Essays on the Coinage of Alexander the Great

Author
Bellinger, Alfred R. (Alfred Raymond), 1893-1978
Series
Numismatic Studies
Publisher
American Numismatic Society
Place
New York
Date
Source
Donum
Source
Worldcat
Source
Worldcat Works
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HathiTrust

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CC BY-NC

Acknowledgement

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

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THE KING'S MONEY

Alexander's coins are inscribed AΛEΞANΞPOY or AΛEΞANΞPOY BAΣIΛEΩΣ.1 They are the king's money. Not in the way that the laws are the king's laws: abstractions of which he is the responsible source with the same relations to all men. Nor in the way that his sword and horse are the king's: by personal, absolute right, capable of being modified only by himself through gift or loan. Without the king's act, entirely without his knowledge, a man may acquire title to coins exactly as he can to any other piece of property. Doubtless the king could take them away from him, as he could take away his cattle or his house or his wife. Legally a man's money is no more vulnerable than any of his other possessions. There may have been a time when coins were the property of the king in an immediate and personal sense. Recently the interesting suggestion has been made that they were not originally intended for currency, but for payment of the Lydian king's mercenaries and that circulation was an incidental and unforeseen consequence.2 It is interesting to guess at the process by which the secondary function absorbed the primary one.3 It must have been early, for the silver of the Greek cities was surely intended as currency from the beginning. In any case, by Alexander's time all thought of personal connection between the king and his money had long since been forgotten. To one of his subjects the genitive on gold and silver must have meant that the coins were struck by authority of the king, from his metal and that they were the medium by which his government paid his obligations and received his dues. They would be legal tender wherever his power extended, for both types and weights were uniform.

Their bullion value was supposed to equal their nominal value: a silver tetradrachm was taken to be four drachmae of silver. Yet, if that had been strictly true, the whole expense of manufacture would have been borne by the king. Originally that may have been so. A man who was accustomed to receive his pay in electrum by weight (and by metal content if that was determined) would hardly be satisfied with a less amount simply because it bore a device when there were still unmarked dumps in circulation of full weight. There must have been some critical point at which the cost of manufacture was transferred from the minting authority to the user and there is no way of telling when that came, but it was before Alexander. His tetradrachms were in competition with those of Athens whose minting, as we know, was an important economic asset of the state. She certainly would not consciously lose by the process, and the simplest way to break even was to reduce the weight of each coin a little so that the part subtracted should be metal equal to the cost of manufacture. That is presumably what Athens did and what Alexander did also.4 How much the deduction was we do not know. The tetradrachm was supposed to weigh 17.62 grams.5 Four drachmae of silver must have weighed somewhat more, but while the coins themselves conform to standard very well, such other weights as are preserved are not nearly so uniform, so that the attempt to find the weight of the official non-monetary drachm is not likely to be successful. No doubt it was all governed by law and the difference a matter of record. We know, from a much later period, what precautions the Athenians took to keep their weights and standards true; we know also that they were perfectly acquainted with a coin weight which was different from the commercial weight.6 If the Macedonian citizens were aware that the government was issuing coins of less than full weight they probably cared very little. The conveniences of a money economy were worth much more than the amount involved.

The king's money was struck in three metals and in a variety of denominations of which the following are the most important:

Gold Stater

Head of Athena right in crested Corinthian helmet

Rev. Winged Nike standing left, holding wreath in right hand, stylis in left P LATE I, 5

Silver Tetradrachm

Head of young Herakles right in lion's skin headdress

Rev. Zeus seated left on throne, eagle on outstretched right hand, with left hand leaning on long scepter. P LATE I, 11

Bronze Unit

Head of young Herakles right in lion's skin headdress

Rev. Bow in case and club PLATE I, 29

All these normally bear symbols on the reverse which distinguish the mints and the issues.

The types of the gold have occasioned much comment. They are new to the Macedonian coinage and are usually, though not universally, regarded as having an Athenian origin. To be sure, their general propriety to Alexander is sometimes held to be sufficient explanation without closer investigation into details. Percy Gardner represented this point of view:7 the types of Philip's gold (PLATE I, 1) "were by no means suited to the ambitious and soaring mind of Alexander," who therefore selected Pallas "the patroness of the besiegers of Ilium" and a warlike Nike with a "trophy-stand." The curiosity of other scholars, however, has not been so easily satisfied, and a considerable literature has grown up about the identification of Pallas and Nike. In 1847 Charles Lenormant 8 deduced from comparison of the staters with the heads of Athena on vases and the later bronze coins of Athens that the goddess was Athena Promachus, Pheidias' heroic bronze statue which stood on the Acropolis between the Erechtheium and the Propylaea, a dedication, according to Pausanias,9 from the spoils of the Persians defeated at Marathon. In 1890 Ernest Babelon 10 was quite willing to accept this and Charles Seltman 11 regarded the head as probably a free adaptation of Athena Promachus, perhaps convinced by the hearty support of this solution by Philip Lederer.12 Considering the uncertainties in regard to this celebrated statue, a positive identification is hardly safe,13 but the other suggestions that have been made are not persuasive.

1) Prokesch-Osten,14 followed by E. J. Seltman,15 put forward as a possible original the ancient Palladium of Pella. This is met by Lederer16 with the objection that Alexander's coins had and were intended to have an ecumenical importance and an obscure local deity would not suit his purpose at all.17 It may be added that when Pallas appears on the obverse of Pella's own coins18 it is in the form of Athena Parthenus in obvious imitation of the New Style silver of Athens.19

2) Babelon, recanting his previous acceptance of Athena Promachus believed that the type was Pallas "des monnaies de Corinthe"20 in which he was followed by Svoronos 21 who thought that the adoption of "Pallas Corinthienne" may have resulted from a decision of the Council of Corinth and who could not believe that relations between Athens and Alexander were such as to make his borrowing a device from her possible. This is a good example of an attempt to exalt likelihood into evidence. If there were no documents this might be regarded as an interesting possibility which, from frequent repetition, would come to be accepted as a fact. But here there is evidence, and one only has to compare the heads of Athena on the coins of Corinth (P LATE II, I) and of Alexander to see instantly that it is impossible that the latter should be derived from the former. If Alexander's goddess had been supposed to be the same person as that on the Corinthian silver she would have been made to look the same. What other way would there have been for men to recognize her?

3) In a recent study of the whole problem of Alexander's imperial currency Gerhard Kleiner 22 urges, on grounds of historical probability, that the goddess is Athena of Ilium and that it was not until after his visit to Ilium that Alexander began to strike his own types on gold.23 Kleiner's work is a connected whole and cannot fairly be disposed of piecemeal; it will be treated more thoroughly presently. But it may be said here that, on purely numismatic grounds, his suggestion is a weak one. Athena Ilias, as she is known to us from many coins (P LATE II, 2,3), was a deity of very special appearance: she wore a polos, over her shoulder she held a filleted spear, and in her other hand was a distaff; that is, she was an Anatolian deity with more oriental than Greek features. If Alexander had had her in mind he could have produced a head with a polos. Now it is true, as Kleiner says, that on later coins of Ilium the head of Athena has other forms, one of which is like that on the staters. But the first coins have on the reverse the cult statue of Athena Ilias; on the obverse a head of Athena with a round Attic helmet (P LATE II, 3). These were issued under Lysimachus; the head in Corinthian helmet comes later under Seleucus I, again with Athena Ilias as a reverse type. To assume that there was an image at Ilium of the appearance of Athena Promachus is purely gratuitous; there were two forms of Athena known earlier on the coins and one of them is clearly named Athena Ilias on the 2nd century silver24 (P LATE II, 2).

A user who knew both Athena Promachus and Athena Ilias must conclude that Alexander's type referred to the former and not to the latter.25 An Athenian model for the obverse of the gold is therefore still the most likely.26

The reverse is quite as worthy of remark. Nike has a long and interesting career on ancient coins, but none of her previous appearances has any connection with Macedonia. This in itself raises no difficulty, and when the object in Nike's left hand was thought to be the frame for the erection of a trophy, it seemed a most appropriate augury of the future to which Alexander was entitled if any man ever was. But it was early noticed that the object assumed a great variety of forms and Babelon presently showed that it was, in fact, a stylis,27 which he took to be an instrument for propping up the aphlaston on the stern of a Greek ship. The naval significance was accepted by Ernst Assmann 28 who asserted however that what was represented was actually a Phoenician standard, borne on the admiral's ship. Some part of his argument was met by G. F. Hill in the same number of the Zeitschrift für Numismatik29 and Babelon also answered him in a discussion much extended from his first essay30 which proved that the object was not purely Phoenician. Its function, however, was hardly adequately treated until 1914 when Jean Svoronos 31 argued with a wealth of illustration that the stylis was an image of the protecting deity set up on the stern of a ship. Whatever interpretations may be advanced in the future, one thing is clear: what Nike holds in her left hand has a naval significance. That does raise a difficulty, for it is well known that, at his accession, Alexander had no fleet and therefore no reason to select a type that meant victory at sea.

There are three ways in which this dilemma is met: 1) by assuming that Alexander looked confidently ahead to victory at sea; 2) by assuming that he did not strike this gold at the beginning of his career but at a later time when it would have been appropriate; 3) by assuming that the stylis was part of the original on which Alexander's type was based and that he copied it as it was without concerning himself about its propriety in detail.

1) Is by its nature incapable of proof, but certainly not very likely unless at the beginning of his career he expected to have the help of some other naval power. We do not know of any plans of his looking to control of the sea.

2) Has been argued more than once. Its acceptance means either that Alexander struck no gold in the first years of his reign or that he continued to issue the types of his father (PLATE I, 13). There is, I think, no defender of the first alternative now, for it is clear that Alexander cannot have conquered Asia Minor without money, and the mines of Macedonia were still providing gold. We may assume that the second alternative is the only one which needs to be argued. It is generally assumed that the capture of Tyre is the point at which such an announcement of naval supremacy would become appropriate. That is Assmann's theory in the article referred to: in 332 Alexander found himself in the position of the Phoenician admiral and could adopt his insignia. In replying to Assmann, Babelon makes the interesting observation that by 332 there had been no sea battles (for the capture of Tyre can hardly be considered such) whereas the army of the Great King had been defeated at Issus and one would be inclined to expect that the real victory would be commemorated on any device adopted then rather than a strategic situation which was not, in fact, of capital importance to his great conquests.

Assman is not the first to have put forward the theory that Alexander's coinage does not begin at the beginning of his reign. It appears as early as E. M. Cousinéry in whose Voyage dans la Macédoine (Paris, 1831) there is a section, "Monnaies d'Alexandre" (pp. 229–270). It is naive and careless in detail (particularly in regard to the correspondence of text and illustrations) but it advances the doctrine which has had fuller and abler treatment since: that the first coins struck by Alexander were not those with his own types but a posthumous continuation of those of his father. "Nous ne pouvons—nous refuser À croire qu'en entrant dans l'Asie, il ne soit borné À mettre en émission la monnaie de son père dans les trois metaux" (pp. 230f.). This is rejected by Müller 32 but has been revived in an impressive presentation: Kleiner's Alexanders Reichmünzen . It will be well, however, to deal first with Cousinéry's earlier and less important treatment, though this will make it necessary to anticipate our discussion of the silver.

Cousinéry's theory is founded on two convictions: first, that the head on the obverse of the silver is invariably a portrait of Alexander. "Cette tête ne présente rien d'idéal" he says (p. 236); he finds complete uniformity not only on the coins struck during Alexander's lifetime but also with the head in elephant-skin headdress issued by Ptolemy (P LATE II, 4) and that with the horns of Ammon issued by Lysimachus (P LATE II, 5), which he rightly recognizes as likenesses not of the kings who minted them but of their deified leader. Of these he gives engravings, but none of the Alexander types to let the reader judge whether they are of invariable style. He does, indeed, remark that the flans of the coins of Macedonia after its division by the Romans are thinner and broader, but there is no indication that he used this or any other criterion to distinguish the epochs to which Alexander coins belong. Apparently he found the same face on the earliest Macedonian silver and on the spread-flan tetradrachms which succeeded the collapse of the Seleucid power. His second conviction is the surprising one that it was the Greek cities, grateful for their deliverance from the Persians, which selected the types and manufactured the coins. A modern numismatist would hardly feel called on to refute this but, of course, if it were true it would mean that the silver types could not have begun until the cities had been freed. The gold, as already remarked, he thinks was subsequent to Alexander's visit to Ilium. The appearance of Athena on the obverse would be a natural consequence of the devotion there paid to her by the conqueror; the Nike of the reverse appears to be no problem to the author.

After the Granicus Alexander could use Persian gold and silver, but he continued to issue his father's types "soit par respect pour sa mémoire, soit À cause du crédit que ces monnaies avaient acquis partout où le nom de Philippe était parvenu. Ce que nous le prouve c'est la grande quantité de ces pièces qu'on ne cesse de découvrir dans toute l'Asie" (p. 231). This last remark is the only appearance of what can fairly be called evidence in a fabric of conjecture, and it is evidence which we can test to some extent. It is essential to distinguish between the gold and silver. The gold of Philip achieved a great success as an international medium and its popularity was such that it certainly was issued posthumously.33 The wide currency of the staters is shown by the hoards in which they occur. There are 19 such hoards listed by Noe:34 they come from Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Syria, Egypt, Italy and Sicily.35 Philip's silver, on the other hand, had a more restricted territory. Among the barbarians of the north it was well received, so that from the mint of Amphipolis these types also were issued posthumously.36 The great number of Celtic imitations, much commoner than those copied from Alexander, is testimony to the success of the originals in that direction. But if the crossing to Asia and the early campaigns there were financed with Philip's silver as well as his gold, which is essential to Cousinéry's theory, the hoards containing his silver should be conspicuous in Asia Minor. There are 24 such hoards, and they come from Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Sicily.37 It cannot be said that there is any lack of evidence from the territory with which we are concerned. From Asia Minor, the adjacent islands, and north Syria Noe's list has 140 hoards, and of these there are no less than 17 which contain silver of Alexander.38 And not one silver coin of Philip ! This is surely enough to justify us in asking "If Philip's silver was used in the first campaigns, where is it?"

Kleiner deals with Alexander's coinage as a whole, which nobody had done since Müller. He has a familiarity with the literary sources which numismatists in general would do very well to match. He has supported his thesis with great learning and ingenuity, assembling much material on iconography with which also numismatists should be better acquainted than they are. It is quite impossible to do justice to the work in any résumé since it is a large body of related details but, though I feel called upon to disagree with him, I should like to do him as little injustice as possible.

Kleiner's thesis is that the imperial coinage—silver as well as gold—was inaugurated at the festival at Tyre in the spring of 331 after Alexander's return from Egypt.39 It was at that time that Harpalus, induced by Alexander to return from his flight to Megara, was reinstated as treasurer. It is, of course, an attractive idea that so large and important a system should have been planned in advance and put into operation all at once, and the second visit to Tyre would certainly be an appropriate moment for such an innovation. But Kleiner does not rely on this appropriateness alone. Like others, he maintains the improbability of Alexander's using Nike as a device before the capture of Tyre (pp. 12, 20, 21); he denies that Pallas is a probable deity for him to have honored in the earliest years of his reign, before his visit to Troy (pp. 18, 19); and he adds a more complicated psychological argument. In 197 B.C ., to celebrate the freeing of the Greeks, gold pieces were struck with the portrait of Flamininus on the obverse, and on the reverse, with the inscription T. QVINCTI, an imitation of Alexander's Nike with a palm substituted for the stylis (P LATE II, 6).40 Kleiner regards this to be a presentation of Flamininus the Liberator as an equivalent for Alexander the Liberator. But he believes that if this type had been employed by Alexander at the beginning of his reign it would have been remembered as the money of Alexander the Destroyer of Thebes and so altogether unsuitable for the model of a type in honor of emancipation, whereas if it had been introduced after his freeing of the Greek cities of Asia Minor there would have been no such objection (pp. 5, 6).41

These arguments, to my mind, are based on probability only and are therefore bound to fail if confronted with evidence to the contrary. And we have contrary evidence in three places. The first is the absence of Philip's silver in hoards from Asia Minor, already discussed in connection with Cou-sinéry. The other two are alike. In discussing the Alexander coinage of Tarsus 42 and Myriandrus43 Newell shows how directly it was based on the coinage of the Persian satrap Mazaeus which preceded it. Now Alexander entered Tarsus September 3, 333 and won the battle of Issus November 12 of the same year.44 If coins were issued from those mints as soon after falling into Alexander's hands as dies could be cut, obviously the theory that the first appearance of his types was in the spring of 331 must be abandoned. Newell does not undertake to prove that the Greek coins follow the Persian ones immediately, though he certainly believed it.45 But there are only two other possibilities: either the mints were idle from 333 to 331 or, conformable to Kleiner's general theory, there were intervening issues bearing Philip's types. In the first case, some reason ought to be alleged; in the second, the issues ought to be identified. Unless or until these conditions are met, Newell's hypothesis holds the field.46

Account should also be taken of the arrangement of the issues of Amphipolis in Newell's study of the Demanhur Hoard.47 They extend from "circa 336 B.C. to circa 318 B.c.," the latter being the date of the hoard's burial (p. 135); they are put in groups A to K. This arrangement the author justifies on pp. 68f.: "The dates here assigned the various groups of the Amphipolis coinage are, perhaps, to a certain extent approximate. But even so, they cannot be in error by much more than a year either way." He points out that important confirmation for the dating of the earlier groups comes from a hoard buried at Kyparissia in 328 or 327.48 Kleiner's theory, which does not affect the date of burial of the Demanhur Hoard, would force us to compress this material by five years, reducing the groups from eleven to six. How is it to be done? It may be urged that Newell himself had revised an earlier arrangement, and so he had, and in important respects.49 There has been much new information made available since his second study and that needs to be worked through; a particular need is the systematic treatment of the issues of Philip II. But it is not enough to say that this arrangement is fallible. It is founded on careful study and unless or until a better arrangement is proposed, we are not justified in lowering the beginning of the coinage by five years.50

Finally, I cannot see that Kleiner has done justice to the evidence of style. The difference between the earliest Heracles heads from the different mints is made much of in the article by Gebaur to be discussed below.

3) Such being the weaknesses of our second possibility, we are left with our third: namely, that Alexander's Nike is copied from one with which the stylis belongs. An Athenian origin was an obvious possibility to those who believed that Pallas on the obverse was Athena Promachus, but Babelon made the suggestion very specific by pointing out51 that Nike with a stylis upon a column beside Athena Promachus was painted on a Panathenaic vase of 336/5, the archonship of Pythodelos. This seemed to him more than a coincidence and he concluded that the two Nikai were related documents of a time of cordiality between the monarch and the city. Hill defended him against Assmann on matters of fact, but was not convinced by the suggestion that Alexander had borrowed from Athens.52 Neither was Svoronos who, as already remarked, could not believe that at this time Alexander would have had any reason to flatter the Athenians as Babelon thought. Instead, he suggested that it was the other way around and that the Nike on the Panathenaic vase was copied from "les types désormais historiques des statères qu' Alexandre venait de frapper dès son retour en Macédoine."53 This was dismissed by Lederer as impossible because there was not enough time for the coins to have been struck and become so well known as to invite imitation in the year 336/5 after Alexander's return from the Congress of Corinth.64 On the other hand, he produced as evidence of the connection with Athens a newly discovered gold stater on which the type of Nike was accompanied by Nike also as a symbol bearing an aphlaston and an obscure object which he thought might be a stylis. This unprecedented use of the same figures as both major and minor device he regarded as certainly calculated. Stylistically the coin belongs to Alexander's earliest issues; Lederer believed that it was the very first die cut for the new king's gold (and possibly cut in Athens itself). Moreover, he made more specific an idea that had already been advanced by Babelon. Golden Nikai had been dedicated in Athens in the latter half of the 5th century, but in the critical days of 407/6 they had, with one exception, been melted down into money. One was restored in 374/3 B.C.,55 others by Lycurgus in the late 4th century. In this case we have a literary tradition and inscriptional evidence as well. The pseudo-Plutarchian Lives of the Ten Orators (841 D and 852 B) and Pausanias I, 29 both record the fact that Lycurgus, who was notable for the extent to which he restored her ancient riches to Athens, had presented to the goddess on the Acropolis, among other things, golden Nikai. Two inscriptions, IG2 II, 333 and 1493 testify to that fact. Now when the gift was dated in 336, as understood by Babelon, a connection between Athens' and Alexander's Nike is an obvious possibility, and Lederer (p. 202) definitely holds the coin to be inspired by those restored statues. One item that makes this attractive is the fact that the figure is not at all what we should expect from the 4th century, whereas it is perfectly appropriate to a restoration of a 5th century original.56 Unfortunately for the theory in this form, the two inscriptions are now dated 334/3.57 It has been rescued, however, by a daring conjecture of Homer A. Thompson:58 to wit, that the restoration of 336/5 was an act of munificence of Alexander himself, whose selection of the type would then commemorate an act of generosity toward a city for which he had recurring moods of affection. We have only to read the speeches of the later Attic orators to find that not all Athenians were his enemies; doubtless he had more friends than we know, and perhaps he thought he had more friends than he did. It is obvious that the only real objection to this solution is skepticism as to such cordial relations between Alexander and Athens in 336.59 If that can be accepted, all difficulties are met. But we should have the candor to admit that the choice would not have been expected and is foreign to general historical probability.

As to the obverse type of the silver, we are met with a different kind of question. The head of young Heracles with a lion's skin covering had ample precedent on Macedonian coins, having appeared under Archelaus I, 413-399, Amyntas III, 389-383, 381-369, Perdiccas III, 364-359 and Philip II, 359-336.60 The legend of the descent of the Macedonian kings from Heracles, whenever it was invented, had been very useful to their claim to admission among the first families of the Hellenic world and no reason beyond tradition was needed for the adoption of the hero's portrait as a device. Kleiner, whose theory requires that the silver as well as the gold should have been inaugurated in 331, argues that Alexander's interest in Heracles was not conspicuous until the episode of Tyre, after which his heroic ancestor assumes great importance in his life,61 but the conclusion is open to the same objections that have already been discussed in regard to the gold. The simplest explanation is that the new king adopted an old type but for a new denomination.

It is natural that the question should have been repeatedly asked: "is the Heracles head a portrait of Alexander himself?" There are really two independent questions, not always distinguished by investigators. Was it the intention of the die-engravers to produce a likeness (which might be true without any effect on the general public, most of whom would not have seen the king at close enough range to judge)? Was it the general persuasion that the head was a likeness of the king (which might be true without any such intent on the part of the die-engravers)? We have sundry bits of evidence that the second was true in later tradition.

1) A very interesting tetradrachm was issued in the 2nd century B.C. by Agathocles, king of Bactria, one of a number honoring his predecessors. The obverse has the familiar head in lion's skin with the inscription AΛEΞANΞPOY TOY ΦIΛIΠΠOY (Plate II, 7).62 Here Heracles is altogether ignored and the portrait is meant to be not that of the deified conqueror but of Agathocles' royal but human precursor.

2) At Alexandria-ad-Issum bronze coins were struck in the 1st century A.D. (to judge by their style and fabric) on the obverse of which there is a Heracles head in lion's skin which, considering the town, must be understood as a picture of Alexander.63

3) A great many bronze coins were issued in Macedonia in the 3rd century A.D. with the head of Alexander on the obverse identified by the inscription AΛEΞANΞPOY (P late II, 8).64 The most favored portrait seems to be one with diadem and flowing hair, obviously modelled on the coinage of Lysimachus, but there also appears the head in lion's skin headdress,65 which shows that at that period there was no doubt as to who was represented.

4) Apollonia Mordiaeum struck a bronze coin in the time of Caracalla on which the Heracles portrait is identified by inscription as Alexander the Founder of Apollonia.66

5) There is also an interesting mediaeval item in the De Thematibus of the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetus (945-959 A.D.).67 Speaking of the Macedonian kings who considered themselves descendants of Heracles who slew the Nemean lion, he reports that instead of taenia or crown or royal purple, they crowned themselves with the skin of a lion's head which they prized more than jewels. "Trustworthy proof of this is the coin of Alexander of Macedon adorned with that kind of portrait." So there were Alexander tetradrachms to be seen in the 10th century and at so late a date the answer to the second question is still that the head was commonly supposed to be that of Alexander, and surely it is not very daring to guess that the same answer would be right for a much earlier period, even the period of Alexander's own lifetime. But for lack of a statement it cannot be proven.

The first question may be debated and has been. It is unnecessary to refer to all the writers who have had their say, since some have nothing new to offer. A few believed that the head is always intended to be Alexander. We have seen that this is the position taken, for different reasons by Cousinéry and by Kleiner.68 It was supported also by some of the older numismatists writing in a day before the resource of abundant illustration, so that their conclusions could not be presented so as to convince the eye; nor, indeed, were their own convictions based on wide and intimate visual acquaintance with the material.

Others have held that the head was never intended as a portrait. Such is Eckhel's belief,69 supported by a bookish argument characteristic of his time. He appeals to the words of Horace (Epistles II. I. 239–41):

"Edicto vetuit, ne quis se praeter Apellem

Pingeret, aut alius Lysippo duceret aera

Fortis Alexandri vultum simulantia."

