Interesting coin designs

The variety of designs found on ancient Greek coins seems limitless, and here we have ten coin types that a collector can expect to encounter – no tantalizing rarities shown. Rare coins will be shown in a different post. Also, as a matter of convenience the coins will all be types in silver.

In this first installment we'll start with the issues of Greece proper and continue every other month with the remaining four.

1. Thrace, Island of Thasos. Silver Stater, c.525-450 B.C. This popular design originated in Thrace, in the northern part of Greece – a region that a purist would argue was not Greek at all. These staters show on their obverse a satyr abducting a nymph, and on their reverse a punch with no design. A later version, seemingly produced between about 435 and 400 B.C., has a similar design, though this time the satyr seduces the nymph, whom he cradles in his arms.

2. Thrace, Maroneia. Silver Tetradrachm, 2nd-1st Centuries B.C. Wine aficionados appreciate this Greek coin, as it celebrates the renown this city earned for its fine wine, which was exported throughout the Mediterranean world. The obverse shows a youthful portrait of the god Dionysus, famed for his patronage of the vine. That same deity is shown on the reverse as a standing figure, holding a cluster of grapes and two narthex stalks (stems of fennel). They are struck on a thin, broad planchet as is typical of coins from the late Hellenistic period.

3. Thessaly, Larissa. Silver Drachm, 4th Century B.C. Located in the fertile pastures of central Greece, many miles northwest of Athens, the city of Larissa struck a series of coins with the facing head of a local water nymph on the obverse and a horse on the reverse. The horse is shown in various positions (in this case it is about to roll) and is sometimes accompanied by a person or a foal. These coins are quite artistic and always are popular with collectors.

4. Boeotia, Thebes. Silver Stater, c.395-338 B.C. The design of a shield and amphora came to symbolize the coinage of Thebes, an important city in central Greece. The shield is of a particular type (not surprisingly) known as Boeotian, and the amphora, a vessel, is of a familiar shape. The name of a magistrate usually appears in the field on the reverse, accounting for the main element of the diversity within the series. However, some varieties show decorations on or above the amphora, and earlier types replace the amphora with various deities from the Greek pantheon.

5. Attica, Athens. Silver Tetradrachm, c.440-404 B.C. This is the most recognized coin of ancient Greece, for it was produced by the most important city of Greece and was struck in great quantities, mainly from the 460s to the 290s B.C. The obverse shows the helmeted head of Athena, the patron deity of the city. The reverse shows the goddesses owl, flanked by the city name, an olive sprig and a crescent moon. These were extensively used in trade, and many suffer from deep chisel cuts or banker’s marks. The issue was also extensively copied in Asia Minor, Egypt and Arabia, where both the originals and the look-alikes were standard currency.

6. Attica, Athens. Silver Tetradrachm, 2nd-1st Centuries B.C. The eventual follow-up to the main issue of Athens tetradrachms of earlier times was the “new style” tetradrachm. This coin was often described in ancient times as a stephanophorus, or “wreath-bearer”, because of the laurel wreath that encloses the reverse design of an owl upon an overturned amphora. The city goddess Athena still graces the obverse, this time wearing an ornate helmet with three crests. The reverse fields are filled with names of magistrates and interesting symbols. The precise dating of these coins is still a hot topic of numismatic research.

7. Island of Aegina. Silver Stater, c.525-480 B.C. Another powerful city-state occupied the island of Aegina, not far from Athens. Her famous ‘turtle’ coins circulated widely in the Mediterranean and through the course of trade were often heavily worn or disfigured with chisel cuts or banker’s marks. Two distinct types were struck: the earlier pieces have a turtle on the obverse with a smooth shell often decorated with pellets; the later pieces show a tortoise with a broad shell divided into segments. The reverses of both types have incuse punches, with the earlier being deep and simplistic and the later ones being shallow, with their squares and triangles often containing letters or designs.

8. Corinthia, Corinth. Silver Stater, 4th Century B.C. One of Athens’ rivals was Corinth, a city recognized for all of the colonies it founded in Greece and South Italy (which tended to strike coins of the same design as their mother city). Corinthian-style coins were also a favorite form of payment for Greek mercenaries abroad. The obverses of these coins show Pegasus, the mythological winged horse, and the reverses show the head of a female wearing a Corinthian helmet high upon her head. Traditionally described as the goddess Athena, she might actually be a local city goddess. Many different symbols appear behind the deity’s head, which can be a separate collecting theme.

9. Sicyonia, Sicyon. Silver Stater, c.380-330 B.C. This coin type is especially interesting since it shows on its reverse a dove, today recognized as a symbol of peace, and on its obverse a Chimaera, a fearsome creature in the form of a lion with the attached forepart of a goat and a snake for its tail. The main issue of these coins was struck during a relatively brief period, and they are scarcer than any of the coins yet described. This city was located close to Corinth, near the point where the mainland of Greece joins the lower land mass, known as the Peloponnesus.

10. Elis, Olympia. Silver Stater, c.mid-4th Century B.C. The silver staters of Olympia were struck every four years to support commerce at the Olympic Games and to serve as souvenirs for visitors. The types on the earliest coins vary considerably, but the issues of the late Classical and early Hellenistic period usually bear on their obverse the head of the god Zeus or his sister-wife, Hera. An eagle is usually shown on the reverse. They were not commercial ‘trade’ coins issued on a regular basis, but were struck for a special occasion that still resonates in the modern day.

