a ratio of 12: 1 in the 5th century, E. S. G. Robinson, "Some Problems in the Late Fifth

Century Coinage of Athens," MN 1960, p. 9.

124 Lysias, De Bonis Aristophanis 39-40; "Plato" Hipparchus 231 D.

125 Reinach, op. cit., pp. 146-149, believes that it was Philip's mining activity and not

Alexander's conquest of the East that was the important moment in the relation of gold to

silver.

126 Reinach cites CIA II. 2. 741 (IG II.2 2.1.1496 col. Ill) of 331/0; CIA II. 237 (an error for

737): IG II.2 2. 1.1492 U. 99-103; Menander (320-292) Parakatatheke (Pollux IX. 76); Herondas

(ca. 247-222) VII, 11. 79, 99. In RN 1902, "Le Rapport de 1'Or a 1'Argent dans les Comptes de

Delphes," pp. 66-68, he calls attention to the same ratio in the accounts of the Naopoioi in the

archonship of Dion. This is important for his thesis as to Pangaean gold, for it was then dated

336/5 and so before Alexander could have had any effect on the gold supply. But Georges Daux

will not date Dion more closely than 336/5-332/1, Fouilles de Delphes III, Fasc. hors S^rie (n. d.),

Chronologic Delphique, p. 15, C 21.

127 E.g., H. T. Wade-Gery, in publishing a difficult inscription, "The Ratio of Silver to Gold

during the Peloponnesian War: IG I.2 301," NC 1930, pp. 16-38, comes to the conclusion that

raw gold, inside the empire, was conventionally tariffed at 10: 1 although this was below its

market price when a buyer was available, and although before the war it had been 14: 1, IG I.2 355.

A great many fluctuations could fall into the lacunae in our evidence.

32 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

When we come to speculate about the bronze we are in greater difficulties.

It is generally agreed that bronze money was essentially fiduciary: that its

value was not measured by the weight of the metal. This is confirmed, though

it cannot be said to be proved, by what little information we have about the

price of bronze.128 More conclusive is the variation in weight of individual

pieces of the same denomination. In the Drama Hoard there are 94 bronze

coins of Alexander all well preserved and in about the same condition; 13 of

them weigh over 7 grams, 25 weigh less than 6. It is obvious that there has

been no such attempt at exactness as even the fractional silver shows.129 To

be sure, the loss or gain in value would be very small, but if a coin of 4.78 grams

was supposed to be worth the same as one of 8.09 that must be because the

bullion value did not matter. But too much can be made of the indifference.

I may quote the conclusions to which I came in regard to Selucid issues where

there are sometimes denominations not distinguished by difference in type.130

"'Everyone will agree that the weighing of the original flans for bronze coins

was less careful than in the case of silver because the bullion value was so much

less. On the other hand, it is too drastic to assume that the bullion value was of

no account whatever. The conception of token money with a value entirely

independent of its material, like our paper, is a modern one which cannot fairly

be attributed to Asiatics of the third century B.C. Doubtless the ultimate worth

of the bronze coins was their theoretical ability to be exchanged for precious

metals, and this allowed them to circulate freely in spite of variation in weight

and at a value higher than that of their material. Yet the analogy of silver and

gold must have affected the peasant or soldier user of bronze coins. The per-

sistence of a system of denominations distinguishable only by weight must rest

on the instinctive conviction that the more metal there is in your coin the

more it is worth."

Weight, then, may be helpful in separating denominations but is no guide

to their relation with the silver issues, and we must look for other methods of

analysis. Newell tentatively proposed alternate schemes for identifying Seleucid

bronze, based on the hypothesis of equality between the largest bronze and the

smallest silver.131 As I have had occasion to remark,132 it is doubtful whether a

single system can be substantiated for all the kings from Seleucus I to Anti-

128 Theodore Reinach, "Du Rapport de Valeur des Metaux moneiaires dans 1'Egypt au

Temps des Ptoleme'es," REG 1928, pp. 121-196, esp. 161f.

12' The tables in Reinach, op. cit., pp. I57f. give the same kind of variation for Ptolemaic

bronze.

130 The Excavations at Dura-Europos. Final Report VI. The Coins, New Haven, 1949, p. 188.

181 "Notes on the Bronze Coinages," ESM, pp. 270-274.

132 Troy, Supplementary Study 2. The Coins, Princeton, 1961, p. 13, n. 78.

THE KING'S MONEY 33

ochus III, and for all their mints, which by no means issue all the same de-

nominations in silver and bronze. But aside from this his values are unsatis-

factory for the period of Alexander. According to his calculations the piece

which he calls the unit would be either J/8 obol or x/16 obol, and therefore l/K or x/96

drachma. On the evidence of a possible reduction in weight by Antiochus IV,

he prefers the second ratio for the early Seleucid period. On the basis of con-

venience, however, the former or a lower one would be preferable. There is no

denomination between the bronze unit and the silver drachma issued frequently

enough to have been in common use, and 48 : 1 seems a wide gap, let alone 96 : 1.

The relation of gold stater to silver drachm was 20 : 1 and, as the tetradrachm

was even commoner than the drachma, there was a ratio of 5 : 1 between the

most available large denominations. Why should the minor ones be separated

by 48 : 1? Yet, as I have pointed out, in the case of Ilium the first local issues

of that mint provided not multiples of Alexander's denomination but fractions:

half and quarter, V96 and 1/192 drachma according to Newell's lower reckoning,

Yi92 an(^ Vs84 according to his higher! This surely must be rejected from its in-

herent improbability.

Reinach, who has done us the service of confuting some of the unsuccessful

speculations of his predecessors, has made a cautious suggestion as to the values

of Ptolemaic bronze.133 Since from 305 B.C. on the Egyptian standard was

Rhodian and not Attic, his definitions will not apply to Alexander's coins, but

he gives voice to an interesting principle which ought not to be overlooked.

"S'il me fallait" he says "a toute force hasarder a mon tour un systeme de

denomination, je verrais volontiers dans la classe de bronze B de Svoronos, qui

est de beaucoup la plus frequente, 1'obole, la piece divisionnaire par excellence."

The obol is, in truth, so prominent in the writers that it seems reasonable that

it should be conspicuous as an actual coin. There is a silver obol but it does not

seem to have been common enough to satisfy the requirement, and it is tempt-

ing to call our bronze piece an obol and so establish a ratio of 6 : 1 between the

minor denominations. The purely factual name chalkous "the bronze piece"

we may safely assume was used of our unit as it had been used of the much-

despised first Athenian attempt to use token money;134 as it would presumably

always be used of a bronze piece which was the only denomination or the

dominant one. In more developed systems it may have been confined to a

particular step in a series of denominations, having its multiples and divisions,

as illustrated by Newell's tables, but for this early period it is almost certain

that the commonest bronze piece would be called chalkous. That, however,

1M Op. cit. (n. 128), pp. 150f.

134 Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, 11. 815, 818.

34 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

takes us no farther into the question of its value in terms of silver. There we

have nothing to go on except reasonable conjecture. We are neither helped nor

hindered by evidence from other places or other times,135 for it is clear that a

coin without mark of value or necessary relation to its metal content would be

very sensitive to circumstance, capable of being easily manipulated by author-

ity or changed by conditions so that the work done by the unit of one situation

might require a multiple in another. Let us assume, then, until we encounter

evidence to the contrary, that the bronze unit was an obol and that two of

them made a pauper's dole in the countries where Alexander's authority ran.

136 E. S. G. Robinson has identified the Athenian obol and diobol of 403 B.C. "Some Problems

in the Later Fifth Century Coinage of Athens," MN 1960, p. 12, PI. II, 18, 19. These are much

smaller than Alexander's bronzes, as they are smaller than later Athenian bronze coins whose

denomination we cannot prove, but there is no reason to suppose that the size first used by Athens

became the canonical size for an obol.

THE KING'S FINANCES

From the time of Alexander I, 498-454 B.C. the kings of Macedon had struck

their own coins1 and it was a matter of course that Philip II and Alexander III

should strike theirs. But the size of Philip's output was altogether beyond that

of any of his predecessors, and Alexander's dwarfed that of his father. Of

course, the thing that made this possible was that Philip came into control of the

gold and silver of the Pangaean district. When he took over theThasian colony

of Crenides in 3572 he developed the neighboring gold mines until they pro-

duced an income of more than 1,000 talents.3 That undoubtedly took the form

of coined money.4 Aristotle's Rhetoric*1 puts abundance of money at the be-

ginning of the kinds of wealth, followed by real estate, movables, cattle and

slaves. There is no mention of bullion, and while we read of Persian bullion

captured by Alexander and of gold objects included in the plunder, there is no

record of royal transactions in bullion any more than there is of transactions

on credit. This fact, that the Macedonian kings, like the Greek cities, used not

merely a money economy but a specie economy is of importance to keep in

mind. If the thousand talents of income were all gold they would be 300,000

gold staters, since a silver talent, to translate it into its commonest forms,

equalled 1,500 tetradrachms or 300 gold pieces at a ratio of 10 : 1.6 Now though

Aristotle, and doubtless his contemporaries, generally believed that a supply

of money was wealth, Philip does not seem to have accumulated much. None

1 Doris Raymond, Macedonian Regal Coinage to 413 B.C. (NNM 126), New York, 1953.

2 Diodorus XVI, 3. 7.

3 Diodorus XVI, 8. 6. "A thousand talents" means gold to the value of 1,000 silver (Attic)

talents. Diodorus specifies gold but Philip certainly got his greatly increased supply of silver from

the Pangaean region. There may therefore have been a thousand talents of gold plus an unspecified

amount of silver. I make the cautious assumption, however, that the thousand talents in fact

included gold and silver both.

4 Diodorus XVI. 8. 7 says that he struck gold pieces used in hiring mercenaries.

5 I. 5. 7 (Loeb ed., p. 50) vonlovaros 1^605.

6 1 talent = 60 minae = 6,000 drachms = 3,000 didrachms = 1,500 tetradrachms. As the

gold stater is a didrachm of gold (8.68 grams), a talent = 300 staters at the ratio of 10 : 1 which

we have accepted (above, p. 31) as generally valid for the period of Alexander. Since a talent is a

measure of weight, one gold talent would be worth 10 talents of silver but, unless it is specified

to the contrary, the sources follow the Greek fashion of calculating in talents of silver. Philip's

1,000 talents, therefore, presumably are not talents of gold, but the gold equivalent of 1,000 talents

of silver.

36 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

of the kings who preceded him had been able to coin gold7 and there was a time

when Philip had little enough.8 It might be thought that, with such a large

increase of income, he would find himself with a surplus. But Philip's ideas

were larger than those of his predecessors and his plans more costly. Not content

with the old Macedonian army which, so far as it was a citizen body, he might

have employed with no expense beyond their maintenance,9 he hired mercenaries

and devised a military force not only larger but also far more resourceful than

any previously known.10 With this force he won his victories in Europe and

from it he sent an advance contingent of 10,000 to Asia under Parmenio and

Attalus in 337.n Obviously his military expenses must have been considerable.

Moreover, Philip is reported to have said that he had enlarged his kingdom

more by gold than by arms12 and, if we had no other evidence than the charges

and counter-charges of the orators, we could judge how freely the king's money

was spent in bribery;13 it may well have amounted to a larger outlay than pay

for the troops. And the tradition, whatever its accuracy, represents Philip as

having no talent for economy. A passage from the Histories of Theopompus14

describing his dissipation is certainly sensational and probably libellous, but

it contains an interesting observation which does not seem to be an expression

of prejudice, "He was a soldier and could not calculate income and expenditure

at leisure." This must be considered in connection with the reports that Alex-

ander was, at the beginning of his reign, short of funds. In the Life of Alexander

(15.1) Plutarch quotes Aristobulus to the effect that on his crossing to Asia

Alexander had only 70 talents in the war chest; Duris says it was only provision

for 30 days15 while Onesicritus adds that he had a debt of 200 talents besides.

7 Some Thracian cities did, however. Allen B. West, Fifth and Fourth Century Gold Coins from

the Thracian Coast (NNM 40), New York, 1929.

8 Athenaeus IV. 148. d, e; VI. 231. b, c.

9 H. W. Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, Oxford, 1933, pp. 158f. "Probably he (Philip) had

little need to spend money on his Macedonian soldiers; it was their recognized duty to follow their

king in the field, and they would require to be provided with subsistence only on long or distant

campaigns. Towards this outlay the Macedonian kings could claim some form of feudal dues

(Arrian 1.16. 5)."

10 An able description of the development of Philip's army is to be found in David G. Hogarth,

Philip and Alexander of Macedon, London, 1897, pp. 49-64.

11 Diodorus XVI. 91. 1.

12 Diodorus XVI. 53. 3.

13 As was also Persian gold, then and later. Plutarch, The Fortune or Virtue of Alexander,

I.3.327c. Persian gold in the hands of demagogues everywhere was being used to arm the

Peloponnesus.

14 Athenaeus IV. 166f.-167C.

16 In the essay on The Fortune or Virtue of Alexander II. 11, the 30 days' provisions are given

on the authority of Phylarchus. These two calculations cannot be made to coincide. If the total

THE KING'S FINANCES 37

Still more lurid accounts of his financial distress are attributed to Alexander

himself when he was haranguing the mutineers at Opis. According to Curtius

(X. 11) he said that he had inherited from his father 60 talents and a debt of

500, while the sober Arrian gives the most extreme account of all (VII. 9.6):

his assets from his father were a few gold and silver cups and less than 60

talents, while Philip's debt of 500 talents he had increased by borrowing

800 more.16 The words attributed to Alexander himself refer to the exchequer

at the time of his accession, not at the time of his crossing. We should not count

too much on the evidential value of such a speech, but there is nothing to con-

tradict the common testimony that Philip had used up his money.

Plutarch takes the circumstances to show the high adventurous spirit of the

young king and he adds the famous tale of his distributing all the royal property

to his friends, keeping for himself only his hopes, in which Perdiccas gallantly

said he would share, refusing all other benefits. But this romantic story is

of Alexander's army of invasion and Parmenio's advance force was about 40,000 foot and 6,000

horse (G. T. Griffith, The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World, Cambridge, 1935, p. 12) it could

hardly have been supported for 30 days on 70 talents. There is an unfortunate silence of the

sources on the fundamental matter of the soldiers' daily wage in Alexander's army (Parke, Greek

Mercenary Soldiers, p. 233, n. 1. It may be pointed out that the fragmentary inscription IG II.2

1. 329, which is cited as proving that Alexander was to pay his allies 1 drachma a day, seems

rather to show a payment of 1 drachma to the hypaspistae with some other, and presumably

lesser, amount for the troops in general. Tarn does not appear to have taken account of the in-

scription in his discussion of the hypaspists, Alexander the Great II, pp. 148-154). However, we have

an interesting detailed proposal by Demosthenes (First Philippic, 28 f.) for an expeditionary force

against Philip that was never raised. His calculation allows 2 obols a day for foot soldiers, one

drachma for horse, citizen and mercenary alike. This was put forward as an emergency measure

and, in view of the fact that the pauper's allowance was 2 obols, it is very unlikely that citizen

infantry, let alone mercenaries, could have been induced to serve ordinarily for that wage, which

would have been sufficient only if supplemented with plunder. There is evidence that by the time

of Alexander the ordinary pay of a Greek mercenary was 4 obols a day (Parke, loc. cit.) and per-

haps we may assume that the pay of all privates was the same; in that case the pay of a horseman

would also be double Demosthenes' figure. Now, if we take the later amount, the pay of the foot

for 30 days would be 800,000 drachmae (40,000 X 4 obols X 30 days H- 6), that of the horse

360,000 drachmae (6,000 X 12 obols x 30 days -=- 6). The total would be 193$ talents (1,160,000

.4- 6,000), while even at Demosthenes' figures the sum would be g6f talents with no allowance for

the pay of higher ranks or any other military expense. Seventy talents would not have lasted

3 weeks even at starvation wages. Probably the reports of the king's finances at the beginning of

the campaign were no more than gossip.

16 Arrian's words imply that Alexander's own borrowing was to finance the expedition. If the

800 were added to Philip's debt of 500, the total of 1,300 talents would be no excessive burden.

Interest at Athens normally ranged from 12 % to 18 %. If we take the latter figure he would have

a yearly interest of 234 talents to pay and as the mines of Philippi alone yielded 1,000 talents

there should be no difficulty in retiring the debt. It must be observed that he did not say he was

without funds when he landed in Asia; being in debt is a different thing.

38 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

quite impossible to believe in the form in which it is given. It would mean that

Alexander embarked on an expensive and perilous enterprise without making

any provision at all for the campaign after its very beginning. One serious check

would have left him with an army that he could not support, separated from a

kingdom whose resources were exhausted with no means of being reestablished.

There may well have been a distribution of gifts, perhaps so spectacular as to

make it seem that he had left nothing for himself, but the record does not

support the legend that he would have given away his soldier's pay and their

safety to make an impression on his friends. Much that Alexander did was

adventurous to the point of recklessness. Like other great generals of antiquity

he conceived it his obvious duty to lead his troops in the field and he never

seems to have provided against the risk by arranging for a second in command,

as in the end he died without providing for the succession. If the battle-axe of

Spithridates had cut him down at the Granicus it is hard to see how the

Macedonian army could have escaped annihilation. Whether there was a

quality in the man that made him take risks beyond reason is a question out-

side the scope of this study. What concerns us is a class of evidence which lies

altogether within reason. Alexander's strategy may have been bold but it was

not hap-hazard. His plans may have been fallible at times, but there were plans,

and among them fiscal plans to provide the money without which the expedition

would have been impossible.

The records tell us a great deal about the accomplishments of Alexander but

little or nothing of what lay behind them. There is tactical information about

his arrangement of the order of battle, and such an episode as the siege of Tyre

is treated with a detail which includes experiment and failure as well as ulti-

mate success, but operations on a larger scale are treated as though they were

an automatic sequence. And yet, of course, a prodigious amount of planning

must have been required for the success of the all but incredible progress of his

arms and of this Alexander must have been the master mind. We get a glimpse

of him in his youth questioning the ambassadors of the Persian king not only

about what was that monarch's position in the line of battle, which might have

been prompted by youthful valor and his adventurous spirit, but also about

the size of the Persian forces and the shortest roads for those going inland from

the sea, which was essentially strategic material.17 The ambassadors recognized

these as subjects in which a king should properly be interested, and called him

a Great King in contrast to their own who was only rich. Slight as the incident

is, it suggests that even as a boy he had an idea of the value of military intel-

ligence, which is one element of a long-range military program. It would be

17 Plutarch, Alexander, 5. 1; The Fortune of Alexander, 1 1 (342 B.C.).

THE KING'S FINANCES 39

interesting if we could have even this much light on the preparations for later

stages of his campaign. But it was not the kind of thing that antiquity found

worthy of recording, and Alexander is not the only great ruler whose plans are

entirely unreported. Once in a while we get an intimation of the day to day

work which a king must do. Plutarch18 remarks that kingship, which is the

most perfect and greatest of offices, has the most cares and burdens and oc-

cupations, and he quotes Seleucus as saying, "If people knew what a labor it is

to write and read so many letters, they would not even pick up a crown that

had been thrown away." We must imagine, then, what the record fails to show:

an Alexander busy with many things less than heroic, but essential for all that.

One of those things was finance.18*

It was recognized in the 4th century that finance was a special study.

Aristotle in the Politics (I. 4. 8) lays it down that it is well for statesmen to

understand money, since states often need money like households, but in greater

quantity. Some statesmen, he says, have devoted themselves to that alone,

doubtless having in mind the Athenian statesman Eubulus whom Plutarch19 cites

as having been commended because although he held unparalleled influence he

did not deal at all with foreign affairs or the military but concerned himself

only with finance and increasing the revenue. There was even some specialized

literature: Aeneas whose Tactica appears to have been written shortly after

360 B.C. also wrote a treatise on military finance.20 An interesting, though too

brief ancient view of imperial finance is presented in Book 2 of the Oeconomica

attributed to Aristotle, edited by Van Groningen.21 In the theoretical introduc-

tion which comprises Chapter I we read "There are four kinds of economy:

that of a king; that of a satrap; that of a city state; that of an individual." It

is plain that in the opinion of the author, which can hardly have been con-

tradicted by the practice of his day, the coining of money is altogether in the

18 Whether Old Men Should Engage in Public Affairs, 790 AB.

18a Major-General J. F. C. Fuller's book The Generalship of Alexander the Great, Rutgers,

1960 is strangely silent on the question of expenses. The author appears to believe that

Alexander's coining began only after the capture of the treasure of Persepolis (pp. 112, 273 f.)

and what he has to say about finance is concerned with trade only. There is no mention of pay

or of transport and supply.

19 Precepts of Statecraft, 812 F.'

20 <H TTopiCTTiKfi ptpAos Aeneas Tacticus 14. 2.

21 Text and commentary, B. A. Van Groningen, Aristote, le second Livre de 1'f.conomique,

Leyden, 1933. His belief is that the author was a Peripatetic, writing for students with a political

futureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even the possibility of a satrapy before them; the book is a unit, not an epitome, written

between 325 and 305 B.C. since no illustrations are later than Alexander, while the royal economy

and the satrapal refer to a single kingdom, i.e., the date is earlier than the kingships of Antigonus,

Demetrius, Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Seleucus. The sources cannot be recovered.

40 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

hands of the sovereign; the powers of a satrap may be great but they do not

include coining. This is a continuation of 5th century doctrine according to

which the issue of money was a declaration of sovereignty. Qualification is

necessary for the Persian practice of the 4th century, however. The striking

of gold was generally regarded as a royal monopoly. When Orontas, Satrap

of Mysia presumed to do that it was because he was in revolt against the king

and intended to declare himself independent.22 But with silver the matter is

different. The Cilician silver bearing the names of the satraps Tiribazus, Pharna-

bazus, Datames and Mazaeus is well known.23 It is so large and important a

constituent of the Persian currency—so much more important than the royal

shekels—that it seems mere legalism to insist that these powerful subordinates

could strike only by grace of the Great King. Babelon24 maintains that no

satrap was permitted to strike qua satrap, the power being always temporary

and always in connection with the command of troops. But since on the pre-

vious page he has admitted that the client kings coined with considerable

freedom and by no means always in connection with the business of their

overlord, and since there is no way of relating each satrapal issue to a military

event, and no explanation of the fact that this military money was issued in

the name of the satrap and not of the king, we may believe that the restriction

was perhaps a theoretical but not a practical one, and that the problem of silver

coinage was generally left to the satrap's judgment. That is not the case with

Alexander, however. In Europe the coining of silver was a government monopoly,

, and when the name of a subordinate appears on a coin struck for Alexander

there is an exceptional reason for it.25 Initials were sometimes permitted to a

governor as to a mint official, but in general the empire of Alexander and the

realms of his successors observe the rule of the Oeconomica.

Our author does not discuss the relations of royal currency with that of a

city state lying within the royal dominion, yet that situation was a common

one in Asia Minor under Persian kings and Macedonian kings as well. Daniel

Schlumberger has recently shown26 that, while the Persian king's gold was a

monopoly, his silver was only one of several kinds that circulated in his own

land. Alexander came into no vacuum of currency when he brought his money

22 HN, p. 597. But see the gold piece attributed to Mazaeus by E. S. G. Robinson, NC 1948,

p. 59. Gold coinage other than royal, some sporadic, some regular (e.g. Lampsacus), occurs with

sufficient frequency to make reserve about the king's monopoly prudent.

™HN, pp. 730 f.

24 Perses achemenides, Paris, 1893, p. XXIII. He follows the opinion of Lenormant and

Waddington.

25 Below, pp. 62-66.

26 "L*Argent grec dans 1'Empire acheme'nide," pp. 3-64.

THE KING'S FINANCES 41

to Asia. Schlumberger's statement of his purpose is very good.27 "What Alex-

ander intended to do is clear. He intended to give to an empire that did not

have it a silver coinage universally acceptable as money and, in so doing, to

extend the use of silver money as such (and not as bullion) to the entire terri-

tory of that empire." The intention was never entirely carried out, partly, of

course, because of the shortness of his life, but, aside from that, it is not likely

that the plan itself was ever so complete as to contemplate the retirement of

the great variety of silver that was already in use. Whatever the theory, the

fact was that there was a supplementary coinage from the cities28 which some-

what complicated the Oeconomica's simple conception of the king as the only

supplier of money.

But the king had to decide, as the text says, what kind of money should be

made and when, and whether the coins should be of greater or less value. The

author realized that the king would not be fulfilling his proper duty if he merely

directed that all bullion should forthwith be converted into coin, leaving the

details to the master of the mint. What was the nature of his decision and by

what considerations was it affected? Van Groningen argues that it was the

king's business to see that the official ratio of gold to silver was maintained.29

He must therefore issue sufficient quantity of each to keep the values from

fluctuating. The editor surprisingly argues on the assumption that it is the

Persian king who is under consideration, who struck only darics of 8.336 grams

or sigloi of 5.56 grams. If his date for the work be accepted (between 325 and

305) there was no Persian king at the time it was written. Moreover his hypo-

thesis, which in any case credits the monarch with an unlikely degree of eco-

nomic sagacity, is less plausible for the Persian king than for a Hellenistic one.

The Persian king could doubtless dictate how much gold should be minted, but

he could neither dictate nor foresee how much silver was to go into circulation,

for the major part of the silver was provided by the cities.30 Ptolemy was in far

better position to control the money market than any king of Persia. Never-

27 Ibid., p. 27.

28 There were certainly times when the king's contribution to the currency of a region was the

minor one, that of the cities the major. The tetrobols of Perdiccas II make a poor show in com-

parison with the great tetradrachms of Abdera, Acanthus, Aenus, Amphipolis, Maronea and

Mende. There was no king before Alexander whose silver had the scope of the Athenian.

29 It was understood that when gold is plentiful it becomes cheaper and makes silver dearer.

Xenophon, Poroi IV. 10.

30 The easy assumption that Persia had a bimetallic currency in the modern senseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;accepted

even by West ("The Early Diplomacy of Philip II of Macedon Illustrated by His Coins," NC1923,

p. 173, n. 7) when he is arguing against a bimetallic currency for Philipâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is based on the sup-

position that the siglos had the same dominant function in Asia as the dark. Schlumberger has

now destroyed that basis.

42 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

theless, whether he was much or little concerned with preserving the ratio

between metals, the king must decide how much gold must be coined and how

much silver, and in what denominations.

Philip had used the mints of Pella and Amphipolis for gold and silver;

perhaps also that of Philippi for bronze.31 Miiller believed that his coins came

from a large number of other towns as well. Some of his identifications have

been proved wrong; other have to do with the posthumous tetradrachms and

staters; it may be that other mints of Philip will eventually be confirmed, but

certainly none to compare with the two great Macedonian cities and, on the

basis of our present information, we can only safely assume that at Alexander's

accession he found Pella and Amphipolis in operation for the precious metals.

His decision in regard to them will have been very simple. With the exchequer

low he undoubtedly required new coin as fast as he could get it. What pro-

portions of the various denominations he needed we cannot say.

His sources of supply were well placed for his first needs: in the spring of 335

he embarked on the northern expedition, which is described in detail in Arrian

I.1. 4-6. 11, which occupied him until the Theban revolt brought him back to

Greece in the fall of that year. His purpose was to discipline the barbarians on

the periphery of Macedonia who showed signs of restlessness at the news of

Philip's death. He marched from Amphipolis to the Ister, crossed it and beat

the Getae in battle, then turned westward against the Agriani and Paeones

and thence south to Pelium in Illyria where he broke up a serious rebellion.