He might have added the passage from Pliny the Elder (H. N. VII. 37. 125): Idem hic imperator edixit ne quis ipsum alius quam Apelles pingeret, quam Pyrgoteles scalperet, quam Lysippus ex aere duceret; and the later passage (XXXVII. 4.1) where the authorization of Pyrgoteles seems to apply only to carving in emerald.70 Even so fortified the argument does not amount to much. The meaning of the edict (whatever form it took) must have been that the king was not going to sit for his portrait to any artists except those three. He cannot have hoped, or desired, to prevent the making of copies and copies of copies by any who felt so inclined. Indeed we have ancient references to other portraits besides those of the official appointees.71 Die-sinkers could certainly make portraits of the king without breaking the law.

Most of the discussions have been, of course, parts of more general inquiries into the portraits of Alexander in all media, but whether other kinds are included or not, the scholars have taken one of two positions, either denying that there were any numismatic portraits of Alexander during his lifetime, or admitting that certain coins might be so considered. The former view has the weighty authority of Imhoof-Blumer,72 which is heartily supported by Theodor Schreiber.73

According to them portraiture was an invention of the Hellenistic age, and the difference between one Alexander tetradrachm and the next is to be explained by differences in time and place of striking and difference of die-sinkers. Both authors look to the issues of Lysimachus (P LATE II, 5) and Ptolemy (Plate II, 4) for real evidence as to the appearance of the king their master.

But other scholars are not able to dismiss the differences so lightly and maintain, with greater or less conviction, that here and there Alexander's own face does appear under the lion's skin. It is noticeable that the numismatists are mostly very cautions and show no disposition to cite specific examples. Müller who, in his time, had studied a much larger body of material than anyone else, lays down the general principle that the earliest Heracles heads of the reign are like their predecessors on the coins of previous kings, but that sometimes later, and commonly after 323 a likeness appears, not as a result of any command of the king but at the choice of the several magistrates or of the artists themselves.74 But there is no indication of where to look for these appearances. George MacDonald 75 is very reticent: "Tradition, indeed, has it that Alexander's features are to be discerned in the head of Heracles—even if we grant that this is so, the very circumstance that portraiture was introduced in covert fashion, lurking under the shelter of religion, is highly significant." And Newell in a book where positive identification would certainly be appropriate,76 says only, "The silver coins invariably bear the head of the youthful Heracles covered with a lion's skin—the features frequently resembling those of Alexander himself."

There are those, however, who are willing to be more specific. E. Q. Visconti 77 finds indication of the king's features on tetradrachms of Rhodes and of Ake. G. F. Hill, more daring than his fellow numismatists, publishes "a head of young Heracles r., with features resembling Alexander's."78 The coin is from Amathus in Cyprus.

Using Newell's plates as a basis, Kurt Gebauer has a full and careful stylistic analysis of the coinage as the first part of his "Alexanderbildnis und Alexandertypus."79 He argues that the first pieces from the mint of Amphipolis (P LATE I, II) and, to a lesser extent, the first from other mints, show a head which is perfectly characteristic of the mid-fourth century. Within the next half decade there is a breaking with tradition and a greater freedom and individuality, usually followed by a hardening into schematization. From this the Macedonian mints never recover but those of Asia, farther from the artistic dominance of the homeland, and inheriting the traditions of local schools of art, produce essentially new portraits. From Sidon in 327 comes a die which he recognizes as the first true likeness of Alexander on a coin (P LATE II, 9), the effect of the exciting news of his invasion of India upon the imagination of a gifted engraver. Thereafter there is no return to the impersonal and universal Heracles, though the individual portrait too loses something of its original freshness. Another essay in portraiture comes from Babylon in 316 (PLATE II, 10), this time showing Lysippan influence. Gebauer regards the development of the head in the years after Alexander's death as a combination of the conception of Alexander as a god with that of Alexander as an historic ruler, the various local streams finally merging in the full tide of Hellenistic art. The portraits which appear on the first silver of Ptolemy and on both silver and gold of Lysimachus are unmistakably identifiable as the deified Alexander.

The article has excellent, clear and well-chosen illustrations. Its tone is logical and temperate and the case it makes is certainly a respectable one. Of course, the language of aesthetic criticism is hard. There is so much that the eye perceives that cannot be put into adequate words. And there are so many times when two beholders will perceive different things as to matters of expression and emotion. The difficulties are increased when the argument is not about single substantative works of art but, as here, about items selected as examples from a large group which has its inner differences as well as its common characteristics. Perhaps another scholar, working with the same material, might modify the course of this study and its conclusions. But it does seem to me that the argument is probable as a whole and supported by its details. It will be seen that it altogether rejects the idea that the broadcasting of his portrait was part of Alexander's original plan, or, indeed, that he had anything to do with it at any time. A priori it would be attractive to think that it had been part of the plan for the imperial coinage—that Alexander had anticipated Ptolemy and Seleucus and Demetrius Poliorcetes in making use of his money to spread his fame. It has been suggested that he himself had been anticipated by his father and that the bearded head on Philip's silver was intended at once for Zeus and for the king.80 But in this case we have no reliable portraits of Philip preserved for comparison and the unproven possibility cannot be used to strengthen the case for Alexander.

The different approach of Miss Bieber's "The Portraits of Alexander the Great" leads to a similar result. As none of her predecessors had done, she "distinguishes between the different periods in which the bewildering varieties of Alexander portraits preserved for us have been created." Her only addition to the numismatic material in Gebauer's article is the enlargement, as fig. 32, of another coin of Sidon of about 320 B.C. (P LATE II, II).81 She would apparently not object to his theory that the first coin portrait came in 327, though she does not mention it. But none of her pictures which may derive from originals earlier than that time has any relation to the head on the first coins from Amphipolis, Tarsos and Sidon, and of these the series from Amphipolis is surely the first of all on the evidence of style.

Both of these studies assume, as do Müller and Hill, that the appearance of a real portrait is the achievement of an individual engraver or perhaps an individual magistrate or satrap. On the other hand, Erik Sjöqvist , publishing a head in the Boston Museum82 illustrates, as a parallel, a tetradrachm of Sicyon (P LATE II, 12)83 which "shows Alexander's likeness in the traditional Heracles iconography." This, he believes, is not merely the work of a single gifted die-cutter but a document of the gradual process of the deification of

Alexander during his own lifetime. "It marks," he says, "the first decisive step in the evolution of an iconography that was totally new to Greek art: that of rendering an image of a deified ruler." He enumerates convincingly the specific traits which make this seem to be an actual individual and not a mere traditional convention, and he believes that the original is the official portrait of Alexander in 332, probably by Lysippus. If we are dealing with an official program the result ought to be that from this time on the coins show with increasing frequency and success heads that are recognizably those of an actual person, somewhat idealized to be sure, but not those of a conventional hero. But do they? Comparison of the different specimens selected as likenesses by the various scholars raises a certain uneasiness in the mind of the beholder and a feeling that we need much more material than even Gebauer has provided.

There is a certain deceptive pattern in the situation. On the one hand there are the coins earlier than Alexander with a beardless head of Heracles. These cannot be portraits of him. They vary considerably in style but it is impossible that they should be portraits of the various rulers who struck them.84 They must be Heracles alone. On the other hand there are the heads generally agreed to be posthumous portraits of Alexander, issued by Ptolemy and Lysimachus. Between are the issues of Alexander himself which should be related to one extreme or the other. But it is not quite as easy as this, for no one has yet demonstrated the uniformity of the testimony of Ptolemy and Lysimachus. Indeed, a glance at Pl. IX of Hill's Select Greek Coins (Paris, 1927) which shows enlargements of coins of Alexander and his two successors tempts us to wonder whether we may not recognize the later heads because they bear the accessories of divinization—the elephant's head and the ram's horns—and not because they resemble each other. We must never forget that we are dealing with the craftsmanship of many die-sinkers who varied greatly in skill and also—as Professor Sjöqvist reminds me—in sympathy with the idea of divinization. Alexander's mints never achieved, and probably never attempted the degree of uniformity shown in the Athena heads of 5th century Athens. But what is the proportion between the specimens which show conformity with an official program and those aberrations of intent or execution which would seem to deny its existence? An enormous task awaits some heroic scholar: analysis which shall be not selective but inclusive of the dozens of dies of Heracles' head to see what generalizations can be safely made. It must be done without preconceptions—and it might well end in failure. Perhaps some guidance can be provided by Cahn's synopsis of the elements which form style85 but it is a work not to be undertaken by the impatient or the faint of heart.

For the present let us content ourselves with concluding that a traditional type was selected by Alexander as suitable for an imperial currency, which proved its acceptability in an empire wider than he could have imagined and that, at some times and in some places, true likenesses of the king and his commanding personality inspired the hands of his artisans so that men came eventually to believe that he and Heracles were one.

The reverse type is invariable in its main features. Zeus is always seated to the left, he has an himation over his legs but is undraped from the waist up, on his outstretched right hand he holds an eagle, with his left he leans upon a long scepter behind him. There are details, with which we shall deal presently, that vary. He is sometimes called Zeus Olympios.86 Yet there are important differences from the statue of Zeus that was at Olympia in Alexander's time: the great chryselephantine statue by Pheidias. They have deterred most scholars from giving a title to Alexander's deity. One other identification was put forward, but it cannot be seriously considered. Eckhel87 says "Jupiter hic Nicephorus (a mere slip for Aetophorus) haud dubie est Bottiaeus ille seu cultus in Bottiaea Macedoniae regione in qua sita Pella." Impressed by "haud dubie" from so great an authority, Müller accepted the name,88 and, in his early work89 Newell contributed a rhetorical flourish which his maturer judgment allowed to be forgotten: "on the reverse we see Zeus of Bottiaea, who had a famous temple at Pella and was honored throughout Macedonia." But Bottiaean Zeus is a very elusive figure indeed. The single ancient mention of him is by Libanius in connection with a dedication of Alexander at Antioch-on-the-Orontes (or rather where Antioch was later to be founded)90. Any connection with the district of Bottiaea around Pella is conjecture and nothing more.

The divergence from Olympian Zeus is excellently stated by Cook in a passage worth quoting in full.91 "When Alexander the Great placed upon his silver coinage the design of a seated Zeus, it might have been expected that he would choose for the purpose the great cult-statue at Olympia—and the more so as Mount Olympos was a prominent feature of his own domain. In point of fact, he did nothing of the sort. He set aside all the improvements introduced by Pheidias and deliberately reverted to the old pre-Pheidiac type. A comparison of his tetradrachms on the one hand with the federal coins of Arkadia (P LATE II, 13), on the other with the Olympian statue is instructive:

Arcadian Coins Pheidias' Statue Alexander's Coins
Right hand has eagle Right hand has Nike Right hand has eagle
Left hand has scepter held high Left hand has scepter held low Left hand has scepter held high
Right leg is in advance of left leg Left leg is in advance of left leg Right leg is in advance of right leg
Himation is wrapped about lower limbs only Himation covers left upper arm as well Himation is wrapped about lower limbs only
Throne has at first no back Throne has high back Throne has at first no back

The inference is clear. Alexander, ignoring the idealized ruler at Olympia, harked back to the more ancient and popular type of Zeus Lykaios. After all, Mount Lykaion too was called Olympos. Yet so immense was the fame of the Pheidiac figure that tetradrachms issued later in the name and with the types of Alexander are increasingly influenced by it. The left leg is advanced instead of the right, and the throne is manifestly assimilated to that of Zeus Olympios—so even Alexander failed to arrest the moral evolution of Zeus." To the resultant questions, "What motive led him to make the attempt? Why did he select for his world-wide coinage the old eagle-bearer of Arkadia rather than the newer and nobler creation of Pheidias?"—he has no answer to offer.92

But the particular form of Zeus was less important than the fact that, like Alexander's other devices, he was easy for inhabitants of the various districts of the empire to accept as their own. Seltman has put the case clearly:93 "Though introduced in 336 B.C. these types were destined to appeal equally to Greeks and to Oriental subjects of Alexander as yet unconquered; for the Phoenician was to see in the obverse type his own god Melqart, the Cilician was to regard the seated deity as the god Ba'al of Tarsus, and the Babylonian, though he might not be able to read the Greek name of Alexander, was to look on pictures that might recall his own Gilgamesh, the lion-slayer, and the figure of Bel-Marduk, god of Babylon. When it is realized that, next to Macedonia, the greatest mints of Alexander were to be established precisely in Phoenicia, Cilicia, and Babylon, the uncanny foresight that the king showed in the selection of these types becomes apparent."

Cook recorded the fact that the earliest pose, with the legs stiffly parallel, the right in front of the left, gives place to an easier position, more like that of Pheidias' figure, with the right leg drawn back and the right foot appearing in back of the left one (PLATE II, 10, 11). This change does not take place everywhere at the same time, but it is general and is an indication of date rather than of place. But there are small differences which are useful for a more exact placing of the issues in their respective mints. Not only does the throne sometimes have a back (as mentioned by Cook) but the back may be decorated with little Nikai on the top, and the shape of the legs and the placing of the crossbars differ. The god is sometimes laureate; sometimes there are long locks on the nape of his neck, sometimes short ones, sometimes none. There may be a dotted exergual line beneath his feet, or a straight one, or a footstool, or nothing. Together with these items also goes a constant modification of style which is in itself sometimes sufficient to prove the relation between reverse dies without more objective variants.

But far more important than other minutiae for the reverses of both silver and gold are the little ancillary figures—the symbols—or the letters or monograms which, with very few exceptions, occur in the field of the reverse type. They are not conceived as parts of the main design, as is evident from the fact that the scales of the type figure and the symbol are quite unrelated. Scholars were early convinced that symbols, monograms and letters alike were indications of the place of striking, and great ingenuity was displayed in recognizing civic devices and deciphering cities' names. Some of the suggestions were good and have been confirmed by later work with greater resources, though the original discoverer is sometimes forgotten. Some were quite fantastic and displayed an astonishing ignorance of ancient history and geography. It would be amusing to list the impossible guesses that have been made, but no serious value would result. Any who are disposed to investigate this chapter in the history of human error might start with Eckhel's list of his predecessors,94 noting his own selective and conservative suggestions as to mints, based largely upon Pellerin "post infelices aliorum conatus."95

These early attempts have one common weakness: they do not distinguish between the first coins and the later ones, some of them very much later. Such differentiation is among the great merits of what is still the basic work in the field: L. Müller's Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand. To a volume which discussed all aspects of the coinage of Alexander, with that of Philip II and Philip III as well, was added an Atlas wherein is displayed in clear tabular form all the varieties known to him (1735 for Alexander, 313 for the elder Philip, 142 for the younger) with drawings of the symbols and monograms, indication of their placing on the coin and of its fabric.96 The fabric was arranged in seven classes, the increasing breadth and flatness of whose flans was the sign of a chronological development, and they are illustrated by engravings on the first two plates. His discussion of them, on pp. 5-9, 97-104, allows for border-line cases, and would not now be accepted in all its details, but it added an important new instrument for the analysis of the huge number of coins with which we have to deal.

Müller treats of symbols and monograms more than once (pp. 35-49, 90—93, 116-122). He began with the conviction that they represented towns or districts and in his Atlas the main headings are place names, with lists of Incerti for the various districts, the length of which might have given him some cause for doubt. Thus, in Macedonia he lists 15 towns followed by 61 varieties from Incertae Urbes which, on the least reckoning, would amount to 11 more. He does at one point admit that symbols might be those of magistrates,97 but he is sure that the marks are generally those of towns.98 Of course, additions to his lists were made, but I think there was no published questioning of his principle until a quarter of a century later.

In 1869 Edward H. Bunbury published99 two tetradrachms of Lysimachus, one (Müller 100 no. 112, Aenos) with caduceus and bee, the other (Müller no. 445 a, Chrysaoris in Caria) with torch and bee; they were both struck with the same obverse die. "It appears to me, therefore," he said, "as certain as any conclusion can be, in a subject where we are necessarily left to inference, that the two coins in question belong to the same part of the country, and can only be referred to neighboring cities." This is as far as his disagreement with Müller went. But a much more serious doubt as to the validity of Müller's method was raised by von Sallet.101 He found three staters of Philip II with the same obverse die. Two of them were Müller no. 88 (Philippi) with K and tripod; the third, the gold counterpart of Müller no. 237 (Incerti) with K and a broad hat but without the tripod. He concluded that these must all have come from the same mint, and that the mint was not Philippi. The symbols, then, may be those of magistrates or emissions and not of places. In reviewing this essay with approval102 Head remarked, "It is becoming every year more and more apparent that the whole edifice rests on a foundation of sand. The symbols, however much they may resemble municipal devices or coin-types, are, as Dr. von Sallet clearly shows, merely the signets of the monetary magistrates, and only very exceptionally to be accepted as mint-marks." This was so much more drastic than Bunbury's essays in revision that it drew a cry of distress from him.103 Head, he protested, was destroying the whole foundation for a reasonable arrangement of the Alexander coinage and leaving mere chaos. To this Head replied in a brief note.104 He granted that Müller's Classes V, VI, and VII, which were issued by free cities after the death of Alexander, bore symbols, sometimes accompanied by initial letters, the devices of the cities which struck them. But, for the earlier coins, he expressed his conviction that three fourths of the signs were those of magistrates and not of cities. Head's doctrine convinced Imhoof-Blumer, who appealed to it in support of his identification of the mint of Babylon.105 Finally, in 1912, Newell, in his Reattribution of Certain Teiradrachms of Alexander the Great, produced such a wealth of evidence on identical dies from the Demanhur Hoard that the hypothesis of a large number of little mints had to be abandoned permanently.

There are, to be sure, cases in which true mint marks do appear, and they are not all confined to the posthumous issues (for example, ĸ or image for Kition in Cyprus, image for Paphos, image for Arados, Σl for Sidon) but the great majority, as Head saw, stand not for places but for persons. Who these persons were we do not know; they had supervision over particular issues, holding office for a term, which would usually be a year after the regular Greek custom, seeing that the official standards were maintained and being allowed to put their private marks on the coins struck under their charge as a subordinate guarantee to the great guarantee of the king's name.

The bronze was less common and is much less well known. The types refer to Heracles, both obverse and reverse, though no one has raised any question about the portrait. The positions of the bow and club vary, and there are letters or symbols which will ultimately help in achieving an arrangement, but correspondences with the symbols on gold and silver are spasmodic and it is likely that the bronze issues were the care of separate officials. They were certainly not struck with the frequency and regularity of the gold and silver. The serious study of them has hardly begun.

Such are the essential aspects of the major coins which formed the international currency of Alexander's empire.

These denominations were supplemented at one time or another by the following multiples and fractions:

Gold Distater

The same types as the stater P LATE I, 4

There are a considerable number of these which were evidently an important element in the currency.

Gold Half Stater

The same types as the stater P LATE I, 6

Gold Quarter Stater

The same types as the stater P LATE I, 7

Gold Quarter Stater

Head of Athena right

Rev. Bow and Club P LATE I, 8

Gold Eighth Stater

Head of Athena right

Rev. Bow and Club P LATE I, 9

These fractions are rare and do not seem to have played an important role.

Silver Decadrachm

The same types as the tetradrachm P LATE 1,10

This also is rare and was probably confined to a single issue from Babylon.106

Silver Decadrachm

Alexander on horseback with a spear attacking Porus on an elephant.

Rev. Alexander standing left in a Persian cap, holding a thunderbolt in his right hand, leaning upon a spear with his left. He wears a sword and is crowned by a flying Nike. P LATE 1,13

Not only is the denomination extraordinary, but the types, commemorating the battle against Porus, make it obvious that these are rather medallions than normal pieces of money. Their weights are proper for ten drachmae, but they can hardly have been intended to be put in circulation.107

Silver Didrachm

The same types as the tetradrachm P LATE 1, 14

A rare denomination, perhaps confined to the first years of the reign.108

Silver Drachm

The same types as the tetradrachm P LATE 1, 15

These occur in large numbers. They certainly provided an important supplement to the tetradrachms, though their issue seems to have been concentrated in Asia Minor.109

Silver Hemidrachm

The same types as the tetradrachms P LATE 1, 16

Silver Obol

The same types as the tetradrachms P LATE 1, 17

Silver Hemiobol

The same types as the tetradrachms P LATE I, 18

Like the fractional gold, these silver denominations are rare.

Silver Tetradrachm of Phoenician weight (14.70 gr.)

Head of Zeus right laureate

Rev. Eagle right, looking left, on thunderbolt P LATE 1, 12

Imhoof-Blumer believed that this was Alexander's first issue from Macedonia, preceding the introduction of his own types.110 Head would attribute it to an eastern mint, perhaps India, after Alexander's death111 and this was accepted by Newell.112 Kleiner, however,113 returns to Imhoof-Blumer's theory and is supported on that point by G. K. Jenkins in a review,114 and by Daniel Schlumberger,115 but the argument of R. B. Whitehead 116 for a Bactrian origin would seem conclusive. The point is not of much importance for us since the coins are so rare that they cannot have played any significant part in the financing of the empire (so far as I know there are none besides the three in the British Museum).

Silver Drachm

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle right on thunderbolt P LATE I, 21

Silver Drachm

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle right, looking left, on thunderbolt P LATE I, 19, 20

Silver Tetrobol

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle right on thunderbolt P LATE I, 22

Silver Hemidrachm

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle right on thyrsus P LATE I, 23

Silver Hemidrachm

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Eagle left on thunderbolt P LATE I, 24

Silver Diobol

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Two eagles, face to face, on thunderbolt P LATE I, 25

Stiver Obol

Head of young Heracles Rev. Thunderbolt PLATE I, 26

These types may all belong to the early issues of Amphipolis.117 Two other small fractional issues may be from Syria or Cilicia.

Silver Hemiobol

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Club and bow in case P LATE I, 27

Silver Quarter Obol

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Two clubs in reverse directions P LATE I, 28

Bronze Unit

Head of young Heracles Rev. Eagle right, looking left, on thunderbolt

Bronze Half

Head of long-haired Apollo, right

Rev. Thunderbolt P LATE I, 30

A common type of bronze unit is

Head of young Heracles

Rev. Bow in case and club P LATE I, 29

Of the whole list the only denominations of real imperial importance are: distater, stater, tetradrachm and drachm.

To translate these pieces of money with any thoroughness into terms of human existence would need far more information than we possess, but we are not without some useful indications of value. The first point to be remembered is that Alexander, abandoning his father's choice of standard for silver, coined on that of Athens according to which the drachm weighed 4.3 grams and was divided into 6 obols. There has been a good deal of discussion as to why he made the change, and talk of bimetallism which is, I think, sufficiently dealt with by Théodore Reinach who points out that the necessary conditions for real bimetallism never existed in antiquity.118 What Alexander did was to follow the example of Athens and strike a silver drachma of the same weight as the gold drachma of which two made the stater. Of the relation of silver and gold we shall speak presently; the issuance of silver money on the standard used by Athens was certainly not surprising considering the assured reputation and universal acceptability of the Athenian owls. Schlumberger, indeed, believes that his choice was influenced not only by their importance in Greece but also by their imitations which had become so notable an element in the currency of Persia. What Alexander wanted to do, he says, was to give a generally recognized coinage to an empire which did not have one and to extend the use of coinage to the whole territory.119 This largeness of view, however, would only have been possible at a time when he could foresee the eastern extension of his empire. It therefore fits Schlumberger's idea that the imperial currency does not begin with the beginning of the reign. But with the difficulties caused by this theory we have already dealt. In any case, Alexander had silver drachms 20 of which were equal to one gold stater in value.

And what were they worth to their possessors? Any attempt to answer this question ought to be prefaced by a reminder that we have no evidence from Macedonia itself. In the works of the orators and the comedians there is a considerable amount of economic information about 4th century Athens, and this has been carefully gathered by August Böckh in his book Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener.120 There a great deal can be found out about the range of revenues and expenses—rents, dowries, wages, fines, loans, and such matters. But these figures, while interesting and illuminating in themselves, must be used with caution for the economy of Macedonia or Asia. Nevertheless, there is one figure so basic that it seems safe to use it. In the latter part of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, which deals with the constitution of his own time, section 49 records the fact that the Council considered the case of paupers, and any who were found to have less than 3 minae capital and to be physically incapacitated received 2 obols a day for food at the public expense. In 4th century Athens, then, 2 obols a day is the level of bare subsistence. This is borne out by Demosthenes' proposal for an expedition against Macedon121 in which the foot soldiers were to get 2 obols a day which would keep them alive even if they were not supplemented by plunder. We know nothing of the cost of living in the country, and Athens may well have been more expensive than any town in Macedonia, but, if we keep that in mind, it is safe to calculate that a silver diobol was about the minimum that a man could get along on for a day. Then a drachma would support him for three days, a tetradrachm for 12.

This being the scale of values for silver, we need to convert it into gold and bronze. Since the gold stater (of two gold drachmae) weighed just twice the silver drachma, the ratio between gold drachma and silver drachma will be exactly the ratio between the bullion values of the metals. Now the value of gold and silver will vary according to supply and demand and will vary differently except in those instances in modern times where government control has produced a true bimetallism. Since in Greece the standard was silver the result was an apparent fluctuation in the value of gold only, though sometimes ancient writers recognized the interaction of the metals.122 There is evidence that in the Persian empire there was a fixed official ratio of 13⅓: 1;123 an Athenian inscription of 434/3 (IG II2. 352) gives a ratio of about 14: 1; two literary sources of the 4th century show that by then the proportion had sunk to 11 or 12: 1.124 In the middle of the 4th century the opening of the mines of Pangaeus suddenly increased the available gold supply which appears to have dropped the ratio to 10: 1,125 and this seems to have been maintained for a long time.126 It would be dangerous to suppose that it never varied during the period of Alexander and his successors,127 but what testimony we have encourages us to assume that 10: I was the usual ratio.One gold stater, then, equalling 20 silver drachmae or 5 tetradrachms, would be subsistence for one man for 60 days, and a distater for twice as long.

