English Coins and Tokens, with a Chapter on Greek and Roman Coins

by Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt; Barclay V. Head

§ OF THE TYPES OF GREEK COINS.

The types of Greek coins were from the earliest times down to the age of the successors of Alexander almost exclusively religious. The reason for this is not far to seek. In an age of simple faith the head of a god upon the coin was the best of all guarantees for purity of metal and good weight. The gods were, so to speak, invoked by the State to vouch for the good quality of its currency, in the same way as State decrees often began with the formula “In the name of the gods.” There is, moreover, some reason to think that the earliest coins were struck within the sacred precincts of the Temple treasuries, as being holy places, secure from plunder and inviolable.

In the most ancient period the principal or obverse type is generally some animal or object sacred to or emblematical of that god whose worship was prevalent in the city in which the coin was issued. Subsequently the head of the deity himself was usually placed upon the obverse of the coin, while the reverse side was occupied by the object emblematical of his worship. Frequently, too, the head of one principal deity appears upon the obverse, and, either the entire figure or the emblem of some other, generally local divinity, on the reverse.

The chief exceptions to the above rule are the so-called agonistic types, or types referring to the games such as the victorious quadriga on the money of various Sicilian cities. These types are commemorative in a general way of victories in the Olympian or other local games, but it is hardly ever possible to refer them to any particular victory.

Victories in war and political revolutions are never directly referred to on Greek coins, although the unintentional records of such events may often be traced in a sudden change of coin-types. Thus, for instance, at Syracuse when the Corinthians succeeded in liberating that city from the tyranny of the Dionysian dynasty, the coinage of Syracuse is for a time assimilated to that of Corinth; a still clearer indication of restored freedom at the same time (B.C. 345) being seen in the first introduction of the head of Zeus “the Liberator” upon the coins of Syracuse.

All through the history of free and independent Greece, the original idea of the religious character of the coinage may be traced. The coinage was everywhere placed under the auspices of the gods, and gods, heroes, and their emblems, were alone considered worthy to be represented upon it. No tyrant, however despotic, not even the great Dionysius of Syracuse, would have dreamed of placing his own head upon the coinage of the State. Even Philip of Macedon, when he had united in his single hand the whole of Northern Greece, and when he reorganized the coinage of his empire on a new model, placed on his gold money the head of Apollo and on his silver that of Zeus.

It was reserved for the successors of Alexander the Great, when the political centre of the Greek world was no longer to be found in Greece itself, but in the various capitals of the powerful semi-oriental monarchies which arose out of the ruins of the Persian empire—Alexandria, Antioch, etc.—it was reserved for these self-constituted kings and their descendants to substitute their own heads for those of the gods.

Such an innovation as this, such a complete upsetting of the ancient deeply rooted idea of the connection between the gods and the coinage could not be introduced all at once. It had to be effected by degrees. Alexander the Great even in his lifetime gave himself out as the son of Zeus Ammon, and after his death the idea of his divinity gained ground year by year. The first step towards the new fashion of placing the king’s head upon the coinage was made by Lysimachus of Thrace, who introduced on his money the portrait of the deified Alexander in the character of the son of Ammon with the ram’s horn over the ear.

Ptolemy Soter, king of Egypt, the first of the dynasty which ruled Egypt for two centuries and a half after the death of Alexander, was the first monarch who placed his own head upon his coins. By slow degrees his example was followed, first in Asia and finally in Europe, where Philip V. of Macedon, B.C. 220, was the first king whose portrait in the character of a mortal, and not disguised as a demi-god, appears upon the coinage.

The influence of the old religious beliefs nevertheless maintained so firm a hold on men’s minds that the reverses of Greek coins continued to bear sacred types throughout the Roman Imperial period; and even on the money of the Byzantine emperors when Christianity had become the State religion, the figures of Christ and the Virgin, or the sign of the Cross, still bear witness that the same religious sanction in a new form continued to be invoked for the coin of the realm.