It was there that he heard of the situation at Thebes in consequence of which

he returned to Greece with all speed. His work in the north seems to have been

thoroughly done, in spite of the interruption, for the barbarians gave him no

further trouble, even after he had crossed to Asia. There is no mention of the

Generated for anonymous on 2015-02-15 19:44 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000055037786 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#cc-by-nc-sa-4.0

acquisition of territory, the founding of cities or the establishment of garrisons.

It is very unlikely that the expedition resulted in the opening of new mints,

immediately or later. To be sure, Miiller assigns certain issues to a mint of

Pelagonia (nos. 205-215) but some of these have been identified as coming

from Amphipolis, others from Tarsus, and it is now clear that this territory

was supplied with silver by the mint of Damastion which operated until 325

B.C., to be continued by the latest coins of Pelagia and the kings of Paeonia

down to the Gallic invasions of 28o.32

How was the campaign financed? Partly by plunder. On two occasions

Arrian speaks of booty;33 the first after Alexander's victory over the Thracians

when he sent it to the cities on the coast in charge of Lysanias and Philotas;

31 See the forthcoming publication of the Drama Hoard.

82 John M. F. May, The Coinage of Damastion, Oxford, 1939, pp. 28, 160, 187; HN, pp. 236!.

33 I. 2. 1;4. 4.

THE KING'S FINANCES

the second when that from the conquered Getae was taken back (presumably

again to the coast cities) by Meleager and Philip. The only way we have of

forming any idea of what it would amount to is to realize that Alexander would

not in each case have detached two officers for escort duty unless the prize were

Map 1

of considerable value.34 Cohen indeed ingeniously calculates the amount by

supposing that it is the difference between his indebtedness of 200 talents

according to Onesicritus and his debt of 1300 talents according to Arrian's

34 The four are listed in Helmut Berve, Das Alexanderreich auf prosopographischer Grundlage,

Munich, 1926, II. Lysanias no. 479, Meleager no. 494, Philip no. 775, Philotas no. 802. The second

and fourth were men of importance.

44 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

report of his speech to the mutineers.35 He explains the statement no further,

but it does not seem likely that two barbarian tribes could be the source of

11oo talents, when the sack of Thebes produced only 440.36 The expedition may

have paid for itself. It is probable that if he did borrow an extra 800 talents

that would have been in preparation for the crossing to Asia.

At the outset of his great enterprise his source of money, like his father's, was

the two Macedonian cities (Map 1). But now there was a difference. Under Philip

Pella had been the premier mint; under Alexander it was Amphipolis.37 The

result was a distinction in the functions fulfilled by the two cities, which Newell

notices in an interesting comment.38 "Probably because of the contrast in their

respective situations the Pella mint now came to be used more for supplying

local demand, the Amphipolis mint for foreign commerce. It is a fact that while

the writer has records of the latter's issues being strongly represented in hoards

from European Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, and Persia, the

Pella coins seldom turn up in finds made outside of Europe and then only in

small numbers. In the European hoards, however, they are not uncommon. It

is furthermore to be noted that such specimens of the Pella mint as did occur at

Demanhur are all beautifully preserved, the majority hardly circulated at all.

It is evident that they had not travelled much from hand to hand after leaving

their dies. In contrast to this, considerable numbers of the Amphipolis pieces,

particularly of the early issues, must by their appearance have circulated a good

deal before they were finally consigned to the ground." Here, then, is an

example of mints fillingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and perhaps already of being intended to fillâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;par-

ticular places in the imperial currency. The tetradrachms of Pella went west

and south, those of Amphipolis went to the soldiers in Anatolia and had seen

long use before they got to Egypt.

p. 56.

36 Gustave Glotz, Pierre Roussel, Robert Cohen, Histoire grecque Vol. IV, Part 1, Paris, 1938,

86 Diodorus XVII. 14. 4.

37 Demanhur, p. 73. Newell never published the reasons which made him change his first

opinion that the bulk of the Demanhur Hoard was the output of Pella, as he said in Reattribution.

It was not for lack of thought on the matter. In Demanhur, p. 67, he says, "A continuous and

detailed study of the numerous later coinages of the same mint appears to prove conclusively that

it was located in Amphipolis and not in Pella. At present it is not advisable to enter upon a

necessarily lengthy discussion of the pros and cons, since this would demand the study of hundreds

of coins not in the Demanhur Hoard and thus take us outside the limits originally set for this

article." Unfortunately he found no later occasion to record his reasons; the difference between

the mints is regarded as fixed in The Coinages of Demetrius Poliorcetes, Oxford, 1927. The attribu-

tions may be taken as probable though their demonstration must await publication of the series

of the two mints.

38 Demanhur, pp. 73 f. See also Bellinger, "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos," Berytus X,

1950/1, pp. 48 f.

THE KING'S FINANCES 45

In the spring of 334 the cavalry and most of the infantry went with Par-

menio across the straits from Sestus to Abydus.39 The latter city had probably

been in Macedonian hands since Philip's expeditionary force three years be-

fore.40 Through it Philip must have introduced his gold, though apparently not

his silver.41 Whether or nor he intended it, the effect was to supplant the Asiatic

issue of gold from Lampsacus and electrum from Cyzicus, Phocaea and My-

tilene.42 Babelon is of the opinion that the use of electrum was encouraged by

the hegemony of Athens which also made her owls the standard large silver

on the coast of Asia Minor in the 5th and 4th centuries.43 If that is true, Alex-

ander made no attempt to change the character of the silver in use; the large

money will have been Athenian tetradrachms, the small silver being produced

by the individual cities. A notable instance is Abydus itself which issued coins

weighing 2.55-3.30 grams as well as a few of larger and smaller denomination.

Since the names of 28 magistrates are known it must have been a considerable

coinage.44 The common denomination is generally called "Persic tetrobol."

39 Arrian I. 11. 6.

40 It is stated as a fact by Babelon, Traitt, Part II, Vol. 2, p. 1324, that Philip's forces had

crossed from Sestus to Abydus. He does not cite his source and I suspect that he is only deducing

from the fact that Philip's army had never been withdrawn and therefore must have controlled

some place in Asia Minor, and that Alexander's crossing was unopposed. Indeed, Alexander was so

confident that it would not be opposed that he did not even accompany the main body but went

off on a romantic expedition of his own to Troy. It is incredible that a general of the ability of

Memnon should allow the Macedonians to cross the Hellespont without a bridge head to make

them safe. It is indeed remarkable that Philip's expedition was allowed to cross but we have only

the bare fact recorded. It may have been a surprise, or the Persian force in Asia Minor may have

been too weak at the time to resist.

41 See above, "The King's Money," pp. gf.

42 Babelon, Traite, Part II, Vol. 2, pp. 1377-1380 (Lampsacus) "Leur Emission commence

au d£but du IVe stecle—pour se ralentir vers 350 devant la diffusion des stateres d'or de Philippe;"

pp. 1395 f. (Cyzicus) "II est probable que des cette 6poque (that of Philip) la frappe de la monnaie

d'electrum s'est singuli^rement ralentie, mais elle ne cessa pas totalement;" pp. 1163, 1194

(Phocaea and Mytilene).

43 Op. cit., pp. 1167f. Unfortunately we have no confirmatory evidence from hoards of the

use of Athenian money in the north of Asia Minor just before Philip—not that the evidence is

contrary, but that there are no hoards recorded of the right time and location. Robinson is willing

to allow the great importance of the Athenian owls in Asia Minor in the 5th century but doubts

that it continued into the 4th.

44 Babelon, op. cit., pp. 1329-1332. Here we are faced with the difficulty of accurate dating.

Wroth, BMC Troas.Aeolis andLesbos, p. xli, says "This series may, on grounds of style, be attributed

to circa B.C. 320 to 280." Without disputing the calculation based on style, Babelon moves the series

back to 340-300. Twenty years is surely not a great difference when one is dating by style in the

4th century, but for our purpose the difference is critical. According to one system Abydus began

her large output of silver before Philip's invasion of Asia and continued it through the life of

Antigonus I; according to the other it did not begin until after Alexander's death and continued

46 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

I am not sure that the valiant effort of numismatists to give a name to every

standard that they find has contributed as much light as they have evidently

intended. The theoretical weight of the Persic tetrobol is given by Hill45 as

3.73-3.74 grams. The difference from the Abydus type is considerable, and the

title does not help to explain why the lighter coins were used at Abydus. It

certainly cannot have been because the Persian is of the same weight as the

"Persic drachm." For one thing, the sigloi were by no means of outstanding

importance in the currency of Asia Minor; for another, if she had wanted to

connect her currency to the sigloi Abydus would have struck "Persic drachms"

which she did not. She struck 2/3 drachmas which was surely inventing un-

necessary trouble if there was anything "Persic" in her intent. The conspicuous

thing about the coins of Abydus is that they are not easily related to any

adjacent currency of importance unless that of Mytilene can be considered

adjacent. Mytilene also struck "Persic" weights, though with a larger propor-

tion of didrachms and fewer tetrobols. Otherwise Abydus was isolated.46 The

neighboring town of Lampsacus struck still smaller silver (obols, diobols and

tetrobols) on what is generally supposed to be the Rhodian standard, with a

theoretical drachma of 3.72-3.88 grams.

The Rhodian standard had more adherents than the Persic in Asia Minor,

according to the received opinion, but the fact is that we need a great deal

more data before any safe conclusion can be reached. And even after the

weighing and counting has been carefully done it is not likely that any pattern

through the life of Seleucus I. I follow Babelon because he is the later (and, I think, the better)

authority and also because his dates seem to me to accord better with historical probability.

Among the phenomena following the death of Alexander I find it hard to believe that there was

any long continued show of independence by cities in Asia. Some such outburst as occasioned the

Lamian War in mainland Greece is easy to imagine, but for Abydus to begin an issue of autono-

mous coins which persisted through the terms of at least 28 officials seems very unlikely. Never-

theless, probability is not proof and the use of Abydus as evidence for the procedure of Alexander

in Asia involves a petitio principii. But neither date avoids the difficulty of simultaneous issue

of autonomous coins on one standard and drachms of Alexander on another. Thompson and

Bellinger, p. 9. Bikerman has nothing to say about Abydus in his sweeping denial that the Asiatic

cities retained the right of coinage. "Alexandre le Grand et les Villes d'Asie," REG 1934, p. 349.

Ehrenberg, admitting that because of the uncertainty of the chronology "our notions are bound

to remain rather vague" comes to the opposite conclusion that "the great majority of the cities

continued autonomous coining of silver and copper under Alexander." Alexander and the Greeks,

Oxford, 1938, p. 32.

45 G. F. Hill, Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins, London, 1899, p. 223.

46 The small silver of Abydus might, without much difficulty, be reckoned as V5 of an Attic

tetradrachm, but that is an idea likelier to occur to an American than to an ancient Greek.

THE KING'S FINANCES 47

will emerge which would be tolerable to modern ideas.47 The towns issued

their own small change for local use with little or no regard to the practice of

their neighbors. When different currencies were dealt with it must have been

by calculation or by convention.48 It would seem that here was an excellent

occasion for Alexander to confer the benefit of a standard currency on a district

so broken into little monetary districts. If the opportunity occurred to him he

was too busy with more immediate duties to act upon it. Between the spring

of 334 and the spring of 333 he occupied, either peaceably or by force, a great

many small towns and a number of cities of importance: Sardes, Ephesus,

Magnesia, Colophon, Miletus, Phaselis, Aspendus and Side. In no case is there any

sign of his using their mints to strike his own types (Map 1) .49 Doubtless he made

47 One thing that might abate the chaos would be accurate dating so that we should know

which issues were really simultaneous. Unfortunately if that is ever to be achieved it must be far

in the future.

48 A notable instance of the control of local value by convention is the variation in price of

gold coins at Delphi between 335 and 328. Sylloge I, 251, n. 15 and 253, n. 14. J. G. Milne was

eminent in his defense of the thesis that, in domestic transactions, the amount of bullion in a coin

was of less importance than its face value. (Cf. "The Monetary Reform of Solon," JHS 1930,

pp. 179-185; The Melos Hoard 0/1907 (NNM 62), 1934). The power of the sovereign to set a value

to a coin which should not be affected by variation in the price of metal is of course dependent on

the degree of control which he had over the metal available, and probably not many would be

tempted to apply the principle, as Milne did, to Pheidon and the very beginning of coinage (Greek

and Roman Coins, London, 1939, pp. 81f., n. X. 2). But he had been impressed by the lack of

uniformity in Greek coin weights and was inclined to echo the complaint of Sir George Macdonald

that the instrument of metrology "has indeed broken short in our hands" ("Fifty Years of Greek

Numismatics," Transactions of the International Numismatic Congress, London, 1938, pp. 3-16).

Macdonald reviews the enthusiastic hopes of the metrologists and the vigorous reaction to them

with reference to his studies in the coinage of Crete, where indeed the weights cannot be got to

make any sense. But it is going too far to assert, because this situation obtains in one area, that

Greek money is all token money except for a few issues such as the Athenian, coined with inter-

national trade specifically in view. There is too great a majority of cases in which the standards

are adhered to, though these are often obscured by the fact that we have not enough data to be

statistically safe. If value really had no relation to metal content there would be nothing to

prevent a drastic and universal reduction in weight of all coins not intended to go abroad. The

enigma of Crete would be only half solved, for though we might have an explanation for the light

coins, we should have none for the heavy. We may continue to believe that, as a rule, silver coins

were worth their weight, with exceptions, some of which we can understand and some of which

we cannot. One thing we can understand is that convenience might demand a conventional

adjustment of values to save the nuisance of perpetual weighing. If there were large quantities

in question the scales were undoubtedly resorted to as they still are in the East, but when a few

small pieces of Abydus had to be exchanged for small silver of Lampsacus it was doubtless done

by agreement. Still, we should not exaggerate an Asiatic's impatience with weighing or belittle his

willingness to spend his leisure for a small profit.

49 On the theory that the coinage of Ilium goes back to Alexander's visit, see Bellinger, "The

Earliest Coins of Ilium," MN 1957, pp. 43-49.

48 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

use of what local currency was available; contributions from the cities would

have come to him in their own coin or from such stores of gold and electrum as

they had accumulated. It is generally assumed that he collected the taxes that

had been paid to the Persians from the satrapies; this is specially attested for

Hellespontine Phrygia and the Aeolian and Ionian cities and there is nothing

to suggest that the practice was not regularly followed.50 In the case of Priene

which surrendered voluntarily there is explicit evidence of remission of taxes51

and in the case of Ephesus, where there had been rioting and danger of civil

war, Alexander directed that they should contribute such taxes as they had

paid to the Persians to rebuilding the temple of Artemis, which had burned

down.52 Both exceptions show that he was not in desperate need of money. I do

not know the basis of Tarn's dictum "till after Issus he was in financial straits and

the taxes from the king's land were his only source of revenue."53 The case of

Ephesus is particularly interesting because that was the one mint city which fell

into his hands north of the Taurus which seems to have had at the time an

output of large silver (in this instance Rhodian tetradrachms) sufficiently great

to suggest it as a possible producer of tetradrachms of his own. The other cities

which he controlled were striking small denominations or in small amounts.

But when he reached Tarsus in the spring of 333 he found a place which was

altogether suitable for the establishment of a royal mint and this was the first

to be added to those which his father had used. The early Alexandrian coinage

of Tarsus has been so thoroughly studied by Newell54 that there is no necessity

60 Arrian 1.17. 1; 18. 2; Beloch IV, 1, pp. 14f. The word used in regard to the Phrygians is

<p6pos and Beloch believes that the Greek cities, responsible only for contributions to the war

chest from time to time "waren aber sonst steuerfrei." But 96905 is used also in respect to the

Aeolian and Ionian cities, particularly Ephesus. Examples of special contributions are Aspendus

(50 talents), Arrian I. 26. 3. and Soli (200 talents) Arrian II. 5. 5.

"OG75, no. 1. 11. 131.

62 Arrian I. 17.10-13; Strabo XIV. 22.

53 Alexander the Great I, p. 34.Tarn is perhaps influenced by his desire to believe that Alexander

was as generous to the Greeks as possible. With the question of constitutional and juridical rela-

tions between them we are not concerned. The theory that the cities were freed by Alexander was

challenged by E. Bickermann, "Alexandre le Grand et les Villes d'Asie," REG 1934, pp. 346-374.

His conclusion is that such liberty as they had rested on the unilateral and revocable act of

Alexander. Tarn, op. cit., II, pp. 199-232, protested against this in favor of the earlier theory. In

1938 Victor Ehrenberg published Alexander and the Greeks, of which pp. 1-51 discuss "Alexander

and the liberated Greek Cities" and the constitutional effect of his tendency toward autocracy,

which the author believes to have been constantly increasing. An interesting study of the reality

of the cities' liberty distinguished from its juridical essence is that of A. Ranovich, "Alexander of

Macedon and the Greek Cities of Asia Minor" (in Russian), Vestnik drevnetistorit, 1947, pp. 57-63.

I am indebted to Dr. Emily G. Kazakevich for an extensive English digest.

64 Tarsos.

THE KING'S FINANCES 49

of doing more than recapitulate the essentials. Tarsus under the Persians had

become the capital of the district of Cilicia and North Syria. It had been the

residence of satraps, the latest of whom was Mazaeus, who ruled for their

master but issued large quantities of silver coins which were not the royal sigloi

but double shekels with a theoretical weight of 11.2 grams, bearing Cilician

types and, more remarkable still, the satraps' names (PLATE III, 1). There was

evidently a convenient near-by supply of silver sufficient to take care of the

military and administrative expenses. The obverse type was a seated Baal

which needed but little modification to become the seated Zeus of Alexander's

reverse, and the extreme similarity of the two figures produced at Tarsus shows

that Alexander's coins followed those of his predecessor immediately and

employed the same die-sinker (PLATE III, 2). Of course the size of the flan was

increased since the tetradrachms were 6 grams heavier, but Zeus was not

noticeably larger than Baal had been. The head of Heracles now replaced the

lion and bull and city walls of Mazaeus' reverse and thereby eliminated any-

thing to identify the mint, for, like the products of Pella and Amphipolis, these

were to be imperial coins showing no special mark of their origin. Indeed the

first issues bore not even the sign of a responsible official, or only an incon-

spicuous pellet between the seat and the cross-bars of the throne. At the same

time, or shortly thereafter, a series of gold was initiated. Since the satraps had

not struck gold and there seems to have been no easily accessible supply of the

metal it may be that the staters appeared only after Issus with the capture of

Darius' money which he had left at Damascus. Doubtless much of it was gold

which could be melted down and restruck; Curtius says that the coined money

amounted to 2600 talents.55

Of course it would not be necessary to restrike the Persian money and we

cannot prove that Alexander did. Newell at one time was inclined to think that

Asiatic currency was the core of what Alexander had to use. "At the time of

Alexander's invasion of Asia," he says,56 "the currency of the East consisted,

in the main, of Persian gold darics and silver sigloi and Athenian tetradrachms.

Two of theseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the gold darics and the Athenian tetradrachmsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;had for the

last hundred and fifty years enjoyed a world-wide circulation and were well

known to Alexander's soldiers. It is probable, therefore, that during his cam-

paigns, from the battle of the Granicus to the invasion of India, for the pay of his

troops he relied principally upon the fabulous hoards of wealth which had been

stored away by the Persian monarchs and which now fell into his hands."

He assumes without discussion and, I think, mistakenly that a large part of

the Persian treasure would have been coined money. It is questionable how far

65 Curtius, III. 13.16.

66 Sidon and Ake, p. 22.

5o ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

this point of view is justified at the time with which we are now dealing. There is,

as we shall see, evidence that he used Persian money later on, and he was willing

to have earlier types continue to circulate under certain conditions; we have

just seen that he probably was content to use the local issues of Asia Minor

at least as supplements to his own. But there was a period of two or three years

after his occupation of Tarsus notable for the opening of new mints to produce

his money. Between the summer of 333 and 330 fall the first issues of Tarsus,

Alexandria-by-Issus,57 the cities of Cyprus,58 Aradus,59 Byblus,60 Sidon,61 Ake,62

as well as Sardes,63 Damascus64 and Babylon65 (Map 2). It seems very unlikely

that so remarkable a concentration should not have had as its purpose the

wholesale replacement of the Persian royal coinage by the Macedonian imperial.

Here we come dangerously close to those discussions of Alexander's psychol-

ogy and intent which fascinate the participants without always convincing the

observers. So far as our evidence goes, the decision what coins to strike, when

and where was Alexander's alone, just as the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica

says it should be. The anonymous author knows that the king cannot do every-

87 Tarn, op. cit., II, pp. 237 f. cannot believe that there was an Alexandria earlier than the

one in Egypt, and presents an hypothesis that it was founded after Gaugamela by command of

Alexander but not by his act in presence. It does not matter to us at what point the city also

known as Myriandrus received the conqueror's name but I do not believe that the argument is a

very good one that some ancient writer must have mentioned the foundation if it had occurred

immediately after Issus. The city had been important enough to have its own Persian issues and

without any doubt those of Alexander at once succeeded (E. T. Newell, Myriandros). It might be

remarked that Tarn has difficulty (pp. 239f.) with another Alexandria: Alexandria Troas. The

tradition is (Strabo, XIII. 26) that the city was founded by Antigonus by the synoecism of the

surrounding towns and named after himself; that when Lysimachus acquired it he refounded

it and renamed it Alexandria. This Tarn will not credit, "It is impossible to believe" he says, "that

one Successor, just once, used the Alexander-name.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;There is only one explanation. Alexander must

have promised to found a city thereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but he did not live to do it." But in Alexander's time a

city in that place would have made no sense at all. The whole thing is a characteristic Hellenistic

performance (Louis Robert, Etudes de Numismatique grecque, Paris, 1951, pp. 5-13). If Alexander

had in mind the founding of any Alexandria before the one in Egypt, Myriandrus would have

been a reasonable location, a site in the Troad would not.

58 E. T. Newell, "Some Cypriote Alexanders," JVC 1915, pp. 294-322.

59 G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexander Coins of Phoenicia," Nomisma 1909, pp. 2-5; Deman-

hur, pp. 119-121.

60 Demanhur, pp. 122-125.

61 Sidon and Ake, pp. 7-38.

62 Op. cit., pp. 39-67.

63 Thompson and Bellinger, pp. 27-31.

64 Demanhur, pp. nsf.

65 F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Die Miinzstatte Babylon zur Zeit der makedonischer Satrapen und

des Seleukos Nikator," NZ 1895, pp. 1-7.

THE KING'S FINANCES 51

thing single-handed. He understands the functions that should be left to the

satraps and Alexander, who retained the Persian organization just as far as

he could,66 had his own satrapsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;so called even when they were Macedonians

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;and we hear a good deal about their powers and duties.There were special

officers in charge of finance, which was the most conspicuous difference be-

tween the old administration and the new. Berve has pointed out that in the

early days of the invasion the central royal treasury and the war treasury were

one67 and the finance officers were imperial and not local officials. On the most

prominent of them, Harpalus, we have much information from excellent

sources, which Berve has fully recorded,68 but nowhere is there the slightest

indication that his powers and responsibilities extended to the mint. It is

difficult for us to imagine that Alexander should direct so detailed an operation,

especially when it had to be done from a distance, and obviously someone must

have supplied him with the information on which the decisions were based.

But the modern system of delegation of duties did not present itself to antiq-

uity as self-evidently the best way of dealing with complicated affairs.69

Pliny's correspondence with Trajan shows what surprisingly minor details

could be properly brought to the attention of the sovereign, and the scraps

that are left of Alexander's correspondence suggest that it would have showed

the same kind of picture.70 If, then, we conclude that arrangements for minting

were Alexander's own business (as we must do in default of evidence to the

contrary) can we discover anything about his motives without getting involved

in historical fiction?

6* Beloch, IV. 1, p. 11.

67 Berve, Das Alexanderreich, I, pp. 302-304.

68 Op. cit., II, pp. 75-80. Cf. A. Andreades, "Antimene de Rhodes et Cldomene de Naucratis,"

BCH 1929, pp. 1-18.

68 This does not mean that there were no cases of delegation, for the coins with satraps' names

(below, pp. 62- 66) are such cases. But there was no individual to whom Alexander entrusted authority

for a whole class of functions, no single person, that is, who was allowed to regulate the currency

as a whole. The king did not decide every detail but there was no detail that he might not decide,

and when others were allowed to act in their own names the I units of their authority were clearly

understood.

70 Athenaeus, XIII. 6071-608a. A letter from Parmenio to Alexander after the capture of

Darius' baggage at Damascus detailing the number of concubines and slaves with their special

skills. XI. 781 f-782a and 784a. Letters concerning the Persian booty with valuations and lists of

table service. XIV. 65gf-66oa is a letter to Alexander urging him to buy a cook from his mother.

How one would like to know more of the letter from Cleomenes that spoke of ten thousand

smoked coot, five thousand thrushes and ten thousand smoked quail! IX. 393c. It may seem

absurd that the sovereign's time should be imposed on with such trifles, but the alternative of a

bureaucracy had its own drawbacks. The late Roman empire found by experience how dis-

astrously a bureaucracy could divide the sovereign and his subjects.

52 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Of course there is no need to prove that he had to have money; the central

question is why did he have to have money with his own types? Newell, after

suggesting that he might have got along with what was already in circulation,

adds71 "Even so, it seems but natural that he would issue coins bearing his own

name and types to take the place, as soon as possible, of a coinage belonging to

a fast vanishing dynasty and empire." Was this replacement to be effected by

having all the new money Alexandrine while the old issues wore out or were melt-

ed down or buried by private owners? Or was the old currency called in by the

government and melted down to be reissued as the new money? There is

evidence of the latter procedure at an earlier period. The satraps Pharnabazus

and Datames seem to have melted down the silver of their predecessor Tiribazus

to issue their own coins.72 There is no way of telling certainly whether Alexander

did the same thing but in any case the new money was to be his. In the cases

of Tarsus and Myriandrus, the metropoleis of Cilicia and North Syria, this

meant putting an end to issues in the name of the Persian satrap Mazaeus and

replacing them by the silver of Alexander, supplemented, in the case of Tarsus,

by gold also. This needs no elaborate explanation. Whether or not the Persian

empire was "fast vanishing" its control over this district was at an end.

But not all the cases were as simple as this. Perhaps the next mint to begin

operations for the conqueror was Aradus which was ruled by a king named

Gerostratus whose son Straton met Alexander on his march south along the

Syrian coast and surrendered the city to him.73 Now Aradus had its own

coinage whose types were purely local and had nothing to do with the Persians.

The fleet of Gerostratus formed a contingent of the Macedonian navy at the

siege of Tyre,74 and there would have been nothing surprising in that service

being rewarded by the continuance of the right of coinage. But Aradus at once

began to strike tedradrachms with the head of Heracles and seated Zeus, like

those of Tarsus and Myriandrus with one notable difference: their origin is

clearly marked, first by the Aramaic letters used on the autonomous coins,

then by an A and finally by the monogram A.75 A similar course was taken by

Sidon whose king, another Straton, surrendered reluctantly and was therefore

replaced.76 Thereupon the double shekels, some of which had been issued by the

king, some by the satrap Mazaeus, appeared no more, being replaced by

71 Sidon and Ake, p. 22.

72 NC 1914, p. 33, n. 14.

73 Arrian, II. 13. 7.

74 Arrian, II. 20. I.

76 Demanhur, pp. 11gf. The autonomous coins are marked with the Aramaic equivalent of

KB, MA. HN gives the reader a clue as to why this should signify Aradus: a stands for the word

"min" meaning "from;" it is the initial of the town's name.