When we come to speculate about the bronze we are in greater difficulties. It is generally agreed that bronze money was essentially fiduciary: that its value was not measured by the weight of the metal. This is confirmed, though it cannot be said to be proved, by what little information we have about the price of bronze.128 More conclusive is the variation in weight of individual pieces of the same denomination. In the Drama Hoard there are 94 bronze coins of Alexander all well preserved and in about the same condition; 13 of them weigh over 7 grams, 25 weigh less than 6. It is obvious that there has been no such attempt at exactness as even the fractional silver shows.129 To be sure, the loss or gain in value would be very small, but if a coin of 4.78 grams was supposed to be worth the same as one of 8.09 that must be because the bullion value did not matter. But too much can be made of the indifference. I may quote the conclusions to which I came in regard to Selucid issues where there are sometimes denominations not distinguished by difference in type.130 "Everyone will agree that the weighing of the original flans for bronze coins was less careful than in the case of silver because the bullion value was so much less. On the other hand, it is too drastic to assume that the bullion value was of no account whatever. The conception of token money with a value entirely independent of its material, like our paper, is a modern one which cannot fairly be attributed to Asiatics of the third century B.C. Doubtless the ultimate worth of the bronze coins was their theoretical ability to be exchanged for precious metals, and this allowed them to circulate freely in spite of variation in weight and at a value higher than that of their material. Yet the analogy of silver and gold must have affected the peasant or soldier user of bronze coins. The persistence of a system of denominations distinguishable only by weight must rest on the instinctive conviction that the more metal there is in your coin the more it is worth."

Weight, then, may be helpful in separating denominations but is no guide to their relation with the silver issues, and we must look for other methods of analysis. Newell tentatively proposed alternate schemes for identifying Seleucid bronze, based on the hypothesis of equality between the largest bronze and the smallest silver.131 As I have had occasion to remark,132 it is doubtful whether a single system can be substantiated for all the kings from Seleucus I to Antiochus III, and for all their mints, which by no means issue all the same denominations in silver and bronze. But aside from this his values are unsatisfactory for the period of Alexander. According to his calculations the piece which he calls the unit would be either ⅛ obol or 1/16 obol, and therefore 1/48ro1/96 drachma. On the evidence of a possible reduction in weight by Antiochus IV, he prefers the second ratio for the early Seleucid period. On the basis of convenience, however, the former or a lower one would be preferable. There is no denomination between the bronze unit and the silver drachma issued frequently enough to have been in common use, and 48: 1 seems a wide gap, let alone 96: 1. The relation of gold stater to silver drachm was 20: 1 and, as the tetradrachm was even commoner than the drachma, there was a ratio of 5: 1 between the most available large denominations. Why should the minor ones be separated by 48: I? Yet, as I have pointed out, in the case of Ilium the first local issues of that mint provided not multiples of Alexander's denomination but fractions: half and quarter, 1/96 and 1/192 drachma according to Newell's lower reckoning, 1/192 and 1/384 according to his higher ! This surely must be rejected from its inherent improbability.

Reinach, who has done us the service of confuting some of the unsuccessful speculations of his predecessors, has made a cautious suggestion as to the values of Ptolemaic bronze.133 Since from 305 B.C. on the Egyptian standard was Rhodian and not Attic, his definitions will not apply to Alexander's coins, but he gives voice to an interesting principle which ought not to be overlooked. "S'il me fallait" he says "À toute force hasarder À mon tour un système de dénomination, je verrais volontiers dans la classe de bronze B de Svoronos, qui est de beaucoup la plus fréquente, l'obole, la pièce divisionnaire par excellence." The obol is, in truth, so prominent in the writers that it seems reasonable that it should be conspicuous as an actual coin. There is a silver obol but it does not seem to have been common enough to satisfy the requirement, and it is tempting to call our bronze piece an obol and so establish a ratio of 6: 1 between the minor denominations. The purely factual name chalkous "the bronze piece" we may safely assume was used of our unit as it had been used of the much-despised first Athenian attempt to use token money;134 as it would presumably always be used of a bronze piece which was the only denomination or the dominant one. In more developed systems it may have been confined to a particular step in a series of denominations, having its multiples and divisions, as illustrated by Newell"s tables, but for this early period it is almost certain that the commonest bronze piece would be called chalkous. That, however, takes us no farther into the question of its value in terms of silver. There we have nothing to go on except reasonable conjecture. We are neither helped nor hindered by evidence from other places or other times,135 for it is clear that a coin without mark of value or necessary relation to its metal content would be very sensitive to circumstance, capable of being easily manipulated by authority or changed by conditions so that the work done by the unit of one situation might require a multiple in another. Let us assume, then, until we encounter evidence to the contrary, that the bronze unit was an obol and that two of them made a pauper's dole in the countries where Alexander's authority ran.

End Notes

1
The earliest issues have the name only without the title. At some mints, e.g., Sidon and Ake, the title is not used at all. Its adoption is not simultaneous in the cities where it occurs and it evidently has no constitutional significance, for sometimes an issue with the title will be succeeded by one without (e.g., E. T. Newell, Myriandros-Alexandria Kat'isson, New York City, 1920, p. 33, nos. 21, 22). The order and placing of the words vary.
2
R. M. Cook, "Speculations on the Origins of Currency," Historia 1958, pp. 257-262.
3
Scholars writing about currency will remember with pleasure the dictum of Aristotle that the theory of finance is a liberal study but the practice is not. Politics I,4.1. He had no doubt that philosophers could be rich if they wanted to but "that is not what they are interested in." 1.4.5.
4
The term "seigniorage" is an anachronism, but we are driven to employ it because we do not know what word the Greeks used. The amount of seigniorage in mediaeval and modern times might be enough not only to cover costs but to provide a revenue for the sovereign (the Bureau of the Mint of the United States is reported to have made a profit of over $45,000,000 in 1957). But that is under conditions where the coinage does not have to compete with others whose bullion content is higher. Leaving out of consideration all other Greek coinages, Athens and Alexander were alike in the intention that their coins should be accepted widely and if they were to invade territory accustomed to an economy of barter it must be because their bullion value was only slightly lower than their face value. Athens presents the conditions where it would be easiest to calculate the expense of striking, and where that expense would be least: invariable types and the use of each die until it was worn out. The Alexander coinage was almost as simple: the types were invariable but the varying symbols on the reverse meant that occasionally, at the end of an official's term, there may have been reverse dies which were not worn out but which must be abandoned or recut for the use of his successor.
5
A. S. Hemmy, "The Weight-standards of Ancient Greece and Persia," Iraq 1938, pp. 65–81, gives a statistical analysis of a number of series and calculates standards of which the following are of importance to us: Persian daric 8.43 grams, siglos 8.52 grams or 8.26 grams (two standards); Philip gold stater 8.68 grams, tetradrachm 14.70 grams; Alexander stater 8.66 grams, tetradrachm 17.62 grams.
6
IG II1,476.1013. Attic Decree on Measures and Weights, end of 2nd century—beginning of Ist century B.C. August Boeckh has an elaborate commentary on this in Staatshaushaltung der Athener, 3rd ed., pp. 318-332, which was accepted by all subsequent writers until Louis Robert, Études de Numismatique grecque, Paris, 1951, pp. 105-135, proved that ΣτεΦανηφόρου δραχμαί which had caused much learned discussion were coins of the Athenian New Style. It was unfortunately not part of Robert's plan to deal with the arithmetical aspects of the inscription which make nonsense as it appears in IG. (Indeed, he added a small item of confusion by printing εκατόν δραχμimageδ instead of imageκατόν πεντήκοντα δραχμimageς in the last line of the text on p. 116). O. Viedebantt, "Der athenische Volksbeschluß über Maß und Gewicht," Hermes 1916, pp. 121-144, has taken heroic means to make sense, inserting two lines which we must assume the Abbé Fourmont missed in making the copy which is now our only witness to the text.
7
The Types of Greek Coins, Cambridge, 1883, P. 188.
8
"Lettre à M. J. de Witte sur trois nouvaux Vases historiques," Annali dell' Instituto Archeologico 1847, PP. 348-407-
9
I. 28.2.
10
Les Rois de Syrie, Paris, 1890, p. xxvi.
11
Greek Coins, London, 1933 and 1955, pp. 204f.
12
"Ein Goldstater Alexanders des Großen," ZfN 1922, pp. 185-205.
13
Gisela Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, New Haven, 1930. It is true that Behrendt Pick, in discussing much later representations of a bust of Athena ("Die Promachos' des Pheidias und die Kerameikos-Lampen," Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 1931, pp. 9-74) says (p. 61) "One can think of no original for a head in Corinthian helmet at Athens except the Promachos"; but to appeal to this for support of the identification involves a petitio principii: what proves that the original of Alexander's Pallas was at Athens?
14
NZ 1871, pp. 52 f.
15
"Rare Gold Staters with Types of Alexander III," NZ 1913, p. 205.
16
Op. cit., p. 197.
17
This is not to deny that the type might have had local significance in various places, but its significance must not have been local only.
18
Hugo Gaebler, Die antiken Münzen von Makedonia und Paionia, II, Berlin, 1935, Pl. XVIII, 26; XIX, 4.
19
There is a fighting Athena on the reverse of a late bronze of Pella which is one example of a type introduced by Seleucus I. How insecure is the ground for identifying this as Athena Alkis or Alkidemos is made clear by Leon Lacroix, Les Reproductions de Statues sur les Monnaies grecques, Liege, 1949, pp. 12of.
20
"Le Stylis, Attribut naval sur les Monnaies," Mélanges numismatiques, 4, Paris, 1912, p. 213.
21
"Stylides, Ancres hierae, Aphlasta, Stoloi, Akrostolia, Embola, Proembola et Totems marins," JIAN 1914, pp. 115f.
22
Alexanders Reichmünzen, Berlin, 1949, p. 19.
23
This theory had already been advanced by Esprit Marie Cousinéry, Voyage dans la Macédoine, Paris, 1831, Vol. I, p. 231.
24
Cf. A. R. Bellinger, Troy. Supplementary Monographs 2, The Coins, Princeton, 1961.
25
Indeed, Kleiner in a later passage (pp. 31f.) seems to me to compromise his position strangely: Harpalus the treasurer must have been influential in the choice of types; Harpalus may have become acquainted with Athens on his first mysterious flight to Megara in 333 and he was inclined to benevolence toward Athens by the celebrated Athenian hetairai Pythionike and Glykera; he was therefore probably responsible for the Athenian character of the gold types. "Durch Harpalos wird es auch am ehesten möglich, die Goldstatere mit Athen in Zusammenhang zu bringen." But then why introduce the Trojan episode at all?
26
There is an interesting detail of the obverse type. The bowl of the helmet of Athena, when it is decorated, may carry one of four different kinds of ornament which have been discussed by G. F. Hill ("Alexander the Great and the Persian Lion-Gryphon," JHS 1923, pp. 156-161). The first, and much the commonest, is a serpent in which Lederer saw a symbol of Athena (ZfN 1922, p. 195). The second is a remarkable animal with straight wings, the body of a lion and the head of a bird. This type of gryphon belongs to the period after Alexander's death and to Asia Minor, Phoenicia and Babylon. A rarer variant has the head of a lion, which is sometimes horned, with curved wings. "The lion-gryphon'' says Hill, "was conceived by the Greek as the enemy par excellence of the Persian." It appears at Ace-Ptolemais and Tarsus, at Sidon (or perhaps Damascus) and possibly in Cyprus, and its dates suggest that it may have been used for a short time as a symbol of the destruction of the Persian power. The rarest ornament is a Greek sphinx, used at Babylon and perhaps elsewhere in the East. If it is symbolic its significance is now lost.
Professor Machteld Mellink of Bryn Mawr whose attention I called to this material points out that the horned lion-headed griffin occurs by itself in contexts where it is surely apotropaic and so can hardly be called "the enemy par excellence of the Persians." At the same time it appears to be unknown outside Persian art so that on Alexander's coins it shows familiarity with a Persian art form. Of the other animals, all traditional as decorations on Athena's helmet, the most striking thing is the galloping pose of the bird-headed griffin. But there is no sure explanation of the significance of any of them.
27
Mélanges numismaliques, 1, Paris, 1892, pp. 203-217.
28
"Das Stabkreuz auf griechischen Münzen," ZfN 1906, pp. 215-226.
29
"Nochmals das Stabkreuz," ibid., pp. 331-334.
30
Mélanges numismatiques, 4, pp. 199–237.
31
JIAN 1914, pp. 81–152, esp. 115–118.
32
L. Müller, Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand, Copenhagen, 1855, p. 14, n. 24.
33
Margaret Thompson and A. R. Bellinger, "A Hoard of Alexander Drachms," Yak Classical Studies, XIV, 1955, pp. 3-45, the conspectus of the Alexander mints of Lampsakos, Abydos, Teos, Kolophon, Magnesia and Sardis (pp. 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 27).
34
Sydney P. Noe, A Bibliography of Greek Coin Hoards, 2nd ed. (NNM 78), New York City, 1937. The hoards are cited by his numbers.
35
Bulgaria, 526, 980; Romania, 46, 624; Greece, 267, 339, 455; Asia Minor 637, 841; Cyprus, 600; Syria, 133, 882; Egypt, 89, 322, 430; Italy, 1045; Sicily, 170, 1093, 1098.
36
E. T. Newell, Reattribution of Certain Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great, New York City, 1912, pp. 12-23.
37
Bulgaria, 38,192, 446, 447, 481, 526, 866, 980; Romania, 286; Greece, 49, 69, 339, 461, 466, 533, 592, 595, 669, 783, 834, 844; Sicily, 21, 170, 1164.
38
20, 29, 30, 31, 40, 51, 67, 79, 82, 475, 488, 603, 846, 925, 926, 991, 1033.
39
Arrian III, 6.
40
Gaebler, Die antiken Münzen von Makedonia und Paionia, II, Pl. XXXVI, 17, 18.
41
There is a parallel argument affecting the use of his silver types by Greek cities celebrating their liberation from Seleucid domination after 189 B.C.
42
Tarsos under Alexander, New York City, 1919. The point had been made long before by J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazaïos," NC 1884, pp. 97-159. P. 101, "les premières monnaies d'Alexandre, frappées en Asie, font immédiatement suite à celles de Mazaïos;" p. 102, "Là donc où finissent les émissions de Mazaïos, commencent celles d'Alexandre. Il n'y a pas de lacune apparente."
43
Myriandros Kat'isson, New York City, 1920.
44
Marcel Dieulafoy, "La Bataille d'Issus, analyse critique d'un travail manuscrit du Commandant Bourgeois," Mémoires de l'Institut national de France, 1914, pp. 41—76.
45
Tarsos, p. 15 "it is interesting to note in how many instances the customs and peculiarities of a local coinage will reappear on the succeeding issues of Alexander for the same district. This shows clearly how the personnel, appliances and traditions of a mint were all retained for the production of the new coin. The coinage of Tarsos is no exception to this rule and the issues bearing the name and types of Alexander the Great are seen to be the direct successors of the local coins of the Persian Satraps." Myriandros, p. 31, 'This fact immediately suggests that the following group of Alexander coins, very similar in style and character to his Tarsian issues, was really struck at Myriandros in immediate succession to the Persic issues of Mazaios emanating from the same important Syrian mint."
46
Reattribution, pp. 27–30. The problem of Sidon and Ake (Newell, The Dated Alexander Coinage of Sidon and Ake, New Haven, 1916) Kleiner has met by revising Newell's dating (pp. 24–29) which I need not discuss. If the principle is established by Tarsus it is superfluous to argue other instances, such as Kition and Salamis in Cyprus whose coinage Newell would begin "circa 332" ("Some Cypriote 'Alexanders'" NC 1915, pp. 294–322). But in the case of Sidon Kleiner's revised date is made impossible by the existence of a Ptolemaic tetradrachm of the year 22 which cannot have been struck in 311/10 as Kleiner's calculation would make it. (Bellinger "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos" Berytus 1950–1, no. 140; G. K. Jenkins "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous" MN 1960, pp. 27f.).
47
Alexander Hoards II. Demanhur, 1905 (NNM 19), New York City, 1923.
48
E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards I (NNM 3), New York City, 1921, pp. 18, 19.
49
In his earlier work, Reattribution, he identified the chief mint as Pella instead of Amphipolis, concluded that the date of burial was 308 instead of 318, dated the first appearance of "Basileus" to 317 instead of 325.
50
The arguments used are based rather on the silver coins than on the gold. The date of the earliest gold at Tarsus is not particularly investigated; it is assumed to begin in 333 (Tarsos, pp. 22, 26), but in the case of Amphipolis there is gold directly connected with the silver series: e.g., Müller 104f. with Demanhur 327-331 (331 B.C.) and Müller 192f with Demanhur 254-265 (333/2 B.C.).
51
Mélanges numismatiques, 4, pp. 210-213, Pl. XIV, 3.
52
Historical Greek Coins, London, 1906, p. 105, n. 2.
53
JIAN 1914, pp. n6f.
54
ZfN 1922, pp. 185-205.
55
Dorothy Burr Thompson, "The Golden Nikai Reconsidered," Hesperia 1944, pp. 173-209.
56
D. B. Thompson, op. cit., p. 189.
57
Accepted by W. S. Ferguson, The Treasurers of Athena, Cambridge, 1932, pp. 122f., n. 2.
58
"A Golden Nike from the Athenian Agora," Athenian Studies presented to William Scott Ferguson, Cambridge, 1940, pp. 183-210.
59
It might be asked, if relations later deteriorated, why was not the type changed? But this admits of an easy answer. It is obvious that what Alexander wanted for his new currency was stability. No event and no sentiment was allowed to affect his types once they had been chosen. It is possible that there was, in his lifetime, variety in the appearance of the minor denominations, but there was none in the coins that did the main fiscal work of the empire.
60
Gaebler, op. cit., Archelaos, hemiobols p. 156, 9, 10, Pl. XXIX, 18, 19; Amyntas, hemi-drachm, p. 159, 3, Pl. XXX, 1, bronze, p. 160, 7-11, Pl. XXX, 7, 9 (cf. the contemporary bronze of Pydna, Pl. XX, 30); Perdiccas, didrachm, p. 161, r, Pl. XXX, 14, bronze, pp. 161f., 2-5, Pl. XXX, 15-17; Philip, gold, half stater-eighth stater pp. 163f, 9-16, Pl. XXX, 28, didrachm, p. 166, 26, Pl. XXXI, I, octobol, p. 166, 27, bronze, p. 168, 37-39, 41, Pl. XXXI, 10,14-16, with Heracles head left, p. 168, 40, Pl. XXXI, 17.
61
Op. cit., pp. 11, 12. It should be remarked that his argument relies heavily on the nonappearance of Heracles in the record of the early years, but surely, considering the nature of the literary sources, the argumentum ex silentio is very risky. Also, some weight should be given to the prominence of Heracles in Isocrates' Oration to Philip, especially sections 104-115.
62
Margarete Bieber, "The Portraits of Alexander the Great," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 1949, p. 414, fig. 63.
63
BMC Lycaonia, Isauria and Cilicia, p. 29, nos. 2-4.
64
Gaebler, op. cit., Erste Abteiling., pp. 94-191. The illustrations of this part of the work are so badly arranged as to be almost unusable, and the dating is very questionable.
65
Op. cit., p. 162, no. 175, Pl. IV, 14.
66
BMC Lycia, Pamphylia and Pisidia, p. 202, no. 1, Pl. XXXIII, 1.
67
Book II, Theme 2. The passage is quoted by the older numismatists, e.g., Joseph Eckhel Doctrina Numorum Veterum, Part I, Vol. 2, Vienna, 1839, P. 99.
68
In 1959 there appeared an article by Kurt Lange, "Zur Frage des Bildnis gehaltes bei Köpfen auf Münzen Philips II und Alexanders III, des Großen, von Makedonien," ( Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen des deutschen Numismatikertages in Göttingen, 1951, Göttingen, 1959, pp. 27-33) which accepted Kleiner's theories and sometimes exaggerated them. Lange believes that the Heracles head was a portrait and was recognized as such, at the time as well as later, but he will not say that every tetradrachm bears a true portrait, and the numismatic part of his article is clearly the least successful.
69
Loc. cit. (n. 67).
70
Eckhel does refer to Apuleius, Florida, I. 7. 2, who carelessly repeats Pliny but substitutes Polycleitus for Lysippus. The weakness of the whole tradition is well exposed by Alfred Emerson, "The Portraiture of Alexander the Great; a Terracotta Head in Munich," A J A 1886, pp. 408–413, 1887, pp. 234–260. Nevertheless, J. J. Bernoulli (Die erhaltenen Darstellungen Alexanders des Großen, Munich, 1905, p. 28) does not hesitate to subscribe to the theory that the Alexander head on Lysimachus' coins goes back to an original of Pyrgoteles. I can see no reason for this but sentiment.
71
Margarete Bieber, op. cit., pp. 375f.
72
Portraitköpfe auf antiken Münzen hellenischer und hellenisierter Völker, Leipzig, 1885, p. 14. His opinion cannot be taken as proof. In the same place he asserts that the title ΒΑΣιΛΕΩΣ is almost without exception posthumous, but this is certainly untrue; the instance cited in n. 1 above is dated 328–326.
73
Studien über das Bildnis Alexanders des Großen, Leipzig, 1903, p. 166, "Alexander hat nie mit seinem Bilde geprägt, sowenig wie sein Vater Philip." So also Hansjörg Bioesch "Persönlichkeit und Individualität auf antiken Münzen," Winterthurer Jahrbuch 1960, p. 62.
74
Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand, pp. 12-15. It is strange to have Müller repeating the tradition of the three approved artists as the reason why the making of his portrait on coins cannot be attributed to the lifetime of Alexander.
75
Coin Types, Glasgow, 1905, p. 151.
76
Royal Greek Portrait Coins, New York City, 1937, p. 13.
77
Iconographie grecque, Paris, 1811, Vol. II, Chap. II "Rois de Macédoine," § 1 "Alexandre le Grand," pp. 28-52.
78
Historical Greek Coins, London, 1910, p. 103, no. 59, Pl. VII (an enlargement of the obverse is on Pl. IX of Select Greek Coins). The mint is not identified by Hill; Newell was at first uncertain of it (Reattribution, p. 54, no. 258, PI. 30. 11) but later assigned it to Amathus "after circa 325 B.C." (Demanhur, p. 45, nos. 2703-2707).
79
Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Institut, Athenische Abteilung 63/64 (1938/39), pp. 1-106.
80
Kleiner, op. cit., pp. 39f., notes 12-14, has a most interesting collection of material about the portrait of Philip and his assimilation to Zeus. Lange, op. cit., is sure that both the bearded rider on Philip's reverse and the Zeus head on his obverse are pictures of the king. But his deductions are more striking than his proof.
81
She cites and copies as her fig. 33 Gebauer's PI. 3. 17, the coin from Babylon. But she describes it as "Lifetime, about 324 B.C." I cannot understand why. It is dated, as Gebauer says, to about 316 by Newell (Alexander Hoards III Andritsaena, New York City, 1923, p. 20) and that seems quite certainly right.
82
"Alexander-Heracles: a Preliminary Note," Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, June 1953, pp. 30-33.
83
It is the first tetradrachm according to The Alexander Coinage of Sicyon arranged from Notes of Edward T. Newell with Comments and Additions by Sydney P. Noe, New York City, 1950, p. 12, no. 3, I. It is instructive for anyone having to work from printed illustrations to compare the life-size collotype of the coin on Noe's Pl. I with the enlargement of the same coin which is Sjöqvist's fig. 2, to see the effect of difference in lighting. Sjöqvist dates it without argument to 330 B.C. This simply follows Noe's dating of "330/25 to c. 318 B.C." and that, in turn is based on Newell's remark (Alexander Hoards: Introduction and Kyparissia Hoard, p. 14) "about 330 B.C.—and certainly by 325 B.C.—a large issue of staters and tetradrachms bearing Alexander's types was instituted at Sicyon." But, in discussing another piece in Group I (Demanhur Pl. IV, 1 = Noe 13, lb) Gebauer, pp. 6, 7, says "Es hat mit den Münzen von Amphipolis und Pella eine gewisse Verhaltenheit und Selbstverständlichkeit des Ausdruck gemeinsam, der sie gegenüber asiatischen Münzen zusammenstellt," and dates it 325-315.
84
For one thing, e.g., Amyntas uses the unbearded head on his small silver and bronze, a bearded Heracles head on his large silver; for another, there would be no explanation for the beardless head on coins of the Mainland Thasians and their successors the citizens of Philippi (Gaebler, op. cit., Pl. XX, 1-9). There are two entirely distinct styles here neither of which could be regarded as a portrait of Philip II.
85
Herbert A. Cahn, "Analyse et interprétation du style," Congrés International de Numismatique, II, Actes, Paris, 1957, pp. 37–42.
86
E.g., Gardner, A History of Ancient Coinage, 700–300 B.C., Oxford, 1918, p. 426; Seltman, Greek Coins, p. 205; Newell, Royal Greek Portrait Coins, p. 13, "a dignified representation of the panhellenic god, par excellence, Olympian Zeus, enthroned and holding scepter and eagle."
87
Doctrina Numorum, Vol. II, p. 100.
88
Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand, p. 5, n. 12.
89
Reattribution, p. 28.
90
A. B. Cook, Zeus, Cambridge, 1914–1940, Vol. II, pp. 1187f.
91
Op. cit., pp. 760–62.
92
Seltman had suggested to him that the model might be the Baal of Tarsos and its selection an instance of Alexander's internationalism. But, as Cook recognizes (p. 762, n. 2) this conflicts with the dating of the first Macedonian issues, a question that has already been discussed. It might also be pointed out that while stylistically Baal on coins of Mazaeus at Tarsus just before Alexander is very much like Alexander's Zeus from the same mint (Tarsos, passim), the designs have important differences: on the Mazaeus silver the scepter is in front surmounted by an eagle, on the Alexanders the scepter is behind and the eagle held on the open hand. Gardner had recognized the differences which Cook lists. The Types of Greek Coins, p. 186, "The Zeus of Alexander's coins is certainly not an imitation in any close sense of the great Olympian statue of Pheidias, but the type is probably introduced in honor of the god represented by that statue."
93
Greek Coins, p. 205. The suggestion mentioned in the foregoing note does not appear in either the first or second edition.
94
Elementa Rei Nutnariae Veterum sive Josephi Eckhelii Prolegomena Doctrinae Numorum, Berlin, 1841, pp. 141-172. I would not, of course, suggest that the bad guesses stopped with Eckhel.
95
Doctrina Numorum, Vol. II, pp. 100-103.
96
It was rightly thought to be worth while to issue a photographic copy of the Atlas in 1957 (Münzen und Medaillen A. G., Basel).
97
P. 30.
98
He restated his position in "Remarks on the Classification of Some Coins of Lysimachus," NC 1870, pp. 1-10: "In Numismatique d'Alexandre I only say (p. 37) that these symbols are in general to be regarded as city symbols—It is possible that some of them have been the escutcheons or signets of magistrates or mint masters—but I have nowhere found sufficient reason for explaining any of them in that way."
99
"On Some Unpublished Coins of Lysimachus," NC 1869, pp. 1–18, esp. 5f.
100
L. Müller, Die Münzen des Thracischen Königs Lysimachus, Copenhagen, 1858, a pendant to his work on Alexander.
101
A. von Sallet, "Beiträge zur antiken Münz- und Alterthumskunde," ZfN 1882, pp. 138 to 189, "Die Beizeichen auf den Münzen Philipps II von Macedonien," pp. 152–154.
102
NC 1882, pp. 2g6f.
103
"Additional Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great," NC 1883, pp. 1–17, esp. 14–17.
104
"Coinage of Alexander the Great. An Explanation," NC 1883, pp. 18f.
105
NC 1906, p. 19 in "The Mint at Babylon: a Rejoinder." Sir Henry Howorth, "Some Coins attributed to Babylon by Dr. Imhoof-Blumer," NC 1904, pp. 1–38, had made an all-inclusive attack on the proposed identification which must have seriously disturbed the Swiss scholar, for his rejoinder appeared in German, NZ 1905, pp. 1–8 and translated into English in the article quoted.
106
Seltman, Greek Coins, p. 213, n. 3.
107
British Museum Quarterly, 1926, pp. 36f.; NC 1927, pp. 204-206; SNG Berry Collection ANS Part I, PI. 11, 295.
108
Newell, Reattribution, pp. 12f., XV, Pl. 7, 1.
109
Thompson and Bellinger, "A Hoard of Alexander Drachms," Yale Classical Studies XIV, 1955, PP. 3-45.
110
Monnaies grecques, 1883, pp. 118f., Pl. D, 8.
111
"The Earliest Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian Coins," NC 1906, pp. 1-16, esp. 1-3, PI. II, 9; HN p. 225.
112
Reattribution, p. 13, n. 6.
113
Op. cit., pp. 7f.
114
JHS 1949, p. 121.
115
Appendix V, "Monnayage d'Etalon présumé 'Indien' ou 'Rhodien,'" Raoul Curiel and Schlumberger, Trésors monétaires d'Afghanistan, Paris, 1953, pp. 58-62.
116
"The Eastern Satrap Sophytes," NC 1943, pp. 60-72.
117
Reattribution, pp. 12-14.
118
"De la Valeur proportioneile de l'Or et de l'Argent dans l'Antiquité grecque," RN 1893, pp. 1-26, 141-166.
119
Schlumberger, "L'Argent grec dans l'Empire achéménide" op. cit., p. 27.
120
Third ed., Berlin, 1886. Translated by George Cornewall Lewis as The Public Economy of Athens, 2nd ed., London, 1842.
121
First Philippic, Sections 28f.
122
Xenophon, Ways and Means, IV. 10, "When gold becomes plentiful it becomes cheaper and makes silver dearer."
123
Théodore Reinach, op. cit. (n. 118), pp. 7–9, but cf. Schlumberger, op. cit. (n. 113), p. 16. For a ratio of 12: 1 in the 5th century, E. S. G. Robinson, "Some Problems in the Late Fifth Century Coinage of Athens," MN 1960, p. 9.
124
Lysias, De Bonis Aristophanis 39–40; "Plato" Hipparchus 231 D.
125
Reinach, op. cit., pp. 146–149, believes that it was Philip's mining activity and not Alexander's conquest of the East that was the important moment in the relation of gold to silver.
126
Reinach cites CIA II. 2. 741 (IG II.2 2.1.1496 col. Ill) of 331/0; CIA II. 237 (an error for 737): IG II.2 2.1.1492 ll. 99–103; Menander (320–292) Parakatatheke (Pollux IX. 76); Herondas (ca. 247–222) VII, ll. 79, 99. In RN 1902, "Le Rapport de l'Or à l'Argent dans les Comptes de Delphes," pp. 66–68, he calls attention to the same ratio in the accounts of the Naopoioi in the archonship of Dion. This is important for his thesis as to Pangaean gold, for it was then dated 336/5 and so before Alexander could have had any effect on the gold supply. But Georges Daux will not date Dion more closely than 336/5–332/1, Fouilles de Delphes III, Fase, hors Série (n. d.), Chronologie Delphique, p. 15, C 21.
127
E.g., H. T. Wade-Gery, in publishing a difficult inscription, "The Ratio of Silver to Gold during the Peloponnesian War: IG I.2 301," NC 1930, pp. 16–38, comes to the conclusion that raw gold, inside the empire, was conventionally tariffed at 10:1 although this was below its market price when a buyer was available, and although before the war it had been 14:1, IG I.2 355. A great many fluctuations could fall into the lacunae in our evidence.
128
Théodore Reinach, "Du Rapport de Valeur des Métaux monétaires dans l'Egypt au Temps des Ptolémées," REG 1928, pp. 121-196, esp. 161f.
129
The tables in Reinach, op. cit., pp. 157f. give the same kind of variation for Ptolemaic bronze.
130
The Excavations at Dura-Europos. Final Report VI. The Coins, New Haven, 1949, p. 188.
131
"Notes on the Bronze Coinages," ESM, pp. 270-274.
132
Troy, Supplementary Study 2. The Coins, Princeton, 1961, p. 13, n. 78.
133
Op. cit. (n. 128), pp. 150f.
134
Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, 11. 815, 818.
135
E. S. G. Robinson has identified the Athenian obol and diobol of 403 B.C. "Some Problems in the Later Fifth Century Coinage of Athens," MN 1960, p. 12, Pl. II, 18, 19. These are much smaller than Alexander's bronzes, as they are smaller than later Athenian bronze coins whose denomination we cannot prove, but there is no reason to suppose that the size first used by Athens became the canonical size for an obol.