History of ancient greek coinage

The history of Ancient Greek coinage can be divided (along with most other Greek art forms) into three periods, the Archaic, the Classical, and the Hellenistic.
The Archaic period extends from the introduction of coinage to the Greek world in about 600 BC until the Persian Wars in about 480 BC.
The Classical period then began, and lasted until the conquests of Alexander the Great in about 330 BC.
This in turn gave way to the Hellenistic period, extending until the Roman absorption of the Greek world in the 1st century BC.
The Greek cities continued to produce their own coins for several more centuries under Roman rule. The coins produced during this period are called Roman provincial coins or Greek Imperial Coins.

Ancient Greek Coinage

It’s rare to find a modern coin that contains anything other than the following standard decoration: an important civic symbol on one side, and a bust of a ruler on the other. Actually, this traditional coin setup  began several thousand years ago in ancient Greece.
The first coins to be minted actually came from two places, where the idea of making small metal medallions that could be traded as currency seems to have developed simultaneously. At the end of the 7th century, both China and Lydia had begun to make plain, round coins for trade. The Greek historian Herodotus, in his work 'the Histories', briefly mentioned that the Lydians were minting coins around 600 BC. Either way, it wasn’t for another 150 years that coins became prominent around the Greek city-states.

Lydian coin  - 600BC

Before the Greeks used minted coins, they made use of small iron rods for currency, called ‘obols’. Since around six obols could fit into the hand of an adult, six obols became equivalent of one drachma coin, once the system transferred over to coinage. In ancient Greek, the word drachma actually means “the graspable” – thus making it a logical choice of name.


Athenian silver obol


 Athenian silver drachma
The island of Aegina was the first place in Greece to mint coins, made out of silver with a very basic geometric shape on either side. Around 500 BC, the Attic drachma had become widely used in the cities, but hadn’t yet spread to the outlying areas. These early Greek coins had Athena’s owl stamped on one side, the head of Athena on the other, and were made of almost pure silver.

'Aeginian turtle'-around 500BC

The Athenians produced huge quantities of coins during the Classical era, around 450 BC, in order to finance their enormous building projects on the Athenian acropolis. They also needed finances to pay for the Peloponnesian War, and it wasn’t long before Athens was demanding the required tribute payments from surrounding city-states in coinage.
Although the pictures on ancient Greek coins remained the same basically until the rise of Alexander the Great – when he would mint his own coins with his image on them – this means that the artistic history of the ancient Greeks can be traced with these coins, as artists’ techniques and tools developed over several centuries.
It was the standard unit of silver coinage at most ancient Greek and Roman mints, and the name 'obol' was used to describe a coin that was one-sixth of a drachma. The notion that "drachma" derived from the word for fistful was recorded by Herakleides of Pontos (387-312 BC) who was informed by the priests of Heraion that Pheidon, king of Argos, dedicated rod-shaped obeloi to Heraion. Similar information about Pheidon's obeloi was also recorded at the Parian Chronicle.
Ancient Greek coins seldom had official names. Each city would mint its own and have them stamped with recognizable symbols of the city, along with suitable inscriptions, and they would often be referred to either by the name of the city or of the image depicted (e.g. the Aeginetan "turtles"). The exact exchange value of each was determined by the quantity and quality of the metal, which reflected on the reputation of each mint.
The 5th century BC Athenian tetradrachm ("four drachma") coin was perhaps the most widely used coin in the Greek world prior to the time of Alexander the Great (along with the Corinthian stater). It featured the helmeted profile bust of Athena on the obverse (front) and an owl on the reverse (back).




 Corithian stater-4th century BC

In daily use they were called γλαῦκες glaukes (owls),^[6] hence the proverb Γλαῦκ’ Ἀθήναζε, 'an owl to Athens', referring to something that was in plentiful supply, like 'coals to Newcastle'. The reverse is featured on the national side of the modern Greek 1 euro coin.
Drachmas were minted on different weight standards at different Greek mints. The standard that came to be most commonly used was the Athenian or Attic one, which weighed a little over 4.3 grams.
After Alexander the Great's conquests, the name drachma was used in many of the Hellenistic kingdoms in the Middle East, including the Ptolemaic kingdom in Alexandria. The Arabic unit of currency known as dirham (in the Arabic language, درهم), known from pre-Islamic times and afterwards, inherited its name from the drachma or didrachm (δίδραχμον, 2 drachmae); the dirham is still the name of the official currencies of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. The Armenian dram also derives its name from the drachma.

How the art of numismatics began ( probably)

Roman nobles, fascinated by Greek culture, collected Greek coins  and  antiquities during the reign of Augustus Caesar, when the art and science of numismatics began.  Although there is no record of  coin collecting  during the Dark Ages,  Renaissance magnates beginning with a famous scholar Francesco Petrarca ( 14th c.) collected portraits of  emperors on Roman coins. Their willingness to pay high prices for fine portrait specimens led to the first  numismatic imitations,  Paduan medals struck by Cavino and other medalists of the time.

Different coin types attract different personalities.  While Greek coins fascinate collectors drawn to their artistic merit, Roman Imperial  issues attract those who prize their realistic and imposing portraits of emperors and their families. Persian coins have  special meaning to collectors interested in the culture and religion of ancient Iran, and the successors of Alexander issued unusual and attractive Indo-Greek coins in Southwest Asia. Ancient coins were struck in many metals: gold, silver, electrum (a natural gold-silver alloy), brass, bronze, billon  (debased silver), potin, lead and even nickel. Although ancient gold can be expensive, some issues  (notably those of the Byzantine Empire) are very reasonably priced. Silver coins are normally well preserved, however bronze coins often  circulated for long periods and many examples show considerable wear, as well as the effects of natural chemical changes.