76 Curtius IV. 1.15-26.

THE KING'S FINANCES 53

Alexander's tetradrachms and staters which at first bore the town's Aramaic

initial, later I or 2M.77 Slightly different is the case of Byblus, for there Ainel

(whom Arrian calls Enylos)78 having delivered the city and joined Alexander's

fleet, as did the king of Aradus, was rewarded—if it was a reward—by having

the first two letters of his name "is; used on the tetradrachms instead of the

name of the city, and the later issues bear the monogram f? for his successor

Adramelek. Now these three cities all had coinages of their own and there was

nothing to prevent Alexander from allowing them to continue now that they

were his allies, as he had apparently done with the coinages north of the Taurus.

To be sure, the double shekels of Mazaeus from Sidon would need to be replaced

as had his shekels from Tarsus, but no objection of that sort could be made to

the emissions of Aradus and Byblus.

Similar treatment was accorded to the kings of Cyprus. They had not been

as prompt to surrender as the mainlanders, but they joined him with their

fleets at Sidon and he was willing to forgive their previous service to the Per-

sians as presumably enforced.79 They also joined the producers of Alexandrine

tetradrachms and those from Citium are clearly identified by the monogram K.

Salamis, however, used first a bow, then a rudder as symbol on its silver and

only the bronze is unmistakably marked IA. Paphos also, which may have

begun a little later prefers her characteristic device of a dove to a literal identi-

fication.80 About these emissions Newell uses what seems to me strange language.

On the mainland, he says, "every city which had thrown open its gates without

a struggle to Alexander was accorded local autonomy, and, where a mint had

previously existed, was allowed to continue coining; with the proviso, however,

that the issues should henceforth conform in types, weights, and denomina-

tions with the regular coinage of the empire. As a result, such cities as Aradus,

Byblus, Sidon and Ake coined as they never had before, even in their most

prosperous days.—It would therefore be strange if, in return for their sub-

mission and the invaluable services of their fleets, Alexander should have

deprived the kings of Cyprus of the immemorial right of coinage, or even have

curtailed it in any vital way."81 Newell's mind at the moment was on identi-

fication and not explanation or he could hardly have written in that way. Can

there be any more vital curtailment imagined of the right of coinage of the

77 The group of staters and distaters with symbols but no letters which Newell originally

assigned to Sidon (Sidon and Ake, pp. 71.) he was later inclined to transfer in whole or in part to

Damascus (G. F. Hill, JHS 1923, p. 159, n. 8).

78 Arrian, II. 20. 1.

79 Arrian, II. 20. 3.

80 Newell reports only one coin at Marion and it is impossible to say whether or not its thunder-

bolt is to be regarded as a mint mark.

81 "Some Cypriote Alexanders," pp. 298f. See Schlumberger's comment, pp. 27f., n. 5.

54 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

king of Citium than that he should have to discontinue his own currency to

produce silver with alien types and the name Alexander on which only the

monogram of his city suggested that he had anything to do with the affair ?82

Is it not obvious that the Cypriote kings and the Phoenician kings were not

"allowed" to continue coining but directed to continue? We are told that

"Arados, Byblos, Sidon and Ake coined as they never had before" and this is

certainly true.83 Where did all the metal come from, not only the greatly in-

creased output of silver but the gold of Tarsus and Sidon and Ake?

The necessary explanation seems to me to be that Alexander, knowing that

there was a vitally important campaign before him, required much moneyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;his

own moneyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and used every available source of supply. If it be asked why he

should now make such efforts to provide his own money when he had opened

no new mints in Asia Minor, there are likely answers at hand. For one thing the

mint of Amphipolis was continuing to pour her abundant production across

the straits so that her gold was replacing the gold and electrum of the other

continent and her tetradrachms were providing a major denomination in that

metal. For another, north of the Taurus Alexander was to some extent among

friends. Whatever the realities behind the professed purpose of freeing the

Greek cities, he had come there as the leader of a Greek League as well as a

king of Macedon; the Greek cities understood his position and in the majority

of cases were willing to accept it. He had driven the Persians out of the country

and though they still had friends there, there was no prospect of their combining

to make head against him. If the Greek coins of the cities circulated as a minor

supplement to the Greek coins of Alexander it was not likely that any harm

would come of it and no harm did. But south of the Taurus he was in alien

territory. He had not come there to free anybody but to conquer. The Cilicians,

the Syrians and the Phoenicians had no reason for prejudice in his favor; if he

was to be as acceptable as the king of the Persians he must make his place.

82 He may have had nothing to do with it whatever. After the siege of Tyre, according to Duris

(Athenaeus IV. 167 c) Alexander gave a property to Pnytagoras which had belonged to "Pygma-

lion" of Citium. Hill (BMC Cyprus, pp. xlf.) concludes, perhaps rashly, that Pymathion of

Citium is intended and that Alexander had deposed him. All Pymathion's coins are gold and there

is a gap in his activity between the siege of Tyre and the death of Alexander.

83 It is generally supposed that Ake had never coined before (BMC Phoenicia, p. Ixxvii, "The

numismatic history of the city begins with Alexander the Great"), but C. Lambert in publishing

"A Hoard of Phoenician Coins Found on the Site of Ake" (The Quarterly of the Department of

Antiquities in Palestine, 1931, pp. 10-20), makes a very strong case for transferring to that city

two groups of Tyrian types: Group II, BMC, pp. 229f., nos. 11-18 and Group IV, pp. 231 f.,

nos. 25-42. He suggests that "coins of Group IV may have been issued for local requirements

concurrently with coins of Alexander's types struck at Acre." The group would begin shortly

after Alexander's death.

THE KING'S FINANCES 55

Tarsus and the cities that received him after Issus were acknowledging what

they thought to be the greater power. Tyre and Gaza held the contrary view

and were destroyed for their mistake. It was vital to him that he be recognized

as the master in all parts of his new territory and therefore all the mints were

set to work to manufacture one of the most effective kinds of manifesto known

to antiquity: his name and types on the coins. This was done quite without

regard for the normal financial needs of the district; the much increased

activity of the coast mints did not mean a sudden era of prosperity and com-

mercial activity. It was their contribution to the conqueror's needs, and since

no new mines were being opened it is only reasonable to assume that the neces-

sary extra bullion came from the melting down of the king's treasure. There

was no overstriking involved, the weights of both gold and silver pieces in

previous use being different from the weights by which they were supplanted.

We shall therefore never have the kind of proof that comes from detecting an

earlier type beneath the later ones. None the less, we have sufficient reason for

believing that in the period succeeding the battle of Issus Alexander did not

intend to continue the local coinages of the district but to replace them with his

own, and one probable means to take would be to melt down and restrike.83*

We must guard against supposing that too complete a revolution was

achieved. In the first place, the pre-Alexandrine coins did not all disappear. In

the hoard from Galilee buried about 319/8M and one found at Byblus buried

about a decade later85 double shekels of Sidon accompanied the Alexander

tetradrachms.86 Later events showed that there was still a place for the earlier

series (below, p. 78). Then, Alexander's production south of the Taurus by

no means made the country independent of coins from the north. In the

Demanhur Hoard there were 1582 pieces from the mint of Amphipolis, 1526

from the mints of Tarsus, Myriandrus, the cities of Cyprus, Aradus, Byblus,

Sidon and Ake all combined. And the situation is even more impressive than

this appears for a much higher proportion of the coins of Amphipolis were struck

during Alexander's lifetime than is the case with the southern mints.87 Before

Gaugamela, then, there would probably have been more Macedonian Alexanders

Ma An important modification of the general rule will probably be provided by a coin of

Balacrus. See below, n. 177.

84 J. Baramki, "A Hoard of Silver Coins of Sidon and Alexander from Khirbet el Kerak,"

The Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine, 1944, pp. 86-90.

85 Bellinger, "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos."

86 The same is true of the hoards of Jdita, Noe, A Bibliography of Greek Coin Hoards, ed. 2

(NNM 78), New York, 1937, 512 and Qasr Naba, Noe 846; the latter has also small silver of other

kinds. It must be confessed that this is not very impressive evidence for the continuance of non-

Alexandrine issues.

87 "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos," p. 48. Cf. Demanhur, pp. 150f

56 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

to be seen in Syria than Syrian and Cilician ones. This must have been the

result not of choice but of the much greater productivity of the Macedonian

mines. Obviously Alexander would prefer to strike coins as close as possible to

the place where they were to be used.

There is nothing surprising therefore in the fact that as he controlled more

of the East he should open a mint at Damascus.88 In writing to Hill about the

possibility of assigning to that mint some of the gold which he had previously

given to Sidon, Newell speaks of it as "probably struck after Gaugamela." In

Demanhur, however, he dates the first series of silver circa 332-330; that is he

believed that the mint was organized soon after the capture of the city by

Parmenio following the victory of Issus. That would mean that Parmenio's

action was not a mere raid to get the king's baggage, but an occupation of a

vital point protecting Alexander's flank and broadening his territory, as did

the campaign in Antilebanon during the siege of Tyre. This is likely enough in

itself, though no ancient author discusses it. Damascus was a new step since

it had never had a mint;89 doubtless artisans were brought there from the

coast. The complicated marks with pellets, which are hard to reduce to a system,

may be evidence of a factory not yet well organized. The mint is clearly marked

with the letters AA, to which later series add the city's device of the forepart

of a ram. It is not easy to find a consistent policy in the use or omission of mint

marks. Apparently the greatest mints: Pella, Amphipolis, Tarsus, Babylon and

Alexandria dispense with them, but by no means all the lesser ones invariably

use them and Newell's feeling that the difference was between imperial and

local issues is hard to support. Here, as so often in ancient numismatics, one

finds a general conformity without absolute uniformity which is distressing

to what one likes to think of as the tidier minds of our day.

Babylon would seem an obvious place for the minting of Persian coins and

indeed Newell says it "had probably possessed a mint under the Persian

kings,"90 but there is no proof of it. Babelon's great work Les Perses achemenides

does not raise the question at all and Hill, after discussing the difficulties of

chronological arrangement, adds,91 "Nor does it seem possible to make any

attempt to identify the mints at which coins were struck until the very difficult

problem of the mints of Alexander's coinage in the East has been more or less

cleared up." So we do not know whether this is a case of adaptation, like

Tarsus or, of original creation, like Damascus. In either case the city which

was intended to be the capital of the whole empire began to contribute its share

88 Demanhur, pp. 115!., tetradrachms; gold, JHS 1923, pp. 156-161, n. 8.

89 On the supposed new mint of Ake see n. 83 above.

80 Demanhur, p. 140.

M BMC, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia, p. cxxxv.

THE KING'S FINANCES 57

of the conqueror's money, presumably as soon as possible after its surrender.

The coins were long in being recognized precisely because there was no re-

cognizable mint mark. An article of Six in 1884 pointed the way,92 to be followed

by a thorough demonstration by Imhoof-Blumer eleven years later.93 The

attribution was indignantly rejected by Sir Henry Howorth94 and many who

did not rush into print must have shared his dismay in the shaking of the

system of mint identification which Miiller had so conveniently constructed,

but the evidence was against Howorth and no one doubts any more. His

insistence that a symbol or monogram should have reference to the place of

minting was in the old tradition and was mistaken, and yet his dissatisfaction

was not without reason, for the matter was more complex than the location of

a new place of origin for the gold and silver with Macedonian types. The fact

is that the great victory at Gaugamela opened a new epoch whose nature is

partly expressed in unprecedented developments of the coinage.

The first step was not revolutionary and it may, indeed, have preceded the

occupation of Babylon. It was the opening of a new mint in Asia Minor at

Sardes (Map 1).95 There is doubtful evidence that the city may have coined for

the Persians,96 but it was not issuing any local types. There is no reason why it

should not have been used by Alexander at any moment after its capture in 334

but, as we have seen, there was at that time no attempt to supplement the

emission of Amphipolis for use in Asia. Why the situation should have changed

by 331 we cannot say, but there is one important difference between the func-

tion of Sardes and that of the earlier Asiatic mints. She was used not so much

for tetradrachms, which had been the principal product of the Macedonian and

southern cities, as for gold and drachmae. In this she was a pattern for the

other towns of Asia Minor presently to be put into operation: Magnesia (330),

Lampsacus (329), Abydus, Colophon and Miletus (325), Teos (324). A reason

for this which comes to mind at once is that the pre-Alexandrine coinage of

Asia Minor had been to a large extent gold, or electrum, and small silver.

92 J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazaios," NC 1884, pp. 97-159.

93 F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Die Miinzstatte Babylon zur Zeit der makedonischer Satrapen und

des Seleukos Nikator," NZ 1895, pp. 1-22.

94 "Some Coins Attributed to Babylon by Dr. Imhoof-Blumer," NC 1904, pp. 1-38.

95 Thompson and Bellinger, pp. 27-31.

96 Newell was convinced (Demanhur, p. 91). Head (BMC, Lydia, p. xcvii) had not been:

"Whether the Persians, after the conquest of Lydia, struck any darics or sigloi at Sardes is very

doubtful." But Milne ("A Hoard of Persian Sigloi," NC 1916, pp. 1-12) suggests that sigloi

with a little lion's head on the reverse might be from Sardes, which Hill (BMC, Arabia,

p. cxxxv) regarded as a "very plausible suggestion." The symbol would be appropriate but there

hardly seem to be enough known to represent the output of what ought to have been an

important mint.

58 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Presumably, therefore, the country liked and would use small silver. But there

would be an advantage in having all the small silver on a single standard, and

this may have been a belated provision of uniformity in place of the pre-existing

confusion.97 Presumably the gold was intended to fill the void caused by the

disappearance of the gold of Lampsacus and the electrum of Cyzicus, Phocaea

and Mytilene, and the metal which used to go into those types was now diverted

to the seven towns to be made into Alexander staters (above p. 45). There can

be no doubt that there was a plan for the special use of these towns, but again

we find a very general plan with unexplained eccentricities of the individual

mints such as might have resulted from decisions made by Alexander one at a

time but such as could hardly have resulted from any laying out of the plan

in detail at the beginning. It is quite out of the question, however, that this

pattern can have been achieved by accident through the independent action

of the cities themselves, or that they should have acted in concert without

reference to the sovereign whose types they proposed to strike. An eighth city,

Ephesus, was added to the group later—probably after 294—and a few other

places made minor contributions of drachmae in the 3rd century. The omission

of Ephesus from the original list was doubtless the result of the confusion at the

time of her capture which may have crippled her for some time to come.98 Not

only was the supply of drachmae adequate for Alexander's lifetime but, the

fashion having once been set, the mints of Asia Minor continued to be the

source of most of the drachmae throughout the empire into the latter half of the

3rd century. What was the proportionate manufacture of gold we do not yet

know enough to say.99

A second innovation was more radical. It was the opening of a mint at Sicyon

for tetradrachms, staters, and a surprising number of distaters (Map 1).100 There

is good reason to believe that it began operations in 330/29. Newell said "about

330 B.C.—and certainly by 325—a large issue of staters and tetradrachms

bearing Alexander types was instituted at Sicyon."101 Noe does not debate the

question but gives "330/25 to c. 318 B.C." as the limits of Group I. The lower

limit is provided by the burial date of the Demanhur Hoard in which speci-

mens of all the varieties of tetradrachms were found. But the group cannot

have lasted so long. Sicyon was allied with Athens against Antipater in the

Lamian War of 323/2 and cannot at that time have been striking royal Mace-

87 See above, pp. 45-48.

98 Arrian I.17.10-13.

99 On all the Alexandrine mints of Asia Minor see Thompson and Bellinger, passim.

100 Sydney P. Noe, Sicyon.

101 Kyparissia, p. 14.

THE KING'S FINANCES 59

donian types.102 The last issue may have been coined in 323 before the beginning

of the war but that is the latest possible date. Now there is evidence of 8

issues103 if one makes the usual assumption that each variety of symbol means

the product of a single year. That would bring the beginning to 330/29, which

would satisfy historical probability very well. For the purpose of the establish-

ment of the mint is clear: it was to assist in the hiring of Peloponnesian merce-

naries. In the fall of 334, between the beginning of the siege of Halicarnassus

and the campaign in Lycia, Alexander had sent Cleander to the Peloponnesus

to collect soldiers.104 In his mention of the matter Curtius says "Cleandro cum

pecunia misso." The nearest European supply of money would be Macedonia

and it was better to send the necessary funds with Cleander. But if there had

to be a shipment of coin from Asia whenever Greek mercenaries were to be

hired the system would be inconvenient. It would be much simpler if there

were a mint nearby where money could be issued as it was needed. That should

have been apparent as early as Oleander's first trip. But would not the opening

of a royal mint in Greece be a serious affront to the spirit, if not to the letter,

of the agreement with the League of Corinth? We have no information as to

loz The suggestion (Sicyon, p. 26) that these coins may have been "some of the sinews of the

Lamian war" is surely mistaken. Rebellion against Antipater would have been the occasion of the

prompt resumption of autonomous issues, or at least cessation of the royal ones.

103 Noe's arrangement would provide 8 issues distinguished by their symbols or by style:

1. Boy with outstretched arms alone (distater no. 1, stater no. 2, tetradrachm no. 3).

2. Boy and rudder (stater no. 5, tetradrachm no. 4).

3. Thunderbolt and A (distater nos. 6, 7—supposing A and A to be the same—stater no. 8).

4. Boy and A (distater no. 9, stater no. n).

5. Boy A and ivy leaf (distater no. 10).

6. Boy alone, different style from 1 (stater no. 12, tetradrachms nos. 13, 14—distinguished

only by a die break on the former).

7. Ear of barley (tetradrachm no. 15).

8. Goat's head (tetradrachm no. 16).

Of these, 1, 3 and 6 are large issues. In 1 there are 8 reverse dies used for the tetradrachms,

though only one each for distater and stater. In 3 there are 18 reverse dies used for the distaters,

1 for the stater. In 6 there are 9 reverses used for the tetradrachms. The others are all small, each

using only a single reverse die, except that there are 2 for tetradrachm no. 4 and 2 for distater

no. 9. There is, however, no reason for combining any of the minor issues, and combining 1 and 6,

where the difference is one of style alone, would still leave 7 issues.

Since the terminal date is 323/2, that would put the beginning not later than 330/29. The

latest issue (presumably 8) might have come in 323 before the outbreak of the Lamian war. The

earliest could not be before the battle of Megalopolis in the fall of 331, and therefore an issue

before 330 would be hardly possible. If we are to provide a year for each of Noe's varieties, there-

fore, we should put 1 in 330/29 and 8 in 323.

104 Arrian I. 24. 2; Curtius III. 1.1. Cleander came back with 4,000 Greek mercenaries during

the siege of Tyre. Arrian II. 20. 5.

60 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

any provision about coining by members of the League, but there is no evidence

that there was any interference with that ancient right of the cities. The large

series of Athens, of Corinth and of Sicyon show no sign of intermission at this

time, and we have one sure instance of a city initiating an autonomous coinage

in Alexander's lifetime: the Amphictionic staters and fractions of Delphi which

were struck from about 337 to 334 for the rebuilding of the temple.105 In time

Macedonian coins did find their way into the Greek cities106 but not because

there was any effort, at this early period, of the Macedonians to replace civic

issues by royal ones. Alexander might well have hesitated to set up his own

mint in the territory of his Greek allies. But consideration for his Greek allies

certainly waned as his phenomenal successes gave him less and less need for

relying on their good will. After Gaugamela things might be done that would

not have been done in 334. Moreover there was a consideration which was more

than sentimental. Anti-Macedonian sentiment was centered in Sparta whose

strength was so considerable that Agis took the offensive in 331 and pressed

Antipater hard until, in the fall of that year, the battle of Megalopolis crushed

the Spartan power.107 After that there was no anti-Macedonian force to resist

an intrusion of royal power or to make the minting and storing of gold in the

Peloponnese an undesirable risk.

The extension of Alexander's activities into the territories of the free cities

of Asia Minor and Greece, if a new departure, was not a surprising one. The

really extraordinary developments were connected with Babylon itself. The

career of the satrap Mazaeus may perhaps deserve a closer scrutiny than it

generally gets.108 He became Satrap of Cilicia about 361 and in this capacity

he struck silver at Tarsus with his name but without title.109 From 351-344 he

was one of the commanders against the rebel king of Sidon. In 351 or later he

became Satrap of Northern Syria and Cilicia, and in this capacity until 333 he

struck silver with his name and title (PLATE III, 1).110 At the same time he

106 E. J. P. Raven, "The Amphictionic Coinage of Delphi," NC 1950, pp. 1-22.

106 Diogenes Laertius VII. 18. Zeno said of the polished discourses of the learned that they

were like the silver of Alexander, pleasant to the eye and well marked but none the better for that.

The other kind of discourse he likened to the Attic tetradrachms, carelessly cut and clumsy but

often able to demolish ornamented speeches. Evidently in Zeno's time there were Alexanders

circulating in Athens along with the Old Style Attic tetradrachmsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and Zeno didn't like them.

107 Alexander sent money to Antipater for the war against Sparta after the capture of Susa.

Arrian III. 16.10.

108 It is extensively treated by J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazaios;" see also Babelon, Traite II. 2,

pp. 445-460; BMC, Lycaonia, etc., pp. Ixxxi-lxxxiii; BMC, Phoenicia, pp. xcvi-xcix; Cohen,

Histoire grecque IV. 1, p. 13, n. 22, pp. 97, 99, 103f., 129.

109 Myriandros, pp. 2-14, Series I-V.

no Myriandros, pp. 14f., Series VI; Tarsos, pp. 3f.

THE KING'S FINANCES 61

issued coins with his name but not his title from Myriandrus ;ul from circa

343-333 he issued coins of Sidonian types with his name112 and there are

imitation Athenian tetradrachms with his name, probably for use in Palestine.113

He was not Satrap of Cilicia at the time of Alexander's invasion. It was

Arsames who deserted Tarsus; he was killed at the battle of Issus.114 Where

Mazaeus was we do not know, but his coins seem to have continued through

the uneasy term of his successor who had fought at the Granicus and whose

subsequent perils had left him no time for civilian activities.115 Mazaeus next

appears in 331 in command of an advance force on the Euphrates which retired

before Alexander's advance.116 But if he proved ineffective there he gave a good

account of himself at Gaugamela where he commanded the Persian right wing

and pressed Parmenio so hard that Alexander had to halt his pursuit of Darius

to assist him. Hearing of the king's flight, however, Mazaeus broke off the

engagement and led the remnants of his troops to Babylon.117 For 30 years he

had been an important and—so far as the record shows—a loyal general and

official of the Persian king, yet on the approach of Alexander he surrendered

Babylon without resistance. Curtius (V. 1. 17) makes it clear that the act was

a very convenient one for Alexander. "Gratus adventus eius regi fuit; quippe

magni operis obsidio futura erat tam munitae urbis." He took the precaution

of marching his army in formation but it was unnecessary; the Babylonians

made him welcome. Perhaps the town had been indefensible in spite of what

Curtius says, perhaps it was clear to Mazaeus that his king could never make

another stand. Yet it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the surrender had

been bargained for and that there was a price involved. The suspicion is deepened

when we find that Mazaeus was promptly appointed Satrap of Babylon—the

first Persian to be given such a position. To Tarn118 this is an act of chivalry

like the later treatment of Porus: "Alexander was honoring a worthy oppo-

nent." But it is surely an extravagant gesture to put so great and rich a

district into the hands of an enemy simply because he had been "a worthy

opponent." To be sure, the compliment was not without safeguards. Apollo-

dorus of Amphipolis was made commander of the troops left with Mazaeus and

in Myriandros, pp. 16-29.

112 BMC, Phoenicia, pp. 153f., nos. 78-85.

113 Babelon, Les Perses achemenides, p. LIX.

114 Curtius III. 4. 3. qui Cilicae praeerat; Arrian II. z. 5; 11. 8.

115 Babelon supposed him to have instituted the series of unsigned staters with the head of

Athena (Traite, pp. 461-468, nos. 719-733) but Newell shows (Tarsos, pp. 42-47) that these were

no earlier than 328. But see below, n. 177.

116 Arrian III. 7. 2.

117 Curtius IV. 16.1-7.

118 Alexander II, p. 109.

62 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Asclepiodorus was made collector of the taxes.119 There was a further unique

aspect of the new satrap's position, however. He at once began to issue silver

tetradrachms of the Attic standard (generally spoken of as staters) on one side

of which was Baaltars, as the inscription showed, and on the other, a lion with

the name of Mazaeus! (PLATE III, 3).120

It is this which most deeply shocked Howorth. "Prima facie" he says, "it

seems incredible that Alexander should have permitted one of his satraps, and

that a Persian...to issue coins in the satrap's own name." The Cilician Baal

would be inappropriate to Babylon, and the Aramaic inscriptions would be

unintelligible to the Greeks, the only people who would use the coins.121

Howorth was defending a doomed thesis, but more attention should have

been paid to the facts against which he protested. Attempts to explain this

unprecedented concession have been far from convincing. Six, who was the

first to face the problem, could only urge that Alexander, about to set out for

the Far East "ne s'est pas, certainment, occup6 des types ou des legends de

monnaies destinies aux populations indigenes." But the idea that this was a

trifle too slight to engage Alexander's attention is certainly untenable. At the

very time that the lion staters were beginning to appear Babylon joined the

great cities of Alexander's earlier conquest to produce his own types.122 He

could have attended to one series if he could provide for the other. Some

special reason must be found for this striking exception to the regular rule that

satraps could not coin in their own names. Most of the historians, if they record

the fact at all, do so without comment. Tarn123 and Cohen124 avoid the central

point: "he was the only satrap permitted to coin, doubtless for the convenience

of the Babylonian trade;" "pour aider a la renaissance du trafic (Alexandre)

lui laisse le privilege de battre monnaie." Money issued at Babylon might well

assist trade, but why this money and why the name Mazaeus? In his answer to

Howorth125 Imhoof-Blumer gave the most thorough-going attempt at an

explanation. "Alexander's efforts to make the utmost allowance for the orien-

118 Arrian III. 16. 4.

120 The weights of these coins create a problem with which Newell has dealt at some length

in ESM, pp. 105 f. It seems clear that the first ones were intended to be on the Attic standard,

but they soon became so much lighter as to fall to the weight of three sigloi, as Imhoof-Blumer

saw, NC 1906, p. 23, n. 10. But Newell rightly pointed out that they cannot have been meant to

be "triple sigloi" for their fractions are didrachms, drachms, hemidrachms and obols, which is

division by two and not by three.

121 NC 1904, pp. 3, 4.

122 Demanhur, nos. 3980-4048.

128 Alexander I, p. 52.

124 Histoire grecque IV. 1, p. 104.

1906, pp. 23f

THE KING'S FINANCES 63

tal point of view is well known. For the silver, the types of the Kilikian satrapal

issues of Mazaeus, Baaltars in the guise of Zeus and the lion were retained.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;On

the first silver issue struck at Babylon Mazaeus continued not only the coin

types of the Kilikian satrapy, but also, in accordance with the usual practice,

their inscriptions, which records his own name and that of the god represented,

the latter being intended to promulgate the figure of Baaltars still little known

in the far east, i.e., the figure of that particular Baal of all the countless Baalim

who had to be identified with the Greek Zeus of contemporary imperial issues.

Before the end of his short term of office (330-328) the satrap Mazaeus appears

to have been induced to give up these inscriptions, and from this date on until

306 the satrapal coins remain anepigraphic" (PLATE III, 4). As to the types,

Hill has an important amendment to offer.126 "The argument of most weight

against the attribution to Babylon lies in the fact that the coins with the name

of Mazeus attributed to Babylon identify the god on the obverse as Baaltars,

who would be unknown and unworshipped at Babylon. The answer to this

objection is that, although issued at Babylon, this was a satrapal coinage in-

tended chiefly for the payment of troops, many of whom may have been raised

in Cilicia by Mazaeus and brought by him to the East." This does indeed

propose a reason for the selection of types. But can it have been necessary to

maintain a separate coinage for the convenience of a body of mercenaries? And

if they demanded western types, why the lion alone (which was the type of

Myriandrus) instead of the familiar lion and bull or lion and deer of Tarsus?