THE KING'S FINANCES

From the time of Alexander 1, 498-454 B.C. the kings of Macedon had struck their own coins1 and it was a matter of course that Philip II and Alexander III should strike theirs. But the size of Philip's output was altogether beyond that of any of his predecessors, and Alexander's dwarfed that of his father. Of course, the thing that made this possible was that Philip came into control of the gold and silver of the Pangaean district. When he took over the Thasian colony of Crenides in 3572 he developed the neighboring gold mines until they produced an income of more than 1,000 talents.3 That undoubtedly took the form of coined money.4 Aristotle's Rhetoric5 puts abundance of money at the beginning of the kinds of wealth, followed by real estate, movables, cattle and slaves. There is no mention of bullion, and while we read of Persian bullion captured by Alexander and of gold objects included in the plunder, there is no record of royal transactions in bullion any more than there is of transactions on credit. This fact, that the Macedonian kings, like the Greek cities, used not merely a money economy but a specie economy is of importance to keep in mind. If the thousand talents of income were all gold they would be 300,000 gold staters, since a silver talent, to translate it into its commonest forms, equalled 1,500 tetradrachms or 300 gold pieces at a ratio of 10: I.6 Now though Aristotle, and doubtless his contemporaries, generally believed that a supply of money was wealth, Philip does not seem to have accumulated much. None of the kings who preceded him had been able to coin gold7 and there was a time when Philip had little enough.8 It might be thought that, with such a large increase of income, he would find himself with a surplus. But Philip's ideas were larger than those of his predecessors and his plans more costly. Not content with the old Macedonian army which, so far as it was a citizen body, he might have employed with no expense beyond their maintenance,9 he hired mercenaries and devised a military force not only larger but also far more resourceful than any previously known.10 With this force he won his victories in Europe and from it he sent an advance contingent of 10,000 to Asia under Parmenio and Attalus in 337.11 Obviously his military expenses must have been considerable. Moreover, Philip is reported to have said that he had enlarged his kingdom more by gold than by arms12 and, if we had no other evidence than the charges and counter-charges of the orators, we could judge how freely the king's money was spent in bribery;13 it may well have amounted to a larger outlay than pay for the troops. And the tradition, whatever its accuracy, represents Philip as having no talent for economy. A passage from the Histories of Theopompus14 describing his dissipation is certainly sensational and probably libellous, but it contains an interesting observation which does not seem to be an expression of prejudice, "He was a soldier and could not calculate income and expenditure at leisure." This must be considered in connection with the reports that Alexander was, at the beginning of his reign, short of funds. In the Life of Alexander (15.1) Plutarch quotes Aristobulus to the effect that on his crossing to Asia Alexander had only 70 talents in the war chest; Duris says it was only provision for 30 days15 while Onesicritus adds that he had a debt of 200 talents besides.

Still more lurid accounts of his financial distress are attributed to Alexander himself when he was haranguing the mutineers at Opis. According to Curtius (X. II) he said that he had inherited from his father 60 talents and a debt of 500, while the sober Arrian gives the most extreme account of all (VII. 9.6): his assets from his father were a few gold and silver cups and less than 60 talents, while Philip's debt of 500 talents he had increased by borrowing 800 more.16 The words attributed to Alexander himself refer to the exchequer at the time of his accession, not at the time of his crossing. We should not count too much on the evidential value of such a speech, but there is nothing to contradict the common testimony that Philip had used up his money.

Plutarch takes the circumstances to show the high adventurous spirit of the young king and he adds the famous tale of his distributing all the royal property to his friends, keeping for himself only his hopes, in which Perdiccas gallantly said he would share, refusing all other benefits. But this romantic story is quite impossible to believe in the form in which it is given. It would mean that Alexander embarked on an expensive and perilous enterprise without making any provision at all for the campaign after its very beginning. One serious check would have left him with an army that he could not support, separated from a kingdom whose resources were exhausted with no means of being reestablished. There may well have been a distribution of gifts, perhaps so spectacular as to make it seem that he had left nothing for himself, but the record does not support the legend that he would have given away his soldier's pay and their safety to make an impression on his friends. Much that Alexander did was adventurous to the point of recklessness. Like other great generals of antiquity he conceived it his obvious duty to lead his troops in the field and he never seems to have provided against the risk by arranging for a second in command, as in the end he died without providing for the succession. If the battle-axe of Spithridates had cut him down at the Granicus it is hard to see how the Macedonian army could have escaped annihilation. Whether there was a quality in the man that made him take risks beyond reason is a question outside the scope of this study. What concerns us is a class of evidence which lies altogether within reason. Alexander's strategy may have been bold but it was not hap-hazard. His plans may have been fallible at times, but there were plans, and among them fiscal plans to provide the money without which the expedition would have been impossible.

The records tell us a great deal about the accomplishments of Alexander but little or nothing of what lay behind them. There is tactical information about his arrangement of the order of battle, and such an episode as the siege of Tyre is treated with a detail which includes experiment and failure as well as ultimate success, but operations on a larger scale are treated as though they were an automatic sequence. And yet, of course, a prodigious amount of planning must have been required for the success of the all but incredible progress of his arms and of this Alexander must have been the master mind. We get a glimpse of him in his youth questioning the ambassadors of the Persian king not only about what was that monarch's position in the line of battle, which might have been prompted by youthful valor and his adventurous spirit, but also about the size of the Persian forces and the shortest roads for those going inland from the sea, which was essentially strategic material.17 The ambassadors recognized these as subjects in which a king should properly be interested, and called him a Great King in contrast to their own who was only rich. Slight as the incident is, it suggests that even as a boy he had an idea of the value of military intelligence, which is one element of a long-range military program. It would be interesting if we could have even this much light on the preparations for later stages of his campaign. But it was not the kind of thing that antiquity found worthy of recording, and Alexander is not the only great ruler whose plans are entirely unreported. Once in a while we get an intimation of the day to day work which a king must do. Plutarch 18 remarks that kingship, which is the most perfect and greatest of offices, has the most cares and burdens and occupations, and he quotes Seleucus as saying, "If people knew what a labor it is to write and read so many letters, they would not even pick up a crown that had been thrown away." We must imagine, then, what the record fails to show: an Alexander busy with many things less than heroic, but essential for all that. One of those things was finance.18a

It was recognized in the 4th century that finance was a special study. Aristotle in the Politics (I. 4. 8) lays it down that it is well for statesmen to understand money, since states often need money like households, but in greater quantity. Some statesmen, he says, have devoted themselves to that alone, doubtless having in mind the Athenian statesman Eubulus whom Plutarch 19 cites as having been commended because although he held unparalleled influence he did not deal at all with foreign affairs or the military but concerned himself only with finance and increasing the revenue. There was even some specialized literature: Aeneas whose Tactica appears to have been written shortly after 360 B.C. also wrote a treatise on military finance.20 An interesting, though too brief ancient view of imperial finance is presented in Book 2 of the Oeconomica attributed to Aristotle, edited by Van Groningen.21 In the theoretical introduction which comprises Chapter I we read 'There are four kinds of economy: that of a king; that of a satrap; that of a city state; that of an individual." It is plain that in the opinion of the author, which can hardly have been contradicted by the practice of his day, the coining of money is altogether in the hands of the sovereign; the powers of a satrap may be great but they do not include coining. This is a continuation of 5th century doctrine according to which the issue of money was a declaration of sovereignty. Qualification is necessary for the Persian practice of the 4th century, however. The striking of gold was generally regarded as a royal monopoly. When Orontas, Satrap of Mysia presumed to do that it was because he was in revolt against the king and intended to declare himself independent.22 But with silver the matter is different. The Cilician silver bearing the names of the satraps Tiribazus, Pharna-bazus, Datames and Mazaeus is well known.23 It is so large and important a constituent of the Persian currency—so much more important than the royal shekels—that it seems mere legalism to insist that these powerful subordinates could strike only by grace of the Great King. Babelon 24 maintains that no satrap was permitted to strike qua satrap, the power being always temporary and always in connection with the command of troops. But since on the previous page he has admitted that the client kings coined with considerable freedom and by no means always in connection with the business of their overlord, and since there is no way of relating each satrapal issue to a military event, and no explanation of the fact that this military money was issued in the name of the satrap and not of the king, we may believe that the restriction was perhaps a theoretical but not a practical one, and that the problem of silver coinage was generally left to the satrap's judgment. That is not the case with Alexander, however. In Europe the coining of silver was a government monopoly, and when the name of a subordinate appears on a coin struck for Alexander there is an exceptional reason for it.25 Initials were sometimes permitted to a governor as to a mint official, but in general the empire of Alexander and the realms of his successors observe the rule of the Oeconomica.

Our author does not discuss the relations of royal currency with that of a city state lying within the royal dominion, yet that situation was a common one in Asia Minor under Persian kings and Macedonian kings as well. Daniel Schlumberger has recently shown26 that, while the Persian king's gold was a monopoly, his silver was only one of several kinds that circulated in his own land. Alexander came into no vacuum of currency when he brought his money to Asia. Schlumberger's statement of his purpose is very good.27 "What Alexander intended to do is clear. He intended to give to an empire that did not have it a silver coinage universally acceptable as money and, in so doing, to extend the use of silver money as such (and not as bullion) to the entire territory of that empire." The intention was never entirely carried out, partly, of course, because of the shortness of his life, but, aside from that, it is not likely that the plan itself was ever so complete as to contemplate the retirement of the great variety of silver that was already in use. Whatever the theory, the fact was that there was a supplementary coinage from the cities28 which somewhat complicated the Oeconomica's simple conception of the king as the only supplier of money.

But the king had to decide, as the text says, what kind of money should be made and when, and whether the coins should be of greater or less value. The author realized that the king would not be fulfilling his proper duty if he merely directed that all bullion should forthwith be converted into coin, leaving the details to the master of the mint. What was the nature of his decision and by what considerations was it affected? Van Groningen argues that it was the king's business to see that the official ratio of gold to silver was maintained.29 He must therefore issue sufficient quantity of each to keep the values from fluctuating. The editor surprisingly argues on the assumption that it is the Persian king who is under consideration, who struck only darics of 8.336 grams or sigloi of 5.56 grams. If his date for the work be accepted (between 325 and 305) there was no Persian king at the time it was written. Moreover his hypothesis, which in any case credits the monarch with an unlikely degree of economic sagacity, is less plausible for the Persian king than for a Hellenistic one. The Persian king could doubtless dictate how much gold should be minted, but he could neither dictate nor foresee how much silver was to go into circulation, for the major part of the silver was provided by the cities.30 Ptolemy was in far better position to control the money market than any king of Persia. Nevertheless, whether he was much or little concerned with preserving the ratio between metals, the king must decide how much gold must be coined and how much silver, and in what denominations.

Philip had used the mints of Pella and Amphipolis for gold and silver; perhaps also that of Philippi for bronze.31 Müller believed that his coins came from a large number of other towns as well. Some of his identifications have been proved wrong; other have to do with the posthumous tetradrachms and staters; it may be that other mints of Philip will eventually be confirmed, but certainly none to compare with the two great Macedonian cities and, on the basis of our present information, we can only safely assume that at Alexander's accession he found Pella and Amphipolis in operation for the precious metals. His decision in regard to them will have been very simple. With the exchequer low he undoubtedly required new coin as fast as he could get it. What proportions of the various denominations he needed we cannot say.

His sources of supply were well placed for his first needs: in the spring of 335 he embarked on the northern expedition, which is described in detail in Arrian I. I. 4-6. 11, which occupied him until the Theban revolt brought him back to Greece in the fall of that year. His purpose was to discipline the barbarians on the periphery of Macedonia who showed signs of restlessness at the news of Philip's death. He marched from Amphipolis to the Ister, crossed it and beat the Getae in battle, then turned westward against the Agriani and Paeones and thence south to Pelium in Illyria where he broke up a serious rebellion. It was there that he heard of the situation at Thebes in consequence of which he returned to Greece with all speed. His work in the north seems to have been thoroughly done, in spite of the interruption, for the barbarians gave him no further trouble, even after he had crossed to Asia. There is no mention of the acquisition of territory, the founding of cities or the establishment of garrisons. It is very unlikely that the expedition resulted in the opening of new mints, immediately or later. To be sure, Müller assigns certain issues to a mint of Pelagonia (nos. 205-215) but some of these have been identified as coming from Amphipolis, others from Tarsus, and it is now clear that this territory was supplied with silver by the mint of Damastion which operated until 325 B.C., to be continued by the latest coins of Pelagia and the kings of Paeonia down to the Gallic invasions of 280.32

How was the campaign financed? Partly by plunder. On two occasions Arrian speaks of booty;33 the first after Alexander's victory over the Thracians when he sent it to the cities on the coast in charge of Lysanias and Philotas; the second when that from the conquered Getae was taken back (presumably again to the coast cities) by Meleager and Philip. The only way we have of forming any idea of what it would amount to is to realize that Alexander would not in each case have detached two officers for escort duty unless the prize were of considerable value.34 Cohen indeed ingeniously calculates the amount by supposing that it is the difference between his indebtedness of 200 talents according to Onesicritus and his debt of 1300 talents according to Arrian's report of his speech to the mutineers.35 He explains the statement no further, but it does not seem likely that two barbarian tribes could be the source of 1100 talents, when the sack of Thebes produced only 440.36 The expedition may have paid for itself. It is probable that if he did borrow an extra 800 talents that would have been in preparation for the crossing to Asia.

image

Map I

At the outset of his great enterprise his source of money, like his father's, was the two Macedonian cities (Map 1). But now there was a difference. Under Philip Pella had been the premier mint; under Alexander it was Amphipolis.37 The result was a distinction in the functions fulfilled by the two cities, which Newell notices in an interesting comment.38 "Probably because of the contrast in their respective situations the Pella mint now came to be used more for supplying local demand, the Amphipolis mint for foreign commerce. It is a fact that while the writer has records of the latter's issues being strongly represented in hoards from European Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, and Persia, the Pella coins seldom turn up in finds made outside of Europe and then only in small numbers. In the European hoards, however, they are not uncommon. It is furthermore to be noted that such specimens of the Pella mint as did occur at Demanhur are all beautifully preserved, the majority hardly circulated at all. It is evident that they had not travelled much from hand to hand after leaving their dies. In contrast to this, considerable numbers of the Amphipolis pieces, particularly of the early issues, must by their appearance have circulated a good deal before they were finally consigned to the ground." Here, then, is an example of mints filling—and perhaps already of being intended to fill—particular places in the imperial currency. The tetradrachms of Pella went west and south, those of Amphipolis went to the soldiers in Anatolia and had seen long use before they got to Egypt.

In the spring of 334 the cavalry and most of the infantry went with Par-menio across the straits from Sestus to Abydus.39 The latter city had probably been in Macedonian hands since Philip's expeditionary force three years before.40 Through it Philip must have introduced his gold, though apparently not his silver.41 Whether or nor he intended it, the effect was to supplant the Asiatic issue of gold from Lampsacus and electrum from Cyzicus, Phocaea and My-tilene.42 Babelon is of the opinion that the use of electrum was encouraged by the hegemony of Athens which also made her owls the standard large silver on the coast of Asia Minor in the 5th and 4th centuries.43 If that is true, Alexander made no attempt to change the character of the silver in use; the large money will have been Athenian tetradrachms, the small silver being produced by the individual cities. A notable instance is Abydus itself which issued coins weighing 2.55-3.30 grams as well as a few of larger and smaller denomination. Since the names of 28 magistrates are known it must have been a considerable coinage.44 The common denomination is generally called "Persic tetrobol."

I am not sure that the valiant effort of numismatists to give a name to every standard that they find has contributed as much light as they have evidently intended. The theoretical weight of the Persic tetrobol is given by Hill 45 as 3.73-3.74 grams. The difference from the Abydus type is considerable, and the title does not help to explain why the lighter coins were used at Abydus. It certainly cannot have been because the Persian is of the same weight as the "Persic drachm." For one thing, the sigloi were by no means of outstanding importance in the currency of Asia Minor; for another, if she had wanted to connect her currency to the sigloi Abydus would have struck "Persic drachms" which she did not. She struck 2/3 drachmas which was surely inventing unnecessary trouble if there was anything "Persic" in her intent. The conspicuous thing about the coins of Abydus is that they are not easily related to any adjacent currency of importance unless that of Mytilene can be considered adjacent. Mytilene also struck "Persic" weights, though with a larger proportion of didrachms and fewer tetrobols. Otherwise Abydus was isolated.46 The neighboring town of Lampsacus struck still smaller silver (obols, diobols and tetrobols) on what is generally supposed to be the Rhodian standard, with a theoretical drachma of 3.72-3.88 grams.

The Rhodian standard had more adherents than the Persic in Asia Minor, according to the received opinion, but the fact is that we need a great deal more data before any safe conclusion can be reached. And even after the weighing and counting has been carefully done it is not likely that any pattern will emerge which would be tolerable to modern ideas.47 The towns issued their own small change for local use with little or no regard to the practice of their neighbors. When different currencies were dealt with it must have been by calculation or by convention.48 It would seem that here was an excellent occasion for Alexander to confer the benefit of a standard currency on a district so broken into little monetary districts. If the opportunity occurred to him he was too busy with more immediate duties to act upon it. Between the spring of 334 and the spring of 333 he occupied, either peaceably or by force, a great many small towns and a number of cities of importance: Sardes, Ephesus, Magnesia, Colophon, Miletus, Phaselis, Aspendus and Side. In no case is there any sign of his using their mints to strike his own types (Map 1) 49 Doubtless he made use of what local currency was available; contributions from the cities would have come to him in their own coin or from such stores of gold and electrum as they had accumulated. It is generally assumed that he collected the taxes that had been paid to the Persians from the satrapies; this is specially attested for Hellespontine Phrygia and the Aeolian and Ionian cities and there is nothing to suggest that the practice was not regularly followed.50 In the case of Priene which surrendered voluntarily there is explicit evidence of remission of taxes51 and in the case of Ephesus, where there had been rioting and danger of civil war, Alexander directed that they should contribute such taxes as they had paid to the Persians to rebuilding the temple of Artemis, which had burned down.52 Both exceptions show that he was not in desperate need of money. I do not know the basis of Tarn's dictum "till after Issus he was in financial straits and the taxes from the king's land were his only source of revenue."53 The case of Ephesus is particularly interesting because that was the one mint city which fell into his hands north of the Taurus which seems to have had at the time an output of large silver (in this instance Rhodian tetradrachms) sufficiently great to suggest it as a possible producer of tetradrachms of his own. The other cities which he controlled were striking small denominations or in small amounts.

