GARDNER P., A History of Ancient Coinage. 700-300 B.C. (original) (raw)

PLATES I-XL * E. Speck (1905) devotes a volume of his JIanddsgeschichte des AUeriums to Greece ; and his work is of value. Of course, there are many smaller works and monographs which throw light on particular fields of ancient commerce. An excellent book, though now somewhat out of date, is Buchsenschiitz, Besitz und Erwerh im griech. Altertum, 1869. It is to be regretted that Mr. A. E. Zimmern, in his recent work on the Greek Commonwealths y has, in the chapters devoted to commerce, frequently followed untrustworthy modern authorities who put theories in the place of facts. Ifl67 B 2 See especially W. Leaf, Troy, a study in Homeric geography ; V. Berard Les PMniciens et VOdysRee. * A great part of this and the foUowiug two sections is repeated from Gardner and Jevons, Manual of Greek AntiquiiieSj pp. 886 and foil., with the permission of the publishers. ' II xxiii. 835. * Jl, vii, 474. GEEEK TEADE-EOUTES 3 Phoenicians came most of the articles of manufacture and luxury used by the Greeks of that age. Vases for unguents and vessels of bronze, and clothes dyed with purple, the skilful Sidonians manufactured themselves ; ivory they brought Taking Athens, Aegina, and Corinth as the centre, we find radiating from it four principal courses of trade. The first led in a north-easterly direction past the coasts of Greeks of Hellas brought in return for the products of the soil wine, pottery, and articles of manufacture. These four routes were the chief lines by which the riches of the barbarians flowed into Greece. Of course, among the great Greek cities themselves, scattered over the coasts of Asia Minor, Sicily, and Italy, and the mainland of Hellas, there was constant intercourse and a continual exchange of goods, for particular classes of which special cities and districts were famous. Thus Chios exported the finest GREEK TRADE-ROUTES 9 wine, as did Cnidus and Thasos ; the wool of the Milesians, probably derived from Phrygia, was universally appreciated ; * Besitz und Erwerb, p. 459. CLASSES OF TRADERS 13 and afterwards that of Alexander the Great in the Levant, the money of Corinth in Sicily and on the Adriatic, and the gold coins of Philip in Central Europe. But usually the money received by merchants had to be either expended by them in the same or a neighbouring port, or else taken away and melted down in order to pass as bullion. Therefore, after disposing of his cargo, the merchant would search about for a new stock of goods such as he might judge to be in demand at his native city or elsewhere ; and thus the process already described would be repeated. It will be' evident from this description that merchants among the Greeks could not usually confine themselves to dealing in one or two classes of goods, but must be ready to purchase whatever was cheap. There were, perhaps, exceptions in case of dealers who attended specially to classes of goods in demand everywhere, such as corn and slaves. Transactions among Greeks took place for money, but, in dealing with the barbarians, the Greeks retained barter at all periods of their trade. ' PoliiicSj L 6, 14. WeUdon's translation. EAELY MEASURES OF VALUE 21 "We can trace, though not in detail, three stages through which trade passed in early Greece, in the development of a coinage : (1) The pre-metallic stage. Among the more backward races of the world even now, or until very recently, the medium of exchange or measure of value has been some article which was portable, and the value of which was recognized by all. Every reader of travels in Africa knows that, in the interior of that continent, the yard of cloth is or was the unit of value : the traveller bargains with a chief as regards the number of yards he must pay for permission to pass through the chiefs territory. In China, shells passed as currency, as in parts of Africa and South Asia : we are even told that compressed cubes of tea passed as currency in Turkestan. Much curious lore of this kind is to be found in Ridgeway's Origin of Currency. The only pre-metallic unit of value which we can clearly trace in Greece is cattle, the ox in particular, which served as the measure of wealth to the Homeric Achaeans. The wellknown Homeric line, * Arms