And would it not be important to give them the double shekels to which they

were accustomed instead of tetradrachms on the Attic standard used by the

conqueror? Alexander's desire to conciliate the Orientals of which Imhoof-

Blumer speaks is indeed a most important consideration. But surely it is

characteristic of his policy from this point on and not of that which guided him

before Gaugamela. Why otherwise the replacement of local issues by his own

types? When all is said there is as yet no explanation of the satrap's name on

the silver of his new office. But how much is explained by the hypothesis that

the price of the bloodless surrender of Babylon was the confirming to Mazaeus

of his title and privileges! When Imhoof-Blumer speaks of the "usual practice"

of inscriptions accompanying the types he means, of course, the practice of the

Persian satraps in Cilicia. If Mazaeus was allowed to continue that, then his

position as Satrap of Babylonia under Alexander would be equivalent to his

position as Satrap of Cilicia under Darius. But, whatever were his rights in the

matter of coining in his earlier office, it is not likely that he now arrogated to

himself that power of decision which the Oeconomica restricts to the sovereign.

The appointment of Asclepiodorus as collector of taxes shows that Mazaeus'

126 BMC, Arabia, p. cxli.

64 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

function was not financial and we may be very sure that the number and kinds

of coins to be struck were decided by higher authority than his. The phrase

"the Satrap Mazaeus appears to have been induced to give up these inscriptions"

calls up an amusing picture of Alexander persuading and Mazaeus magnani-

mously consenting.127 If the special privilege was ended before the satrap's death

in 328 it is hardly likely to have been done in so courtly a fashion. The reason

for suggesting it is that there are anepigraphic lion staters which seem to come

so early in the series that Imhoof-Blumer would assign them to the first satrap.

But that is not proven. The staters with Mazaeus' name are very rare but

Babelon128 publishes four varieties: with no symbol, with a wreath, with a

serpent, with K. If they follow the normal Greek practice of a different symbol

every year all the years of Mazaeus' satrapy would be accounted for.

Whatever the intent behind the origin of the lion staters, and their divisions,

they did serve an economic function for they continued to be issued from Baby-

lon into, and perhaps through, the reign of Seleucus I and, in lesser numbers,

from Susa129 and Ecbatana130 in the same reign. This is not easy to account for.

They were by then so much under weight for Attic tetradrachms that they

must have been at a disadvantage compared with the full weight coins of

Alexandrine type being struck at the same time. Yet, if this were intended for

the convenience of a population accustomed to the use of sigloi, the fractions

would have been made to fit the Persian system, which they do not. (Paren-

thetically it must be pointed out that we are by no means sure that the inhabi-

tants of Babylonia did have any preference for sigloi).131 One is tempted to

think of coins only locally valid where a discrepancy between face value and

bullion value could be ignored by the sovereign, and Newell132 has very tenta-

tively suggested a connection between the lion staters and the temple of Bel.

He recognizes the difficulty created by the lion issues of Susa and Ecbatana

and can only hazard a guess that "if the temple at Babylon could issue 'temple

money' so too, presumably, could the hardly less important and famous temples

of Artemis-Nanaia at Susa and of Aene at Ecbatana." He cites the interesting

187 Ulrich Wilcken, Alexander the Great, New York, 1932, p. 141, whatever his source, believes

that it was a temporary arrangement. "As an exceptional measure—which was soon cancelled—

Mazaeus as satrap was entrusted with the coining of money."

128 Traite II. 2, pp. 475-478, nos. 751-753.

™ESM, pp. 117f.

130 ESM, p. 171.

131 The hoard from Mesopotamia published by Robinson, "A Silversmith's Hoard from

Mesopotamia," Iraq, 1950, pp. 44-51, contained 7 sigloi, compared with 6 Athenian coins and

10 more from western mints. Noe 1109 from the Tigris seems to have been exclusively Greek

silver with no sigloi at all.

132 ESM, p. 106, n. 14.

THE KING'S FINANCES 65

correspondence in fabric between the lion staters and the much later Jewish

shekels of the First Revoltâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;also temple money. Though I have nothing better

to suggest, I cannot believe that Newell's hypothesis is defensible. It is true

that Alexander made his offerings to Bel-Marduk and directed the recon-

struction of his temple133 but there cannot have been any intended connection

between that act and the first lion staters on which the god is specifically named

not Marduk but Baaltars. One must suppose either that the Babylonians could

not read the inscription (which is likely enough) or that the correspondence was

not thought of until the appearance of the anepigraphic staters. It is true that

Baaltars and Marduk were of sufficiently similar nature so that the seated god

could be taken for either one of them. But that is patently not true of Artemis-

Nanaia of Susa or Aene-Anaitis-Nanea of Ecbatana. And if the basis of the

lion staters' success had been real religious association it is surprising that it

should have disappeared so quickly. Only in Babylon can they have possibly

lasted beyond the reign of Seleucus I and there only until 275 at the latest,

when Antiochus moved the inhabitants to Seleucia.134 The theory of a limited

circulation is further complicated by their appearance in the Oxus Hoard.135

I cannot solve the enigma but, at the moment, the point of importance is that

the length of life of the experimental currency was enough to make it plain that

it was acceptable to the community and it is only fair to suppose that Alexander

and Mazaeus had reasonable grounds for supposing that it would be acceptable.

Mazaeus is not the only satrap to turn up on coins in Babylonia, but the

second instance has to do with a very different class of coins: the imitation of

Athenian owls. At the end of the 5th century it could be said that the owls of

Athens were the international currency par excellence, and even down to

Alexander's time they held their place as one of the principal elements of the

currency of the East, though now they were joined by satrapal silver and that

of the cities of the Syrian coast.136 The appearance of these latter issues begins

at the time of the Peloponnesian war when the supply of owls was much

reduced and they are accompanied by a growing number of imitations of

Athenian coins. Early hoards, such as those of Caboul and Malayer published

by Schlumberger, show a surprising number of 5th century owls, about equal

to the coins of all the other cities together, but the 4th century owls do not

seem to be included. Instead, one gets imitations.137 Now one kind of imitation,

133 Arrian III. 16. 4.

134 ESM, p. 104.

135 "The Coins from the Treasure of the Oxus," MN 1962, pp. 51-67.

136 Schlumberger, pp. 22 f.

137 One imitation with AIT instead of AGE was in the Caboul Hoard (Schlumberger, p. 36,

no. 64); another had been in the Oxus Hoard (Gardner, NC 1880, p. 191).

66 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

said to amount to a "very large group" is the type of owl bearing in Aramaic

the name of Mazaces, whose provenance is consistently Babylonia (PLATE III,

5).138 These are mysterious coins, the only explanation for which is that put

forward by Newell. After Issus Mazaces had been sent as Persian satrap to Egypt

where he kept order until the arrival of the Macedonian army, and where he

issued tetradrachms with Athenian types and bronzes with the head of a satrap

and a galley, both classes bearing his name in Aramaic.139 Being too weak to

resist, he received Alexander in friendly fashion into the country and the

cities,140 handing over 800 talents and the royal furniture.141 Berve thinks it

likely that he found a place at Alexander's court142 but the sources have nothing

more to say about him. The evidence for his connection with Babylonia is

purely numismatic, as to which Newell says, "Our coins do suggest that

Alexander had entrusted to Mazaces the governorship of some important city

or district as a reward for his ready surrender of Egypt." His owls then would

be an exact parallel to Mazaeus' lion staters except that we do not know what

position Mazaces could have held which would entitle him to this distinction.

Nor do we know the location of the mint. Newell gives good reasons for not

putting it at Babylon, yet he can only suggest Uruk or Opis, neither of which

has any special claim to consideration. Yet if there are many things puzzling

about these coins their purpose is more evident than that of Mazaeus' issues.

They can hardly have been intended primarily for use in Babylonia, even

though they turn up there. The imperial mint was producing Macedonian

tetradrachms and lion staters as well, and that surely ought to have satisfied

the demand. But if one wanted to mint silver for general circulation in the East

imitation owls would be the obvious thing to strike. Of course, this cannot have

been a private venture of Mazaces. It must have been part of a plan that had

imperial approval and prima facie the plan was to supply familiar types for

use in the East.

But these two classes of silver were not the only innovation connected with

the capture of Babylonia. "Demanding explanation also" says Newell, "is the

fact that for many years double and (more rarely) single gold darics of Achae-

minid type were coined alongside the lion staters. These gold coins seem, almost

138 Newell, Miscellanea Numismatic a, Cyrene to India (NNM 82), 1938, pp. 82-88. Schlum-

berger, p. 20, n. 6, accepts the attribution as certain. Six, NC 1884, pp. 141-143 had read the name

as Mazaros and assigned his no. 3 to the Companion whom Alexander installed as commander of

the citadel at Susa. Arrian III. 16. 9.

139 Newell, op. cit., pp. 72-75. His predecessor Sabaces had also struck imitation owls with

his name and signed bronzes with a lion and a Persian archer, op. cit., pp. 62-72.

140 Arrian III. 1.2.

141 Curtius IV. 7. 4.

142 Das Alexanderreich II, p. 246.

THE KING'S FINANCES 67

invariably, to turn up in eastern Iran and Bactria and not in Babylonia. But as

most of the specimens of which we possess any record at all have come from

the single great Treasure of the Oxus,' this seeming fact may be illusory. That

both double darics and lion staters were mostly coined at Babylon is certain."143

The double darics "which everybody admits to be of the time of Alexander

the Great"144 are at once distinguishable from earlier Persian gold by their

appearance (PLATE III, 6). Though the conventional figure of the king in

kneeling or running position is preserved, the face, with its straight nose, is a

Hellenized version of the Persian monarch. The relief is higher and the incuse

on the reverse, instead of being an amorphous depression, is filled with wavy

lines or curves that tend to form a pattern (cf. BMC Arabia, PI. XX, 1-13).

Moreover, most of the specimens have Greek letters or monograms on the

obverse. There are no double darics which do not have some or all of these

characteristics and none, therefore, which can be assigned to an earlier period.

That is, this higher denomination is an invention of the time of Alexander.

What is the unit to which it belongsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the rarer single gold daric ? There are few

darics with letters or monograms like those of the doubles145 and none with

quite the same wavy patterns on the reverse. There are, however, some which

show a similar pattern and which also have high relief and a Hellenized por-

trait (BMC Arabia, PI. XXV, 21-25). As to these, Hill is cautious. He calls

attention to the likeness of the two denominations, but catalogues the darics

with the Persian Empire instead of with the Alexandrine Empire of the East.

They must, he says "belong to the last Persian king, Darius III,146 and in the

catalogue they appear under the caption 'Darius III' Babylon." There are a

few sigloi like them. Only one is illustrated (PI. XXV, 26) but it certainly

shows a portrait unlike the earlier sigloi. Hill's arrangement would mean that

under Darius III there was a marked artistic change in the coins issued at

Babylon affecting both darics and sigloi, and that Alexander used and developed

the new style in the same city for the making of a denomination of his own, the

double daric, though he did not strike either single darics or sigloi. The sudden

appearance of a Greek profile on coins of Darius III is possible but surprising,

143 The capital work is F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Die Miinzstatte Babylon," NZ 1895, pp. 1-22.

Except for the protest of Sir Henry Howorth, promptly answered, there has been no dissent.

However, the concession implied in Newell's phrase "mostly coined at Babylon" had been more

clearly expressed by Hill, BMC, Arabia, p. cxli, n. 1. "It may perhaps be admitted that some of

the coins were issued at other mints in the Eastern portion of Alexander's conquests;" e.g., pp.

178f., nos. 8-13. "the following are for the most part of ruder workmanship, and were perhaps

made farther East than Babylon."

144 BMC, Arabia, p. cxxvi, n. 6.

146 There is a daric with OA in the Newell collection.

146 BMC, Arabia, p. cxxx.

68 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

and the suggestion might be ventured as an alternative that these darics and

sigloi are also coins of Alexander but from a different mint, which would ex-

plain their differences from the double darics.

That these are indeed from Babylon is the general persuasion, but it can

hardly be called proven. The piece with M in the field (BMC, p. 176, no. 2) may

be compared with the Babylonian Alexander teradrachm with M (Demanhur,

3980); the combination M and <D on the tetradrachms (Demanhur, 3983-4057)

with [*i on a double daric (BMC, p. 177, no. 5). But OA or Ol are on both the

gold which Hill labels "Usually attributed to the mint of Babylon" and that

of which he says "The following are for the most part of ruder workmanship,

and were perhaps made farther East than Babylon." The idea that all these

strange issues were the product of Mazaeus is tempting147 but it will need more

facts to make it a certainty.

If there is general agreement on the fact of Alexander's striking the double

darics there is very little said about the reason for it. Unlike the lion staters these

from beginning to end are on a different standard from the Attic and there must

have been a particular reason for the premeditated confusion of two gold coins

one of which was not quite twice the weight of the other. It seems inescapable

that the invention of the double daric rests on the intention to use the daric,

and perhaps the darics which Hill assigns to Darius III are actually the units

of Alexander. But there were others available. Diodorus says that the capture

of Susa brought in 40,000 talents of uncoined gold and silver and 9,000 talents

of darics; that of Persepolis, 120,000 talents reckoning the gold at its value in

silver.148 We have seen reason to believe that the treasure captured at Damascus

147 Babelon, Les Perses achlmenides, p. xx, "De toute necessite, on doit conclure qu'Alexandre,

en laissant au satrap perse Mazaios ses droits monetairesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;lui permit de continuer non seulement

1'emission de ses tetradrachmes d'argent aux types de Baaltars et du lion, mais encore celle des

dariques et des doubles dariques." Babelon says nothing about the sigloi which Hill associates with

the darics. Can there have been the simultaneous issue from the same mint of Alexandrine

tetradrachms, lion staters and sigloi?

lie XVII. 66. 1; 71. 1. He is the only one who makes special reference to darics. The authors

vary in the amounts they give, but the differences are not extreme. They all reckon in silver

talents (dtpyuplou ToXavra talentum argenti) though Diodorus alone is specific: els dpyvptou A6yov

dvoyoulvou TOU xpwiov. The accounts compare as follows:

SUSA PERSEPOLIS

Arrian III. 16. 7 50,000 tal.

Curtius V. 2. 11; 6. 9 50,000 tal. 120,000 tal.

uncoined

Diodorus XVII. 66. 1, 2; 71. 1 40,000 tal. 120,000 tal.

uncoined gold and silver

9,000 tal.

of darics

THE KING'S FINANCES

Map 2

Plutarch, Alex., 36. 1; 37. 2

an equal amount of coin

40,000 tal.

coined

Justin XI. 14. 9 40,000 tal.

This is not serious variation. The chief question is, was any of the treasure in the form of coin?

I do not believe that Plutarch's VOU(CTUOTOS is of any importance. In view of Curtius' explicit phrase

non signati forma sed rudi pondere, and Diodorus' Aor'mou ypvaov Kocl dpyupoO we must suppose

there was bullion, which is likely even without testimony. But Diodorus is so clear in his anti-

thesis between the bullion and the dvvocKiax'Xia TdXavra xP"00" x0?010^0 SapeiKibv UXOITOC as

to make it certain that he believed there to have been both bullion and coin. It is less likely that

his source invented the darics than that the source of Arrian and Curtius made up a round number

by including them with the uncoined metal.

70 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

was melted down and reissued with Alexander's own types, but we do not find

the same conditions here. There is no activity in local mints. Indeed, it is a fact

of the greatest importance that there is no mint for Alexander coins in the East

except Babylon. The map will show the surprising lack of proportion which

multiplies the western mints and leaves nothing but Babylon to supply the

funds for the long and costly campaign east of the two rivers (Map 3). The army

cannot have been without coin. Even though they were going into country

where an economy of barter may have prevailed widely, the Greek and Mace-

donian soldiery cannot have been induced to forego their accustomed pay from

the summer of 330 to that of 325. Yet the record, which contains two mutinies,

has no suggestion of the kind of difficulty about pay so common with ancient

armies. The cancellation of debts which followed the marriages at Susa149 was,

to be sure, a phenomenon of the return to familiar civilization, but how did the

army incur debts of 20,000 talents if they had been operating on payments in

kind? The reorganization which provided for "ten stater men" between the

ordinary soldiers and the "double pay men" is reported150 without any intim-

ation that pay was being reintroduced. If Alexander had founded his eastern

cities (particularly the military colonies)151 without money could the Greek

historians possibly have avoided comment on it? There is no escape from the

fact that the army must have had money in the East and the necessary con-

clusion seems to be that it was transported from Babylon, the nearest source.

But that surely presents an enormous problem of transport. The system of the

Seleucids is enlightening. They had mints certainly at Susa, Persepolis,

Ecbatana and Bactra, with another which may have been at Hecatompylus or

Artacoana, and the contents of the Oxus Hoard show that the mint of Bactra

supplied the needs of that district as it was intended to do.152 Why should

Alexander rely on so remote a city as Babylon which, moreover, had its own

important district to serve (Map 3)?

U9 Arrian VII. 5.1-3.

150 Arrian VII. 23. 3. 4. Griffith, Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World, p. 300 believes that

pay was intermitted during the Indian campaign on two grounds: first, "It is difficult to think that

Alexander carried vast sums of money about with him during his Indian campaign" and second

"when he returned from India and discharged 10,000 Macedonian veterans, he had arrears of pay

to make up" (Arrian VII. 12. 1). The difficulty as to transport is a serious one, but not so serious

in India where he had the rivers to use as in the mountains of Bactria. And there is nothing to

suggest that the arrears in pay were of long standing. They may have been only in connection with

the march back from India. Griffith is hardly justified in saying "in fact it is certain that he did

not pay pna66s regularly by the month." In any case, this concerns only one element of expense.

151 Tarn, Alexander II, pp. 232-249.

152 "The Coins from the Treasure of the Oxus," MN 1962,

THE KING'S FINANCES

Map 3

But did he? It is instructive to look at what happened to the treasure from

Susa and Persepolis. The bulk of it was so great that Plutarch says153 it re-

quired 10,000 pairs of mules and 5,000 camels to move it. Curtius says154 that

the baggage and a large part of the army was left at Persepolis in charge of

Parmenio and Craterus. But it was not to stay there. We know from Arrian155

that Parmenio was ordered to take the treasure to the citadel in Ecbatana and

deliver it to Harpalus who had a guard of 6,000 Macedonians plus a few auxil-

iary troops. The mention of Harpalus is puzzling. We do not know how or when

he got to Ecbatana or why or when he left to return to Babylon. Moreover,

in the next section Arrian tells us that Cleitus, who had been left sick in Susa,

was ordered to proceed to Ecbatana, take the Macedonian guard of the treasure

and march against the Parthyaeans. Then who was left to guard the treasure?

Something has certainly dropped out of the account. Fortunately we know the

main fact. At the time of Parmenio's execution in the fall of 330 he was Satrap

of Media and guardian of the king's treasure whose total Diodorus gives as

180,000 talents;156 Justin says 190,000.157 Clearly this was Alexander's capital

for the financing of the campaign in Afghanistan and India. But it was not

taken to Babylon at all. Now it has been suggested what Harpalus was doing

153 Alexander, 37. 2.

154 V. 6. 11.

156 III. 19. 7.

156 XVII. 80. 3.

W7 XII. 1.1.

72 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

in Ecbatana: he was supervising the coining of the Persian treasure.158 This is

on the theory that Harpalus, as treasurer, had control over minting, which

there is nothing to support. But there is a more serious difficulty than the

theoretical one. If Harpalus put 180,000 talents into coins what are they? In

discussing the Seleucid mint of Ecbatana, Newell says,159 "There need be less

surprise that a mint was opened by the Greeks at Ecbatana than that the

mint should have commenced to function so late. At least, the earliest coins

of Alexandrine types that can be assigned confidently to Ecbatana do not

antedate the reign of Seleucus. There do exist a few earlier pieces which may

have been coined there." But "a few pieces" will not solve our dilemma. From

this enormous treasure must have come a series at least comparable in size to

that of Babylon. But there is no such series. There are still small groups whose

attribution is doubtful but the product of the great mints is known, and there

is nothing left over to assign to Ecbatana. Its output must have disappeared.

Unless its output was darics. To prove that would need the assembly of

much more evidence than is now available. The gold already published as

presumably Alexandrine is not enough in bulk to fill the need. But I think no

search for darics has ever been undertaken with this in mind. Such a search

might prove disappointing, but the possibility ought to be kept open that the

double darics "certainly from Babylon" were supplemented by others of more

eastern appearance and by darics and sigloi whose place of origin may have

been Ecbatana. To the circumstantial evidence already cited one more item is

to be added: the one experiment of Seleucus I in coining a double daric was

at Ecbatana (ESM, p. 171, no. 460).

Even this much proven would leave us with baffling questions. The

problem of transport would not be solved. Ecbatana is a couple of hundred

miles nearer the eastern campaigns but it is still far enough in all conscience.

There are several possibilities, none of them very comfortable. There may

have been mints still further east which contributed their share to the expenses

of the campaign. This would mean reducing still further the number that we

could credit to Ecbatana. There may have been other treasures containing

coin in the East of which we have no record. Money already in circulation may

have been confiscated and used for the army. Eastern cities, perhaps his own

foundations, may have been used as advance treasuries for the accumulation

of coin. Of course, if the treasure of Susa and Persepolis is involved at all in

158 Berve, Das Alexanderreich II, pp. 76f. "wo unter seiner Oberleitung in den nachsten Jahren

sich die Ausmunzung der Achaimenidenschatze vollzogen haben wird." Evidently he thinks that

Harpalus was independent of Parmenio and continued his duties as mintmaster after the satrap's

execution.

158 ESM, p. 162.

THE KING'S FINANCES 73

the eastern campaigns the question of transport remains. Either bullion or

coin must have been carried to the army and though bullion would have been

less bulky it would have been just as heavy. But it would seem that the most

inconvenient arrangement would be for the mint to forward its current pro-

duction at frequent intervals, though presumably that is how the paymasters

got their funds when mints were close by. For a big and remote army that

would have meant keeping the transport trains on the road constantly with

a large body of men of necessity detailed for guard duty. But obviously the

conversion into coin of enough metal for a campaign of 5 years' duration could

not be done quickly.

The problem of silver is also very obscure. A natural assumption would

be that if Ecbatana minted darics it minted sigloi as well, but here there is a

still smaller group (BMC Arabia, p. 160, nos. 88-91) which there is reason to

attribute to the time of Alexander. We know, on Schlumberger's showing, how

slight was the importance of the siglos in the total currency of the Persian

empire. Still, in Alexander's time it had some importance or no late ones would

have been struck at all. But these few sigloi and the imitations of Mazaces are

the only silver we have found so far which has the appearance of being designed

for use in the East. Could that and the late darics and double darics have been

sufficient for the need?

This would be the place to give an account of the king's income and expenses

if we could only do so with any confidence. There is a summary calculation of

income and expenses given by Beloch (IV. 1., pp. 41-43) in which the cost of

the army is put at 7,000 talents a year. The uncertainty of the figures is illus-

trated by the eclectic confidence given to the sources. Justin XIII. 1. 9 gives

specific figures for the time of Alexander's death: erant enim in thesauris L

milia talentum et in annuo vectigali ac tributo tricena milia. The first sum is

accepted, the second rejected on the grounds that Herodotus III. 90-95 gives

the yearly tribute of Darius I as 14,560 talents (10,000 "ohne den indischen

Tribut und die Naturalleistungen"), which is regarded as an exaggeration,

while Antigonus at the height of his power in 315, when he controlled nearly

all the Asiatic satrapies, had an income of only 11,000 talents (Diodorus

XIX. 56. 5). Beloch therefore reduces Justin's 30,000 talents to 15,000. Various

extraordinary sums such as that for Hephaestion's funeral, and gifts to the

army are accepted, but the total of 12,000 talents "contra decus regiumâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;tumu-

lumque" as Justin puts it, on which Justin (XII. 12. 12) and Diodorus (XVII.

115. 5) agree, is rejected because even the funeral of a Roman emperor cost no

more than 400 talents. If we accept Beloch's figure of 7,000 talents for the

yearly cost of the army we must do so with the realization that it is no more

than a good guess. The most recent and most thorough study of Alexander's

74 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

economy is that of A. M. Andreades 'Icrropia THS 'EXXrivkris Sr^oafas olxouonfas

Book II, Part I, 'H 6r)uoa(a oixovoula TOU jieyaXou 'AAs^cxvSpou, Athens, 1930.

He thinks that Beloch's 7,000 is too low a figure (p. 21), but his calculations

suffer from the same unavoidable weakness of having to substitute probable

hypotheses for data. Both authors agree that Alexander's expenses exceeded

his income.

Let us for the moment accept 7,000 talents as a reasonable military budget

and, using very much simplified figures (since there is no possibility of ex-

actitude) see what the consequences would be. If Diodorus is right and there

were 9,000 talents of darics in Susa, then the first year would be paid for with-

out the need of further mintage—indeed there would be a surplus of 2,000

talents. Suppose we say that Alexander would be provided for from the death

of Darius to the summer of 329. He must then make provision for 2 years'

campaigning, from the summer of 329 to that of 327 when he entered India

and an entirely new set of conditions. He would have needed 14,000 talents

for the army, which the treasure at Ecbatana was well able to provide. Let us

assume that 10,000 talents is to be in the form of double darics and (to make

things as simple as possible) let us assume that the double daric equals the

distater and that 150 of them go to the talent.160 That would mean minting

1,500,000 of them. What would be a reasonable number of specimens now

preserved to represent that number originally struck ? There is one recent study

which has at least some degree of control for its calculation of survival rate:

E. J. P. Raven, "The Amphictionic Coinage of Delphi."161 But in spite of the

author's sane and careful treatment there is an embarrassing spread in the

possibilities according to the denomination investigated and the total amount

supposed to have been struck—a spread from 1 in 7,310 to 1 in 240,000! Mr.

Raven himself is a little discouraged and recalling that "previous estimates of

survival rates have usually been in the region of 1 in 5,000" admits that "that

figure may not be far from the average of all Greek coins." Let us adopt it with

no illusions.162 It would mean that of the original 1,500,000 double darics, 300

160 This involves a considerable discrepancy since, according to Hemmy, Iraq 1938, p. 70,

two of Alexander's staters would weigh 17.32 grams, the double daric only 16.80. But the degree

of other uncertainties is so great that we need not hesitate to consult our convenience to this

extent.

161 NC 1950, pp. 1-22.

162 E. S. G. Robinson, "Some Problems in the Later Fifth Century Coinage of Athens,"

MN 1960, p. 12, making his own calculation of the survival rate of Athenian gold, concludes that

it was "something like one part in 4,000"—"perhaps more" he writes me, "certainly not less." He

considers that more gold went into jewelry than silver so that the survival rates of the two metals

would be unlike. The difference between 5,000 and 4,000 is a palliative, but I do not feel that it

can cure our difficulty. Since this was written Margaret Thompson's great work on the Athenian

THE KING'S FINANCES 75

should have survived. If we assume that 2,000 talents consisted of silver (the

other 2,000 being accounted for by the surplus darics) and that the silver was

imitation Athenian tetradrachms at 1,500 to the talent, there would have been

3,000,000 struck, of which 600 should have survived. If one follows more

closely the proportions of Seleucid coinage the amount of gold will be much

decreased and the silver correspondingly increased, but the Seleucids had no

great reservoirs of gold to make into money. I will not affront the reader by

pointing out what a tissue of uncertainties we have here. Everyone must decide

for himself whether such procedure can do any good at all. I may express my

own feeling that, no matter how you calculate, there do not seem to be enough

coins to meet the requirements. There has been no gathering of either double

darics or imitation owls, but I find it hard to believe that a census would

approach the necessary figures. It seems to me that there must have been

supplements from more Persian coins, from the Alexander coinage, or from

other series. It is unlikely that the country itself offered large amounts of

plunder.