But when he reached Tarsus in the spring of 333 he found a place which was altogether suitable for the establishment of a royal mint and this was the first to be added to those which his father had used. The early Alexandrian coinage of Tarsus has been so thoroughly studied by Newell 54 that there is no necessity of doing more than recapitulate the essentials. Tarsus under the Persians had become the capital of the district of Cilicia and North Syria. It had been the residence of satraps, the latest of whom was Mazaeus, who ruled for their master but issued large quantities of silver coins which were not the royal sigloi but double shekels with a theoretical weight of 11.2 grams, bearing Cilician types and, more remarkable still, the satraps' names (P LATE III, 1). There was evidently a convenient near-by supply of silver sufficient to take care of the military and administrative expenses. The obverse type was a seated Baal which needed but little modification to become the seated Zeus of Alexander's reverse, and the extreme similarity of the two figures produced at Tarsus shows that Alexander's coins followed those of his predecessor immediately and employed the same die-sinker (P LATE III, 2). Of course the size of the flan was increased since the tetradrachms were 6 grams heavier, but Zeus was not noticeably larger than Baal had been. The head of Heracles now replaced the lion and bull and city walls of Mazaeus' reverse and thereby eliminated anything to identify the mint, for, like the products of Pella and Amphipolis, these were to be imperial coins showing no special mark of their origin. Indeed the first issues bore not even the sign of a responsible official, or only an inconspicuous pellet between the seat and the cross-bars of the throne. At the same time, or shortly thereafter, a series of gold was initiated. Since the satraps had not struck gold and there seems to have been no easily accessible supply of the metal it may be that the staters appeared only after Issus with the capture of Darius' money which he had left at Damascus. Doubtless much of it was gold which could be melted down and restruck; Curtius says that the coined money amounted to 2600 talents.55

Of course it would not be necessary to restrike the Persian money and we cannot prove that Alexander did. Newell at one time was inclined to think that Asiatic currency was the core of what Alexander had to use. " At the time of Alexander's invasion of Asia," he says,56 "the currency of the East consisted, in the main, of Persian gold darics and silver sigloi and Athenian tetradrachms. Two of these—the gold darics and the Athenian tetradrachms—had for the last hundred and fifty years enjoyed a world-wide circulation and were well known to Alexander's soldiers. It is probable, therefore, that during his campaigns, from the battle of the Granicus to the invasion of India, for the pay of his troops he relied principally upon the fabulous hoards of wealth which had been stored away by the Persian monarchs and which now fell into his hands." He assumes without discussion and, I think, mistakenly that a large part of the Persian treasure would have been coined money. It is questionable how far this point of view is justified at the time with which we are now dealing. There is, as we shall see, evidence that he used Persian money later on, and he was willing to have earlier types continue to circulate under certain conditions; we have just seen that he probably was content to use the local issues of Asia Minor at least as supplements to his own. But there was a period of two or three years after his occupation of Tarsus notable for the opening of new mints to produce his money. Between the summer of 333 and 330 fall the first issues of Tarsus, Alexandria-by-Issus,57 the cities of Cyprus,58 Aradus,59 Byblus,60 Sidon,61 Ake,62 as well as Sardes,63 Damascus64 and Babylon 65 (Map 2). It seems very unlikely that so remarkable a concentration should not have had as its purpose the wholesale replacement of the Persian royal coinage by the Macedonian imperial.

Here we come dangerously close to those discussions of Alexander's psychology and intent which fascinate the participants without always convincing the observers. So far as our evidence goes, the decision what coins to strike, when and where was Alexander's alone, just as the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica says it should be. The anonymous author knows that the king cannot do everything single-handed. He understands the functions that should be left to the satraps and Alexander, who retained the Persian organization just as far as he could,66 had his own satraps—so called even when they were Macedonians —and we hear a good deal about their powers and duties.There were special officers in charge of finance, which was the most conspicuous difference between the old administration and the new. Berve has pointed out that in the early days of the invasion the central royal treasury and the war treasury were one67 and the finance officers were imperial and not local officials. On the most prominent of them, Harpalus, we have much information from excellent sources, which Berve has fully recorded,68 but nowhere is there the slightest indication that his powers and responsibilities extended to the mint. It is difficult for us to imagine that Alexander should direct so detailed an operation, especially when it had to be done from a distance, and obviously someone must have supplied him with the information on which the decisions were based. But the modern system of delegation of duties did not present itself to antiquity as self-evidently the best way of dealing with complicated affairs.69 Pliny's correspondence with Trajan shows what surprisingly minor details could be properly brought to the attention of the sovereign, and the scraps that are left of Alexander's correspondence suggest that it would have showed the same kind of picture.70 If, then, we conclude that arrangements for minting were Alexander's own business (as we must do in default of evidence to the contrary) can we discover anything about his motives without getting involved in historical fiction?

Of course there is no need to prove that he had to have money; the central question is why did he have to have money with his own types? Newell, after suggesting that he might have got along with what was already in circulation, adds71 "Even so, it seems but natural that he would issue coins bearing his own name and types to take the place, as soon as possible, of a coinage belonging to a fast vanishing dynasty and empire." Was this replacement to be effected by having all the new money Alexandrine while the old issues wore out or were melted down or buried by private owners? Or was the old currency called in by the government and melted down to be reissued as the new money? There is evidence of the latter procedure at an earlier period. The satraps Pharnabazus and Datames seem to have melted down the silver of their predecessor Tiribazus to issue their own coins.72 There is no way of telling certainly whether Alexander did the same thing but in any case the new money was to be his. In the cases of Tarsus and Myriandrus, the metropoleis of Cilicia and North Syria, this meant putting an end to issues in the name of the Persian satrap Mazaeus and replacing them by the silver of Alexander, supplemented, in the case of Tarsus, by gold also. This needs no elaborate explanation. Whether or not the Persian empire was "fast vanishing" its control over this district was at an end.

But not all the cases were as simple as this. Perhaps the next mint to begin operations for the conqueror was Aradus which was ruled by a king named Gerostratus whose son Straton met Alexander on his march south along the Syrian coast and surrendered the city to him.73 Now Aradus had its own coinage whose types were purely local and had nothing to do with the Persians. The fleet of Gerostratus formed a contingent of the Macedonian navy at the siege of Tyre,74 and there would have been nothing surprising in that service being rewarded by the continuance of the right of coinage. But Aradus at once began to strike tedradrachms with the head of Heracles and seated Zeus, like those of Tarsus and Myriandrus with one notable difference: their origin is clearly marked, first by the Aramaic letters used on the autonomous coins, then by an A and finally by the monogram A.75 A similar course was taken by Sidon whose king, another Straton, surrendered reluctantly and was therefore replaced.76 Thereupon the double shekels, some of which had been issued by the king, some by the satrap Mazaeus, appeared no more, being replaced by Alexander's tetradrachms and staters which at first bore the town's Aramaic initial, later Σ or Σl,77 Slightly different is the case of Byblus, for there Ainel (whom Arrian calls Enylos)78 having delivered the city and joined Alexander's fleet, as did the king of Aradus, was rewarded—if it was a reward—by having the first two letters of his name image used on the tetradrachms instead of the name of the city, and the later issues bear the monogram image for his successor Adramelek. Now these three cities all had coinages of their own and there was nothing to prevent Alexander from allowing them to continue now that they were his allies, as he had apparently done with the coinages north of the Taurus. To be sure, the double shekels of Mazaeus from Sidon would need to be replaced as had his shekels from Tarsus, but no objection of that sort could be made to the emissions of Aradus and Byblus.

Similar treatment was accorded to the kings of Cyprus. They had not been as prompt to surrender as the mainlanders, but they joined him with their fleets at Sidon and he was willing to forgive their previous service to the Persians as presumably enforced.79 They also joined the producers of Alexandrine tetradrachms and those from Citium are clearly identified by the monogram "K. Salamis, however, used first a bow, then a rudder as symbol on its silver and only the bronze is unmistakably marked ΣΑ. Paphos also, which may have begun a little later prefers her characteristic device of a dove to a literal identification.80 About these emissions Newell uses what seems to me strange language. On the mainland, he says, "every city which had thrown open its gates without a struggle to Alexander was accorded local autonomy, and, where a mint had previously existed, was allowed to continue coining; with the proviso, however, that the issues should henceforth conform in types, weights, and denominations with the regular coinage of the empire. As a result, such cities as Aradus, Byblus, Sidon and Ake coined as they never had before, even in their most prosperous days.—It would therefore be strange if, in return for their submission and the invaluable services of their fleets, Alexander should have deprived the kings of Cyprus of the immemorial right of coinage, or even have curtailed it in any vital way."81 Newell's mind at the moment was on identification and not explanation or he could hardly have written in that way. Can there be any more vital curtailment imagined of the right of coinage of the king of Citium than that he should have to discontinue his own currency to produce silver with alien types and the name Alexander on which only the monogram of his city suggested that he had anything to do with the affair?82 Is it not obvious that the Cypriote kings and the Phoenician kings were not "allowed" to continue coining but directed to continue? We are told that "Arados, Byblos, Sidon and Ake coined as they never had before" and this is certainly true.83 Where did all the metal come from, not only the greatly increased output of silver but the gold of Tarsus and Sidon and Ake?

The necessary explanation seems to me to be that Alexander, knowing that there was a vitally important campaign before him, required much money—his own money—and used every available source of supply. If it be asked why he should now make such efforts to provide his own money when he had opened no new mints in Asia Minor, there are likely answers at hand. For one thing the mint of Amphipolis was continuing to pour her abundant production across the straits so that her gold was replacing the gold and electrum of the other continent and her tetradrachms were providing a major denomination in that metal. For another, north of the Taurus Alexander was to some extent among friends. Whatever the realities behind the professed purpose of freeing the Greek cities, he had come there as the leader of a Greek League as well as a king of Macedon; the Greek cities understood his position and in the majority of cases were willing to accept it. He had driven the Persians out of the country and though they still had friends there, there was no prospect of their combining to make head against him. If the Greek coins of the cities circulated as a minor supplement to the Greek coins of Alexander it was not likely that any harm would come of it and no harm did. But south of the Taurus he was in alien territory. He had not come there to free anybody but to conquer. The Cilicians, the Syrians and the Phoenicians had no reason for prejudice in his favor; if he was to be as acceptable as the king of the Persians he must make his place. Tarsus and the cities that received him after Issus were acknowledging what they thought to be the greater power. Tyre and Gaza held the contrary view and were destroyed for their mistake. It was vital to him that he be recognized as the master in all parts of his new territory and therefore all the mints were set to work to manufacture one of the most effective kinds of manifesto known to antiquity: his name and types on the coins. This was done quite without regard for the normal financial needs of the district; the much increased activity of the coast mints did not mean a sudden era of prosperity and commercial activity. It was their contribution to the conqueror's needs, and since no new mines were being opened it is only reasonable to assume that the necessary extra bullion came from the melting down of the king's treasure. There was no overstriking involved, the weights of both gold and silver pieces in previous use being different from the weights by which they were supplanted. We shall therefore never have the kind of proof that comes from detecting an earlier type beneath the later ones. None the less, we have sufficient reason for believing that in the period succeeding the battle of Issus Alexander did not intend to continue the local coinages of the district but to replace them with his own, and one probable means to take would be to melt down and restrike.83a We must guard against supposing that too complete a revolution was achieved. In the first place, the pre-Alexandrine coins did not all disappear. In the hoard from Galilee buried about 319/884 and one found at Byblus buried about a decade later85 double shekels of Sidon accompanied the Alexander tetradrachms.86 Later events showed that there was still a place for the earlier series (below, p. 78). Then, Alexander's production south of the Taurus by no means made the country independent of coins from the north. In the Demanhur Hoard there were 1582 pieces from the mint of Amphipolis, 1526 from the mints of Tarsus, Myriandrus, the cities of Cyprus, Aradus, Byblus, Sidon and Ake all combined. And the situation is even more impressive than this appears for a much higher proportion of the coins of Amphipolis were struck during Alexander's lifetime than is the case with the southern mints.87 Before Gaugamela, then, there would probably have been more Macedonian Alexanders to be seen in Syria than Syrian and Cilician ones. This must have been the result not of choice but of the much greater productivity of the Macedonian mines. Obviously Alexander would prefer to strike coins as close as possible to the place where they were to be used.

There is nothing surprising therefore in the fact that as he controlled more of the East he should open a mint at Damascus.88 In writing to Hill about the possibility of assigning to that mint some of the gold which he had previously given to Sidon, Newell speaks of it as "probably struck after Gaugamela." In Demanhur, however, he dates the first series of silver circa 332-330; that is he believed that the mint was organized soon after the capture of the city by Parmenio following the victory of Issus. That would mean that Parmenio's action was not a mere raid to get the king's baggage, but an occupation of a vital point protecting Alexander's flank and broadening his territory, as did the campaign in Antilebanon during the siege of Tyre. This is likely enough in itself, though no ancient author discusses it. Damascus was a new step since it had never had a mint;89 doubtless artisans were brought there from the coast. The complicated marks with pellets, which are hard to reduce to a system, may be evidence of a factory not yet well organized. The mint is clearly marked with the letters ΔΑ, to which later series add the city's device of the forepart of a ram. It is not easy to find a consistent policy in the use or omission of mint marks. Apparently the greatest mints: Pella, Amphipolis, Tarsus, Babylon and Alexandria dispense with them, but by no means all the lesser ones invariably use them and Newell's feeling that the difference was between imperial and local issues is hard to support. Here, as so often in ancient numismatics, one finds a general conformity without absolute uniformity which is distressing to what one likes to think of as the tidier minds of our day.

Babylon would seem an obvious place for the minting of Persian coins and indeed Newell says it "had probably possessed a mint under the Persian kings,"90 but there is no proof of it. Babelon's great work Les Perses achéménides does not raise the question at all and Hill, after discussing the difficulties of chronological arrangement, adds,91 "Nor does it seem possible to make any attempt to identify the mints at which coins were struck until the very difficult problem of the mints of Alexander's coinage in the East has been more or less cleared up." So we do not know whether this is a case of adaptation, like Tarsus or, of original creation, like Damascus. In either case the city which was intended to be the capital of the whole empire began to contribute its share of the conqueror's money, presumably as soon as possible after its surrender. The coins were long in being recognized precisely because there was no recognizable mint mark. An article of Six in 1884 pointed the way,92 to be followed by a thorough demonstration by Imhoof-Blumer eleven years later.93 The attribution was indignantly rejected by Sir Henry Howorth 94 and many who did not rush into print must have shared his dismay in the shaking of the system of mint identification which Müller had so conveniently constructed, but the evidence was against Howorth and no one doubts any more. His insistence that a symbol or monogram should have reference to the place of minting was in the old tradition and was mistaken, and yet his dissatisfaction was not without reason, for the matter was more complex than the location of a new place of origin for the gold and silver with Macedonian types. The fact is that the great victory at Gaugamela opened a new epoch whose nature is partly expressed in unprecedented developments of the coinage.

The first step was not revolutionary and it may, indeed, have preceded the occupation of Babylon. It was the opening of a new mint in Asia Minor at Sardes (Map 1).95 There is doubtful evidence that the city may have coined for the Persians,96 but it was not issuing any local types. There is no reason why it should not have been used by Alexander at any moment after its capture in 334 but, as we have seen, there was at that time no attempt to supplement the emission of Amphipolis for use in Asia. Why the situation should have changed by 331 we cannot say, but there is one important difference between the function of Sardes and that of the earlier Asiatic mints. She was used not so much for tetradrachms, which had been the principal product of the Macedonian and southern cities, as for gold and drachmae. In this she was a pattern for the other towns of Asia Minor presently to be put into operation: Magnesia (330), Lampsacus (329), Abydus, Colophon and Miletus (325), Teos (324). A reason for this which comes to mind at once is that the pre-Alexandrine coinage of Asia Minor had been to a large extent gold, or electrum, and small silver. Presumably, therefore, the country liked and would use small silver. But there would be an advantage in having all the small silver on a single standard, and this may have been a belated provision of uniformity in place of the pre-existing confusion.97 Presumably the gold was intended to fill the void caused by the disappearance of the gold of Lampsacus and the electrum of Cyzicus, Phocaea and Mytilene, and the metal which used to go into those types was now diverted to the seven towns to be made into Alexander staters (above p. 45). There can be no doubt that there was a plan for the special use of these towns, but again we find a very general plan with unexplained eccentricities of the individual mints such as might have resulted from decisions made by Alexander one at a time but such as could hardly have resulted from any laying out of the plan in detail at the beginning. It is quite out of the question, however, that this pattern can have been achieved by accident through the independent action of the cities themselves, or that they should have acted in concert without reference to the sovereign whose types they proposed to strike. An eighth city, Ephesus, was added to the group later—probably after 294—and a few other places made minor contributions of drachmae in the 3rd century. The omission of Ephesus from the original list was doubtless the result of the confusion at the time of her capture which may have crippled her for some time to come.98 Not only was the supply of drachmae adequate for Alexander's lifetime but, the fashion having once been set, the mints of Asia Minor continued to be the source of most of the drachmae throughout the empire into the latter half of the 3rd century. What was the proportionate manufacture of gold we do not yet know enough to say.99

A second innovation was more radical. It was the opening of a mint at Sicyon for tetradrachms, staters, and a surprising number of distaters (Map 1).100 There is good reason to believe that it began operations in 330/29. Newell said "about 330 B.C. —and certainly by 325—a large issue of staters and tetradrachms bearing Alexander types was instituted at Sicyon."101 Noe does not debate the question but gives "330/25 to c. 318 B.C ." as the limits of Group I. The lower limit is provided by the burial date of the Demanhur Hoard in which specimens of all the varieties of tetradrachms were found. But the group cannot have lasted so long. Sicyon was allied with Athens against Antipater in the Lamian War of 323/2 and cannot at that time have been striking royal Macedonian types.102 The last issue may have been coined in 323 before the beginning of the war but that is the latest possible date. Now there is evidence of 8 issues103 if one makes the usual assumption that each variety of symbol means the product of a single year. That would bring the beginning to 330/29, which would satisfy historical probability very well. For the purpose of the establishment of the mint is clear: it was to assist in the hiring of Peloponnesian mercenaries. In the fall of 334, between the beginning of the siege of Halicarnassus and the campaign in Lycia, Alexander had sent Cleander to the Peloponnesus to collect soldiers.104 In his mention of the matter Curtius says "Cleandro cum pecunia misso." The nearest European supply of money would be Macedonia and it was better to send the necessary funds with Cleander. But if there had to be a shipment of coin from Asia whenever Greek mercenaries were to be hired the system would be inconvenient. It would be much simpler if there were a mint nearby where money could be issued as it was needed. That should have been apparent as early as Cleander's first trip. But would not the opening of a royal mint in Greece be a serious affront to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the agreement with the League of Corinth? We have no information as to any provision about coining by members of the League, but there is no evidence that there was any interference with that ancient right of the cities. The large series of Athens, of Corinth and of Sicyon show no sign of intermission at this time, and we have one sure instance of a city initiating an autonomous coinage in Alexander's lifetime: the Amphictionic staters and fractions of Delphi which were struck from about 337 to 334 for the rebuilding of the temple.105 In time Macedonian coins did find their way into the Greek cities106 but not because there was any effort, at this early period, of the Macedonians to replace civic issues by royal ones. Alexander might well have hesitated to set up his own mint in the territory of his Greek allies. But consideration for his Greek allies certainly waned as his phenomenal successes gave him less and less need for relying on their good will. After Gaugamela things might be done that would not have been done in 334. Moreover there was a consideration which was more than sentimental. Anti-Macedonian sentiment was centered in Sparta whose strength was so considerable that Agis took the offensive in 331 and pressed Antipater hard until, in the fall of that year, the battle of Megalopolis crushed the Spartan power.107 After that there was no anti-Macedonian force to resist an intrusion of royal power or to make the minting and storing of gold in the Péloponnèse an undesirable risk.

The extension of Alexander's activities into the territories of the free cities of Asia Minor and Greece, if a new departure, was not a surprising one. The really extraordinary developments were connected with Babylon itself. The career of the satrap Mazaeus may perhaps deserve a closer scrutiny than it generally gets.108 He became Satrap of Cilicia about 361 and in this capacity he struck silver at Tarsus with his name but without title.109 From 351-344 he was one of the commanders against the rebel king of Sidon. In 351 or later he became Satrap of Northern Syria and Cilicia, and in this capacity until 333 he struck silver with his name and title (P LATE III, 1).110 At the same time he issued coins with his name but not his title from Myriandrus;111 from circa 343-333 he issued coins of Sidonian types with his name112 and there are imitation Athenian tetradrachms with his name, probably for use in Palestine.113 He was not Satrap of Cilicia at the time of Alexander's invasion. It was Arsames who deserted Tarsus; he was killed at the battle of Issus.114 Where Mazaeus was we do not know, but his coins seem to have continued through the uneasy term of his successor who had fought at the Granicus and whose subsequent perils had left him no time for civilian activities.115 Mazaeus next appears in 331 in command of an advance force on the Euphrates which retired before Alexander's advance.116 But if he proved ineffective there he gave a good account of himself at Gaugamela where he commanded the Persian right wing and pressed Parmenio so hard that Alexander had to halt his pursuit of Darius to assist him. Hearing of the king's flight, however, Mazaeus broke off the engagement and led the remnants of his troops to Babylon.117 For 30 years he had been an important and—so far as the record shows—a loyal general and official of the Persian king, yet on the approach of Alexander he surrendered Babylon without resistance. Curtius (V. 1. 17) makes it clear that the act was a very convenient one for Alexander. "Gratus adventus eius regi fuit; quippe magni operis obsidio futura erat tarn munitae urbis." He took the precaution of marching his army in formation but it was unnecessary; the Babylonians made him welcome. Perhaps the town had been indefensible in spite of what Curtius says, perhaps it was clear to Mazaeus that his king could never make another stand. Yet it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the surrender had been bargained for and that there was a price involved. The suspicion is deepened when we find that Mazaeus was promptly appointed Satrap of Babylon—the first Persian to be given such a position. To Tarn118 this is an act of chivalry like the later treatment of Porus: "Alexander was honoring a worthy opponent." But it is surely an extravagant gesture to put so great and rich a district into the hands of an enemy simply because he had been "a worthy opponent." To be sure, the compliment was not without safeguards. Apollo-dorus of Amphipolis was made commander of the troops left with Mazaeus and Asclepiodorus was made collector of the taxes.119 There was a further unique aspect of the new satrap's position, however. He at once began to issue silver tetradrachms of the Attic standard (generally spoken of as staters) on one side of which was Baaltars, as the inscription showed, and on the other, a lion with the name of Mazaeus! (Plate III, 3).120

It is this which most deeply shocked Howorth. "Prima facie" he says, "it seems incredible that Alexander should have permitted one of his satraps, and that a Persian...to issue coins in the satrap's own name." The Cilician Baal would be inappropriate to Babylon, and the Aramaic inscriptions would be unintelligible to the Greeks, the only people who would use the coins.121 Howorth was defending a doomed thesis, but more attention should have been paid to the facts against which he protested. Attempts to explain this unprecedented concession have been far from convincing. Six, who was the first to face the problem, could only urge that Alexander, about to set out for the Far East "ne s'est pas, certainment, occupé des types ou des légends de monnaies destinées aux populations indigènes." But the idea that this was a trifle too slight to engage Alexander's attention is certainly untenable. At the very time that the lion staters were beginning to appear Babylon joined the great cities of Alexander's earlier conquest to produce his own types.122 He could have attended to one series if he could provide for the other. Some special reason must be found for this striking exception to the regular rule that satraps could not coin in their own names. Most of the historians, if they record the fact at all, do so without comment. Tarn123 and Cohen 124 avoid the central point: "he was the only satrap permitted to coin, doubtless for the convenience of the Babylonian trade;" "pour aider À la renaissance du trafic (Alexandre) lui laisse le privilège de battre monnaie." Money issued at Babylon might well assist trade, but why this money and why the name Mazaeus? In his answer to Howorth 125 Imhoof-Blumer gave the most thorough-going attempt at an explanation. "Alexander's efforts to make the utmost allowance for the oriental point of view is well known. For the silver, the types of the Kilikian satrapal issues of Mazaeus, Baaltars in the guise of Zeus and the lion were retained.—On the first silver issue struck at Babylon Mazaeus continued not only the coin types of the Kilikian satrapy, but also, in accordance with the usual practice, their inscriptions, which records his own name and that of the god represented, the latter being intended to promulgate the figure of Baaltars still little known in the far east, i.e., the figure of that particular Baal of all the countless Baalim who had to be identified with the Greek Zeus of contemporary imperial issues. Before the end of his short term of office (330-328) the satrap Mazaeus appears to have been induced to give up these inscriptions, and from this date on until 306 the satrapal coins remain anepigraphic" (P LATE III, 4). As to the types, Hill has an important amendment to offer.126 "The argument of most weight against the attribution to Babylon lies in the fact that the coins with the name of Mazeus attributed to Babylon identify the god on the obverse as Baaltars, who would be unknown and unworshipped at Babylon. The answer to this objection is that, although issued at Babylon, this was a satrapal coinage intended chiefly for the payment of troops, many of whom may have been raised in Cilicia by Mazaeus and brought by him to the East." This does indeed propose a reason for the selection of types. But can it have been necessary to maintain a separate coinage for the convenience of a body of mercenaries? And if they demanded western types, why the lion alone (which was the type of Myriandrus) instead of the familiar lion and bull or lion and deer of Tarsus? And would it not be important to give them the double shekels to which they were accustomed instead of tetradrachms on the Attic standard used by the conqueror? Alexander's desire to conciliate the Orientals of which Imhoof-Blumer speaks is indeed a most important consideration. But surely it is characteristic of his policy from this point on and not of that which guided him before Gaugamela. Why otherwise the replacement of local issues by his own types? When all is said there is as yet no explanation of the satrap's name on the silver of his new office. But how much is explained by the hypothesis that the price of the bloodless surrender of Babylon was the confirming to Mazaeus of his title and privileges ! When Imhoof-Blumer speaks of the "usual practice" of inscriptions accompanying the types he means, of course, the practice of the Persian satraps in Cilicia. If Mazaeus was allowed to continue that, then his position as Satrap of Babylonia under Alexander would be equivalent to his position as Satrap of Cilicia under Darius. But, whatever were his rights in the matter of coining in his earlier office, it is not likely that he now arrogated to himself that power of decision which the Oeconomica restricts to the sovereign. The appointment of Asclepiodorus as collector of taxes shows that Mazaeus' function was not financial and we may be very sure that the number and kinds of coins to be struck were decided by higher authority than his. The phrase "the Satrap Mazaeus appears to have been induced to give up these inscriptions" calls up an amusing picture of Alexander persuading and Mazaeus magnanimously consenting.127 If the special privilege was ended before the satrap's death in 328 it is hardly likely to have been done in so courtly a fashion. The reason for suggesting it is that there are anepigraphic lion staters which seem to come so early in the series that Imhoof-Blumer would assign them to the first satrap. But that is not proven. The staters with Mazaeus' name are very rare but Babelon 128 publishes four varieties: with no symbol, with a wreath, with a serpent, with K. If they follow the normal Greek practice of a different symbol every year all the years of Mazaeus' satrapy would be accounted for.

