Let us first turn to the well-known type of the tunny fish (πηλαμύς, θύννος), vast shoals of which were continually passing through the sea of Marmora (Propontis) from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean[377]. This type appears invariably upon the electrum coins of Cyzicus, and a tunny’s head is found upon some very archaic silver coins from the Santorin ‘find’ which Mr Head places at the top of the whole Cyzicene series, but no one has, as far as I am aware, yet hitherto attempted to mythologize it[378], although the fecundity of this fish would make it just as suitable an emblem for Aphrodite as the “lascivious turtle,” and the traders of Cyzicus might quite as well wear the badge of the goddess of the sea as the merchants of Aegina, for there is just as much or just as little evidence for Phoenician influences at Cyzicus as there is at Aegina. From what we have learned in an earlier chapter we know that the articles which form the staple commodities of a community in the age of barter virtually form its money. In a city like Cyzicus whose citizens depended for their wealth on their fisheries and trade, rather than on flocks or herds and agriculture, the tunny fish singly or in certain defined numbers, as by the score or hundred and the like, would naturally form a chief monetary unit, just as we found the stock fish employed in mediaeval Iceland. Are we not then justified in considering the tunny fish, which forms the invariable adjunct of the coins of Cyzicus, as an indication that these coins superseded a primitive system in which the tunny formed a monetary unit, just as the Kettle and Pot counter-marks on the coins of Crete point back to the days when real kettles formed the chief medium of exchange? But far stronger evidence is at hand to show that the tunny fish was used as a monetary unit in some parts of Hellas. We have had occasion to refer to the city of Olbia which lay on the north shore of the Black Sea. It was a Milesian colony, and was the chief Greek emporium in this region. There are bronze coins of this city made in the shape of fishes, and inscribed ΘΥ, which has been identified as the abbreviation θύννος, tunny. Others are inscribed ΑΡΙΧΟ, which Koehler read as τάριχος, salt fish, but which the distinguished German numismatist Von Sallet[379] regards as meaning a basket (ἄρριχος). He holds those marked ΘΥ as the legal price of a tunny fish, those marked ΑΡΙΧΟ as that of a basket of fish[380]. When we recall the Chinese bronze cowries, the Burmese silver shells, the silver fish-hooks of the Indian Ocean, the little hoes and knives of China, and the miniature axes from Africa, we are constrained to believe that in those coins of Olbia, shaped like a fish, we have a distinct proof of the influence on the Greek mind of the same principle which has impelled other peoples to imitate in metal the older object of barter which a metal currency is replacing. The inhabitants of Olbia were largely intermixed with the surrounding barbarians, and may therefore have felt some difficulty in replacing their barter unit by a round piece of metal bearing merely the imprint of a fish, while the pure-blooded Greek of Cyzicus had no hesitation in mentally bridging the gulf between a real fish and a piece of metal merely stamped with a fish, and did not require the intermediate step of first shaping his metal unit into the form of a tunny. We shall find that this tendency to shape metal into the form of the object which it supplants may perhaps be traced in the coins of Aegina and Boeotia.
Fig. 33. Coins of Olbia in the form of tunny fish.
Fig. 34. Coin of Tenedos with double-headed axe.
In the same quarter of Hellas we find another instance of a coin type which may be regarded as evidence that the silver coin which bears it was the representative of an older barter unit. The island of Tenedos, lying off the Troad, struck at a very early date silver coins bearing for device a double-headed axe (the Latin bipennis). This “Axe of Tenedos” (Τενέδιος πέλεκυς) was explained by Aristotle[381] as a reference to a decree of a king of Tenedos which enacted that all who were convicted of adultery should be put to death. This explanation is probably a bit of mere aetiology to explain the existence of an emblem, the true origin of which had been forgotten. However, it yields one important result, for it shows that the emblem was not religious. Had that been its nature, priestly conservatism would have kept an unbroken tradition of its origin. But from another source some light may be obtained: Pausanias[382] in the 2nd century A.D. saw at Delphi axes dedicated according to tradition by Periclytus of Tenedos, and then proceeds to relate the following tale: Tennes, an old King of Tenedos about the time of the Trojan War, cut with an axe the ropes with which his father Cycnus had moored his ship to the shore, when he came to ask pardon of Tennes for having cast him and his sister in a chest into the sea, in a fit of anger caused by the false accusation of a stepmother. We may gather that according to this form of the legend the Janiform head, male and female, on the obverse of the coins of Tenedos alludes to the brother and sister. But Pausanias makes no attempt to connect Periclytus in any way with Tennes except as being a native of Tenedos. This is hardly enough to account for the dedication of the axes at Delphi. Two explanations suggest themselves. It was the custom of kings or communities to send offerings to Delphi of the best products of their land. Thus Croesus sent vast quantities of his Lydian electrum, and, still more to the point, the people of Metapontum in South Italy, whose land was famous for its wheat, after an especially favourable harvest sent to Delphi a wheat-ear (υέρος) of gold. Were the double axes in like fashion an especial product of Tenedos? Or was this dedication analogous to that of Pheidon when he hung up in the temple of the Argive Here the ancient nails and bars? The first explanation is the more probable, for there was no reason why the Tenedians should not have dedicated their cast off currency of axes in some temple at home. I have already mentioned the hoe currency of ancient China, and the axes used as such in Africa. I shall now show that such double-axes as those stamped on the coins of Tenedos formed part of the earliest Greek system of currency. I have already enumerated the various articles used in barter in the Homeric poems. The prizes offered in the Funeral games of Patroclus are of course merely the usual objects of barter and currency, slavewomen, oxen, lebetes, tripods, talents of gold and the like. “But he (Achilles) set for the archers dark iron, and he set down ten axes (πελέκεας), and ten half-axes (ἡμιπέλεκκα)[383].” The axe is undoubtedly of the same kind as that on the coins of Tenedos, the name (pelekys) being the same in each case, and the Homeric one beyond doubt is double-headed like the Tenedian, since the half-axe (hemi-pelekkon) must obviously mean a single-headed axe[384]. The double-axes formed the first prize, the ten half-axes the second, for “Meriones took up all the ten axes, and Teucer bore the ten half-axes to the hollow ships[385].” These axes and half-axes then seem to go in groups of ten as units of value, the half-axes representing half the value of the double-headed. If then the kettle and tripod of Homeric times are found as symbols on the coins of Crete, why may not the axe on those of Tenedos represent the local unit of an earlier epoch? and that such axes were evidently an important article in Tenedos is proved by the dedication at Delphi.
Fig. 35. Coin of Phanes (earliest known inscribed coin).
Fig. 36. Archaic coin of Samos.