We have some evidence of subsidiary series. There are a number of pieces

that have been often attributed to India: varieties of imitation owls, small

coins with Athena's head and an eagle, drachms and the famous tetradrachms

with the head of Zeus and an eagle, these last with the name of Alexander

(PLATE I, 12).163 The old attribution is disposed of, finally, one hopes, by an

admirable article by R. B, Whitehead164 in which he shows clearly that, though

specimens are acquired in India, their place of origin is across the mountains

in Afghanistan. These, then, might have helped to fill the need, but their

number cannot have been large.

As to the use of Alexander's regular coinage, we are in strange doubt. Alex-

anders do turn up in Afghanistan. I have recently seen a number acquired by

an inexpert collector who had no interest in selecting rarities. There were

8 tetradrachms, 6 drachms and a hemidrachm, but the only pieces surely early

enough to belong to this period were one stater of Amphipolis and one late

daric. The silver was all of 324 or later. The Oxus Hoard, which ought to be

New Style Silver has appeared with calculations that in that series the survival rate might be as

low as 1: 2625, as high as 1: 395. Her conclusion (p. 709) "There is no such thing as a general

survival rate which can be applied indiscriminately to various issues of Greek coinage" is certainly

just and reduces still further the possible evidential value of the figures used by me.

193 B. V. Head, "The Earliest Greco-Bactrian and Greco-Indian Coins," NC 1906, pp. 1-16.

164 "Xhe Eastern Satrap Sophytes," NC 1943, pp. 60-72. The eastern imitations have been

treated in A. K. Narain, The Indo-Greeks, Oxford, 1957, p. 4. He raises the interesting question

whether the Bactrian users of Greek coins may not have been Greeks from the settlements to the

north-west of India to which both Greek and Indian sources testify (pp. 1 f.).

76 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

very enlightening, fails us entirely. Of the 100 odd tetradrachms and 100 odd

drachms said to have been included, only one was sufficiently described to be

identified, and that turns out to be a coin of Seleucus I from Ecbatana, ESM,

p. 166, no. 454. We have no way of knowing the date of the others nor, if we

knew, could we tell whether they came into the country with Alexander or

later. J. Hackin's "Repartition des Monnaies anciennes en Afghanistan"165

makes no mention of Alexanders (but neither does he mention Seleucids,

though he prints "Seleucides" on his map at Tash Kurgan). So far as our

evidence goes, the coins of Alexander himself played no part of any importance

in his conquest of Bactria.

There remains the possibility that he had more Persian coins and used them,

but I do not see how that can ever be proved.166

The record of Alexander's finances in India is extremely meager. Plutarch167

records the gift to the king of Taxila of 1,000 talents, which he says was in coin,

and the great displeasure of Alexander's friends. The same incident occurs in

Curtius,168 with an interesting addition. Omphis, being confirmed as king of

Taxila, presented Alexander with sundry gifts and 80 talents signati argenti.169

Alexander was gratified but returned the offering and instead gave Omphis

1,000 talents ex praeda quam vehebat, gold and silver vessels, Persian robes

and 30 horses. This is an odd episode. What did Omphis expect to buy with so

small a gift as 80 talents ? The exchange of presents would be appropriate ritual

between two kings meeting to form an alliance but the 1,000 talents, even if

Plutarch was not right about its being coin, would be much more credible if it

were to insure the cooperation of the forces of Taxila than if it were a mere

gesture of vanity, as both the authors seem to take it to be. For what it is worth,

the incident shows Alexander as actually carrying his treasure in his baggage

165 Journal asiatique 1935.

166 It is perhaps worth mentioning that "Plutarch," Lives of the Ten Orators, 846 A, says,

apparently on the authority of Philochorus, that Demosthenes accepted a bribe of 1,000 darics

from Harpalus. No one else mentions the unit of the bribe. It is conceivable that some of the

5,000 talents with which Harpalus is said to have absconded (Diodorus XVII. 108. 6) was in

darics.

167 Alexander 59. 3.

168 VIII. 12.15 f.

168 John Allan, "The Beginnings of Coinage in India," Transactions of the International

Numismatic Congress, 1936, London, 1938, pp. 387-392, believes that what is meant is the small

silver bars with punched design, of the weight of two sigloi. Some of them were found at Taxila

with a siglos, a tetradrachm and drachm of Alexander and a tetradrachm of Philip III, and Allan

regards them as the earliest Indian coins. I doubt, however, whether argentum signatum "is

clearly more than bullion and yet something that to the Western mind was not exactly coin." The

same phrase is used to describe the money brought by Orsines, Satrap of Pasargada, Curtius

X.1. 24.

THE KING'S FINANCES 77

and as having enough so that he could part with a large sum before the con-

quest of India had fairly begun.

Curtius says170 that after the defeat of Porus and the founding of Nicaea and

Bucephala Alexander gave each of the leaders a crown and 1,000 aureiâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a

detail so conventional that it is hardly to be taken seriously. Both Arrian171 and

Plutarch172 speak of Indian mercenaries. This is all that is pertinent in the

literary tradition. The coins themselves, however, are more helpful. First there

is the negative evidence of the extreme rarity of Alexander's own money in

India.173 Second there is the scarcity of Persian gold and the comparative

frequency of Persian silver.174 Third there is the existence of a class of silver

coins of double, half and quarter siglos weight175 which seems to have formed

the basic currency of the northwest district to which Alexander first came.

Macdonald explains the infrequency of Persian gold in India by the fact that

there was so much gold there that the ratio with silver was only 8: 1. This

would, of course, be unfavorable to the use of darics coined on the Persian

standard of 13. 3: 1 and, to a lesser extent, to the gold coins of Alexander

struck at 10: 1. Alexander may, therefore, have planned to use silver only,

though in this case he would have had little need to import specie. India is

notoriously rich in metal and, moreover, much given to hoarding,176 so that

here, as in Persia, the conqueror will have been able to look forward to the

capture of enough bullion to finance his campaign. It certainly was not financed

by staters and tetradrachms transported from Babylon.

This digression into the perplexities of the East has led us far from the

main course of our study, but it could hardly be neglected. No matter how the

details are finally settled, the general picture is clear. Before Gaugamela the

empire had two monetary zones: Greece and Asia Minor (Map 2) where the

170IX. 1. 6.

171IV. 26.1:27.3.

172 Alexander 59. 3.

173 I am indebted to Dr. R. B. Whitehead, whose experience and recollections are conclusive

in this matter. He cites some coins with Alexander's name collected in the Punjab, reported

without details by Charles J. Rodgers (Coin Collecting in Northern India, Allahabad, 1894,

p. 19), and Sir John Marshall's siglos, Alexander tetradrachm and drachm and Philip III tetra-

drachm, the insignificant fruit of his 20 years of excavation at Taxila (Taxila, Cambridge, 1951,

Vol. II, p. 795). I recall that Newell once told me that he had just received an Alexander found

in India, the first in his experience, but I never knew the details.

174 George Macdonald, "Ancient Persian Coins in India," Cambridge History of India, Vol. I,

New York, 1922, pp. 342-344.

176 John Allan, Catalogue of the Indian Coins in the British Museum. Ancient India, London,

1936, pp. xv-xvii, 1-3, PI. 1,1-5, Class I.

176 A. H. Lloyd, "Hoarding of the Precious Metals in India," Transactions of the International

Numismatic Congress, 1936, London, 1938, pp. 427-438.

78 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

imperial types joined or dominated but did not extinguish the local currencies;

Cilicia and Syria (Map 3) where the local currencies were replaced by the

imperial. To this period belongs the fiscal purpose of Alexander, as defined by

Schlumberger, of eventually achieving monetary uniformity for the empire as

a whole. But after Gaugamela a third zone is added, of Mesopotamia and the

East (Map 4) in which the preexisting confusion is not merely tolerated but

augmented by the emissions of the conqueror. There is concession to the Persian

tradition, as proved by the double darics; concession to the satrapal tradition,

as proved by the imitation owls. Whether temporarily or permanently the ideal

of uniformity is laid aside. In part this was doubtless the result of difficulties

greater in the East than in the West: the continuous warfare, the strange and

remote terrain, the alien mores of the people. But it also resulted from a changed

state of mind, for there are two phenomena in the West, one beginning about

327 during Alexander's absence in the East, the other in 324 after his return.

The first is the institution at Tarsus of a series of silver staters of Persian weight

and Cilician type without any reference to Alexander, for the use of Issus,

Mallus, Soli and Tarsus itself (PLATE III, 7, 8).177 The other is the coining, in

the mints of Asia Minor, of gold staters with the name and type of Philip II.178

Neither of these can be explained by any pressure of necessity or change of

conditions. Both must have been designed to gratify the sentiment of those

who still remembered kindly the money that preceded Alexander.

All this is perfectly appropriate to the historical situation. Until the final

defeat of the Persian king Alexander was an adventurer, with everything to

gain, but much to lose. Whenever his resolution was taken that he himself was

to be the Great King, it became imperative for him to assert his prestige and

177 Tarsos, pp. 16-22. The enigmatic second series of staters (PLATE III, 8), ibid., whatever

its explanation, adds to the effect of the first. The significance of both these series will need to be

reconsidered in view of the recent discovery of a specimen on which, instead of the usual B,

there appears the name of Balacrus, Alexander's satrap of Cilicia. Babelon had suggested this

meaning for B which Newell (Tarsos, p. 18) had denied. Howorth made the same suggestion in

his article "A Note on Some Coins Generally Attributed to Mazaios, the Satrap of Cilicia and

Syria," JVC 1902, pp. 83 f. The owner of the new piece, Herr von Aulock, has kindly sent me

photographs of his interesting discovery, which he is about to publish. It would not be proper to

anticipate the publication, but it may be remarked that while the new coin proves that Series II

of Persic staters (Tarsos, pp. 42-47) was instituted before the death of Balacrus in 328 it does not

settle the question whether the B which sometimes appears on Series I (ibid. p. 17, d-f) is the

mark of the same official, still less whether he is the B who shares with A the issue of the early

Tarsiote Alexanders (ibid. p. 9). On the initial date will depend the solution to the question

whether the signed lion staters of Mazaeus from Babylon were without precedent, as assumed in

the present study, or whether Alexander had already allowed another satrap to put his name

on a coin. In any case, the privilege seems to have been of short duration.

178 Thompson and Bellinger, passim.

THE KING'S FINANCES 79

his power. Asiatics were to be taught that the imperial structure which they

had regarded as supreme was in process of being overthrown by a mighty

foreigner, supported by foreign gods, who was no mere raider, but had come

among them to conquer, to occupy and to organize. Heracles and Zeus and the

name of Alexander were to become as familiar to them as the gods of their own

country and the odd little monarch with bow and spear. But when the empire

was won, when he was in fact the Great King himself, what did it matter any

longer? Then came the experiments with the amalgamation of races, the

Persians in positions of trust, the oriental splendor and extravagance, the

figure of Alexander on the great decadrachm, a Macedonian king on one side

charging against Porus, but, on the other, a divine king in Persian dress, wield-

ing the thunderbolt (PLATE I, 13).

But, if there was confusion in the East and breach of precedent in the West,

it must not be thought that the general system was weakened, much less

abandoned, after Gaugamela. The old mints continued to strike their con-

ventional coins, the latest organized of the great mints, Alexandria, beginning

to operate about 326.179 About that time also there was a marked, though un-

explained, increase in the output of a number of cities.180 Neither quantity nor

quality showed signs of slackening, and there must have been few west of

Babylon who did not know the types of Alexander.

The ultimate test of a currency is its ability to provide what is needed. So

judged, Alexander's international currency had been a great success. It had

furnished him with the resources of war and peace over a vast territory whose

178 Demanhur, pp. 144-147. A violent contrast to the orthodoxy of the old mints cannot be

entirely passed over. Didrachms of very strange appearance, some of which have the name

"Alexander" in Aramaic characters are assigned by Six (NC 1878, pp. 103-118) to Hierapolis in

Syria and to the period from 315-301. Later (NC 1884, p. 113) he was inclined to believe that

those with Alexander's name may have been struck in his own lifetime. I am not competent to

deal with the linguistic and paleographical problems involved, but I believe that no one would

assign, on the grounds of appearance, the first four coins of PI. VI of the former article to the end

of the 4th century B.C. Even that, however, is more likely than that a series so barbaric should

have been begun under Alexander and in his name. The condition of the High Priest of Hierapolis

was doubtless unique, but he was not so far from Cilicia that his city would have been totally

unaware of numismatic propriety. Babelon (Perses achemenides, pp. LI-LIV) though he suggests

that the place of issue might be Comana instead of Hierapolis, accepts the theory that we have

to do with Alexander the Great and not a dynast of that name, since the types are imitations of

those of Mazaeus. But the style of imitation is quite uncharacteristic of the time, and the appear-

ance of Alexander as dynast or High Priest signing coins of a petty state with types totally un-

related to his own is without parallel and without probability. I would invite the Orientalists to

consider the possibility that the Alexander of Six' nos. 1 and 2 is a High Priest, like Abd-Hadad

of nos. 4 and 5 and that the whole series belongs to a much later time.

180 Thompson and Bellinger, pp. 30 f.

8o ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

expansion he could not foresee in detail. It had succeeded, at least as far as

Mesopotamia, in introducing an economy of uniform specie to regions accustom-

ed to other currencies or to none. Trade had carried the daric and the owl far

and wide, but the army and the civil power carried the gold Athena and the

silver Heracles farther yet. As an instrument of conquest or commerce and of

government, the coinage of Alexander made a record no less brilliant than his

more familiar achievements.

Could its success have continued? Would it have served the whole estab-

lished empire which he planned? No question which must assume the con-

tinued life and health of Alexander can have a satisfying answer, but here, as

in other cases, one must doubt if he could have maintained what he created.

There is no reason to suspect that he was an economist more gifted than his

generation. It is the common belief that his expenses outran his income. Doubt-

less the mines of Macedonia seemed inexhaustible; inexhaustible also the huge

Persian treasure. With its capture begin the tales of extravagances which, in

the end, were sure to impoverish the royal power. If he could have learned in

Babylon, when there was nothing more to conquer, to match his expenses to

his needs as successfully as he seems to have done while he was winning Asia

Minor, his financial structure might have stood for generations. But who was

there to teach him?

THE SUCCESSORS AND THE CITIES

The death of Alexander left his empire without a leader and there was

great difficulty in choosing one. Some were for retaining the kingship in the

Macedonian royal house and supported Philip's son Arrhidaeus, Alexander's

half-brother. Others felt that the family of Alexander himself was the proper

source of royal power and hoped for an heir in the child which Roxane was

expecting. The factions were vehement and almost came to blows, yet to the

wiser minds it must have been apparent that the true question was not who

was to have the name of king but who was to control the armies and the

finances of the empire. The generals could not know, any more than we know

now whether it was possible that the vast realm which they had conquered

could be ruled as a unit, but even those who doubted most had no plan for

division except the appeal to arms. But civil war was to the liking of no one

and so it was essential that the formal question as to the kingship should be

settled promptly. A compromise was reached: Arrhidaeus' name was changed

to Philip and he was declared king with the proviso that if Roxane's child

should be a son he was to share the royal title. Roxane's child, as it turned out,

was a son; he was duly named Alexander and war was for the time averted.

Perdiccas and Craterus divided the ill-defined powers and duties of guardian

and regent. Many of the necessary arrangements of which we are not told must

have been made by them and it may have been they who decided that, as

money must continue to be struck, the familiar types should be retained but

that some of the coins should bear the name of Philip, and this plan was put

into effect as soon as the problem of the kingship was solved.

It was not universally done, however. The most conspicuous exception is

that the premier mint of Amphipolis never used Philip's name. It is not easy

to see why this should have been so. The Macedonians had been Philip's

supporters in the contest as to the succession and Antipater, who was regent

in Macedonia, was a thorough legitimist. Moreover, he had long been at odds

with Olympias, that fervent partisan of her grandson and foe of his co-ruler,

which should have put Antipater in Philip's party if partisanship was impor-

tant in Macedonia in 323. It is a further complication that there is an issue for

Philip from Pella in about 318.x At that time there is indeed evidence of a

1 Demanhur 1637 with the same symbols as the Alexander issue, 1635. The coin is in the British

Museum and seems to be unique. It is an odd piece with BAZIAEIiZ upside down in the exergue.

82 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

division in the country. Cassander was making head against the duly appointed

guardian Polyperchon; Eurydice, Philip's wife and half-sister, had attempted

to take charge of affairs and transfer the command from Polyperchon to

Cassander; the young Alexander was apparently with his grandmother in

Epirus. It may be that Eurydice had enough influence in Pella to have it strike

in her husband's name, but not enough to prevent the same magistrate from

striking in that of Alexander. But this does not explain why the omission

should have been made in the beginning when Babylon was using both names.2

Perhaps there will ultimately be found adequate political explanations for the

other places where Philip's name was not used, such as Miletus, Damascus and

Alexandria, but at present it seems as though the irregular procedure is no

more than a symptom of imperfect control by the regents of minting regulation.

This does not prevent the unhappy Philip, burdened with illegitimacy, an

over-bearing wife and a weak intellect, from being a person of numismatic

importance. Since his brief career began in 323 and ended in 317 his coins, of

course, must fall between those limits, and consequently also the coins with

the name of Alexander and symbols identical with Philip's which is a very

important aid in the arrangements of the coins after 323.*

2 Ibid., 4526-4609. This is the only mint that gives the impression of having coined more for

Philip than for Alexander.

3 The few pertinent facts about Philip are to be found in Diodorus XVITI, XIX, sometimes

confirmed by other sources. They may be summarized as follows:

323 The infantry supported him for the kingship. He was made king and his name changed

from Arrhidaeus to Philip. (Diodorus XVIII. 2. 2-4).

322 Perdiccas took him on campaign to Cappodocia (16. 1). After the defeat of Ariarathes

they campaigned in Pisidia (22. 1).

321 After the death of Perdiccas, Pithon and Arrhidaeus were elected regents and guardians

of the kings (36. 7). At the conference of Triparadeisos, because of the interference of

Eurydice, the guardians resigned and Antipater was elected in their place (39. 1-4). He

took the kings back to their fatherland, Macedonia (39.7).

319 On his death bed Antipater appointed Polyperchon regent and guardian (48. 4). Poly-

perchon invited Olympias to return from Epirus to take charge of Alexander's son until

he should be of age (49. 4, 57. 3). Eumenes in Asia supported the kings against Anti-

gonus (57. 3, 4).

318 On Eumenes' advice Olympias decided to stay in Epirus (58.2-4). Polyperchon supported

Eumenes by authority of the kings (58. 1, 59. 3, 62. 1, 2). Polyperchon and the kings

were in Phocis. When Cassander came to the Piraeus Polyperchon moved into Attica

but presently left part of the army with his son Alexander while he went to the Pelopon-

nesus (68. 2, 3).

317 Eurydice assumed the regency (XIX. 11. 1) (and transferred the command from Poly-

perchon to Cassander. Justin XIV. 5.1-3). Polyperchon, in alliance with Aeacides of Epirus

brought Olympias with Alexander's son back to the kingdom (11. 2). Eurydice's army

deserted her at sight of Olympias; Philip and Eurydice were captured and killed (11. 2-7).

We may suppose that Eurydice's activity caused the change of affairs between 318 and 317.

THE SUCCESSORS AND THE CITIES 83

At once after the settlement of the question about the kingship the satrapies

were dealt out, and there was a second distribution in 321 at the conference of

Triparadeisus. From the point of view of the control of mint cities the result

was very strangely proportioned. A full discussion of the satrapies will be found

in Berve's Alexanderreich I, pp. 221-290, but since not all of them contained

mint cities we may abbreviate the lists to deal only with those which did. (I give

merely mints whose position is fairly sure).

Macedonia and Greece. Antipater

Amphipolis

Pella

Sicyon

Hettespontine Phrygia. 1. Leonnatus 2. Arrhidaeus

Lampsacus

Abydus

Lydia. 1. Menander 2. Cleitus

Sardes

Teos

Colophon

Caria. Asander

Magnesia

Miletus

Pamphylia, Lycia and Greater Phrygia. Antigonus

Side

CUicia. 1. Philotas 2. Philoxenus

Tarsus

In the earlier year both the kings were with Polyperchon in Phocis. He apparently did not take

them with him to the Peloponnesus, where his failure to capture Megalopolis injured his reputation

and induced most of the Greek states to desert him for his rival Cassander. It will have been at

this time that Eurydice (who may have come back to Macedonia in 321 with the kings) achieved

her coup d'etat which must have been accompanied by the return of Philip to Macedonia and the

flight of Alexander to his grandmother in Epirus. (Miss Macurdy believes that Roxane and Alex-

ander IV stayed in Macedonia, Grace H. Macurdy, "Roxane and Alexander IV in Epirus," JHS

1932, 256-261). The role of Polyperchon is not quite clear. He generally speaks and acts in the

name of "the kings," making no distinction between them, but when he invited Olympias to

return to Macedonia to take care of "Alexander's son" he can hardly have believed that the

result would be to Philip's advantage. For a long time he did not persuade her that it would be to

hers either. There are two strange reappearances of Philip's name: on a tetradrachm of Marathus

struck about 301, WSM, p. 195, no. 1241; and on a stater from an uncertain mint which must be

even later in date, WSM, p. 373, no. 1688, Seyrig, "Parion au 3e Siecle," Centennial Publication

of the American Numismatic Society, New York, 1958, pp. 622 f.

84 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Syria. Laomedon

Myriandrus

Damascus

Aradus

Byblus

Berytus

Sidon

Ake

Egypt. Ptolemy

Alexandria

Babylonia. 1. Archon 2. Seleucus

Babylon

Media. 1. Atropates 2. Peithon

Ecbatana

It is remarkable how few of these governors played parts of any importance

during the struggles of the Successors. The boundaries of the satrapies would

be maintained as they had been in Alexander's time and it may be that the

entrusting of important provinces to men not of the first importance was caused

less by a mistaken estimate of their abilities than by the mutual jealousies of

greater men. The fact that there was obviously no attempt to provide an equal

distribution of mints can only mean that the unity of the empire was still so

fundamental in the minds of the generals that it was taken for granted that all

money was still the kings' money, only now at the disposal of the regent. There

are positive indications that this was true. In 321, after the murder of Perdiccas,

his brother-in-law Attalus sailed to Tyre and there recovered 800 talents from

Archelaiis, the captain of the garrison, which Perdiccas had given him for safe-

keeping.4 This was evidently a transaction entirely independent of Laomedon,

the satrap. In 319 Antigonus committed what was regarded as a clear act of

rebellion when he captured and appropriated 600 talents which were being

conveyed by ship from Cilicia to the kings in Macedonia.5 And in the next year,

when Polyperchon was strengthening the hand of Eumenes against Antigonus

he sent letters in the name of the kings to the generals in Cilicia and the

treasurers to pay Eumenes 500 talents and any more that he might require.6

Ptolemy, indeed, protested to the treasurers against paying any money to

Eumenes and promised to protect them if they failed to carry out instructions,

but nobody paid any attention to him.7

4 Diodorus XVIII. 37. 3, 4.

5 Ibid., 52. 7.

6 Ibid., 58. 1; 59. 3. Plutarch, Eumenes 13. 1 says that the letter came from Polyperchon

and King Philip. 7 Diodorus XVIII. 62. 1, 2.

THE SUCCESSORS AND THE CITIES 85

The assumption of the unity of empire, however, soon began to be challeng-

ed. Ptolemy was apparently the first to conceive of making a part of the empire

his own domain, though perhaps the idea had come as soon to Lysimachus,

fighting to organize the still unconquered elements of Thrace. After his re-

covery of Babylon from Antigonus in 312 Seleucus set himself to make a

permanent possession of the East. And in the spring of that same year when

Cassander had put Olympias to death, though he was the only one with any

title to be considered the guardian of the young Alexander, he showed his true

purpose by having the boy imprisoned with his mother Roxane. In 310 by

having them assassinated he left no basis for any legitimist party.

Against these separatist forces the regents had fought, Perdiccas with more

than a little personal ambition involved, Antipater with loyal devotion to the

royal house, Polyperchon with good intentions, doubtless, but with little practi-

cal sense and with diminishing effectiveness. But there was another opponent

of the separatists: Antigonus, and he was moved not by sentiment but by the

determination to keep the empire together for himself. This ambition was

shared and inherited by his son Demetrius, and the greatest episode of the

closing of the 4th century and the opening of the 3rd is the account of the

adventures of those two warriors.

The interplay of all these individuals meant constant change in the control

of territory and in the condition of the cities. Though the mints may have

struck coins originally for the use of all parts of the empire alikeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;subject

always to the element of convenienceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;there must have come a time when for

Antigonus to capture a mint meant for him to capture additional revenue. The

activity of the Asia Minor mints in 310 and 309 seems to be part of his program,8

and perhaps some of the constant friction between the Ptolemies and their

neighbors was caused by desire to control the mint-cities of the Syrian coast.

It is impossible to give any general picture of the fortunes of the mints in

the period just after Alexander's death. That must be worked out a city at a

time, a labor which has hardly begun as yet, though many issues have been

assigned to their proper cities without historical commentary. Newell's works

on Demetrius and the Seleucids have obiter dicta about the preceding Alexander

coins and so have publications of sundry hoards, but we are still in the dark

as to such a matter as the closing of the mint at Damascus, its date and cause.

Much meticulous work with individual series is necessary before we can write

the history of the early posthumous Alexanders.

Nevertheless, there are some things that can be said as to the practice of

the different Successors, for there are only a few of them of any numismatic

8 Thompson and Bellinger, pp. 30 f.

86 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

importance. In the realm of Antipater, as one would expect, nothing was ever

minted except the old types, and that was true of the realm in the hands of Poly-

perchon. Since they regarded the empire as the kings' estate, it could be financed

only by the kings' money. Cassander held to the convention so far as gold and

silver were concerned, but he did issue bronze with the head of Heracles and a

lion with his own name.9 Antigonus also used only the Alexander types; the

coins bearing the legend Antigonus or King Antigonus belong to his grandson

Antigonus Gonatas or Antigonus Doson.10 Of course his endeavor was to avoid

anything that might seem to acknowledge the possibility of partition, and as

long as the old man lived his son Demetrius, if he is to be regarded as an in-

dependent minting authority, followed the father's example. The first breach

of tradition was that of Ptolemy about 320 when he substituted for the head

of Heracles a head of Alexander wearing a headdress made of an elephant with

jutting tusks and uplifted trunk (PLATE II, 4). This is the deified Alexander:

above his cheek may be seen the ram's horn of his divine father Zeus Ammon.

A few years later there was a more extreme innovation. The deified head

remained but the familiar seated Zeus was replaced by an Athena with helmet,

aegis, shield and thunderbolt. The earliest coins of this type bore the inscription

AAEEANAPEION, a further deviation from tradition but a somewhat puzzling

one which gave place again to the conventional AAEEANAPOY. So far there had

been no overt show of independence, but a step was taken which actually made

for more independence than a change of type could. Ptolemy abandoned the

Attic standard of 17.62 grams and began to strike tetradrachms of Rhodian

weight (15.50 grams) and so cut Egypt off from the international currency of

his rivals. Then, after the death of Alexander IV in 310 had left no legitimate

monarch, Antigonus and Demetrius, Seleucus and Lysimachus took the title

of king in 306/5 and 305/4, and Ptolemy joined them, now introducing his own

portrait on the obverse and using as his reverse the eagle which had been on

Zeus' hand. This became the standard Ptolemaic type and the Alexander

coinage thus disappears from Egypt forever.