Whatever the intent behind the origin of the lion staters, and their divisions, they did serve an economic function for they continued to be issued from Babylon into, and perhaps through, the reign of Seleucus I and, in lesser numbers, from Susa129 and Ecbatana130 in the same reign. This is not easy to account for. They were by then so much under weight for Attic tetradrachms that they must have been at a disadvantage compared with the full weight coins of Alexandrine type being struck at the same time. Yet, if this were intended for the convenience of a population accustomed to the use of sigloi, the fractions would have been made to fit the Persian system, which they do not. (Parenthetically it must be pointed out that we are by no means sure that the inhabitants of Babylonia did have any preference for sigloi).131 One is tempted to think of coins only locally valid where a discrepancy between face value and bullion value could be ignored by the sovereign, and Newell 132 has very tentatively suggested a connection between the lion staters and the temple of Bel. He recognizes the difficulty created by the lion issues of Susa and Ecbatana and can only hazard a guess that "if the temple at Babylon could issue "temple money' so too, presumably, could the hardly less important and famous temples of Artemis-Nanaia at Susa and of Aene at Ecbatana." He cites the interesting correspondence in fabric between the lion staters and the much later Jewish shekels of the First Revolt—also temple money. Though I have nothing better to suggest, I cannot believe that Newell's hypothesis is defensible. It is true that Alexander made his offerings to Bel-Marduk and directed the reconstruction of his temple133 but there cannot have been any intended connection between that act and the first lion staters on which the god is specifically named not Marduk but Baaltars. One must suppose either that the Babylonians could not read the inscription (which is likely enough) or that the correspondence was not thought of until the appearance of the anepigraphic staters. It is true that Baaltars and Marduk were of sufficiently similar nature so that the seated god could be taken for either one of them. But that is patently not true of Artemis-Nanaia of Susa or Aene-Anaitis-Nanea of Ecbatana. And if the basis of the lion staters' success had been real religious association it is surprising that it should have disappeared so quickly. Only in Babylon can they have possibly lasted beyond the reign of Seleucus I and there only until 275 at the latest, when Antiochus moved the inhabitants to Seleucia.134 The theory of a limited circulation is further complicated by their appearance in the Oxus Hoard.135 I cannot solve the enigma but, at the moment, the point of importance is that the length of life of the experimental currency was enough to make it plain that it was acceptable to the community and it is only fair to suppose that Alexander and Mazaeus had reasonable grounds for supposing that it would be acceptable.

Mazaeus is not the only satrap to turn up on coins in Babylonia, but the second instance has to do with a very different class of coins: the imitation of Athenian owls. At the end of the 5th century it could be said that the owls of Athens were the international currency par excellence, and even down to Alexander's time they held their place as one of the principal elements of the currency of the East, though now they were joined by satrapal silver and that of the cities of the Syrian coast.136 The appearance of these latter issues begins at the time of the Peloponnesian war when the supply of owls was much reduced and they are accompanied by a growing number of imitations of Athenian coins. Early hoards, such as those of Caboul and Malayer published by Schlumberger, show a surprising number of 5th century owls, about equal to the coins of all the other cities together, but the 4th century owls do not seem to be included. Instead, one gets imitations.137 Now one kind of imitation, said to amount to a "very large group" is the type of owl bearing in Aramaic the name of Mazaces, whose provenance is consistently Babylonia (P LATE III, 5).138 These are mysterious coins, the only explanation for which is that put forward by Newell. After Issus Mazaces had been sent as Persian satrap to Egypt where he kept order until the arrival of the Macedonian army, and where he issued tetradrachms with Athenian types and bronzes with the head of a satrap and a galley, both classes bearing his name in Aramaic.139 Being too weak to resist, he received Alexander in friendly fashion into the country and the cities,140 handing over 800 talents and the royal furniture.141 Berve thinks it likely that he found a place at Alexander's court142 but the sources have nothing more to say about him. The evidence for his connection with Babylonia is purely numismatic, as to which Newell says, "Our coins do suggest that Alexander had entrusted to Mazaces the governorship of some important city or district as a reward for his ready surrender of Egypt." His owls then would be an exact parallel to Mazaeus' lion staters except that we do not know what position Mazaces could have held which would entitle him to this distinction. Nor do we know the location of the mint. Newell gives good reasons for not putting it at Babylon, yet he can only suggest Uruk or Opis, neither of which has any special claim to consideration. Yet if there are many things puzzling about these coins their purpose is more evident than that of Mazaeus' issues. They can hardly have been intended primarily for use in Babylonia, even though they turn up there. The imperial mint was producing Macedonian tetradrachms and lion staters as well, and that surely ought to have satisfied the demand. But if one wanted to mint silver for general circulation in the East imitation owls would be the obvious thing to strike. Of course, this cannot have been a private venture of Mazaces. It must have been part of a plan that had imperial approval and prima facie the plan was to supply familiar types for use in the East.

But these two classes of silver were not the only innovation connected with the capture of Babylonia. "Demanding explanation also" says Newell, "is the fact that for many years double and (more rarely) single gold darics of Achae-minid type were coined alongside the Hon staters. These gold coins seem, almost invariably, to turn up in eastern Iran and Bactria and not in Babylonia. But as most of the specimens of which we possess any record at all have come from the single great 'Treasure of the Oxus,' this seeming fact may be illusory. That both double darics and Hon staters were mostly coined at Babylon is certain."143 The double darics "which everybody admits to be of the time of Alexander the Great"144 are at once distinguishable from earlier Persian gold by their appearance (Plate III, 6). Though the conventional figure of the king in kneeling or running position is preserved, the face, with its straight nose, is a Hellenized version of the Persian monarch. The relief is higher and the incuse on the reverse, instead of being an amorphous depression, is filled with wavy lines or curves that tend to form a pattern (cf. BMC Arabia, Pl. XX, 1-13). Moreover, most of the specimens have Greek letters or monograms on the obverse. There are no double darics which do not have some or all of these characteristics and none, therefore, which can be assigned to an earlier period. That is, this higher denomination is an invention of the time of Alexander. What is the unit to which it belongs—the rarer single gold daric? There are few darics with letters or monograms like those of the doubles145 and none with quite the same wavy patterns on the reverse. There are, however, some which show a similar pattern and which also have high relief and a Hellenized portrait (BMC Arabia, Pl. XXV, 21-25). As to these, Hill is cautious. He calls attention to the likeness of the two denominations, but catalogues the darics with the Persian Empire instead of with the Alexandrine Empire of the East. They must, he says "belong to the last Persian king, Darius III,146 and in the catalogue they appear under the caption 'Darius III' Babylon." There are a few sigloi like them. Only one is illustrated (Pl. XXV, 26) but it certainly shows a portrait unlike the earlier sigloi. Hill's arrangement would mean that under Darius III there was a marked artistic change in the coins issued at Babylon affecting both darics and sigloi, and that Alexander used and developed the new style in the same city for the making of a denomination of his own, the double daric, though he did not strike either single darics or sigloi. The sudden appearance of a Greek profile on coins of Darius III is possible but surprising, and the suggestion might be ventured as an alternative that these darics and sigloi are also coins of Alexander but from a different mint, which would explain their differences from the double darics.

That these are indeed from Babylon is the general persuasion, but it can hardly be called proven. The piece with M in the field (BMC, p. 176, no. 2) may be compared with the Babylonian Alexander teradrachm with M (Demanhur, 3980); the combination M and Φ on the tetradrachms (Demanhur, 3983-4057) with image ona double daric (BMC, p. 177, no. 5). But Φ∧ or Φι are on both the gold which Hill labels "Usually attributed to the mint of Babylon" and that of which he says "The following are for the most part of ruder workmanship, and were perhaps made farther East than Babylon." The idea that all these strange issues were the product of Mazaeus is tempting147 but it will need more facts to make it a certainty.

If there is general agreement on the fact of Alexander's striking the double darics there is very little said about the reason for it. Unlike the lion staters these from beginning to end are on a different standard from the Attic and there must have been a particular reason for the premeditated confusion of two gold coins one of which was not quite twice the weight of the other. It seems inescapable that the invention of the double daric rests on the intention to use the daric, and perhaps the darics which Hill assigns to Darius III are actually the units of Alexander. But there were others available. Diodorus says that the capture of Susa brought in 40,000 talents of uncoined gold and silver and 9,000 talents of darics; that of Persepolis, 120,000 talents reckoning the gold at its value in silver.148 We have seen reason to believe that the treasure captured at Damascus was melted down and reissued with Alexander's own types, but we do not find the same conditions here. There is no activity in local mints. Indeed, it is a fact of the greatest importance that there is no mint for Alexander coins in the East except Babylon. The map will show the surprising lack of proportion which multiplies the western mints and leaves nothing but Babylon to supply the funds for the long and costly campaign east of the two rivers (Map 3). The army cannot have been without coin. Even though they were going into country where an economy of barter may have prevailed widely, the Greek and Macedonian soldiery cannot have been induced to forego their accustomed pay from the summer of 330 to that of 325. Yet the record, which contains two mutinies, has no suggestion of the kind of difficulty about pay so common with ancient armies. The cancellation of debts which followed the marriages at Susa149 was, to be sure, a phenomenon of the return to familiar civilization, but how did the army incur debts of 20,000 talents if they had been operating on payments in kind? The reorganization which provided for "ten stater men" between the ordinary soldiers and the "double pay men" is reported150 without any intimation that pay was being reintroduced. If Alexander had founded his eastern cities (particularly the military colonies)151 without money could the Greek historians possibly have avoided comment on it? There is no escape from the fact that the army must have had money in the East and the necessary conclusion seems to be that it was transported from Babylon, the nearest source. But that surely presents an enormous problem of transport. The system of the Seleucids is enlightening. They had mints certainly at Susa, Persepolis, Ecbatana and Bactra, with another which may have been at Hecatompylus or Artacoana, and the contents of the Oxus Hoard show that the mint of Bactra supplied the needs of that district as it was intended to do.152 Why should Alexander rely on so remote a city as Babylon which, moreover, had its own important district to serve (Map 3)?

image

Map 2

image

Map 3

But did he? It is instructive to look at what happened to the treasure from Susa and Persepolis. The bulk of it was so great that Plutarch says153 it required 10,000 pairs of mules and 5,000 camels to move it. Curtius says154 that the baggage and a large part of the army was left at Persepolis in charge of Parmenio and Craterus. But it was not to stay there. We know from Arrian155 that Parmenio was ordered to take the treasure to the citadel in Ecbatana and deliver it to Harpalus who had a guard of 6,000 Macedonians plus a few auxiliary troops. The mention of Harpalus is puzzling. We do not know how or when he got to Ecbatana or why or when he left to return to Babylon. Moreover, in the next section Arrian tells us that Cleitus, who had been left sick in Susa, was ordered to proceed to Ecbatana, take the Macedonian guard of the treasure and march against the Parthyaeans. Then who was left to guard the treasure? Something has certainly dropped out of the account. Fortunately we know the main fact. At the time of Parmenio's execution in the fall of 330 he was Satrap of Media and guardian of the king's treasure whose total Diodorus gives as 180,000 talents;156 Justin says 190,000.157 Clearly this was Alexander's capital for the financing of the campaign in Afghanistan and India. But it was not taken to Babylon at all. Now it has been suggested what Harpalus was doing in Ecbatana: he was supervising the coining of the Persian treasure.158 This is on the theory that Harpalus, as treasurer, had control over minting, which there is nothing to support. But there is a more serious difficulty than the theoretical one. If Harpalus put 180,000 talents into coins what are they? In discussing the Seleucid mint of Ecbatana, Newell says,159 'There need be less surprise that a mint was opened by the Greeks at Ecbatana than that the mint should have commenced to function so late. At least, the earliest coins of Alexandrine types that can be assigned confidently to Ecbatana do not antedate the reign of Seleucus. There do exist a few earlier pieces which may have been coined there." But "a few pieces" will not solve our dilemma. From this enormous treasure must have come a series at least comparable in size to that of Babylon. But there is no such series. There are still small groups whose attribution is doubtful but the product of the great mints is known, and there is nothing left over to assign to Ecbatana. Its output must have disappeared.

Unless its output was darics. To prove that would need the assembly of much more evidence than is now available. The gold already published as presumably Alexandrine is not enough in bulk to fill the need. But I think no search for darics has ever been undertaken with this in mind. Such a search might prove disappointing, but the possibility ought to be kept open that the double darics "certainly from Babylon" were supplemented by others of more eastern appearance and by darics and sigloi whose place of origin may have been Ecbatana. To the circumstantial evidence already cited one more item is to be added: the one experiment of Seleucus I in coining a double daric was at Ecbatana (ESM, p. 171, no. 460).

Even this much proven would leave us with baffling questions. The problem of transport would not be solved. Ecbatana is a couple of hundred miles nearer the eastern campaigns but it is still far enough in all conscience. There are several possibilities, none of them very comfortable. There may have been mints still further east which contributed their share to the expenses of the campaign. This would mean reducing still further the number that we could credit to Ecbatana. There may have been other treasures containing coin in the East of which we have no record. Money already in circulation may have been confiscated and used for the army. Eastern cities, perhaps his own foundations, may have been used as advance treasuries for the accumulation of coin. Of course, if the treasure of Susa and Persepolis is involved at all in the eastern campaigns the question of transport remains. Either bullion or coin must have been carried to the army and though bullion would have been less bulky it would have been just as heavy. But it would seem that the most inconvenient arrangement would be for the mint to forward its current production at frequent intervals, though presumably that is how the paymasters got their funds when mints were close by. For a big and remote army that would have meant keeping the transport trains on the road constantly with a large body of men of necessity detailed for guard duty. But obviously the conversion into coin of enough metal for a campaign of 5 years' duration could not be done quickly.

The problem of silver is also very obscure. A natural assumption would be that if Ecbatana minted darics it minted sigloi as well, but here there is a still smaller group (BMC Arabia, p. 160, nos. 88-91) which there is reason to attribute to the time of Alexander. We know, on Schlumberger's showing, how slight was the importance of the siglos in the total currency of the Persian empire. Still, in Alexander's time it had some importance or no late ones would have been struck at all. But these few sigloi and the imitations of Mazaces are the only silver we have found so far which has the appearance of being designed for use in the East. Could that and the late darics and double darics have been sufficient for the need?

This would be the place to give an account of the king's income and expenses if we could only do so with any confidence. There is a summary calculation of income and expenses given by Beloch (IV. 1., pp. 41-43) in which the cost of the army is put at 7,000 talents a year. The uncertainty of the figures is illustrated by the eclectic confidence given to the sources. Justin XIII. 1. 9 gives specific figures for the time of Alexander's death: erant enim in thesauris L milia talentum et in annuo vectigali ac tributo tricena milia. The first sum is accepted, the second rejected on the grounds that Herodotus III. 90-95 gives the yearly tribute of Darius I as 14,560 talents (10,000 "ohne den indischen Tribut und die Naturalleistungen"), which is regarded as an exaggeration, while Antigonus at the height of his power in 315, when he controlled nearly all the Asiatic satrapies, had an income of only 11,000 talents (Diodorus XIX. 56. 5). Beloch therefore reduces Justin's 30,000 talents to 15,000. Various extraordinary sums such as that for Hephaestion's funeral, and gifts to the army are accepted, but the total of 12,000 talents "contra decus regium—tumu-lumque" as Justin puts it, on which Justin (XII. 12. 12) and Diodorus (XVII. 115. 5) agree, is rejected because even the funeral of a Roman emperor cost no more than 400 talents. If we accept Beloch's figure of 7,000 talents for the yearly cost of the army we must do so with the realization that it is no more than a good guess. The most recent and most thorough study of Alexander's economy is that of A. M. Andreades 'Ιστορία τimageς Ελληνίκης δημοσίας Οίκονομίας Book II, Part 1, 'H δημOσία οίκονομία τοimage μ∊γάλου 'Αλ∊ξάνδρου, Athens, 1930. He thinks that Beloch's 7,000 is too low a figure (p. 21), but his calculations suffer from the same unavoidable weakness of having to substitute probable hypotheses for data. Both authors agree that Alexander's expenses exceeded his income.

Let us for the moment accept 7,000 talents as a reasonable military budget and, using very much simplified figures (since there is no possibility of exactitude) see what the consequences would be. If Diodorus is right and there were 9,000 talents of darics in Susa, then the first year would be paid for without the need of further mintage—indeed there would be a surplus of 2,000 talents. Suppose we say that Alexander would be provided for from the death of Darius to the summer of 329. He must then make provision for 2 years' campaigning, from the summer of 329 to that of 327 when he entered India and an entirely new set of conditions. He would have needed 14,000 talents for the army, which the treasure at Ecbatana was well able to provide. Let us assume that 10,000 talents is to be in the form of double darics and (to make things as simple as possible) let us assume that the double daric equals the distater and that 150 of them go to the talent.160 That would mean minting 1,500,000 of them. What would be a reasonable number of specimens now preserved to represent that number originally struck? There is one recent study which has at least some degree of control for its calculation of survival rate: E. J. P. Raven, 'The Amphictionic Coinage of Delphi."161 But in spite of the author's sane and careful treatment there is an embarrassing spread in the possibilities according to the denomination investigated and the total amount supposed to have been struck—a spread from 1 in 7,310 to 1 in 240,000 ! Mr. Raven himself is a little discouraged and recalling that "previous estimates of survival rates have usually been in the region of 1 in 5,000" admits that "that figure may not be far from the average of all Greek coins." Let us adopt it with no illusions.162 It would mean that of the original 1,500,000 double darics, 300 should have survived. If we assume that 2,000 talents consisted of silver (the other 2,000 being accounted for by the surplus darics) and that the silver was imitation Athenian tetradrachms at 1,500 to the talent, there would have been 3,000,000 struck, of which 600 should have survived. If one follows more closely the proportions of Seleucid coinage the amount of gold will be much decreased and the silver correspondingly increased, but the Seleucids had no great reservoirs of gold to make into money. I will not affront the reader by pointing out what a tissue of uncertainties we have here. Everyone must decide for himself whether such procedure can do any good at all. I may express my own feeling that, no matter how you calculate, there do not seem to be enough coins to meet the requirements. There has been no gathering of either double darics or imitation owls, but I find it hard to believe that a census would approach the necessary figures. It seems to me that there must have been supplements from more Persian coins, from the Alexander coinage, or from other series. It is unlikely that the country itself offered large amounts of plunder.

We have some evidence of subsidiary series. There are a number of pieces that have been often attributed to India: varieties of imitation owls, small coins with Athena's head and an eagle, drachms and the famous tetradrachms with the head of Zeus and an eagle, these last with the name of Alexander (PLATE 1,12). 163 The old attribution is disposed of, finally, one hopes, by an admirable article by R. B, Whitehead 164 in which he shows clearly that, though specimens are acquired in India, their place of origin is across the mountains in Afghanistan. These, then, might have helped to fill the need, but their number cannot have been large.

As to the use of Alexander's regular coinage, we are in strange doubt. Alexanders do turn up in Afghanistan. I have recently seen a number acquired by an inexpert collector who had no interest in selecting rarities. There were 8 tetradrachms, 6 drachms and a hemidrachm, but the only pieces surely early enough to belong to this period were one stater of Amphipolis and one late daric. The silver was all of 324 or later. The Oxus Hoard, which ought to be very enlightening, fails us entirely. Of the 100 odd tetradrachms and 100 odd drachms said to have been included, only one was sufficiently described to be identified, and that turns out to be a coin of Seleucus I from Ecbatana, ESM, p. 166, no. 454. We have no way of knowing the date of the others nor, if we knew, could we tell whether they came into the country with Alexander or later. J. Hackin's "Répartition des Monnaies anciennes en Afghanistan"165 makes no mention of Alexanders (but neither does he mention Seleucids, though he prints "Séleucides" on his map at Tash Kurgan). So far as our evidence goes, the coins of Alexander himself played no part of any importance in his conquest of Bactria.

There remains the possibility that he had more Persian coins and used them, but I do not see how that can ever be proved.166

The record of Alexander's finances in India is extremely meager. Plutarch 167 records the gift to the king of Taxila of 1,000 talents, which he says was in coin, and the great displeasure of Alexander's friends. The same incident occurs in Curtius,168 with an interesting addition. Omphis, being confirmed as king of Taxila, presented Alexander with sundry gifts and 80 talents signati argenti.169 Alexander was gratified but returned the offering and instead gave Omphis 1,000 talents ex praeda quam vehebat, gold and silver vessels, Persian robes and 30 horses. This is an odd episode. What did Omphis expect to buy with so small a gift as 80 talents? The exchange of presents would be appropriate ritual between two kings meeting to form an alliance but the 1,000 talents, even if Plutarch was not right about its being coin, would be much more credible if it were to insure the cooperation of the forces of Taxila than if it were a mere gesture of vanity, as both the authors seem to take it to be. For what it is worth, the incident shows Alexander as actually carrying his treasure in his baggage and as having enough so that he could part with a large sum before the conquest of India had fairly begun.

Curtius says170 that after the defeat of Porus and the founding of Nicaea and Bucephala Alexander gave each of the leaders a crown and 1,000 aurei—a detail so conventional that it is hardly to be taken seriously. Both Arrian171 and Plutarch 172 speak of Indian mercenaries. This is all that is pertinent in the literary tradition. The coins themselves, however, are more helpful. First there is the negative evidence of the extreme rarity of Alexander's own money in India.173 Second there is the scarcity of Persian gold and the comparative frequency of Persian silver.174 Third there is the existence of a class of silver coins of double, half and quarter siglos weight175 which seems to have formed the basic currency of the northwest district to which Alexander first came. Macdonald explains the infrequency of Persian gold in India by the fact that there was so much gold there that the ratio with silver was only 8: 1. This would, of course, be unfavorable to the use of darics coined on the Persian standard of 13. 3: 1 and, to a lesser extent, to the gold coins of Alexander struck at 10: 1. Alexander may, therefore, have planned to use silver only, though in this case he would have had little need to import specie. India is notoriously rich in metal and, moreover, much given to hoarding,176 so that here, as in Persia, the conqueror will have been able to look forward to the capture of enough bullion to finance his campaign. It certainly was not financed by staters and tetradrachms transported from Babylon.