worth a hundred kine for arms worth nine,' proves this. In the early laws of Rome, as well as in the laws of Draco, fines were assessed in oxen. And the very word pecunia, which is closely related to pecus, a flock, bears record of a time when in Latium wealth was calculated in flocks and herds, as was wealth in Palestine in the days of Job. (2) The next stage in currency is the use of the precious metals by weight. When once gold, silver, and bronze circulated freely, their superior fitness as currency enabled them to drive out all competitors. An ox is well enough to reckon by, but when it comes to halves and quarters of the unit a difficulty arises ; the half of an ox would be a most inconvenient thing to take in payment. But metals can easily be divided and lose nothing in the process. In fact, in the ancient world most nations which had passed beyond the stage of barter used the precious metals by weight in their trade. This fact is made familiar to us by several passages in Genesis. 'Abraham weighed to Ephron the * GriecJi. Geschichte, ii. 1, S45. 2 5^^jj^^^and xvi, below. 33 INTEODUCTION with the state coinage, but their success must have been both slight and transient. Fortunately we are able, within certain limits, to fix the relative values of gold, silver, electrum,and bronze in different regions at successive periods of history. I propose in this place to give a summary of our knowledge of the matter which in future chapters I can expand. s regards the proportional values of the three metals, gold, silver, and electrum, in the ancient world we owe an excellent summary of our knowledge to an investigation by M. Theodore Eeinach.^On nearly all points the conclusions of M. Eeinach, based as they are upon a careful examination of ancient texts and inscriptions and of extant coins, seem to me to be solidly established. In Asia, from the beginning of coinage down to the middle of the fourth century, the ratio of value between gold and silver was 13^to 1. This is a view maintained by Mommsen and Brandis, and it seems trustworthy. It is indeed established by induction from a consideration of the Persian coinage. The gold daric or stater in that empire weighed up to 130 grains (grm. 8*42) and the silver shekel up to 86 grains (grm. 5'57). Now we know on the definite authority of Xenophon^that twenty of the silver coins passed as equivalent to one of the gold ; so we have the formula 1,720 grains of silver are equivalent to 130 of gold, and the relation between these numbers is nearly 13-| to i. The same equation holds in the Lydian coinage which preceded the daric; and we cannot doubt that it was an old-established equivalence. Herodotus, it is true, in his account of the revenues of Persia,* says that gold was thirteen times as valuable as silver ; but this is clearly only an approximate statement. The relation 13^to 1, although at first glancê Especially useful are papers by M. E. Babelon, Origines de la monnaie, 1897, chs. 6-8, and by M. Theodore Keinach, VRistoire par les monnaies, 1902, chs. 4 and 5. VSistoire par les monnaies, 1902, ch. 4. 3 Anab. i. 7, 18. Cyrus pays 3,000 darics in discharge of a debt of ten talents of silver, or 60,000 shekels. * Hdt. iii. 95, 1. * Origines de la monnaie, pp. 93-134. * Head, H. N., p. 416. * Hicks and Hill, Greek hist inscr.^p. 181. * Memoires, 1911, p. 351. VAnarchie monetaire. Keil, Fragm. cow., ii. 563 ; fragment 66. ' Brit. Mus. Gat., Thessaly, PJ. VI. 9 : cf, ch. xviii. Horsemen of Tarenfum, p. 136. a treasure including coins of Lete, Maroneia, Corinth, Naxos, Chios, Cos, Cyprus, and Cyrene. At Sakha was discovered a deposit,^including coins of Dieaea, Lete, Aegina, Corinth, Naxos, Pares, Chios, Clazomenae, lalysus and Lindus in Rhodes, and Cyrene. As with these coins were found fragments and bars of silver, the destination of this hoard for the melting-pot has been conjectured. The coins included in it belong to the most usual currencies of the eastern Mediterranean. A small find of coins of Cyrene from near Ramleh emphasizes the close connexion affirmed in historic records between Egypt and Cyrene. Another hoard, found in the Delta,^is very similar in composition to those above mentioned. It included a few coins of Athens, and examples of the coinages of Corinth,