The development of types was different in other cases. Lysimachus had

originally controlled no mint11 and it was not until 308 that he provided him-

â&#x20AC;˘ HN, p. 228.

10 Newell, Demetrius, pp. 14!., n. 1.

11 The early currency of Lysimachus is still a mystery. He cannot possibly have been without

money from 323 to 308. He certainly used the Alexander types but as yet no city has been identified

where he could have struck them. He may simply have had some arrangement with Antipater

which allowed him to use the output of Amphipolis. It does seem odd that in 319 the kings, for

whose needs the Macedonian mines ought to have been ample, should have to import money from

Cilicia (above, n. 5). But an amicable division of coin between Lysimachus and Cassander does

not seem likely.

THE SUCCESSORS AND THE CITIES 87

self with a suitable capital by building the city of Lysimacheia near Cardia in

Thrace. There he struck Alexanders on which about 303 he put a distinguishing

mark: the forepart of a lion, which was his own device; and his own name now

stood in place of Alexander's. In 29612 he imitated Ptolemy in replacing the

Heracles head with a portrait of the divinized Alexander, again with the horns

of Ammon but without the elephant skin (PLATE II, 5). It is one of the most

spectacular of Hellenistic portraits. The reverse shows a seated Athena holding

Nike and leaning on her shield. The title is that of King Lysimachus, and with

that he was content; his portrait never appeared on his coins, and since he had

no heir his types would have died with him except that, like those of Alexander,

they had caught the fancy of the cities and were imitated long after his death.

When the disaster of Ipsus had ended Antigonus' plans and ambitions

Demetrius was left to gather the remnants of his father's great empire and, from

the cities still in his control, he issued notice of his continued command of the

sea: the magnificent tetradrachms bearing his name and showing Nike with a

trumpet on a prow and Poseidon standing with menacing trident. Later there

were two series with Demetrius' own portrait, one with Poseidon seated, the

other with his foot on a rock, leaning on a trident.

The first change introduced by Seleucus was the substitution of his own

name for that of Alexander after 306 when he took the title of king. This was at

Seleucia-on-the-Tigris about 305.13 It became common about 300 and was the

regular type for gold and silver in the West, though the bronze shows consider-

able variation. An apparent exception occurs in Pergamum where Seleucus'

name is used on tetradrachms with horse's head/elephant. But those were

actually issued by Philetaerus and his governor and were followed by a re-

version to Alexander's type and name, and then to Alexander's type with

Seleucus' name.14 In the East two other types were used for silver: the head

of Zeus/Athena in a biga or quadriga of elephants;15 and head of Seleucus/Nike

and trophy.16 It is interesting that the king confined the use of his own portrait

to his eastern mints, and even there it did not entirely displace the older design

as Ptolemy's portrait did in Egypt. In Susa, for instance, there is a reversion

to the Alexander type with Seleucus' name after both of the others had been

used17 and at Ecbatana Alexander's name appears in the latter half of Seleucus'

12 Thompson and Bellinger, p. 11.

13 ESM, pp. 12-14.

14 WSM, pp. 316-318, nos. 1528-1535.

15 E.g., Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, ESM, pp. 23-25, nos. 29-41.

16 E.g., Susa, ESM, pp. 113!., nos. 300-302.

17 ESM, p. 116, nos. 309-313.

88 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

reign.18 By the end of that reign, however, the Alexander types had been

abandoned.19

Mention must be made of three interesting uses of the Alexander type by

lesser powers than the dynasts of whom we have spoken. One is the case of a

client king, Nicocles of Paphos in Cyprus. A number of tetradrachms of that

mint, apparently perfectly ordinary Alexanders, are found on close inspection,

to have the name NIKOKAEOYZ inscribed on the mane of the lion headdress in

letters so tiny that they are not visible on a photograph and are frequently only

to be seen on the coins themselves under a magnifying glass.20 J. M. F. May in

an admirably complete treatment of them21 concludes that they were issued

from 323, immediately after Alexander's death, to 320, which would allow for

their appearance in the Demanhur Hoard, buried in 318/7. As he says, the

legend has every appearance of being surreptitious and it is tempting to think

that the Paphian king was a bit intoxicated by the feeling of liberty caused by

the news from Babylon, but not so confident as to let his state of mind be

obvious to the regents. We have no way of knowing whether his temerity

escaped notice, or was indulged, or was punished. But none of his fellow kings

copied his experiment. There are letters on coins of Salamis which may perhaps

have stood for the names of the kings Nicocreon and Menelaus22 but those cases

were undoubtedly official and were far less explicit. A similar license had been

accorded kings of Byblus in Alexander's lifetime.23 But it seems that Nicocles

was aiming at something more than that.

The second case is that of a tetradrachm of eastern appearance which, in

addition to the usual inscription, has the name AHTEIIOY, under the arm of

Zeus (PLATE III, 9). E. S. G. Robinson, publishing the specimen in the British

Museum,24 called attention to a Persian named Aspeisas mentioned byDiodorus

18 ESM, p. 177, nos. 485f., p. 178, no. 491, p. 179, nos. 494f.

19 The case is not so clear for Demetrius. There are instances in Newell's catalogue where

Alexanders in gold and silver appear to follow the introduction of Demetrius' own types, Deme-

trius, p. 25, no. 19, p. 66, no. 59. But these might come at the beginning of their respective groups

instead of at the end. The same is true of the tetradrachms from an uncertain mint, p. 74, no. 63.

Newell suggests, to be sure, that some Alexanders were struck at Sicyon, Demetrius, p. 146 and

Noe believes that they are to be recognized in his Group III, Sicyon, pp. 28 f., but this can hardly

be regarded as proved.

20 There is an enlarged drawing in Newell, "Nikokles, King of Paphos," NC 1919, pp. 64f . and

an enlarged photograph used as a frontispiece for Sawyer Me A. Mosser, The Endicott Gift of

Greek and Roman Coins (NNM 97), 1941.

21 "The Alexander Coinage of Nikokles of Paphos," NC 1952, pp. 1-15.

22 "Some Cypriote Alexanders," NC 1915, pp. 31of., 315f.

23 Above, p. 53.

24 "Aspeisas, Satrap of Susiana," NC 1921, pp. 37f

THE SUCCESSORS AND THE CITIES 89

(XIX. 55. 1) as having been installed as satrap of Susiana by Antigonus in 316

after the defeat of Eumenes, and there can be no doubt that this is the same

man. There was a mint in operation at Susa by 31y/625 striking coins with the

names of Alexander and Philip, and sometime between that date and 312 when

Seleucus recovered the territory this piece must have been struck. Though it is

without parallel and without consequence,26 it is worthy of attention, for it

ventures on a show of independence which the greater Successors were slow to

follow. Modesty or caution or both forbade the introduction of a new design.

Who was Aspeisas that the East should accept his money? But he was more

than the mint official who must be content to be known by a monogram or an

ambiguous symbol and he saw to it that he should appear as a man of

importance in the realm that had been Alexander's. One wonders whether he

knew of the case of Nicocles and declined to use such a mixture of display and

concealment. One wonders also what impression it made on Antigonus who

had appointed him—Antigonus who was so scrupulous to maintain the old

types unchanged.

The third instance is even more surprising. It is the issuance by Areus king

of Sparta, 309-264, of a tetradrachm with Alexander's types and the inscription

BAZ1AEOI APEOI.27 Areus is chiefly known as the opponent of Macedon, as leader

of the Peloponnesian League in 280 and again in the Chremonidean war until

he fell in battle at Corinth. Beloch28 supposes that the act of striking his own

money, unprecedented for a Spartan, was one of the manifestations of eminence

and self-confidence which resulted from his victory over Pyrrhus in 272. No

Spartan king for a long time had been so powerful, and it is easy to assume that

his emulation of royal power of which Athenaeus speaks29 falls in this period.

It might be a time suitable for the introduction of the silver with his own

portrait,30 if that is indeed struck by him, but the use of his name on the Alex-

ander type would be much more appropriate to the years 306-304 when the

Successors whom he considered his rivals were taking the title of king. We know

nothing of what he was doing from his accession in 309 to his first campaign

in 280, and this may have been a kind of announcement that he also was one

of the Successors, with Greece for his province. But at any juncture it is

25 ESM, p. 107; Bellinger, "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos," p. 45.

26 A similar case, under Alexander, is that of Balacrus of Cilicia, above, The King's Finances,

n. 177.

27 One specimen in Berlin. ZfN 1875, pp. 126,285; BMC, Peloponnesus, p. xlvii. There is now

a specimen in the ANS.

» IV. 1, p. 587.

» rv. 142. b.

30 BMC, Peloponnesus, PL XXIV. I. There is no inscription but AA.

go ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

astonishing to have the types of Alexander used by a king of the one Greek

state which had been Alexander's consistent and pertinacious foe.31

The economy of these posthumous Alexanders is still unstudied. It is

evident that after the change of standard, the silver of Egypt was isolated from

the rest of the Hellenistic world,32 but what about the money of the other

Successors? How much of their product remained in their own territory? How

much was at the disposition of their rivals? I ventured remarks on this subject

a few years ago33 suggesting that there might be evidence for the development

of separate monetary districts. I did not have much material to go on, and

how upsetting to reasonable conjecture the facts can be is clearly seen in a

hoard from Basra, recently published by Georges Le Rider.34 This extraordinary

collection, of which he saw 507 pieces, begins with a 5th century Attic owl and

ends with a tetradrachm of Attambelus I of Characene struck in 45/4 B.C. It

includes 4 drachms and 159 tetradrachms of Alexander. Of these 93 are from

the mint of Amphipolis (60 being of the series with A and race torch from the

beginning of the 3rd century) ;35 23 more are imitations of Amphipolis. There

are only 2 from Tarsus and 7 from Babylon. Such a proportion could not

possibly have been anticipated. Surely the mint of Babylon could have supplied

money to Basra (it did in fact supply 1 1 lion staters) without anyone getting

coins from Macedonia! Yet though at present we are at a loss, the accumulation

of evidence will in time certainly show us something of the movement of cur-

rency in the early Hellenistic world. We are not without some indications. We

know that the kings were not as rich as Alexander had been.36 We know that

they issued much less gold and much more bronze. We know that they modified

his geographical arrangement of mints: Lysimachus was served by some which

had never struck for Alexander, and the Seleucids pushed eastward to Bactria

itself (Map 4), showing that whatever were the dispositions of Alexander there

31 On psychological grounds this is harder to explain than the use of Alexander types on the

posthumous civic coins which troubles Kleiner so much.

32 Not completely, of course. It occurs frequently in the Peloponnesus: Newell, Alexander

Hoards IV Olympia (NNM 39), 1929; Oscar E. Ravel, "Corinthian Hoard from Chiliomodi,"

Transactions of the International Numismatic Congress, 1936, pp. 98-108; David M. Robinson,

"The Alexander Hoard of Megalopolis," MN IV, 1950, pp. 13-28.

33 "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos," pp. 47-49.

34 "Monnaies de Characene," Syria 1959, pp. 240-250.

35 The assignment of this series to Uranopolis in SNG Copenhagen is an error. It comes just

before the issues of Demetrius from Amphipolis in 294, Demetrius, p. 102, notes 1-3.

36 Antigonus was assiduous in his search for funds. When somebody said "Alexander wasn't

like that" he replied "Of course not. He was reaping Asia. I am gathering straw." Plutarch,

Sayings of Kings 182 A.

THE SUCCESSORS AND THE CITIES 91

they could not be made permanent. But these were phenomena that lie beyond

the limits of this study.

After the death of Demetrius no one had any illusions about the possibility

of keeping the empire together, and even before that, at the death of Cassander

in 297 or of his sons in 294, the uniform types as a symbol of imperial unity had

been abandoned. It would seem that Heracles and the seated Zeus had come

to the end of their career. But in fact they reappear, not in the service of the

kings but in that of the cities. Indeed, their use now is a sign of independence

of the kings.37 These issues as related phenomena have had the benefit so far of

only one serious study: Henri Seyrig's article "Parion au 3e Siecle avant notre

fire"38 in which he considers the posthumous Alexanders of northern Asia

Minor together with the posthumous imitations of the tetradrachms of Lysi-

machus coined after 281 on both sides of the Propontis and on the Thracian

coasts. There are two distinct periods to which the Alexanders belong, clearly

distinguished in appearance. As to the earlier I can do no better than quote

Seyrig's summary. "We have in Seleucid Asia two kinds of money. At Sardes

the types are royal, the name of the ruling sovereign is habitual; civic symbols

are absent, the issue is continuous, the likeness of the coins to those of the

eastern mints reveals the imperial centralization. In the other towns, on the

contrary, the pieces have the traditional types of Alexander the Great, the

name of the ruling sovereign is absent, the use of civic symbols is habitual, the

issues are of limited importance. In other words, the coins of Sardes testify to

immediate royal control while those of the other towns show no trace of it. The

fact is that Sardes, the ancient capital, was left by Alexander under its Lydian

laws and depended directly on the royal authority, while the other towns were

Greek cities. The coins show, therefore, that the administrative capital in the

first half of the 3rd century was still subject, while Seleucus had given the Greek

cities a status which respected certain attributes of sovereignty."39

After the death of Antiochus I, however, the royal power encroached on this

sovereignty, whatever its nature, and royal types reappear in various cities.

This was the situation until the death of Antiochus Hierax in 229/8. There

followed another period of quasi-independence under the friendly protection

of Attalus I of Pergamum. This was celebrated in many towns by the issuance

of Alexander type tetradrachms with low relief and very large flans. I illustrate

37 It is this use of types as a declaration of independence which Kleiner feels would have been

sentimentally unlikely, if not impossible, if they were associated in the minds of the users with the

early days of Alexander and the destruction of Thebes. But the Greek world had been using Alex-

ander's types for a great many years without any sign of hurt susceptibilities.

38 Centennial Publication of the American Numismatic Society, New York, 1958, pp. 603-625.

89 Op. cit., pp. 620 f.

92 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

one such from the mint of Myrina, Miiller 934 (PLATE III, 10). On these, as on

the earlier series, the symbols and monograms identify the issuing town, and

they must be regarded as civic, not as royal issues. I have endeavored to put

both series into their context in the case of Alexandria Troas.40

Seyrig observes, as to the earlier posthumous series, "the issues are of

limited importance," and that would seem to be still more true of the later

ones. They are, in fact, analogous to the civic types, also struck on large flans,

whose explanation, I am convinced, is sentimental rather than economic. I

have discussed this matter at length in regard to the tetradrachms of Ilium41

and I need not repeat the argument here. It is clear how wide a difference there

is between these rare pieces and the great Macedonian issues which, more than

a century before, financed the campaigns of Alexander.

There is no study comparable to Seyrig's for other districts and I will not

embark on the complicated problems involved except by way of illustration.

Coins are known, for example, certainly attributable to Miletus, Miiller 1043

(PLATE III, u) and to Rhodes, Miiller 1160 (PLATE III, 12). These evidently

contemporary series are confidently dated in the old catalogues to the period

after the battle of Magnesia 190 B.C.42 But Head supposes that all the Alex-

anders of Miletus, Miiller 1033-1057, belong to the same period, whereas

Newell43 puts Miiller 1054 "about the first quarter of the third century B.C."

and Seyrig44 thinks that most of the posthumous Alexanders ceased at the

battle of Magnesia and that their attribution to the second century is very

doubtful. There were exceptions: dated Alexander tetradrachms from Aradus

go as late as 171 B.C.,45 and the series from Odessus in Thrace belongs to the 1st

century B.C.46 Some comparative work is obviously called for here. The

Peloponnesian specimens also invite and deserve investigation. In publishing

the Olympia Hoard Newell called attention to the presence of some of those

rare varieties and offered comments on them which were intended as only

preliminary observations.47 Since then the publication of Noe's Sicyon has

given us new information about that mint without altogether settling the

questions raised by Olympia,48 and a hoard from Megalopolis has produced

40 Troy. The Coins. Supplementary Monograph No. 2, Princeton, 1961, pp. 82, 92 f.

41 "The First Civic Tetradrachms of Ilium," MN 1958, pp. 11-24.

42 BMC, Ionia, p.l., BMC, Caria, Cos, Rhodes, p. cix.

*3 Demetrius, p. 59.

44 Op. cit., p. 623.

46 HN, p. 789.

46 Behrendt Pick and Kurt Regling, Die Antiken Miinzen von Dacien und Moesien, Berlin,

1910, pp. 534-540.

47 Olympia, pp. 19, 20.

48 Sicyon, p. 35, III.

THE SUCCESSORS AND THE CITIES 93

three Alexanders from that city, contributing a few more details of uncertainty.49

Someone should have the courage to go through the fragmentary history of

Hellenistic Greece and try to discover whether the Alexanders belong to con-

nected episodes or to independent ones and how they relate to the autonomous

coinage.

The need for more systematic study of the posthumous Alexanders is really

part of a much larger one: the need for more attention to the relation of one

Greek mint with another. The study of Greek issues city by city has, of course,

been a first necessity and has not yet been completed by any means. Never-

theless, the independence of Greek towns, important as it is, must not obscure

the fact that their careers were parallel and that the fiscal fabric of antiquity

must be judged by coincidences as well as by consequences. But that subject

far transcends the concern of these essays which is only a single aspect of a

picture almost infinitely complex. If we pursue the types of the Macedonian

king into a period so long succeeding his death we may as well acknowledge

that we are moved by sentiment as well as by science, and perhaps the best

illustration that can be found of his place in the imagination of later generations

is the fact that from 92 to 88 B.C. the Roman governors of a conquered Mace-

donia could find no fitter type for the coins they struck than the head of Alex-

ander the Great (PLATE III, 13).

49 "The Alexander Hoard of Megalopolis," MN 1950, pp. 13-28.

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

The following list is intended to serve a restricted purpose: to give a

chronological framework for the years while Alexander's types were being issued

by the Conqueror and his successors, and to mention some of the events which

may be of importance for the understanding of those issues. Of course, it is not

a history of the period, which would include much material foreign to this

inquiry. Such histories are available in Vol. VI of the Cambridge Ancient

History; Karl Julius Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, ed. 2, Vols. III-IV, Berlin,

1924-1927; Gustave Glotz, Pierre Roussel and Robert Cohen, Histoire grecque,

Vol. IV, Part I, Alexandre et le Demembrement de son Empire, Paris, 1938;

M. L. W. Laistner, A History of the Greek World from 479 to 323 B.C., London,

1936, and M. Gary, A History of the Greek World from 323 to 146 B.C., 2nd ed.

London, 1951. Lists of special studies may be found in the bibliographies of

these works, though many have appeared since their publication which must

be sought for in the periodicals.

Under each entry I have set a reference to the ancient source. In the

interests of brevity I have generally given one reference only, though the event

may be attested in a number of places, since it is the fact and not its inter-

pretation which is important to us; when there are more references than one it

is because the second provides some important information which the first does

not. The commonest ancient Greek chronological system is the list of epony-

mous archons of Athens. I have used the archon years, indicating closer dating

only when some evidence is given in the source.

The only continuous ancient account that we have is that of Diodorus of

Sicily whose Greek Bibliotheca Historica, in 40 books, was written under Caesar

and Augustus. Books XVII-XX, which deal with our period, are preserved

complete. The work is invaluable but very fallible; the author used good sources

and used them assiduously, but his power of organization was not equal to the

demands of constructing a world history. He was not unaware of the seriousness

of the difficulties, and in XX. 43. 7 he makes apology for history which cannot

present simultaneously simultaneous events. But his attempt to combine

episodic treatment with a chronological reckoning by Roman consuls (who

took office in January) and Attic archons (who took office in July) has led to

great confusion which the ingenuity of modern scholarship has not wholly

dispelled, and never will. Nevertheless, I have followed their conclusionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS 95

fortunately fairly harmonious for this periodâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as best I could, and have not

indicated the places where I depart from his chronology. Nor have I called

attention to his errors as to consuls and archons. To have argued the justifica-

tion for these deviations would have occupied a quite unreasonable amount

of space, and might not have been convincing in the end.1 The chronology here

presented may be called reasonably orthodox at the present time. There is a

Loeb Library text and translation of Diodorus XVIII-XX by Russel M Geer:

Vol. IX, 1929; Vol. X, 1933.

For the lifetime of Alexander a more reliable source is The Anabasis of

Alexander written by Arrian in Greek in the 2nd century A.D. His subject was

more limited than that of Diodorus and his historical sense better, and most of

what we need to know is in his pages. His special study of India is printed as

Book VIII of the Loeb Anabasis by E. Iliff Robson: Vol. I, 1954; Vol. II, 1949.

Arrian also wrote a continuation, Ti PET& 'AA^otvSpov, Post Alexandrum, which

is excerpted in the Bibliotheca of Photius. The Greek text is published in Felix

Jacoby's Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker II, Berlin, 1929, no. 156.

There is an English translation in J. H. Freese, The Library of Photius, Vol.I

(no more published), London and New York, 1920, XCII, pp. 159-167.

The History of Alexander by Quintus Curtius, a Latin work of uncertain

date, while it gives more extended accounts of many episodes, provides no

reliable data of importance not given by the two preceding authors, and is not

cited here. More useful are two other Greek works: the Parallel Lives of Plut-

arch, and the Geography of Strabo. The former is a series of biographies of

notable Greeks and Romans written in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. They

are ethical in purpose and do not confine themselves to the use of impeccable

sources, but the lives of Alexander, Eumenes and Demetrius preserve some

significant facts not given elsewhere. Strabo published his monumental Geo-

graphy about 7 B.C. He sometimes furnishes us with special information about

places connected with Alexander.

The sparse references to other authors and to inscriptions should not mislead

the reader into supposing that the scattered evidence for this period is slight.

On the contrary, it is abundant, but very little of it provides otherwise un-

known events for such a list as this.

It will be seen that our main authorities are far later than their subjects

and though that has little importance for this study, for general historical

purposes it is important to know where they got their information and how

they used it. A characteristically brilliant analysis of the sources for Alexander

is to be found in W. W. Tarn's Alexander the Great, Cambridge, 1948, Vol. II,

1 Beloch IV. 1, p. 134, n. "Natiirlich gibt es immer Leute, denen der Buchstabe hoher steht,

als die Sache, sogar wenn es sich um Diodor handelt."

96 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

pp. 1-133, while Beloch's much briefer "Quellen und Literatur," Vol. IV,

Part 2, pp. 1-19, deals also, to some extent, with modern works as well as with

ancient. Lionel Pearson's book, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great,

Philological Monographs XX, American Philological Association, 1960, which

appeared too late for me to use extensively, will be found to contain a great

deal of valuable criticism.

The composition of the list—the decision which items to include and which

to exclude—has been difficult and has certainly been imperfect. Something of

the kind has already been done in the "Zeittafeln" of Beloch, Vol. Ill, Part 2,

pp. 450-464 and Vol. IV, Part 2, pp. 623-639, which I have found very helpful,

but those were not devised to serve our special need. Since we are concerned

with the striking of coins, the basic question is: who was in control of a certain

territory at a certain time? Generally the answer bears on the operation of

particular mints, but sometimes it is important to know that a ruler controlled

such-and-such a place but did not operate a mint there. When we know the

location of a mint—as we do of the most important ones—we can follow its

history and fortunes so far as the sources give us information, which is not as

complete as one could wish. There are others, to be sure, not yet exactly

located, as to which there is perhaps more to be known than we realize, and future

scholars may wish that this or that piece of information had been included.

But it is not my purpose here to record every mention of every place that has

or may have connection with a mint. I am trying to give more general guidance,

and since the decision that an item is worth citing must be a subjective one,

I cannot hope that the reader's judgment will always coincide with mine. I have

omitted, with entire confidence, all reference to Italy, Sicily, and to Cyrene

after its first surrender to Alexander. I have omitted, with less feeling of

certainty, affairs in Epirus, Aetolia and the barbarian countries of Asia lying

outside the empire. I do not believe that any of these produced Alexander

coins during the period treated—but I may turn out to have been mistaken.

Since others besides Alexander struck his types and name it has been

necessary to carry the entries down beyond the date of his death. But as

posthumous Alexanders appear very much later I have had to set a terminus,

and the one selected has been the battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C. when Antigonus

died, who was that one of Alexander's marshals who clung most tenaciously

to the hope of himself controlling all the empire, and who never issued gold or

silver except with the traditional types and names. Later revivals, by younger

rulers, are brief and intermittent phenomena for which a complete chronology

is not so necessary. The list might have been continued to the death of Cassander

in 297, for Cassander also never issued his own types in the noble metals, but

the portion of Diodorus which is complete ends with the 2oth book, just before

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Ipsus, and thereafter the materials for an outline are even less satisfactory than

before. It has seemed wise to deal with later issues separately without trying

to work them into an historic scheme.

The abbreviations used are A for Arrian, D for Diodorus, P for Plutarch,

S for Strabo.