This digression into the perplexities of the East has led us far from the main course of our study, but it could hardly be neglected. No matter how the details are finally settled, the general picture is clear. Before Gaugamela the empire had two monetary zones: Greece and Asia Minor (Map 2) where the imperial types joined or dominated but did not extinguish the local currencies; Cilicia and Syria (Map 3) where the local currencies were replaced by the imperial. To this period belongs the fiscal purpose of Alexander, as defined by Schlumberger, of eventually achieving monetary uniformity for the empire as a whole. But after Gaugamela a third zone is added, of Mesopotamia and the East (Map 4) in which the preexisting confusion is not merely tolerated but augmented by the emissions of the conqueror. There is concession to the Persian tradition, as proved by the double darics; concession to the satrapal tradition, as proved by the imitation owls. Whether temporarily or permanently the ideal of uniformity is laid aside. In part this was doubtless the result of difficulties greater in the East than in the West: the continuous warfare, the strange and remote terrain, the alien mores of the people. But it also resulted from a changed state of mind, for there are two phenomena in the West, one beginning about 327 during Alexander's absence in the East, the other in 324 after his return. The first is the institution at Tarsus of a series of silver staters of Persian weight and Cilician type without any reference to Alexander, for the use of Issus, Mallus, Soli and Tarsus itself (Plate III, 7, 8).177 The other is the coining, in the mints of Asia Minor, of gold staters with the name and type of Philip II.178 Neither of these can be explained by any pressure of necessity or change of conditions. Both must have been designed to gratify the sentiment of those who still remembered kindly the money that preceded Alexander.

All this is perfectly appropriate to the historical situation. Until the final defeat of the Persian king Alexander was an adventurer, with everything to gain, but much to lose. Whenever his resolution was taken that he himself was to be the Great King, it became imperative for him to assert his prestige and his power. Asiatics were to be taught that the imperial structure which they had regarded as supreme was in process of being overthrown by a mighty foreigner, supported by foreign gods, who was no mere raider, but had come among them to conquer, to occupy and to organize. Heracles and Zeus and the name of Alexander were to become as familiar to them as the gods of their own country and the odd little monarch with bow and spear. But when the empire was won, when he was in fact the Great King himself, what did it matter any longer? Then came the experiments with the amalgamation of races, the Persians in positions of trust, the oriental splendor and extravagance, the figure of Alexander on the great decadrachm, a Macedonian king on one side charging against Poms, but, on the other, a divine king in Persian dress, wielding the thunderbolt ( P late 1, 13).

But, if there was confusion in the East and breach of precedent in the West, it must not be thought that the general system was weakened, much less abandoned, after Gaugamela. The old mints continued to strike their conventional coins, the latest organized of the great mints, Alexandria, beginning to operate about 326.179 About that time also there was a marked, though unexplained, increase in the output of a number of cities.180 Neither quantity nor quality showed signs of slackening, and there must have been few west of Babylon who did not know the types of Alexander.

The ultimate test of a currency is its ability to provide what is needed. So judged, Alexander's international currency had been a great success. It had furnished him with the resources of war and peace over a vast territory whose expansion he could not foresee in detail. It had succeeded, at least as far as Mesopotamia, in introducing an economy of uniform specie to regions accustomed to other currencies or to none. Trade had carried the daric and the owl far and wide, but the army and the civil power carried the gold Athena and the silver Heracles farther yet. As an instrument of conquest or commerce and of government, the coinage of Alexander made a record no less brilliant than his more familiar achievements.

Could its success have continued? Would it have served the whole established empire which he planned? No question which must assume the continued life and health of Alexander can have a satisfying answer, but here, as in other cases, one must doubt if he could have maintained what he created. There is no reason to suspect that he was an economist more gifted than his generation. It is the common belief that his expenses outran his income. Doubtless the mines of Macedonia seemed inexhaustible; inexhaustible also the huge Persian treasure. With its capture begin the tales of extravagances which, in the end, were sure to impoverish the royal power. If he could have learned in Babylon, when there was nothing more to conquer, to match his expenses to his needs as successfully as he seems to have done while he was winning Asia Minor, his financial structure might have stood for generations. But who was there to teach him?

End Notes

18a
Major-General J. F. C. Fuller's book The Generalship of Alexander the Great, Rutgers, 1960 is strangely silent on the question of expenses. The author appears to believe that Alexander's coining began only after the capture of the treasure of Persepolis (pp. 112, 273f.) and what he has to say about finance is concerned with trade only. There is no mention of pay or of transport and supply.
83a
An important modification of the general rule will probably be provided by a coin of Balacrus. See below, n. 177.
1
Doris Raymond, Macedonian Regal Coinage to 413 B.C. (NNM 126), New York City, 1953.
2
Diodorus XVI, 3. 7.
3
Diodorus XVI, 8. 6. "A thousand talents" means gold to the value of 1,000 silver (Attic) talents. Diodorus specifies gold but Philip certainly got his greatly increased supply of silver from the Pangaean region. There may therefore have been a thousand talents of gold plus an unspecified amount of silver. I make the cautious assumption, however, that the thousand talents in fact included gold and silver both.
4
Diodorus XVI. 8. 7 says that he struck gold pieces used in hiring mercenaries.
5
I. 5. 7 (Loeb ed., p. 50) νομίσματος πΛimageθος
6
I talent = 60 minae = 6,000 drachms = 3,000 didrachms = 1,500 tetradrachms. As the gold stater is a didrachm of gold (8.68 grams), a talent = 300 staters at the ratio of 10:1 which we have accepted (above, p. 31) as generally valid for the period of Alexander. Since a talent is a measure of weight, one gold talent would be worth 10 talents of silver but, unless it is specified to the contrary, the sources follow the Greek fashion of calculating in talents of silver. Philip's 1,000 talents, therefore, presumably are not talents of gold, but the gold equivalent of 1,000 talents of silver.
7
Some Thracian cities did, however. Allen B. West, Fifth and Fourth Century Gold Coins from the Thracian Coast (NNM 40), New York City, 1929.
8
Athenaeus IV. 148. d, e; VI. 231. b, c.
9
H. W. Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, Oxford, 1933, pp. 158f. "Probably he (Philip) had little need to spend money on his Macedonian soldiers; it was their recognized duty to follow their king in the field, and they would require to be provided with subsistence only on long or distant campaigns. Towards this outlay the Macedonian kings could claim some form of feudal dues (Aman I.16. 5)."
10
An able description of the development of Philip's army is to be found in David G. Hogarth, Philip and Alexander of Macedon, London, 1897, pp. 49–64.
11
Diodorus XVI. 91. 1.
12
Diodorus XVI. 53. 3.
13
As was also Persian gold, then and later. Plutarch, The Fortune or Virtue of Alexander, I. 3. 327 c. Persian gold in the hands of demagogues everywhere was being used to arm the Peloponnesus.
14
Athenaeus IV. 166f.–167c.
15
In the essay on The Fortune or Virtue of Alexander II. 11, the 30 days' provisions are given on the authority of Phylarchus. These two calculations cannot be made to coincide. If the total of Alexander's army of invasion and Parmenio's advance force was about 40,000 foot and 6,000 horse (G. T. Griffith, The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World, Cambridge, 1935, p. 12) it could hardly have been supported for 30 days on 70 talents. There is an unfortunate silence of the sources on the fundamental matter of the soldiers' daily wage in Alexander's army (Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, p. 233, n. 1. It may be pointed out that the fragmentary inscription IG II.2 1. 329, which is cited as proving that Alexander was to pay his allies 1 drachma a day, seems rather to show a payment of I drachma to the hypaspistae with some other, and presumably lesser, amount for the troops in general. Tarn does not appear to have taken account of the inscription inhis discussion of the hypaspists, Alexander the Great II, pp. 148–154). However, we have an interesting detailed proposal by Demosthenes (First Philippic, 28f.) for an expeditionary force against Philip that was never raised. His calculation allows 2 obols a day for foot soldiers, one drachma for horse, citizen and mercenary alike. This was put forward as an emergency measure and, in view of the fact that the pauper's allowance was 2 obols, it is very unlikely that citizen infantry, let alone mercenaries, could have been induced to serve ordinarily for that wage, which would have been sufficient only if supplemented with plunder. There is evidence that by the time of Alexander the ordinary pay of a Greek mercenary was 4 obols a day (Parke, loc. cit.) and perhaps we may assume that the pay of all privates was the same; in that case the pay of a horseman would also be double Demosthenes' figure. Now, if we take the later amount, the pay of the foot for 30 days would be 800,000 drachmae (40,000 χ 4 obols χ 30 days ÷ 6), that of the horse 360,000 drachmae (6,000 χ 12 obols χ 30 days ÷ 6). The total would be 193⅓ talents (1,160,000 ÷ 6,000), while even at Demosthenes' figures the sum would be 96⅔ talents with no allowance for the pay of higher ranks or any other military expense. Seventy talents would not have lasted 3 weeks even at starvation wages. Probably the reports of the king's finances at the beginning of the campaign were no more than gossip.
16
Arrian's words imply that Alexander's own borrowing was to finance the expedition. If the 800 were added to Philip's debt of 500, the total of 1,300 talents would be no excessive burden. Interest at Athens normally ranged from 12% to 18%. If we take the latter figure he would have a yearly interest of 234 talents to pay and as the mines of Philippi alone yielded 1,000 talents there should be no difficulty in retiring the debt. It must be observed that he did not say he was without funds when he landed in Asia; being in debt is a different thing.
17
Plutarch, Alexander, 5. 1; The Fortune of Alexander, 11 (342 B.C.).
18
Whether Old Men Should Engage in Public Affairs, 790 AB.
19
Precepts of Statecraft, 812 F.
20
'H ποριστικimage βίβλος Aeneas Tacticus 14. 2.
21
Text and commentary, B. A. Van Groningen, Aristote, le second Livre de VÉconomique, Leyden, 1933. His belief is that the author was a Peripatetic, writing for students with a political future—even the possibility of a satrapy before them; the book is a unit, not an epitome, written between 325 and 305 B.C. since no illustrations are later than Alexander, while the royal economy and the satrapal refer to a single kingdom, i.e., the date is earlier than the kingships of Antigonus, Demetrius, Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Seleucus. The sources cannot be recovered.
22
HN, p. 597. But see the gold piece attributed to Mazaeus by E. S. G. Robinson, NC 1948, p. 59. Gold coinage other than royal, some sporadic, some regular (e.g. Lampsacus), occurs with sufficient frequency to make reserve about the king's monopoly prudent.
23
HN, pp. 730f.
24
Perses achéménides, Paris, 1893, p. XXIII. He follows the opinion of Lenormant and Waddington.
25
Below, pp. 62-66.
26
"L'Argent grec dans l'Empire achéménide," pp. 3-64.
27
Ibid., p. 27.
28
There were certainly times when the king's contribution to the currency of a region was the minor one, that of the cities the major. The tetrobols of Perdiccas II make a poor show in comparison with the great tetradrachms of Abdera, Acanthus, Aenus, Amphipolis, Maronea and Mende. There was no king before Alexander whose silver had the scope of the Athenian.
29
It was understood that when gold is plentiful it becomes cheaper and makes silver dearer. Xenophon, Poroi IV. 10.
30
The easy assumption that Persia had a bimetallic currency in the modern sense—accepted even by West ("The Early Diplomacy of Philip II of Macedon Illustrated by His Coins," NC 1923, p. 173, n. 7) when he is arguing against a bimetallic currency for Philip—is based on the supposition that the siglos had the same dominant function in Asia as the daric. Schlumberger has now destroyed that basis.
31
See the forthcoming publication of the Drama Hoard.
32
John M. F. May, The Coinage of Damastion, Oxford, 1939, pp. 28, 160, 187; HN, pp. 236f.
33
I. 2.1; 4. 4.
34
The four are listed in Helmut Berve, Das Alexanderreich auf prosopographischer Grundlage, Munich, 1926, II. Lysanias no. 479, Meleager no. 494, Philip no. 775, Philotas no. 802. The second and fourth were men of importance.
35
Gustave Glotz, Pierre Roussel, Robert Cohen, Histoire grecque Vol. IV, Part 1, Paris, 1938, p. 56.
36
Diodorus XVII. 14. 4.
37
Demanhur, p. 73. Newell never published the reasons which made him change his first opinion that the bulk of the Demanhur Hoard was the output of Pella, as he said in Reattribution. It was not for lack of thought on the matter. In Demanhur, p. 67, he says, "A continuous and detailed study of the numerous later coinages of the same mint appears to prove conclusively that it was located in Amphipolis and not in Pella. At present it is not advisable to enter upon a necessarily lengthy discussion of the pros and cons, since this would demand the study of hundreds of coins not in the Demanhur Hoard and thus take us outside the limits originally set for this article." Unfortunately he found no later occasion to record his reasons; the difference between the mints is regarded as fixed in The Coinages of Demetrius Poliorcetes, Oxford, 1927. The attributions may be taken as probable though their demonstration must await publication of the series of the two mints.
38
Demanhur, pp. 73f. See also Bellinger, "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos," Berytus X, 1950/1, pp. 48f.
39
Arrian I.11. 6.
40
It is stated as a fact by Babelon, Traité, Part II, Vol. 2, p. 1324, that Philip's forces had crossed from Sestus to Abydus. He does not cite his source and I suspect that he is only deducing from the fact that Philip's army had never been withdrawn and therefore must have controlled some place in Asia Minor, and that Alexander's crossing was unopposed. Indeed, Alexander was so confident that it would not be opposed that he did not even accompany the main body but went off on a romantic expedition of his own to Troy. It is incredible that a general of the ability of Memnon should allow the Macedonians to cross the Hellespont without a bridge head to make them safe. It is indeed remarkable that Philip's expedition was allowed to cross but we have only the bare fact recorded. It may have been a surprise, or the Persian force in Asia Minor may have been too weak at the time to resist.
41
See above, "The King's Money," pp. gf.
42
Babelon, Traité, Part II, Vol. 2, pp. 1377-1380 (Lampsacus) "Leur émission commence au début du IVe siècle—pour se ralentir vers 350 devant la diffusion des statères d'or de Philippe;" pp. 1395f. (Cyzicus) " Il est probable que dès cette époque (that of Philip) la frappe de la monnaie d'electrum s'est singulièrement ralentie, mais elle ne cessa pas totalement;" pp. 1163, 1194 (Phocaea and Mytilene).
43
Op. cit., pp. 1167f Unfortunately we have no confirmatory evidence from hoards of the use of Athenian money in the north of Asia Minor just before Philip—not that the evidence is contrary, but that there are no hoards recorded of the right time and location. Robinson is willing to allow the great importance of the Athenian owls in Asia Minor in the 5th century but doubts that it continued into the 4th.
44
Babelon, op. cit., pp. 1329-1332. Here we are faced with the difficulty of accurate dating. Wroth, BMC Troas,Aeolis and Lesbos, p. xli, says "This series may, on grounds of style, be attributed to circa B.C. 320 to 280." Without disputing the calculation based on style, Babelon moves the series back to 340–300. Twenty years is surely not a great difference when one is dating by style in the 4th century, but for our purpose the difference is critical. According to one system Abydus began her large output of silver before Philip's invasion of Asia and continued it through the life of Antigonus I; according to the other it did not begin until after Alexander's death and continued through the life of Seleucus I. I follow Babelon because he is the later (and, I think, the better) authority and also because his dates seem to me to accord better with historical probability. Among the phenomena following the death of Alexander I find it hard to believe that there was any long continued show of independence by cities in Asia. Some such outburst as occasioned the Lamian War in mainland Greece is easy to imagine, but for Abydus to begin an issue of autonomous coins which persisted through the terms of at least 28 officials seems very unlikely. Nevertheless, probability is not proof and the use of Abydus as evidence for the procedure of Alexander in Asia involves a petitio principii. But neither date avoids the difficulty of simultaneous issue of autonomous coins on one standard and drachms of Alexander on another. Thompson and Bellinger, p. 9. Bikerman has nothing to say about Abydus in his sweeping denial that the Asiatic cities retained the right of coinage. "Alexandre le Grand et les Villes d'Asie," REG 1934, p. 349. Ehrenberg, admitting that because of the uncertainty of the chronology "our notions are bound to remain rather vague" comes to the opposite conclusion that "the great majority of the cities continued autonomous coining of silver and copper under Alexander." Alexander and the Greeks, Oxford, 1938, p. 32.
45
G. F. Hill, Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins, London, 1899, p. 223.
46
The small silver of Abydus might, without much difficulty, be reckoned as ⅕ of an Attic tetradrachm, but that is an idea likelier to occur to an American than to an ancient Greek.
47
One thing that might abate the chaos would be accurate dating so that we should know which issues were really simultaneous. Unfortunately if that is ever to be achieved it must be far in the future.
48
A notable instance of the control of local value by convention is the variation in price of gold coins at Delphi between 335 and 328. Sylloge I, 251, n. 15 and 253, n. 14. J. G. Milne was eminent in his defense of the thesis that, in domestic transactions, the amount of bullion in a coin was of less importance than its face value. (Cf. "The Monetary Reform of Solon," JHS 1930, pp. 179–185; The Melos Hoard of 1907 (NNM 62), 1934). The power of the sovereign to set a value to a coin which should not be affected by variation in the price of metal is of course dependent on the degree of control which he had over the metal available, and probably not many would be tempted to apply the principle, as Milne did, to Pheidon and the very beginning of coinage (Greek and Roman Coins, London, 1939, pp. 81f., n. X. 2). But he had been impressed by the lack of uniformity in Greek coin weights and was inclined to echo the complaint of Sir George Macdonald that the instrument of metrology "has indeed broken short in our hands" ("Fifty Years of Greek Numismatics," Transactions of the International Numismatic Congress, London, 1938, pp. 3–16). Macdonald reviews the enthusiastic hopes of the metrologists and the vigorous reaction to them with reference to his studies in the coinage of Crete, where indeed the weights cannot be got to make any sense. But it is going too far to assert, because this situation obtains in one area, that Greek money is all token money except for a few issues such as the Athenian, coined with international trade specifically in view. There is too great a majority of cases in which the standards are adhered to, though these are often obscured by the fact that we have not enough data to be statistically safe. If value really had no relation to metal content there would be nothing to prevent a drastic and universal reduction in weight of all coins not intended to go abroad. The enigma of Crete would be only half solved, for though we might have an explanation for the light coins, we should have none for the heavy. We may continue to believe that, as a rule, silver coins were worth their weight, with exceptions, some of which we can understand and some of which we cannot. One thing we can understand is that convenience might demand a conventional adjustment of values to save the nuisance of perpetual weighing. If there were large quantities in question the scales were undoubtedly resorted to as they still are in the East, but when a few small pieces of Abydus had to be exchanged for small silver of Lampsacus it was doubtless done by agreement. Still, we should not exaggerate an Asiatic's impatience with weighing or belittle his willingness to spend his leisure for a small profit.
49
On the theory that the coinage of Ilium goes back to Alexander's visit, see Bellinger, "The Earliest Coins of Ilium," MN 1957, pp. 43–49.
50
Arrian 1.17.1; 18. 2; Beloch IV, I, pp. 14f. The word used in regard to the Phrygians is φόρος and Beloch believes that the Greek cities, responsible only for contributions to the war chest from time to time "waren aber sonst steuerfrei." But φόρος is used also in respect to the Aeolian and Ionian cities, particularly Ephesus. Examples of special contributions are Aspendus (50 talents), Arrian I. 26. 3. and Soli (200 talents) Arrian II. 5. 5.
51
OGIS, no. I. 11.131.
52
Arrian I. 17. 10-13; Strabo XIV. 22.
53
Alexander the Great I, p. 34. Tarn is perhaps influenced by his desire to believe that Alexander was as generous to the Greeks as possible. With the question of constitutional and juridical relations between them we are not concerned. The theory that the cities were freed by Alexander was challenged by E. Bickermann, "Alexandre le Grand et les Villes d'Asie," REG 1934, pp. 346-374. His conclusion is that such liberty as they had rested on the unilateral and revocable act of Alexander. Tarn, op. cit., II, pp. 199-232, protested against this in favor of the earlier theory. In 1938 Victor Ehrenberg published Alexander and the Greeks, of which pp. 1-51 discuss "Alexander and the liberated Greek Cities" and the constitutional effect of his tendency toward autocracy, which the author believes to have been constantly increasing. An interesting study of the reality of the cities' liberty distinguished from its juridical essence is that of A. Ranovich, "Alexander of Macedon and the Greek Cities of Asia Minor" (in Russian), Vestnik drevneimageï istorii, 1947, pp. 57-63. I am indebted to Dr. Emily G. Kazakevich for an extensive English digest.
54
Tarsos.
55
Curtius, III. 13. 16.
56
Sidon and Ake, p. 22.
57
Tarn, op. cit., II, pp. 237f. cannot believe that there was an Alexandria earlier than the one in Egypt, and presents an hypothesis that it was founded after Gaugamela by command of Alexander but not by his act in presence. It does not matter to us at what point the city also known as Myriandrus received the conqueror's name but I do not believe that the argument is a very good one that some ancient writer must have mentioned the foundation if it had occurred immediately after Issus. The city had been important enough to have its own Persian issues and without any doubt those of Alexander at once succeeded (E. T. Newell, Myriandros). It might be remarked that Tarn has difficulty (pp. 239f.) with another Alexandria: Alexandria Troas. The tradition is (Strabo, XIII. 26) that the city was founded by Antigonus by the synoecism of the surrounding towns and named after himself; that when Lysimachus acquired it he refounded it and renamed it Alexandria. This Tarn will not credit, "It is impossible to believe" he says, "that one Successor, just once, used the Alexander-name.—There is only one explanation. Alexander must have promised to found a city there—but he did not live to do it." But in Alexander's time a city in that place would have made no sense at all. The whole thing is a characteristic Hellenistic performance (Louis Robert, Études de Numismatique grecque, Paris, 1951, pp. 5-13). If Alexander had in mind the founding of any Alexandria before the one in Egypt, Myriandrus would have been a reasonable location, a site in the Troad would not.
58
E. T. Newell, "Some Cypriote Alexanders," NC 1915, pp. 294-322.
59
G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexander Coins of Phoenicia," Nomisma 1909, pp. 2-5; Demanhur, pp. 119-121.
60
Demanhur, pp. 122-125.
61
Sidon and Ake, pp. 7-38.
62
Op. cit., pp. 39-67.
63
Thompson and Bellinger, pp. 27-31.
64
Demanhur, pp. 115f.
65
F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Die Münzstätte Babylon zur Zeit der makedonischer Satrapen und des Seleukos Nikator," NZ 1895, pp. 1-7.
66
Beloch, TV. i, p. 11.
67
Berve, Das Alexanderreich, I, pp. 302-304.
68
Op. cit., II, pp. 75-80. Cf. A. Andreades, "Antimène de Rhodes et Cléomène de Naucratis," BCH 1929, pp. 1-18.
69
This does not mean that there were no cases of delegation, for the coins with satraps' names (below, pp. 62—66) are such cases. But there was no individual to whom Alexander entrusted authority for a whole class of functions, no single person, that is, who was allowed to regulate the currency as a whole. The king did not decide every detail but there was no detail that he might not decide, and when others were allowed to act in their own names the limits of their authority were clearly understood.
70
Athenaeus, XIII. 6o7f-6o8a. A letter from Parmenio to Alexander after the capture of Darius' baggage at Damascus detailing the number of concubines and slaves with their special skills. XI. 781f-782a and 784a. Letters concerning the Persian booty with valuations and lists of table service. XIV. 659f-660a is a letter to Alexander urging him to buy a cook from his mother. How one would like to know more of the letter from Cleomenes that spoke of ten thousand smoked coot, five thousand thrushes and ten thousand smoked quail! IX. 393c. It may seem absurd that the sovereign's time should be imposed on with such trifles, but the alternative of a bureaucracy had its own drawbacks. The late Roman empire found by experience how disastrously a bureaucracy could divide the sovereign and his subjects.
71
Sidon and Ake, p. 22.
72
NC 1914, p. 33, n. 14.
73
Aman, II. 13. 7.
74
Aman, II. 20. 1.
75
Demanhur, pp. 119f. The autonomous coins are marked with the Aramaic equivalent of image MA. HN gives the reader a clue as to why this should signify Aradus: image0 stands for the word "min" meaning "from;" image is the initial of the town's name.
76
Curtius IV. 1. 15-26.
77
The group of staters and distaters with symbols but no letters which Newell originally assigned to Sidon (Sidon and Ake, pp. 7f.) he was later inclined to transfer in whole or in part to Damascus (G. F. Hill, JHS 1923, p. 159, n. 8).
78
Arrian, II. 20.1.
79
Arrian, II. 20. 3.
80
Newell reports only one coin at Marion and it is impossible to say whether or not its thunderbolt is to be regarded as a mint mark.
81
"Some Cypriote Alexanders," pp. 298f. See Schlumberger's comment, pp. 27f., n. 5.
82
He may have had nothing to do with it whatever. After the siege of Tyre, according to Duris (Athenaeus IV. 167c) Alexander gave a property to Pnytagoras which had belonged to "Pygmalion" of Citium. Hill (BMC Cyprus, pp. xlf.) concludes, perhaps rashly, that Pymathion of Citium is intended and that Alexander had deposed him. All Pymathion's coins are gold and there is a gap in his activity between the siege of Tyre and the death of Alexander.
83
It is generally supposed that Ake had never coined before (BMC Phoenicia, p. lxxvii, "The numismatic history of the city begins with Alexander the Great"), but C. Lambert in publishing "A Hoard of Phoenician Coins Found on the Site of Ake" (The Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine, 1931, pp. 10–20), makes a very strong case for transferring to that city two groups of Tyrian types: Group II, BMC, pp. 229f., nos. 11–18 and Group IV, pp. 231f., nos. 25–42. He suggests that "coins of Group IV may have been issued for local requirements concurrently with coins of Alexander's types struck at Acre." The group would begin shortly after Alexander's death.
84
J. Baramki, "A Hoard of Silver Coins of Sidon and Alexander from Khirbet el Kerak," The Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine, 1944, pp. 86-90.
85
Bellinger, "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos."
86
The same is true of the hoards of Jdita, Noe, A Bibliography of Greek Coin Hoards, ed. 2 (NNM 78), New York City, 1937, 512 and Qasr Naba, Noe 846; the latter has also small silver of other kinds. It must be confessed that this is not very impressive evidence for the continuance of non-Alexandrine issues.
87
"An Alexander Hoard from Byblos," p. 48. Cf. Demanhur, pp. 150f.
88
Demanhur, pp. 115f, tetradrachms; gold, JHS 1923, pp. 156–161, n. 8.
89
On the supposed new mint of Ake see n. 83 above.
90
Demanhur, p. 140.
91
BMC, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia, p. cxxxv.
92
J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazaios," NC 1884, pp. 97-159.
93
F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Die Münzstätte Babylon zur Zeit der makedonischer Satrapen und des Seleukos Nikator," NZ 1895, pp. 1-22.
94
"Some Coins Attributed to Babylon by Dr. Imhoof-Blumer" NC 1904, pp. 1-38.
95
Thompson and Bellinger, pp. 27-31.
96
Newell was convinced (Demanhur, p. 91). Head (BMC, Lydia, p. xcvii) had not been: "Whether the Persians, after the conquest of Lydia, struck any darics or sigloi at Sardes is very doubtful." But Milne ("A Hoard of Persian Sigloi," NC 1916, pp. 1-12) suggests that sigloi with a little lion's head on the reverse might be from Sardes, which Hill (BMC, Arabia, p. cxxxv) regarded as a "very plausible suggestion." The symbol would be appropriate but there hardly seem to be enough known to represent the output of what ought to have been an important mint.
97
See above, pp. 45-48.
98
Arrian 1.17.10-13.
99
On all the Alexandrine mints of Asia Minor see Thompson and Bellinger, passim.
100
101
Kyparissia, p. 14.
102
The suggestion (Sicyon, p. 26) that these coins may have been "some of the sinews of the Lamian war" is surely mistaken. Rebellion against Antipater would have been the occasion of the prompt resumption of autonomous issues, or at least cessation of the royal ones.
103
Noe's arrangement would provide 8 issues distinguished by their symbols or by style:
I. Boy with outstretched arms alone (distater no. 1. stater no. 2, tetradrachm no. 3).
2. Boy and rudder (stater no. 5, tetradrachm no. 4).
3. Thunderbolt and A (distater nos. 6, 7—supposing A and A to be the same—stater no. 8).
4. Boy and A (distater no. 9, stater no. 11).
5. Boy A and ivy leaf (distater no. 10).
6. Boy alone, different style from 1 (stater no. 12, tetradrachms nos. 13, 14—distinguished only by a die break on the former).
7. Ear of barley (tetradrachm no. 15).
8. Goat's head (tetradrachm no. 16).
Of these, 1, 3 and 6 are large issues. In 1 there are 8 reverse dies used for the tetradrachms, though only one each for distater and stater. In 3 there are 18 reverse dies used for the distaters, I for the stater. In 6 there are 9 reverses used for the tetradrachms. The others are all small, each using only a single reverse die, except that there are 2 for tetradrachm no. 4 and 2 for distater no. 9. There is, however, no reason for combining any of the minor issues, and combining 1 and 6, where the difference is one of style alone, would still leave 7 issues.
Since the terminal date is 323/2, that would put the beginning not later than 330/29. The latest issue (presumably 8) might have come in 323 before the outbreak of the Lamian war. The earliest could not be before the battle of Megalopolis in the fall of 331, and therefore an issue before 330 would be hardly possible. If we are to provide a year for each of Noe's varieties, therefore, we should put 1 in 330/29 and 8 in 323.
104
Arrian I. 24. 2; Curtius III. 1.1. Cleander came back with 4,000 Greek mercenaries during the siege of Tyre. Arrian II. 20. 5.
105
E. J. P. Raven, "The Amphictionic Coinage of Delphi," NC 1950, pp. 1-22.
106
Diogenes Laertius VII. 18. Zeno said of the polished discourses of the learned that they were like the silver of Alexander, pleasant to the eye and well marked but none the better for that. The other kind of discourse he likened to the Attic tetradrachms, carelessly cut and clumsy but often able to demolish ornamented speeches. Evidently in Zeno's time there were Alexanders circulating in Athens along with the Old Style Attic tetradrachms—and Zeno didn't like them.
107
Alexander sent money to Antipater for the war against Sparta after the capture of Susa. Arrian III. 16. 10.
108
It is extensively treated by J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazaïos;" see also Babelon, Traité II. 2, pp. 445-460; BMC, Lycaonia, etc., pp. lxxxi-lxxxiii; BMC, Phoenicia, pp. xcvi-xcix; Cohen, Histoire grecque IV. 1, p. 13, n. 22, pp. 97, 99, 103f., 129.
109
Myriandros, pp. 2-14, Series I-V.
110
Myriandros, pp. 14f., Series VI; Tarsos, pp. 3f.
111
Myriandros, pp. 16-29.
112
BMC, Phoenicia, pp. 153f., nos. 78-85.
113
Babelon, Les Perses achéménides, p. LIX.
114
Curtius HI. 4. 3. qui Cilicae praeerat; Arrian II. 2. 5; 11. 8.
115
Babelon supposed him to have instituted the series of unsigned staters with the head of Athena (Traité, pp. 461-468, nos. 719-733) but Newell shows (Tarsos, pp. 42-47) that these were no earlier than 328. But see below, n. 177.
116
Arrian III. 7. 2.
117
Curtius IV. 16.1-7.
118
Alexander II, p. 109.
119
Arran III. 16. 4.
120
The weights of these coins create a problem with which Newell has dealt at some length in ESM, pp. 105f. It seems clear that the first ones were intended to be on the Attic standard, but they soon became so much lighter as to fall to the weight of three sigloi, as Imhoof-Blumer saw, NC 1906, p. 23, n. 10. But Newell rightly pointed out that they cannot have been meant to be "triple sigloi" for their fractions are didrachms, drachms, hemidrachms and obols, which is division by two and not by three.
121
NC 1904, pp. 3,4.
122
Demanhur, nos. 3980–4048.
123
Alexander I , p. 52.
124
Histoire grecque IV. 1, p. 104.
125
NC 1906, pp. 23f.
126
BMC, Arabia, p. cxli.
127
Ulrich Wilcken, Alexander the Great, New York City, 1932, p. 141, whatever his source, believes that it was a temporary arrangement. "As an exceptional measure—which was soon cancelled— Mazaeus as satrap was entrusted with the coining of money."
128
Traité II. 2, pp. 475-478, nos. 751-753.
129
ESM, pp. 117f.
130
ESM, p. 171.
131
The hoard from Mesopotamia published by Robinson, "A Silversmith's Hoard from Mesopotamia," Iraq, 1950, pp. 44-51, contained 7 sigloi, compared with 6 Athenian coins and 10 more from western mints. Noe 1109 from the Tigris seems to have been exclusively Greek silver with no sigloi at all.
132
ESM, p. 106, n. 14.
133
Arrian III. 16. 4.
134
ESM, p. 104.
135
"The Coins from the Treasure of the Oxus," MN 1962, pp. 51-67.
136
Schlumberger, pp. 22f.
137
One imitation with ΑιΓ instead of ΑΘΕ was in the Caboul Hoard (Schlumberger, p. 36, no. 64); another had been in the Oxus Hoard (Gardner, NC 1880, p. 191).
138
Newell, Miscellanea Numismatica, Cyrene to India (NNM 82), 1938, pp. 82-88. Schlum-berger, p. 20, n. 6, accepts the attribution as certain. Six, NC 1884, pp. 141-143 had read the name as Mazaros and assigned his no. 3 to the Companion whom Alexander installed as commander of the citadel at Susa. Arrian III. 16. 9.
139
Newell, op. cit., pp. 72-75. His predecessor Sabaces had also struck imitation owls with his name and signed bronzes with a lion and a Persian archer, op. cit., pp. 62-72.
140
Arrian III. 1. 2.
141
Curtius IV. 7. 4.
142
Das Alexanderreich II, p. 246.
143
The capital work is F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Die Münzstätte Babylon," NZ 1895, pp. 1-22. Except for the protest of Sir Henry Howorth, promptly answered, there has been no dissent. However, the concession implied in Newell's phrase "mostly coined at Babylon" had been more clearly expressed by Hill, BMC, Arabia, p. cxli, n. 1. "It may perhaps be admitted that some of the coins were issued at other mints in the Eastern portion of Alexander's conquests;" e.g., pp. 178f., nos. 8-13. "the following are for the most part of ruder workmanship, and were perhaps made farther East than Babylon."
144
BMC, Arabia, p. cxxvi, n. 6.
145
There is a daric with ΦΛ in the Newell collection.
146
BMC, Arabia, p. cxxx.
147
Babelon, Les Perses achétnénides, p. xx, "De toute nécessité, on doit conclure qu' Alexandre, en laissant au satrap perse Mazaios ses droits monétaires—lui permit de continuer non seulement I'émission de ses tétradrachmes d'argent aux types de Baaltars et du lion, mais encore celle des dariques et des doubles dariques." Babelon says nothing about the sigloi which Hill associates with the darics. Can there have been the simultaneous issue from the same mint of Alexandrine tetradrachms, lion staters and sigloi?
148
XVII. 66. I; 71. I. He is the only one who makes special reference to darics. The authors vary in the amounts they give, but the differences are not extreme. They all reckon in silver talents (imageργυρίου τimageλαντα talentum argenti) though Diodorus alone is specific: είς άργυρίου λόγον άναγομίνου τοimage χρυσίου. The accounts compare as follows:
S usa Persepolis
Arrian III. 16. 7 50,000 tal.
Curtius V. 2.11; 6. 9 50,000 tal. uncoined 120,000 tal.
Diodorus XVII. 66. 1, 2; 71. 1 40,000 tal. uncoined 120,000 tal. gold and silver
9,000 tal. of darics
Plutarch, Alex., 36.1; 37. 2 40,000 tal.
coined an equal amount of coin
Justin XI. 14. 9 40,000 tal.
This is not serious variation. The chief question is, was any of the treasure in the form of coin? I do not believe that Plutarch's νομίσματος is of any importance. In view of Curtius' explicit phrase non signati forma sed nidi pondere, and Diodorus' άσήμου χρυσοimage καì άργνροimage we must suppose there was bullion, which is likely even without testimony. But Diodorus is so clear in his antithesis between the bullion and the έννακισχίλια τάλαντα χρυσοimage χαρακτimageρα δαρεικòν έχοντα as to make it certain that he believed there to have been both bullion and coin. It is less likely that his source invented the darics than that the source of Arrian and Curtius made up a round number by including them with the uncoined metal.
149
Arrian VIT. 5.1-3.
150
Arrian VII. 23. 3. 4. Griffith, Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World, p. 300 believes that pay was intermitted during the Indian campaign on two grounds: first, "It is difficult to think that Alexander carried vast sums of money about with him during his Indian campaign" and second "when he returned from India and discharged 10,000 Macedonian veterans, he had arrears of pay to make up" (Arrian VIT. 12.1). The difficulty as to transport is a serious one, but not so serious in India where he had the rivers to use as in the mountains of Bactria. And there is nothing to suggest that the arrears in pay were of long standing. They may have been only in connection with the march back from India. Griffith is hardly justified in saying "in fact it is certain that he did not pay μισθός regularly by the month." In any case, this concerns only one element of expense.
151
Tarn, Alexander II, pp. 232-249.
152
"The Coins from the Treasure of the Oxus," MN 1962,
153
Alexander, 37. 2.
154
V. 6.11.
155
III. 19. 7.
156
XVII. 80. 3.
157
XII. 1.1.
158
Berve, Das Alexanderreich II, pp. 76f. "wo unter seiner Oberleitung in den nächsten Jahren sich die Ausmünzung der Achaimenidenschätze vollzogen haben wird." Evidently he thinks that Harpalus was independent of Parmenio and continued his duties as mintmaster after the satrap's execution.
159
ESM, p. 162.
160
This involves a considerable discrepancy since, according to Hemmy, Iraq 1938, p. 70, two of Alexander's staters would weigh 17.32 grams, the double daric only 16.80. But the degree of other uncertainties is so great that we need not hesitate to consult our convenience to this extent.
161
NC 1950, pp. 1-22.
162
E. S. G. Robinson, "Some Problems in the Later Fifth Century Coinage of Athens," MN1960, p. 12, making his own calculation of the survival rate of Athenian gold, concludes that it was "something like one part in 4,000"—"perhaps more" he writes me, "certainly not less." He considers that more gold went into jewelry than silver so that the survival rates of the two metals would be unlike. The difference between 5,000 and 4,000 is a palliative, but I do not feel that it can cure our difficulty. Since this was written Margaret Thompson's great work on the Athenian New Style Silver has appeared with calculations that in that series the survival rate might be as low as 1: 2625, as high as 1: 395. Her conclusion (p. 709) "There is no such thing as a general survival rate which can be applied indiscriminately to various issues of Greek coinage" is certainly just and reduces still further the possible evidential value of the figures used by me.
163
B. V. Head, "The Earliest Greco-Bactrian and Greco-Indian Coins," NC 1906, pp. 1-16.
164
"The Eastern Satrap Sophytes," NC 1943, pp. 60-72. The eastern imitations have been treated in A. K. Narain, The Indo-Greeks], Oxford, 1957, p. 4. He raises the interesting question whether the Bactrian users of Greek coins may not have been Greeks from the settlements to the north-west of India to which both Greek and Indian sources testify (pp. 1 f.).
165
Journal asiatique 1935.
166
It is perhaps worth mentioning that "Plutarch," Lives of the Ten Orators, 846 A, says, apparently on the authority of Philochorus, that Demosthenes accepted a bribe of 1,000 darics from Harpalus. No one else mentions the unit of the bribe. It is conceivable that some of the 5,000 talents with which Harpalus is said to have absconded (Diodorus XVII. 108. 6) was in darics.
167
Alexander 59. 3.
168
12.15f.
169
John Allan, "The Beginnings of Coinage in India," Transactions of the International Numismatic Congress, 1936, London, 1938, pp. 387-392, believes that what is meant is the small silver bars with punched design, of the weight of two sigloi. Some of them were found at Taxila with a siglos, a tetradrachm and drachm of Alexander and a tetradrachm of Philip III, and Allan regards them as the earliest Indian coins. I doubt, however, whether argentum signatum "is clearly more than bullion and yet something that to the Western mind was not exactly coin." The same phrase is used to describe the money brought by Orsines, Satrap of Pasargada, Curtius X. 1. 24.
170
IX. I. 6.
171
IV. 26. I; 27.3.
172
Alexander 59. 3.
173
I am indebted to Dr. R. B. Whitehead, whose experience and recollections are conclusive in this matter. He cites some coins with Alexander's name collected in the Punjab, reported without details by Charles J. Rodgers (Coin Collecting in Northern India, Allahabad, 1894, p. 19), and Sir John Marshall's siglos, Alexander tetradrachm and drachm and Philip III tetradrachm, the insignificant fruit of his 20 years of excavation at Taxila (Taxila, Cambridge, 1951, Vol. II, p. 795). I recall that Newell once told me that he had just received an Alexander found in India, the first in his experience, but I never knew the details.
174
George MacDonald, "Ancient Persian Coins in India," Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, New York City, 1922, pp. 342-344.
175
John Allan, Catalogue of the Indian Coins in the British Museum. Ancient India, London, 1936, pp. xv-xvii, 1-3, PL 1,1-5, Class I.
176
A. H. Lloyd, "Hoarding of the Precious Metals in India," Transactions of the International Numismatic Congress, 1936, London, 1938, pp. 427-438.
177
Tarsos, pp. 16-22. The enigmatic second series of staters (Plate III, 8), ibid., whatever its explanation, adds to the effect of the first. The significance of both these series will need to be reconsidered in view of the recent discovery of a specimen on which, instead of the usual B, there appears the name of Balacrus, Alexander's satrap of Cilicia. Babelon had suggested this meaning for B which Newell ( Tarsos , p. 18) had denied. Howorth made the same suggestion in his article "A Note on Some Coins Generally Attributed to Mazaios, the Satrap of Cilicia and Syria," NC 1902, pp. 83f. The owner of the new piece, Herr von Aulock, has kindly sent me photographs of his interesting discovery, which he is about to publish. It would not be proper to anticipate the publication, but it may be remarked that while the new coin proves that Series II of Persic staters ( Tarsos , pp. 42-47) was instituted before the death of Balacrus in 328 it does not settle the question whether the B which sometimes appears on Series I (ibid. p. 17, d-f) is the mark of the same official, still less whether he is the B who shares with A the issue of the early Tarsiote Alexanders (ibid. p. 9). On the initial date will depend the solution to the question whether the signed lion staters of Mazaeus from Babylon were without precedent, as assumed in the present study, or whether Alexander had already allowed another satrap to put his name on a coin. In any case, the privilege seems to have been of short duration.
178
Thompson and Bellinger, passim.
179
Demanhur, pp. 144-147. A violent contrast to the orthodoxy of the old mints cannot be entirely passed over. Didrachms of very strange appearance, some of which have the name "Alexander" in Aramaic characters are assigned by Six (NC 1878, pp. 103-118) to Hierapolis in Syria and to the period from 315-301. Later (NC 1884, p. 113) he was inclined to believe that those with Alexander's name may have been struck in his own lifetime. I am not competent to deal with the linguistic and paleographical problems involved, but I believe that no one would assign, on the grounds of appearance, the first four coins of Pl. VI of the former article to the end of the 4th century B.C. Even that, however, is more likely than that a series so barbaric should have been begun under Alexander and in his name. The condition of the High Priest of Hierapolis was doubtless unique, but he was not so far from Cilicia that his city would have been totally unaware of numismatic propriety. Babelon (Perses achéménides, pp. LI-LIV) though he suggests that the place of issue might be Comana instead of Hierapolis, accepts the theory that we have to do with Alexander the Great and not a dynast of that name, since the types are imitations of those of Mazaeus. But the style of imitation is quite uncharacteristic of the time, and the appearance of Alexander as dynast or High Priest signing coins of a petty state with types totally unrelated to his own is without parallel and without probability. I would invite the Orientalists to consider the possibility that the Alexander of Six' nos. 1 and 2 is a High Priest, like Abd-Hadad of nos. 4 and 5 and that the whole series belongs to a much later time.
180
Thompson and Bellinger, pp. 30f.

