Greek Coin Tetradrachm

Inv. No.: c002
Provenance: Athens
Date: c. 449-415 B.C.
 
Obv.: Athena, helmeted.

Rev.: Owl with pronged tail and closed wings, olive spray, lunar crescent.

As with most Greek coins of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., this coin was struck with a punch die, whose face was smaller than the flan, or metal blank. The reverse, consequently, has a central incuse with a rim rising all round. The owl was the badge of Athens. The legend gives the first three letters of the city name.

The coin is typical of Greek coins in that historical allusions are, to say the least, indirect. The olive leaves on Athena’s helmet, for example, appear from around 480 B.C. onwards, but it is quite uncertain whether they refer to the battles of Marathon or Salamis, to the establishment of democracy, or to something else again. The origin of the crescent moon is similarly uncertain. One attractive suggestion is that the battle of Marathon was fought at this stage of the lunar cycle, and that the moon device is a subtle dig at Sparta: the Spartans, when asked for assistance, maintained that they could not set out for the battle until the coming of the full moon. As a result they arrived after the Athenians and their Plataean allies had won the battle on their own. A simpler theory is that the moon is the symbol of the nocturnal owl.

The persistence and wide dispersion of Athenian coins in the ancient world are astonishing. It is certain that they were minted until Sulla sacked the city and its port Piraeus in 86 B.C. One view holds that they continued until the middle of the first century B.C. If this is so, it is due to the centuries of long recognition of Athens as the principal custodian of Greek culture: certainly her commercial significance after the onslaught of Sulla was nil. Imitations of the coins were likewise persistent. In 410 B.C. the Persian satrap Tissaphernes supplied financial help to Athens’ enemies. The coins he struck were at first glance remarkably similar to Athens’ standard coin, the tetradrachm. The weight standard was precisely the same. The owl reverse was still being copied in Arabia at the end of the first century B.C.

Aristophanes (Frogs 722) through his Chorus proclaimed not only that the tetradrachms of Athens were the only ones correctly struck and refined, but that they were the most beautiful of all. The first claim is incontestable; the second is open to dispute. In the time of Aristophanes (c. 450 – c. 385 B.C.) the designs of Athenian coins were merely reproductions of those which had been introduced a century or so before. There was no evidence of artistic progress. One instance of this is the frontal stare of the eye in Athena’s profile. On the other hand, Athens’ first object in minting coins was to put raw silver from her mines at Laurium into a form convenient to her commercial customers. For men such as these, aesthetic appeal was a secondary consideration. Indeed any change in the appearance of the coins could have resulted in distrust and loss of popularity. As it was, the international significance of fifth century Athenian coinage is demonstrated, for example, by the many large consignments discovered within the Persian Empire. A single hoard, unearthed in Egypt in 1946, numbered roughly 10,000 pieces – an indication of the financial stability of Athens at the peak of her supremacy. One might compare the continuing use of Austrian Maria Theresa thalers in the Middle East today.

Comparanda:
Cf. AGC 151-152.