365/5

End of July 356

336/5

Elpines archon

Birth of Alexander

P. Alexander 3. 3 6 Hekatombaion

donians call Loos"2

'which the Mace-

Spring 335

335/4

Oct. 8-12, 335

Pythodelos archon

Accession of Alexander

A. I. 1. I Pythodelos (mss. Pythodemos) archon

Alexander about 20

D. XVII. 2. 1 Euainetos archon (D's archon list is un-

reliable) presumably at the beginning of the Attic year,

since it is the first event mentioned under that archon-

ship

Congress of Corinth. Alexander elected general of the war

against Persia. Sparta hostile

A. I. 1.2

Expedition against the northern barbarians

A. I. 1. 4-6. 11. In the spring he went toward Thrace

Euainetos archon

Revolt and destruction of Thebes

A. I. 7. 1-1o. 6

P. Camillus 19. 6. At the time of the Mysteries

2 The Attic and Macedonian months are as follows:

Attic

1. Hekatombaion (ca. July)

2. Metageitnion

3. Boedromion

4. Pyanopsion

5. Maimakterion

6. Posideion

7. Gamelion

8. Anthesterion

9. Elaphebolion

10. Mounychion

11. Thargelion

12. Skirophorion

Macedonian

1. Dios (ca. October)

2. Apellaios

3. Audenaios

4. Peritios

5. Lystros

6. Xanthikos

7. Artemisios

8. Daisies

9. Panemos

10. Loos

11. Gorpiaios

12. Hyperberetaios

98 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Early spring 334 March to the Hellespont

A. I. 11. 3. At the beginning of spring

Alexander at Ilium

A. I. 11. 7-12. 5

(S. XIII. 1. 26 puts the visit after the Granicus)

March to the Granicus

A. I.12.6. Arisbe, Percote, passing Lampsacus and Colonae,

Hermotos

Priapus surrendered

A. I. 12. 7

May 15-June 14, Battle of the Granicus

334 A.I. *3. 1-16. 7

P. Alexander 16. 1-8. Daisios

P. Camillus 19. 4. Thargelion

Capture of Dascylium by Parmenio

A. I. 17. 1

Surrender of Sardis

A. I. 17.3

334/3 Ktesikles archon

Capture of Ephesus

A. I. 17.10-13. There is no indication of the month so

that this may have taken place at the end of Euainetos'

year

Surrender of Magnesia and Tralles

A. I. 18. 1

Reduction of the towns of Aeolis and Ionia

A. I. 18. 1

Aug. 334 Capture of Priene

Hiller von Gaertringen, Inschriften von Priene, Berlin,

1906, no. 2, Metageitnion 2

Capture of Miletus

A. I. 18. 3-19. 6

Dittenberger, Sylloge,3 no. 272. Alexander eponymous

334/3

3 This stay, not otherwise attested, but agreeing with Arrian's date for the death of Darius,

creates a difficulty by allowing Alexander too little time to reach the Hindu Kush. C. A. Robinson,

The Ephemerides of Alexander's Expedition, Providence. 1932, Appendix: "When did Alexander

reach the Hindu Kush"? disposed of the problem by making Alexander leave Persis in March

instead of in May. D. G. Hogarth, Philip and Alexander of Macedon, London, 1897, Appendix,

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS 99

Capture of cities between Miletus and Halicarnassus

A. I. 20. 2

Beginning of the siege of Halicarnassus

A. I. 20. 2

Appointment of Ada as Satrap of Caria

A. I. 23. 7

Conquest of the Lycian and Pamphylian coast: Hyparna,

Telmissus, Pinara, Xanthus, Patara

A. I. 24. 4

Mid-winter 334/3 Campaign in the Milyas mountains

A. I. 24. 5. Mid-winter

Surrender of Phaselis

A. I. 24. 5

Capture of Perga

A. I. 26. 1

Surrender of Aspendus

A. I.26.2, 3; 27. 1-4

Capture of Side

A. I. 26. 4, 5

Siege of Termessus

A. I. 27. 5-28. I

Capture of Sagalassus

A. I. 28. 2-8

Surrender of Celaenae

A. I. 29. 1, 2

Reunion with Parmenio at Gordium

A. I. 29. 3, 4

333/2 Nikokrates archon

March from Gordium to Ancyra

A. II. 4. 1. There is no indication of the month, so that

this may have taken place at the end of Ktesikles' year

Surrender of the Paphlagonians

A. II. 4. 1

pp. 288-305, settles it by supposing that he spent a winter in Drangiana (unrecorded) and that

the two winter quarters recorded for Bactria were really one. W. W. Tarn, Cambridge Ancient

History VI, p. 390, concludes that he did not go into winter quarters at all in 330/29. Since the

question is of little importance for the present purpose, I repeat the dates in the sources without

trying to resolve their contradiction.

too ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Conquest of much of Cappadocia

A. II. 4. 2

March to the Cilician Gates

A. II. 4. 4

Persian desertion of Tarsus and Alexander's entry

A. II. 4. 5, 6

Occupation of Anchialus

A. II. 5. 2

Occupation of Soli

A. II. 5. 5

Campaign in the Cilician mountains

A. II. 5. 6

News of the capture of Halicarnassus, Myndus, Cannus,

Thera, Callipolis, Cos and Triopium

A. II. 5. 7

Occupation of Mallus

A. II. 5. 9

Abortive rising of Agis of Sparta. Crete held by Spartan

mercenaries

A. II. 13. 4-6

Nov. 333 Victory at Issus

A. II. 7. 1-11. 10. Nikokrates archon. Maimakterion

Capture of Damascus by Parmenio

A. II. 11. 10

March to Phoenicia

A. II. 13.7

Surrender of Aradus, Marathus, Sigon and Mariamne

A. II. 13. 7, 8

Surrender of Byblus and Tripolis

A. II. 15.6

Surrender of Sidon

Curtius IV. I. 15-26

Jan.-July 332 Siege of Tyre

A. II. 17. 1-24. 6. Tyre captured in Hekatombaion in the

archonship of Niketes. Hekatombaion 1 = July 22

P. Alexander 24. 3. Siege of seven months

Surrender of the kings of Cyprus during the siege

A. II. 20. 3

Campaign in Antilebanon during the siege

A. II. 20. 4, 5

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS 101

332/1 Niketes archon

Sept.-Oct. 332 Siege of Gaza

A. II. 26. 1-27. 7

D. XVII. 48. 7. Siege of two months

Invasion of Egypt

A. III. 1. 1-5

Founding of Alexandria

A. III. 2. 1,2

Submission of Cyrene

D. XVII. 49. 2

Spring 331 Departure from Egypt

A. III. 6. 1. At the beginning of spring

Spartan victory over Macedonians in the Peloponnesus

Aeschines, Against Ktesiphon 165

331/0 Aristophanes archon

July-Aug. 331 Crossing of the Euphrates at Thapsacus

A. III. 7. 1. Hekatombaion

Sept. 331 Crossing of the Tigris

A. III. 7.5

Sept. 20, 331 Eclipse of the moon

A. III. 7. 6

P. Alexander 31. 4, Boedromion

Oct. 1. 331 Battle of Gaugamela

A. III. 8. 1-15. 7. Aristophanes archon. Pyanepsion (in

error)

P. Alexander 31. 4. On the 11th day following the eclipse

P. Camillus 19. 3. Boedromion 25

Spartans beaten at Megalopolis

D. XVII. 63

Surrender of Babylon

A.III. 16.3,4

Stay of over 30 days in Babylon

D. XVII. 64. 4

Surrender of Susa

A. III. 16. 6, 7. Journey of 20 days

Conquest of Persis

A. III. 17. 1-18. 10

1o2 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Jan.-May 330 Stay in Persepolis

P. Alexander 37. 3. He spent four months there3

Conquest of Paraetacae

A. III. 19. 2

Arrival at Ecbatana

A. III. 19.5

Conquest of Hyrcania

A. III. 19. 7

March to Rhagae

A. III. 20.2

330/29 Aristophon archon

July 33Â° Death of Darius

A. III. 22. 2. Aristophon archon. Hekatombaion

March to Zadracarta

A. III. 23. 6-25.1

Campaign in Parthia and Aria

A. III. 25. 1, 2

Bessus proclaimed king in Bactria

A. III. 25. 3

Revolt and reduction of Aria

A. III. 25. 5, 6

Foundation of Alexandria in Aria

Pliny, Natural History VI, 92, 93. The date is not given

Execution of Philotas and Parmenio

A. III. 26. 1-4

Reduction of Drangiana and Gedrosia

A. III. 28. 1

Conquest of the Arachoti

A. III. 28. 1

Mid Nov. 330 Through the Paropamisadae to the Caucasus (Hindu Rush)

S. XV. 2. 10. At the setting of the Pleiades

Foundation of Alexandria

A. III.28. 4

Spring 329 Crossing the Hindu Kush

A. III. 28. 9. Deep snow

Capture of Aornos and Bactra

A. III. 29. 1

Capture of Bessus

A. III. 30. 3-5

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

103

Late spring 329

329/8

Winter 329/8

328/7

Winter 328/7

Spring 327

Summer 327

327/6

Reduction of seven Bactrian strongholds

A. IV. 2. 1-3. 5. The winter water courses were low

Foundation of Alexandria Eschata

A. IV. 1. 3:4. 1

Pliny N. H. VI. 49

Kephisophon archon

Victory over the Scythians across the Tanais

A. IV. 4. 1-9

Defeat by Spitamenes and Scythian allies

A. IV. 5. 2-6. 5

Winter quarters at Zariaspa (Bactra)

A. IV. 7. 1

Campaign in Sogdiana

A. IV. 15. 7-17. 7. As there are no indications of dates or

duration, I have assumed that the campaign occupied

all the time from the winter of 329/8 to that of 328/7

Euthykritos archon

Campaign in Sogdiana

A. IV. 15. 7. 1-17. 17

Whiter quarters in Nautaca

A. IV. 18. 2

Reduction of the Rock of Sogdiana

A. IV. 18. 4-19. 4. The beginning of spring

Marriage of Alexander and Roxane

A. IV. 19. 5

Surrender of the Rock of Chorienes in Paraetacene

A. IV. 21. 1-1o

Crossing the mountains to India

A. IV. 22. 3. When spring was over

S. XV. 1.17. After the setting of the Pleiades

Hegemon archon

Alliance with the king of Taxila

A. IV. 22. 6. Taxiles

D. XVII. 86. Mophis, Taxiles' son and successor

Conquest of the country to the Indus

A. IV, 24.1-30. 9

104 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Winter 327/6 Winter quarters in the mountains

S. XV. 1. 17

Spring 326 Descent into the plain

S. XV. 1. 17. At the beginning of spring

Crossing the Indus and arrival at Taxila

A. V. 7. 1-8. 3

Apr. 326 March to the Hydaspes

A.V. 8.3

S. XV. 1. 17. The first rain at Taxila. Hogarth, Philip and

Alexander of Macedon, London, 1897, p. 293

Apr.-May 326 Victory over Porus

A. V. 8. 4-19. 3. Hegemon archon. Munychion. Hogarth,

1. c., who will not use Arrian's dates by months, puts

the battle in mid-summer on the basis of indications of

weather in S. XV. 1. 17

Foundations of Nicaea and Bucephela

A. V. 19.4

Campaign against the younger Porus

A. V. 20. 1-24. 8

Capture and destruction of Sangala

A. V. 24. 4-8

Refusal of the army to cross the Hyphasis

A. V.28.1-4

326/5 Chremes archon

Return to the Hydaspes

A. V. 29.1-3

Early Nov. 326 Start down the river

A. VI. 3. 1-5

S. XV. 1. 17. A few days before the setting of the Pleiades

Hogarth, p. 293

Campaign against the Malli

A. VI. 6. 1-11.2

Revolt in Bactria and Sogdiana

D. XVII. 99. 5

325/4 Antikles archon

Early Aug. 325 Arrival at Pattala

A. VI. 17. 5

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS 105

S. XV. 1.17. At about the time of the rising of the Dog

Star; the trip took 10 months

P. Alexander 66. 1. The trip took 7 months. This would

agree better with the meteorological data

Hogarth, p. 294, n. 1

Departure from Pattala

A. VI. 21.3

Sept. 325 Departure of Nearchus with the fleet

A. Indica 21. 1. Kephisodoros archon (in error) Boedromion

March through Gedrosia and Carmania

A. VI. 21. 3-28. 4

News of the murder of the Satrap of India

A. VI. 27. 2

Meeting of Alexander and Nearchus

A. VI. 28. 5

Arrival at Pasagardae

A. VI. 29. 1-1

Arrival at Persepolis

A. VI. 30. 1-3

Arrival at Susa

A. VII. 4. 1

Flight of Harpalus

D. XVII. 108.6. On the chronology of the flight of Harpalus

see E. Badian "Harpalus" JHS 1961, pp. 42 f.

Arrival of Nearchus at Susa

A. VII. 5. 6

Mutiny at Opis

A. VII. 8. 1-11.9

324/3 Hegesias archon

July 324 Decree restoring the exiles sent to Greece

D. XVII. 109. 1. Read at the Olympic Games

Stay in Ecbatana

A. VII. 14. 1

Conquest of the Cossaeans

A. VII. 15.1-3

Arrival at Babylon

A. VII. 16. 5

1o6

ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

June 13, 323

323/2

Aug. 323

March 322

322/1

Aug. 6, 322

Death of Alexander

A. VII. 28. 1. Hegesias archon. Age 32 years, 8 months

Reign 12 years, 8 months

P. Alexander 76. 4. Daesius 28 according to the Ephem-

erides

P. op. cit., 75. 4. Daesius 30 according to Aristobulus

Kephisodoros archon

Compromise of the generals: Philip Arrhidaeus king; Perdic-

cas regent

D. XVIII. 2. 1-4. Kephisodorus archon

Division of the satrapies and offices

D. XVIII. 3. 1-5

Birth of Alexander, son of Roxane; made king with Philip

A. Post Alexandrum FGH 156. 1. 9

Justin XIII. 2. 5

Revolt of the Greeks in the eastern provinces and its sup-

pression

D. XVIII. 4. 8; 7. 1-9

Expulsion of the Macedonian garrison by Rhodes

D. XVIII. 8. 1

Beginning of the Lamian war against Antipater

D. XVIII. 9. 1-n. 5

Drawn battle in Thrace between Lysimachus and Seuthes

D. XVIII. 14. 2-4

Reinforcement of Antipater

D. XVIII. 14. 4, 5

Raising of the siege of Lamia; retirement of Antipater

D. XVIII. 15.1-7

Perdiccas' conquest of Cappadocia

D. XVIII. 16. 1-3

Macedonian naval victory at Amorgus

Parian Chronicle. Kephisodorus archon

T. Walek "Operations navales pendant la Guerre lamia-

que" Revue de Philologie 1924, pp. 27f.

Philokles archon

Antipater's victory at Crannon

D. XVIII. 17.1-5

P. Camillus 19. 5. Mategeitnion 7

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

107

. 18

Spring 321

321/0

Winter 321/0

320/19

319/8

Macedonian garrison in Athens

D. XVIII. 18. 5, 6

P. Camillus 19. 6 Boedromion 20

Ptolemy's annexation of Cyrene

D. XVIII. 21. 9

Death of Craterus in battle with Eumenes in Asia Minor

D. XVIII. 30. 1-32. 4

Assassination of Perdiccas on campaign against Ptolemy

D. XVIII. 33. 1-36. 7

Archippos archon

Surrender of Tyre to Attains, Perdiccas' brother-in-law

D. XVIII. 37. 3, 4

Redistribution of offices at Triparadeisos in Syria

Antipater the kings' guardian

D. XVIII. 39. 5-7

Return of Antipater with the kings to Macedonia

D. XVIII. 39. 7

A. Post Alexandrum FGH 156. 11. 45

Eumenes in winter quarters at Celaenae

P. Eumenes 8. 4

Neachmos archon

Victory of Antigonus over Eumenes at Orcynii in Cappadocia

D. XVIII. 40. 6-8

P. Eumenes g. 2

Eumenes besieged in Nora in Cappadocia

D. XVIII. 41. 1

Antigonus' campaign in Pisidia

D. XVIII. 44. 1-47. 5

Apollodoros archon

Death of Antipater. Polyperchon the kings' guardian

Cassander second in command

D. XVIII. 48. 4, 5

Raising of the siege of Nora

D. XVIII. 53. 5. The siege lasted a year

Conquest of Syria by Ptolemy

D. XVIII. 43. 1, 2

Parian Chronicle. Apollodoros archon

108 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Antigonus' conquests in Asia Minor

D. XVIII. 52. 5, 8

Edict of freedom for the Greek cities issued by Polyperchon

in the name of the kings

D. XVIII. 56. 1-8

Eumenes' levy against Antigonus in Cilicia

D. XVIII. 61. 4, 5

War of the eastern satraps against Peithon

D. XIX. 14. 1-4

Occupation of the Peiraeus by Cassander

D. XVIII. 68. 1

Democratic governments reestablished in the Peloponnesus

D. XVIII. 69. 3, 4

Polyperchon's unsuccessful siege of Megalopolis

D. XVIII. 70. 1-72. 1

318/7 Archippos archon

Command of the sea won by Antigonus

D. XVIII. 72. 2-9

Adhesion of the cities of Greece to Cassander

D. XVIII. 74. 1

March east of Eumenes, followed by Antigonus

D. XVIII. 73. 1, 2

Winter 318/7 Their winter quarters in Mesopotamia

D. XIX. 12. 1; 15. 6

Hostility of Seleucus to Eumenes

D. XIX. 12. 1-13. 5

Junction of Eumenes with the eastern satraps

D. XIX. 14. 4-15. 1

317/6 Demogenes archon

Alliance of Antigonus, Seleucus, and Peithon

D. XIX. 17. 2

July 317 Victory of Eumenes over Antigonus at the Cophrates river

D. XIX. 18. 1-7. The time of the Dog Star's rising

Sept. 317 Killing of Philip III by Olympias

D. XIX. 11. 5. He had reigned 6 years, 4 months

Drawn battle between Antigonus and Eumenes in Paraeta-

cene

D. XIX. 30. 1-31.5; 34.7

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS 109

Dec. 317 Battle in Gabiene. Betrayal and death of Eumenes

D. XIX. 37. 3; 42. 1-44. 2. About the time of the winter

solstice

Antigonus' winter quarters in Media

D. XIX. 44. 4

Antigonus' execution of Peithon

D. XIX. 46. 1-4

Antigonus' distribution of the eastern satrapies

D. XIX. 48. 1-5

Cassander's capture of Pydna, Pella and Amphipolis

D. XIX. 50. 5-8

Founding of Cassandreia

D. XIX. 52. 2

Seleucus' flight from Antigonus to Ptolemy

D. XIX. 55. 5; 56. 1

316/5 Demokleides archon

Rebuilding of Thebes

D. XIX. 54. 1-3. In the 20th year after its destruction

Nov. 316 Antigonus' winter quarters in Cilicia

D. XIX. 56. 5. After the setting of Orion

Coalition of Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Cassander against

Antigonus

D. XIX. 57. 2

Summer 315 Building of Antigonus' fleet in Phoenicia, Cilicia and Rhodes

D. XIX. 58. 1-6. He planned to launch it "that same

summer"

His capture of Joppa and Gaza

D. XIX. 59. 2

His successes in the Peloponnesus and Asia Minor

D. XIX. 60. 1-4

Edict of freedom for the cities of Greece

D. XIX. 61. 3

Beginning of the siege of Tyre

D. XIX. 61. 5

Counter-edict by Ptolemy

D. XIX. 62. 1

315/4 Praxiboulos archon

Campaigns in the Peloponnesus

D. XIX. 63. 1-64. 3

11o

ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

314/3

Winter 314/3

313/2

Winter 313/2

Spring 312

Alliance of Polyperchon's son Alexander with Cassander

D. XIX. 64. 4

Naval victory of Ptolemy's admiral Polycleitos

D. XIX. 64. 5-7

Nikodoros archon

Antigonus' capture of Tyre

D. XIX. 61. 5. The siege lasted a year and 3 months

Cassander's unsuccessful attempt to conquer Caria

D. XIX. 68. 5-7

Antigonus' march across the Taurus, leaving his son

Demetrius in Syria

D. XIX. 69. 1, 2

Antigonus' winter quarters at Celaenae

D. XIX. 69. 2

Lysimachus' victory over a coalition of cities, Thracians and

Scythians

D. XIX. 73. 1-1o

Successes of Antigonus' general Telesphoros in the Pelopon-

nesus

D. XIX. 74. 1, 2

Antigonus' capture of Miletus, Tralles and Caunus

D. XIX. 74. 3-5

Theophrastos archon

Capture of Chalcis, Thebes and Phocian cities by Antigonus'

general Ptolemaeus

D. XIX. 78. 2-5

Ptolemy's pacification of Cyprus and raids in Syria

D. XIX. 79. 4-7

Antigonus' winter quarters in Asia Minor

D. XIX. 77. 7

Defeat of Demetrius at Gaza by Ptolemy and Seleucus

D. XIX. 80. 5; 83. 3-84. 8. The troops were brought out

of winter quarters

Recovery of Babylon by Seleucus

D. XIX. 90. 1-91. 5

His conquest of Susiane and Media

D. XIX. 92. 1-5

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS 11

312/1 Polemon archon

Antigonus' recovery of Syria and Phoenicia

D. XIX. 93. 7-94. 1

Oct. 7, 312 Beginning of the Seleucid Era in Syria. Dios 1 = Pyanop-

sion 1

Apr. 3, 311 Beginning of the Seleucid Era in Babylonia. Nissanu 1 =

Munychion 2

Beloch IV. 2, pp. 5of.

Demetrius' raid on Babylon

D. XIX. 100. 5-7

Peace treaty of Antigonus with Cassander, Ptolemy and

Lysimachus; Seleucus not included

D. XIX. 105. 1

R. H. Simpson "The Historical Circumstances of the Peace

of 311" JHS 1954, pp. 25-31

311/0 Simonides archon

War between Antigonus and Seleucus in Babylonia

CAH VI, p. 493

Founding of Seleucia-on-the-Tigris

Beloch IV. 1, p. 146, n. 2

310/09 Hieromnemon archon

Assassination of Roxane and Alexander IV by Cassander

D. XIX. 105. 2

Founding of Antigoneia in the Troad

S. XIII. 1.33

Louis Robert, Etudes de Numismatique grecque, Paris, 1951,

PP.5f.

309/8 Demetrios of Phaleron archon

Alliance between Cassander and Polyperchon

D. XX. 28. 2, 3

Winter 309/8 Winter quarters of Polyperchon in Locris

D. XX. 28. 4

Founding of Lysimacheia

D. XX. 29. 1

Surrender of Corinth and Sicyon to Ptolemy

D. XX. 37. 2

Treaty between Ptolemy and Cassander in Greece

D. XX. 37. 2

H2 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

308/7 Kairimos archon

June 11, 307 Freeing of Athens by Demetrius

P. Demetrius 8. 3. Thargelion 25

307/6 Anaxikrates archon

Taking and destruction of Munychia by Demetrius

D. XX. 45. 5-46. 1

Founding of Antigoneia-on-the-Orontes

D. XX. 47. 5

Naval victory of Demetrius over Ptolemy off Salamis in Cyprus

D. XX. 51. 1-52. 3

306/5 Koroibos archon

Taking of the title of king by Antigonus and Demetrius

D. XX. 53. 2

Oct.-Nov. 306 Failure of their expedition against Egypt

D. XX. 73. 1-76. 6. The time of the setting of the Pleiades

Beginning of Demetrius' siege of Rhodes

D. XX. 83.1-88. 9

305/4 Euxenippos archon

Taking of the title of king by Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Seleucus

and Cassander

Parian Chronicle between archons Koroibos and Pherekles

D. XX. 53. 3, 4

P. Demetrius 18.1,2 says that Cassander did not use the title

on his letters; his bronze coins bear it, however, HN, p. 228

End of the siege of Rhodes. Treaty with Demetrius

D. XX. 99. 1-1oo. 1. The siege had lasted a year

304/3 Pherekles archon

Demetrius' campaign in central Greece

D. XX. 100. 6

His capture of Sicyon

D. XX. 102. 2

His capture of Corinth

D. XX. 103.1-3

His campaign in the Peloponnesus

D. XX. 103. 4-7

Revival of the Hellenic Confederacy at the Isthmus

P. Demetrius 25. 3

IG. IV. 1, 68

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS 113

Treaty of Seleucus with Sandrokottos

Justin XV. 4. 20, 21

303/2 Leostratos archon

Alliance of Cassander, Lysimachus, Ptolemy and Seleucus

against Antigonus

D. XX. 106. 2-5

Cassander's invasion of Thessaly

D. XX. 107. 1

Lysimachus' invasion of Asia

D. XX. 107. 2

Successful campaign of his general Prepalaus in Asia Minor

D. XX. 107. 3-5

302/1 Nikokles archon

Demetrius and Cassander stale-mated in Greece

D. XX. 11o. 2-6

Demetrius' raids on the coast of Asia

D. XX. 111. 3

Antigonus' march north from Syria

D. XX. 108. 2, 3

Winter 302/1 Antigonus' and Lysimachus' winter quarters in Asia Minor

D. XX. 109. 4-6

Ptolemy's campaign in Syria

D. XX. 113. 1

301/0 Klearchos archon

Battle of Ipsus. Defeat and death of Antigonus

P. Demetrius 29. 3-5

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GENERAL WORKS

Ernest Babelon, Les Perses achiminides, Paris, 1893.

Ernest Babelon, Les Rois de Syrie, Paris, 1890.

Ernest Babelon, Traite des Monnaies grecques et romaines. Part II, Vols. 1-4, Paris, 1907,

1910, 1914, 1932.

Helmut Berve, Das Alexanderreich aiif Prosopographischer Grundlage, Munich, 1926.

Joseph Eckhel, Doctrina Numoritm Veterum, Part I, Vol. 2, Vienna, 1839.

Hugo Gaebler, Die antiken Miinzen von Makedonia und Paeonia II, Berlin, 1935.

Percy Gardner, A History of Ancient Coinage 700-300 B. C., Oxford, 1918.

Curt Gebaur, "Alexanderbildniss und Alexandertypus" Mitteilungen des deutschen archd-

ologischen Institut, Athenische Abteilung, 1938/9, pp. 1-106.

B. V. Head, Historia Numorum, Oxford, 1911.

G. F. Hill, Historical Greek Coins, London, 1906.

Gerhard Kleiner, Alexanders Reichmunzen, Berlin, 1949.

L. Muller, Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand, Copenhagen, 1855.

E. T. Newell, The Coinage of the Eastern Seleucid Mints from Seleucus I to Antiochus III,

New York, 1938.

E. T. Newell, The Coinage of the Western Seleucid Mints from Seleucus I to Antiochus III,

New York, 1941.

E. T. Newell, The Coinages of Demetrius Poliorcetes, Oxford, 1927.

E. T. Newell, The Reattribution of Certain Alexander Tetradrachms, New York, 1912.

E. T. Newell, Royal Greek Coin Portraits, New York, 1937.

S. P. Noe, A Bibliography of Greek Coin Hoards, ed. 2, New York, 1937.

Charles Seltman, Greek Coins, London 1933 and 1955.

MINTS

Abdera

Muller, pp. 155-157.

Abydus

Demetrius, p. 74, no. 63.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 16f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 150-158, 224-229.

Acanthus

Muller, p. 138.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 115

Acroathon

Miiller, p. 141.

Aegae

Miiller, p. 310.

Aegina

Miiller, pp. 225!.

Ake

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia" Nomisma IV, 1909, pp. 1-15.

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous" MN 1960, pp. 27f.

C. F. Lehmann, "Der erste syrische Krieg und die Weltlage um 275-272 v. Christ" Klio

1903, pp. 49Â°-547. esp. pp. 51 f., n. 4.

Miiller, pp. 303 f.

Demanhur, pp. 55 f, 134-139, nos. 3769-3975.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Ph6nice" JIAN 1901, pp. 193-232.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 177-178, 275-276.

Aldbanda

Miiller, pp. 257f.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 319.

Alexandria in Egypt

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 24.

Miiller, pp. 319f

Demanhur, pp. 64, 144-147, nos. 4610-4826.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 186-189, 299.

Alexandria Troas

Miiller, pp. 236 f.

WSM, p. 340. Cf. Seyrig, "Parion au 3e Siecle avant notre Ere," p. 622 and n. 82.

Amathus

Demanhur, pp. 44f., 108-110, nos. 2683-2714.

Amphipolis

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27.

Miiller, pp. 127-134.

Demetrius, p. 102.

Demanhur, pp. 26-32, 65-71, nos. 1-1582.

Kyparissia, pp. 9-11, 15-17, nos. 16-30.

Andritsaena, pp. 5-8, nos. 1-32.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 135-143, 195-203.

Antigoneia on the Or antes

WSM, pp. 84f., nos. 1-5.

n6 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Antiock in Caria

Miiller, pp. 264-266.

Antioch in Pisidia

Miiller, pp. 264-266.

Aphytis

Miiller, pp. 142 f.

Apollonia on Athos

Miiller, p. 141.

Apollonia in Thrace

Miiller, p. 180.

A pter a

Miiller, p. 230.

Aradus

E. Babelon, "Aradus" RN 1891, pp. 283-314.

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 1-15.

J. G. Milne, "The Coinage of Aradus in the Hellenistic Period" Iraq V, 1938, pp. 12-21.

Miiller, pp. 293-298.

Demanhur, pp. 50-52, 119-121, nos. 3269-3585.

Andritsaena, p. 12, nos. 63-67.

WSM, p. 192.

J. Rouvier, "Le Monnayage alexandrin d'Arados" RN 1900, pp. 36-52, 137-151.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies phe"niciennes" NC 1877, pp. 177-239.

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 12, nos. 63-67.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 269-273.

Argos

Sicyon, p. 35.

S. P. Noe, "The Corinth Hoard of 1938" MN 1962, pp. 37-39.

Ascalon

C. F. Lehmann, "Der erste syrische Krieg und die Weltlage um 275-272 v. Christ," pp.

496-547, esp. p. 517, n. 1.

Miiller, pp. 308 f.

Aspendus

Miiller, pp. 267-270.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 324-325.

Assus

Miiller, pp. 237 f.

Astypalaea

Miiller, p. 261.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 117

Atarnea

Miiller, p. 238.

Athens

Kleiner, Alexanders Reichmiinzen, pp. 31 f.

Attuda

Miiller, pp. 261 f.

Azotus

Miiller, p. 308.

Babylon

N. Breitenstein, "Studies in the Coinage of the Macedonian Kings" Ada Archaeologica

1942, pp. 242-258, esp. 252-256.

G. F. Hill, BMC Arabia, pp. cxli-cxlviii, 176-187, 191.

Sir Henry Howorth, "Some Coins attributed to Babylon by Dr. Imhoof-Blumer" NC

1904, pp. 1-38.

F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Die Miinzstatte Babylon zur Zeit der Makedonischer Satrapen und

des Seleukos Nikator" NZ 1895/6, pp. 1-26.

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous, " p. 28.

Demanhur, pp. 57-64, 140-143, nos. 3980-4609.

Andritsaena, pp. 13-15, 20, nos. 74-83.

J. P. Six, "Monnaies grecques in6dites et incertaines" NC 1898, pp. 193-245.

J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazzaios" NC 1884, pp. 97-159.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 179-183, 277-295.

Berytus

Muller, p. 310.

Demanhur, pp. 53, 126, no. 3653.

Botrys

Byblus

Muller, p. 310.

Demanhur, pp. 52, 122-125, nos. 3586-3652.

Andritsaena, pp. I2f., nos. 68-71.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 172.

Cabyle

T. Gerassimov, "The Alexandrine Tetradrachms of Cabyle in Thrace" Centennial Publi-

cation of the American Numismatic Society, pp. 273-277.

T. Gerassimov, "Rare Coins of Thrace" NC 1957, pp. 1-5.

G. K. Jenkins, "Recent Acquisitions of Greek Coins by the British Museum" NC 1959,

pp. 23-45.

Calchedon

Kurt Regling, "Neue Konigstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis" Klio 1929, p. 298.

118 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Callatis

Muller, pp. 181 f.

Kurt Regling, "Neue Konigstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis," pp. 292-302.

G. Severeanu, "Consideratiuni asupra Tetradrahmelor batute in Kallatis" Buletinul so-

cietatii numismatice romane 1924, pp. 20-29.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 191.

Cardia

Muller, pp. 159-164.

Carne

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," p. 5.

Demanhitr, pp. 50, 117-119, nos. 3267f

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phe'nice," pp. 64-66.

Carrhae

WSM, pp. 40 f.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 296.

Chalcis

Muller, p. 210.

Demetrius, p. 139, n. 4.

Chios

N. Breitenstein, "Studies in the Coinage of the Macedonian Kings" Ada Archaeologica,

pp. 242-258.

P. Gardner, "The Financial History of Ancient Chios" JHS 1920, pp. 160-173.

Muller, pp. 252 f.

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 40.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 318.

Cilicia

Muller, pp. 277-282.

Citium

E. T. Newell, "Some Cypriote Alexanders" NC 1915, pp. 294-322.

Demanhur, pp. 43, 1o6f., nos. 2545-2666.

Andritsaena, p. u, no. 59.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 170.

Clazomenae

Muller, pp. 244 f.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 314.

Cnidus

Muller, pp. 258 f.

Coela

Muller, pp. 166f.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 119

Colone

Muller, p. 237.

Colophon

Muller, pp. 246-248.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 20-22.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 233-242, 315.

Commagene

Muller, p. 286.

Cos

B. V. Head, BMC Caria, p. cix, 200.

Muller, pp. 259 f.

Crithote

Muller, p. 162.

Curium

D. H. Cox, Coins from the Excavations at Curium, 1932-1953, New York, 1959, pp. 3, 90f.

Cydonia

Muller, pp. 230 f.

Cyme

Muller, pp. 239 f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 312-313.

Cyprus

D. Pierides, "On the Coins of Nicocreon, one of the Kings of Cyprus" NC 1869, pp. 19-24.

E. J. Seltman, "Rare Gold Staters with Types of Alexander III" NZ 1913, p. 209. Cf.

E. T. Newell "Some Cypriote Alexanders," p. 313, n. 21.

Cyrene

BMC Cyrenaica, pp. cxxxviii-cxl.

Muller, pp. 320 f.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 190.

Cyzicus

Muller, pp. 233 f.

Damascus

G. F. Hill, JHS 1923, p. 159, n. 8 quoting Newell.

Muller, pp. 287-289.

Demanhur, pp. 48-50, H5f., nos. 2898-3266.

Dionysopolis

Muller, p. 171.

Dioscurides

G. Severeanu, "Tetradrachme d'Alexandre le Grand f rappee par Dioscurides" Buletinul

societatii numismatice romane 1924, pp. 29-31.

120 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Dium in Pieria

Miiller, pp. 148 f.

Ecbatana

ESM, pp. 163-179.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 297-298.

Ephesus

Miiller, pp. 248!.

Demetrius, p. 66, no. 59.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 40!.

Epidaurus

Paul Lambros, Nonfancrra TTJS Nfjaou 'AuopyoO, Athens, 1870, p. 19.

Erythrae

Miiller, pp. 245 f.

Euboea

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 42.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 212.

Heraclea in Ionia

Miiller, pp. 250 f.

Heraclea Pontica

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 310.

Heraclea Sintica

Miiller, pp. 135-137.

Heracleum in Pieria

Miiller, pp. 149 f.

Hierapolis-Bambyce

Demanhur, pp. 48, 114!., no. 2897.

Histiaea

Miiller, pp. 21of.

India

B. V. Head, "The Earliest Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian Coins" NC 1906, pp. 1-16.

A. von Sallet, "Die Nachfolger Alexanders d. G. in Baktrien und Indien" ZfN 6, p. 285.

R. B. Whitehead, "The Eastern Satrap Sophytes" NC 1943, pp. 60-72.

Istros

Kurt Regling, "Neue Konigstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis," pp. 292-302.

Itanus

Miiller, p. 229.

Joppa

Miiller, p. 307.

Lamia

Miiller, p. 187.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 121

Lampsacus

Agnes Baldwin Brett, "The Gold Staters of Lampsakos" American Journal of Numismatics

1924, pp. 1-76, esp. 65-72.

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27.

Muller, p. 235.

Demanhur, pp. 36, 82-87, nos. 1687-1747.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 13-15.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos, 145-149, 214-223.

Laodicea-ad-Mare

Muller, pp. 289 f.

Laodicea in Thrace

Muller, p. 146.

Larissa in Troad

Muller, pp. 290-293.

Limyra

Muller, p. 276.

Locris

Muller, p. 208.

Lysimacheia

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 42.

Lyttos

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 19.

Muller, p. 229.

Magnesia on the Maeander

Muller, pp. 251 f.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 23 f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 243-249, 316.

Magnesia in Thessaly

Muller, pp. 182-185.

Mallns

Muller, pp. 282-284.

Marathus

E. Babelon, "Monnaies de Marathus" RN 1888, pp. 497-528.

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 1-15.

Muller, pp. 298 f.

WSM, pp. 194!.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phe*nice, "pp. 125-152.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies phe"niciennes" NC 1877, pp. 177-239.

Marium

E. T. Newell, "Some Cypriote Alexanders."

Demanhur, pp. 45, 111, no. 2715.

122 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Maronea

Muller, pp. 158 f.

Megalopolis

S. P. Noe, "The Corinth Hoard of 1938" MN 1962, pp. 39-41.

von Prokesch-Osten, NZ 1869, p. 48.

D. M. Robinson, "The Hoard of Megalopolis" MN 1950, pp. 16f.

J. N. Svoronos, Eupripia ZocpiKoG 'EmBaupias, JIAN 1907, p. 36.

Melitaea

Muller, pp. 185-187.

Mende

Muller, p. 144.

Mesembria

N. Breitenstein, "Studies in the Coinage of the Macedonian Kings," pp. 251 f.

Percy Gardner, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC 1886, p. 251.

T. Gerassimov, "Tresor de Tetradrachmes de Mesembria et d'Odessos" Bulletin de la SociiU

archeologique d Varna X, pp. 65-78.

Muller, pp. 175-179.

Kurt Regling, "Neue Konigstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis," p. 296.

Methymna

Muller, p. 242.

Midaeum

Muller, pp. 263 f.

Miletus

Muller, pp. 249f

Demetrius, pp. 59-61.

Demanhur, pp. 37, 93-96, nos. 1751-1818.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 25 f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 161-163, 250-256.

Mylasa

Muller, pp. 256 f.

Askidil Akarca Les Monnaies qrecques de Mylasa, Paris, 1959, pp. 55-59.

Myra

Muller, p. 275.

Myriandrus

Muller, pp. 46-48, 112-114.

Myriandros.

Myrina

Muller, pp. 238 f.

Mytilene

Muller, pp. 241 f.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 39 f.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 123

Nagidus

Muller, pp. 285 f.

Demanhur, pp. 57, 139f., nos. 3976-3978.

Nisyrus

Muller, pp. 260f.

Odesstis

T. Gerassimov, "Tre'sor de Tetradrachmes de Mesembria et d'Odessos" Bulletin de la

Societt archtologique d Varna X, pp. 65-78.

Miiller, pp. 171-175.

B. Pick and Kurt Regling, Die Antiken Miinzen von Dacien und Moesien, Berlin, 1910, pp.

529-540.

Kurt Regling, "Neue Konigstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis," p. 296.

Paltus

Muller, p. 298.

Paphos

J. M. F. May, "The Alexander Coinage of Nikokles of Paphos" NC 1952, pp. 1-18.

E. T. Newell, "Some Cypriote Alexanders."

Demanhur, pp. 43f., 107f., nos. 2667-2682.

Parium

H. Seyrig, "Parion au 36 Siecle avant notre Ere" Centennial Publication of the American

Numismatic Society 1958, pp.6o3~625.

Pelagonia

Muller, p. 146.

Pella

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27.

Muller, pp. 124-127.

Demanhur, pp. 32-34, 71-74, nos. 1583-1638.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 204-211.

Perga

G. Le Rider, Monnaies d Legende grecque et Monnaies des Rois d'fclymatde, Paris, 1960,

p. 25, n. 2.

Pergamum

F. Imhoof-Blumer, Die Miinzen der Dynastic von Pergamon, Berlin, 1884.

E. T. Newell, The Pergamene Mint under Philetaerus (NNM) 1936.

WSM, p. 317.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 311.

Perinthus

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27.

Muller, pp. 170 f.

Phalasarna

Muller, p. 231.

124 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Pharsalus

Miiller, pp. 187 f.

Phaselis

Miiller, pp. 275 f.

Demanhur, pp. 37f., 96-102, nos. 1819-1973.

Andritsaena, pp. 9!., nos. 41-50.

Philadelphia

Miiller, pp. 308 f.

Philippi

Miiller, pp. 137!.

PhilomeUum

Miiller, pp. 266 f.

Phocaea

Miiller, pp. 242 f.

Phocis

Miiller, p. 209.

Phoenicia

R. Dussaud, "L'ere d'Alexandre le Grand en Phe"nicie" RN 1908, pp. 445-454.

J. Rouvier, "Nouvelles recherches sur 1'ere d'Alexandre le Grand en Ph6nicie" RN 1909,

pp. 321-354.

Priene

Miiller, p. 249.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 317.

Rhodes

BMC Caria, p. cix.

Churchill Babington, "On an unpublished Tetradrachm of Alexander III struck at Rho-

des with some Observations on the Rhodian symbol and other matters connected with

Rhodes" NC 1864, pp. 1-6.

Miiller, p. 260.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 320-323.

Salamis

G. Le Rider, RN 1961, pp. 9!.

Demetrius, pp. 19-25.

Demanhur, pp. 42, 105f., nos. 2436-2544.

Andritsaena, pp. 1of., no. 58.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 171, 268.

Salymbria

Miiller, pp. 169 f.

Samos

Percy Gardner, "Samos and Samian Coins" NC 1882, pp. 210-290.

Miiller, p. 254.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 125

Samothrace

Miiller, pp. 157 f.

Sardes

Demanhur, pp. 36-93, nos. 1748-1750.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 27-31.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 164-167, 257-266.

Scione

Muller, p. 143.

Scythopolis

Muller, pp. 300 f.

Seleucia on the Tigris

ESM, p. 14.

Sestus

Muller, pp. 165!.

Sicyon

George Finlay, "Thoughts about the Coinage of the Achaean League" NC 1868, pp. 21-35.

F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Griechische Miinzen aus dem Museum in Klagenfurt und anderen

Sammlungen" NZ 1884, pp. 244-246.

G. K. Jenkins, "Recent Acquisitions of Greek Coins by the British Museum" NC 1959, p.31.

Muller, pp. 218-225.

Demanhur, pp. 34f., 75-80, nos. 1649-1673.

Sicyon.

E. J. Seltman, "An unpublished Gold Stater of Sikyon" JIAN 1912, pp. 177-180.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 144, 213.

Side

Muller, pp. 270 f.

Demanhur, pp. 37f., 96-102, nos. 1819-1973.

Andritsaena, pp. gf., nos. 41-55.

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 41.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 168.

Sidon

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 6-10.

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27.

C. F. Lehmann, "Der erste syrische Krieg und die Weltlage um 275-272 v. Christ," pp.

496-547. esp. p. 517, n. 2.

Muller, pp. 299-302.

Sidon and Ake.

Demanhur, pp. 53 f., 127-133, nos. 3656-3768.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phe"nicie," pp. 117-121.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies phe"niciennes" NC 1877, pp. 195-221.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 173-176, 274.

126 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Sigeum

MiUler, p. 235.

Sillyum

Muller, p. 270.

Sinope

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexander Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 6-10.

E. T. Newell, The Alexandrine Coinage of Sinope, New York, 1919.

Smyrna

Muller, pp. 243 f.

Soli

Muller, pp. 284 f.

Demanhur, pp. 45, 111f., nos. 2716-2718.

Sozusa

Muller, pp. 306 f.

Stratonos Pyrgos

Muller, p. 306.

Susa

E. S. G. Robinson, NC 1921, pp. 37f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 184-185.

Sycaminum

Muller, pp. 300 f.

Synnada

Muller, pp. 262f

Tarsus

L. J. G., "Decouvertes et Nouvelles" Revue Archtlogique 1845, p. 178.

Muller, p. 280.

Tarsos.

Demetrius, p. 48.

Demanhur, pp. 39-42, 103-105, nos. 1974-2435.

J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazaios" JVC 1884, pp. 97-159.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 169-267.

Temnos

Muller, pp. 240 f.

Tenedos

F. Lenormant, "Note sur deux ateliers mone"taires d'Alexandre le Grand" RN 1863, pp.

169-175.

Muller, p. 255.

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 39.

Teas

Percy Gardner, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC 1886, p. 151.

Muller, p. 246.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 127

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 18f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 159-160, 230-231.

Terone

Miiller, p. 142.

Thebes

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous." p. 27.

Miiller, pp. 209 f.

Therma

Muller, pp. 144-146.

Thessalonica

Muller, p. 146.

Thrace

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 42.

Traelium

Muller, pp. 134f

Tricca

Muller, pp. 188f.

Tyre

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 1-15.

Muller, pp. 302 f.

E. T. Newell, Tyrus Rediviva, New York, 1923, pp. 1-23.

Demetrius, pp. 44 f.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phe'nicie," pp. 276!

J. Rouvier, "L'ere d'Alexandre le Grand en Phe'nicie (note complementaire)" RN 1904,

pp. 239-251.

H. Seyrig, "Sur une pre"tendue ere Tyrienne" Antiquites syriennes 1957, pp. 93-98.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies pheniciennes," pp. 189-195.

Uranopolis

N. Breitenstein, "Studies in the Coinage of the Macedonian Kings" Ada Archaeologica

1942, pp. 248-251.

Muller, pp. 138-141.

Xanthns

Muller, p. 275.

HOARDS

1765 J. Pellerin, Latakia Hoard Mdlange de diverses Medailles Vol. I, Paris, pp. 104-140.

1853/54 Charles T. Newton, (Communicated by W. S. W. Vaux) "A Hoard of Coins of

Alexander the Great, discovered near Patras in 1850" NC, pp. 29-37.

1865 W. H. Waddington, "Trouvailles de Saida et de Marmara" RN, pp. 1-28.

1871 R. H. Long, "Treasure-trove in Cyprus in Gold Staters" NC, pp. 229-234.

1905 G. Dattari, "Comments on a Hoard of Athenian Tetradrachms found in Egypt"

JIAN, pp. 103-114.

128 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

1907 J. N. Svoronos, EOprma Ioq>iKou 'EmSaupfas, JIAN, pp. 35-46.

1908 A. J. B. Wace, "A Hoard of Hellenistic Coins" Annual of the British School at Athens,

pp. 149-158.

1912 E. T. Newell, Reattribution of Certain Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great (Reprinted

from American Journal of Numismatics).

1921 E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards I. Introduction and Kyparissa (NNM 3).

1923 E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards II. Demanhur 7905 (NNM 19).

1923 E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards III Andritsaena (NNM 21).

1925 Archdologischer Anzeiger, p. 64.

1929 E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards IV Olympia (NNM 39).

1931 E. T. Newell, The Kuchuk Kohne Hoard (NNM 46).

1932 C. Lambert, "A Hoard of Phoenician Coins found on the Site of Ake" The Quarterly

of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine, pp. 10-20.

1934 E. T. Newell, A Hoard from Siphnos (NNM 64).

1947 E. S. G. Robinson, "The Tell El-Mashkuta Hoard of Athenian Tetradrachms" NC,

pp. 115-121.

1948 E. S. G. Robinson, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC, pp. 43-59.

1949 BCH "Chronique," p. 520.

1950 D. M. Robinson, "The Alexander Hoard of Megalopolis" MN 4, pp. 13-28.

1950 E. S. G. Robinson, "A 'Silversmith's Hoard' from Mesopotamia" Iraq, pp. 44-51.

1950/51 A. R. Bellinger, "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos" Berytus, pp. 37-49.

1951 BCH "Chronique," p. 104.

1952 BCH "Chronique," p. 205.

1952 D. M. Robinson, A Hoard of Silver Coins from Carystus (NNM 124).

1953 D. H. Cox, A Third Century Hoard of Tetradrachms from Gordion. Museum Mono-

graphs University Museum, Philadelphia.

1954 Margaret Thompson, "A Countermarked Hoard from Buyukfekmece" MN 6,

pp. H-34.

1955 Margaret Thompson and A. R. Bellinger, "Greek Coins in the Yale Collection IV:

a Hoard of Alexander Drachms" Yale Classical Studies, pp. 3-45.

1956 W. P. Wallace, The Euboean League and its Coinage (NNM 134), pp. 50-52, 59-61.

1956 BCH "Chronique," p. 227.

1957 BCH "Chronique," p. 497.

1958 P. R. Franke, "Zur Geschichte des Antigonos Gonatas und der Oitaioi. Ein Schatz-

fund griechischer Miinzen von Phayttos" Archaologischer Anzeiger, pp. 38â&#x20AC;&#x201D;62.

1960 G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous" MN, pp. 17-37.

PERSIANS AND SATRAPS

R. P. Austin and M. N. Tod, "Athens and the Satraps' Revolt" JHS 1944, pp. 98-100.

E. Babelon, "Les Monnaies des Satrapes dans 1'Empire des Perses Achemenides" RN 1892,

pp. 227-328, 413-463.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 129

E. Babelon, Catalogue des Monnaies grecques de la Bibliotheque nationale. Les Perses

achimtnides Paris, 1893, pp. xx-xxiii.

O. Blau, "Aramaische Legenden auf Munzen athenischen Geprags" NZ 1872, pp. 181-184.

O. Blau, "Satrap Orontas" NZ 1876, p. 233.

O. Blau, "Barsine, Gemahlin Alexanders des GroBen" NZ 1876, pp. 234-237.

O. Blau, "Die achaemenideschen Feldzugmeister und ihre Munzen" NZ 1879, pp. I-52.

G. Dattari, "Comments on a Hoard of Athenian Tetradrachms found in Egypt" JIAN

jgoS. pp. 103-114.

H. Droysen, "Die Munzen der persischen Satrapen in Kleinasien" ZfN 1875, pp. 309-319.

Percy Gardner, "New Greek Coins of Bactria and India" NC 1887, pp. 177-184.

J. Hackin, "Repartition des Monnaies anciennes en Afghanistan" Journal asiatique

1935.

B. V. Head, The Coinage of Lydia and Persia from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the

Dynasty of the Achaemenidae, London, 1877.

G. F. Hill, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC 1921, pp. 161-178.

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Imperial Persian Coinage" JHS 1919, pp. 116-129.

G. F. Hill, BMC Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia, pp. cxx-cxl, 148-175.

H. Howorth, "A Note on some Coins generally attributed to Mazaios, the Satrap of Cilicia

and Syria" NC 1902, pp. 81-87.

F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Antike griechische Munzen," Revue suisse 1913/4, p. 9.

C. M. Kraay, "Greek Coins recently acquired by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford" NC

1954, pp. 15 f.

G. Le Rider, "Le Tresor de Basra" Syria 1959, pp. 229-53.

M. A. Levy, "Die aremaische Legende auf einer Drachme athenischen Geprags" NZ 1871,

pp. 433 f.

A. H. Lloyd, "Hoarding of the Precious Metals in India" Transactions of the International

Numismatic Congress 1936, London, 1938.

H. de Luynes, Essai sur la Numismatique des Satrapies et de la Phtnice sous les Rois

achimlnides, Paris, 1846.

E. Merzbacher, "Satrapenmiinze mit arama'ischer Schrift" NZ 1871, pp. 427-429.

E. T. Newell, Miscellanea Numismatica, Cyrene to India (NNM 82), pp. 62-75, 82-88.

Tarsos, pp. 16-22.

E. J. Pilcher, "Philistine Coins from Lachish" Palestine Exploration Quarterly 1921,

pp. 134-151.

E. J. Rapson, "Note on Ancient Coins collected in Seistan by Mr. G. P. Tate I Coins

derived from Greek Sources" Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1904, pp. 673-675.

K. Regling, "Dareikos und Kroiseios" Klio 1915, pp. 91-112.

E. S. G. Robinson, "The Tell El-Mashkuta Hoard of Athenian Tetradrachms" NC 1947,

pp. 115-121.

E. S. G. Robinson, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum 1938-48" NC 1948,

pp. 43-59.

J. Rouvier, "Repartition chronologique des Monnayage des Rois pheniciens d'Arvad

avant Alexandre le Grand" JIAN 1898, pp. 263-298.

130 ESSAYS ON THE COINAGE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des Villes de la Phenice" JIAN 1901, pp. 35-63; 1902,

pp. 99-134, 229-284.

A. von Sallet, "Satrapenmunzen mit griechischer Inschrift" NZ 1871, pp. 419-426.

J. P. Six, "Monnaies grecques inedites et incertains" NC 1895, pp. 169-210.

J. P. Six, "Monnaies d'Hierapolis en Syrie" NC 1878, pp. 103-131.

J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazaios" NC 1884, pp. 97-159.

J. P. Six, "Monnaies grecques inedites et incertains" NC 1888, pp. 97-137.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies pheniciennes" NC 1877, pp. 221-239.

R. B. Whitehead, "The Eastern Satrap Sophytes" NC 1943, pp. 60-72.

Some Additions to Muller's Catalogue

1859 A. de Longperier, "Medailles grecques de la Collection Palin" RN, pp. 109-123.

1861 F. Lenormant, "Distatere d'or de Philippe II" RN, pp. 397-401.

1868 E. H. Bunbury, "On some unpublished Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great" NC,

pp. 309-320.

1869 Baron de Prokesch-Osten, "List des Alexandres de ma Collection qui ne se trouvent

pas dans le Catalogue de M. L. Muller" NZ, pp. 31-63.

1870 Baron de Prokesch-Osten, "Inedita meiner Sammlung 1870" NZ, pp. 268-270.

1871 Baron de Prokesch-Osten, "Suite des Monnaies inedites d'or et d'argent d'Alexandre

le Grand" NZ, pp. 51-72.

1883 E. H. Bunbury, "Additional Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great" NC, pp. 1-17.

1883 F. Imhoof-Blumer, Monnaies grecques, Amsterdam, pp. 118-123.

1886 P. Gardner, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC, pp. 249-264.

1890 W. Wroth, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC, pp. 311-329.

1891 NC, p. 122. 8, pp. 26 f.

1893 NC, pp. 10 f.

1894 ATC, p. 3. 2.

1897 G. F. Hill, "Notes on Additions to the Greek Coins in the British Museum 1887-1896"

JHS, pp. 78-91.

1909 J. de Foville, "Les Monnaies grecques et romaines de la Collection Valton" RN,

pp. 305 f.

1913 E. J. Seltman, "Rare Gold Coins with Types of Alexander III" NZ, pp. 203-210.

1919 NC, p. 8.

1928 NC, pp. 7f.

1936 NC, p. 174.

INDEX TO THE PLATES

All coins are in the collection of The American Numismatic Society except PLATE I:

9-10 (British Museum), 12-13 (British Museum); PLATE II: 6 (Paris), 7 (British Museum)

PLATE I, PAGE

1. Philip. Gold Stater. 3, 7

2. Philip. Silver Tetradrachm. 7

3. Philip. Silver Tetradrachm. 7

4. Alexander. Distater. 26

5. Alexander. Stater. 3

6. Alexander. Â£ Stater. 26

7. Alexander. J Stater. 26

8. Alexander. J Stater. 26

9. Alexander. J Stater. 26

10. Alexander. Decadrachm. 27

11. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Amphipolis. 3. 18

12. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Phoenician Weight. 27, 75

13. Alexander. Decadrachm. 27, 79

14. Alexander. Didrachm. 27

15. Alexander. Drachm. 27

16. Alexander. Hemidrachm. 27

17. Alexander. Obol. 27

18. Alexander. Hemiobol. 27

19. Alexander. Drachm. 28

20. Alexander. Drachm. 28

21. Alexander. Drachm. 28

22. Alexander. Tetrobol. 28

23. Alexander. Hemidrachm. 28

24. Alexander. Hemidrachm. 28

132

INDEX TO THE PLATES

25. Alexander. Diobol.

26. Alexander. Obol.

27. Alexander. Hemiobol.

28. Alexander. Quarter Obol.

29. Alexander. Bronze Unit.

30. Alexander. Bronze Half.

PLATE II, 1. Corinth. Silver Stater.

2. Ilium. Tetradrachm.

3. Ilium. Bronze Unit.

4. Ptolemy. Tetradrachm.

5. Lysimachus. Tetradrachm.

6. Flamininus. Gold Stater.

7. Agathocles of Bactria. Tetradrachm.

8. Macedonia. Bronze.

9. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Sidon.

10. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Babylon.

11. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Sidon.

12. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Sicyon.

13. Arcadia. Hemidrachm.

PLATE III, 1. Mazaeus. Shekel of Tarsus.

2. Alexander. Tetradrachm of Tarsus.

3. Mazaeus. Lion Stater. Babylon.

4. Mazaeus. Lion Stater. Babylon.

5. Mazaeus. Imitation Athenian Owl.

6. Alexander. Double Daric.

7. Persic Stater. Tarsus.

8. Persic Stater. Tarsus.

9. Aspeisas. Tetradrachm. Susa.

10. Posthumous Alexander. Tetradrachm. Myrina.

3,29

8, 17, 86

8, 17, 87

18,23

I9>23

49, 60

11. Posthumous Alexander. Tetradrachm. Miletus.

12. Posthumous Alexander. Tetradrachm. Rhodes.

13. Aesillas. Tetradrachm.

PLATES

15 16 17 18

Ill

INDIAN.', i.