THE SUCCESSORS AND THE CITIES

The death of Alexander left his empire without a leader and there was great difficulty in choosing one. Some were for retaining the kingship in the Macedonian royal house and supported Philip's son Arrhidaeus, Alexander's half-brother. Others felt that the family of Alexander himself was the proper source of royal power and hoped for an heir in the child which Roxane was expecting. The factions were vehement and almost came to blows, yet to the wiser minds it must have been apparent that the true question was not who was to have the name of king but who was to control the armies and the finances of the empire. The generals could not know, any more than we know now whether it was possible that the vast realm which they had conquered could be ruled as a unit, but even those who doubted most had no plan for division except the appeal to arms. But civil war was to the liking of no one and so it was essential that the formal question as to the kingship should be settled promptly. A compromise was reached: Arrhidaeus' name was changed to Philip and he was declared king with the proviso that if Roxane's child should be a son he was to share the royal title. Roxane's child, as it turned out, was a son; he was duly named Alexander and war was for the time averted. Perdiccas and Craterus divided the ill-defined powers and duties of guardian and regent. Many of the necessary arrangements of which we are not told must have been made by them and it may have been they who decided that, as money must continue to be struck, the familiar types should be retained but that some of the coins should bear the name of Philip, and this plan was put into effect as soon as the problem of the kingship was solved.

It was not universally done, however. The most conspicuous exception is that the premier mint of Amphipolis never used Philip's name. It is not easy to see why this should have been so. The Macedonians had been Philip's supporters in the contest as to the succession and Antipater, who was regent in Macedonia, was a thorough legitimist. Moreover, he had long been at odds with Olympias, that fervent partisan of her grandson and foe of his co-ruler, which should have put Antipater in Philip's party if partisanship was important in Macedonia in 323. It is a further complication that there is an issue for Philip from Pella in about 318.1 At that time there is indeed evidence of a division in the country. Cassander was making head against the duly appointed guardian Polyperchon; Eurydice, Philip's wife and half-sister, had attempted to take charge of affairs and transfer the command from Polyperchon to Cassander; the young Alexander was apparently with his grandmother in Epirus. It may be that Eurydice had enough influence in Pella to have it strike in her husband's name, but not enough to prevent the same magistrate from striking in that of Alexander. But this does not explain why the omission should have been made in the beginning when Babylon was using both names.2 Perhaps there will ultimately be found adequate political explanations for the other places where Philip's name was not used, such as Miletus, Damascus and Alexandria, but at present it seems as though the irregular procedure is no more than a symptom of imperfect control by the regents of minting regulation. This does not prevent the unhappy Philip, burdened with illegitimacy, an over-bearing wife and a weak intellect, from being a person of numismatic importance. Since his brief career began in 323 and ended in 317 his coins, of course, must fall between those limits, and consequently also the coins with the name of Alexander and symbols identical with Philip's which is a very important aid in the arrangements of the coins after 323.3

Syria. Laomedon

Myriandrus

Damascus

Aradus

Byblus

Berytus

Sidon

Ake

Egypt. Ptolemy

Alexandria

Babylonia, i. Archon 2. Seleucus

Babylon

Media. i. Atropates 2. Peithon

Ecbatana

It is remarkable how few of these governors played parts of any importance during the struggles of the Successors. The boundaries of the satrapies would be maintained as they had been in Alexander's time and it may be that the entrusting of important provinces to men not of the first importance was caused less by a mistaken estimate of their abilities than by the mutual jealousies of greater men. The fact that there was obviously no attempt to provide an equal distribution of mints can only mean that the unity of the empire was still so fundamental in the minds of the generals that it was taken for granted that all money was still the kings' money, only now at the disposal of the regent. There are positive indications that this was true. In 321, after the murder of Perdiccas, his brother-in-law Attalus sailed to Tyre and there recovered 800 talents from Archelaüs, the captain of the garrison, which Perdiccas had given him for safekeeping.4 This was evidently a transaction entirely independent of Laomedon, the satrap. In 319 Antigonus committed what was regarded as a clear act of rebellion when he captured and appropriated 600 talents which were being conveyed by ship from Cilicia to the kings in Macedonia.5 And in the next year, when Polyperchon was strengthening the hand of Eumenes against Antigonus he sent letters in the name of the kings to the generals in Cilicia and the treasurers to pay Eumenes 500 talents and any more that he might require.6 Ptolemy, indeed, protested to the treasurers against paying any money to Eumenes and promised to protect them if they failed to carry out instructions, but nobody paid any attention to him.7

The assumption of the unity of empire, however, soon began to be challenged. Ptolemy was apparently the first to conceive of making a part of the empire his own domain, though perhaps the idea had come as soon to Lysimachus, fighting to organize the still unconquered elements of Thrace. After his recovery of Babylon from Antigonus in 312 Seleucus set himself to make a permanent possession of the East. And in the spring of that same year when Cassander had put Olympias to death, though he was the only one with any title to be considered the guardian of the young Alexander, he showed his true purpose by having the boy imprisoned with his mother Roxane. In 310 by having them assassinated he left no basis for any legitimist party.

Against these separatist forces the regents had fought, Perdiccas with more than a little personal ambition involved, Antipater with loyal devotion to the royal house, Polyperchon with good intentions, doubtless, but with little practical sense and with diminishing effectiveness. But there was another opponent of the separatists: Antigonus, and he was moved not by sentiment but by the determination to keep the empire together for himself. This ambition was shared and inherited by his son Demetrius, and the greatest episode of the closing of the 4th century and the opening of the 3rd is the account of the adventures of those two warriors.

The interplay of all these individuals meant constant change in the control of territory and in the condition of the cities. Though the mints may have struck coins originally for the use of all parts of the empire alike—subject always to the element of convenience—there must have come a time when for Antigonus to capture a mint meant for him to capture additional revenue. The activity of the Asia Minor mints in 310 and 309 seems to be part of his program,8 and perhaps some of the constant friction between the Ptolemies and their neighbors was caused by desire to control the mint-cities of the Syrian coast.

It is impossible to give any general picture of the fortunes of the mints in the period just after Alexander's death. That must be worked out a city at a time, a labor which has hardly begun as yet, though many issues have been assigned to their proper cities without historical commentary. Newell's works on Demetrius and the Seleucids have obiter dicta about the preceding Alexander coins and so have publications of sundry hoards, but we are still in the dark as to such a matter as the closing of the mint at Damascus, its date and cause. Much meticulous work with individual series is necessary before we can write the history of the early posthumous Alexanders.

Nevertheless, there are some things that can be said as to the practice of the different Successors, for there are only a few of them of any numismatic importance. In the realm of Antipater, as one would expect, nothing was ever minted except the old types, and that was true of the realm in the hands of Polyperchon. Since they regarded the empire as the kings' estate, it could be financed only by the kings' money. Cassander held to the convention so far as gold and silver were concerned, but he did issue bronze with the head of Heracles and a lion with his own name.9 Antigonus also used only the Alexander types; the coins bearing the legend Antigonus or King Antigonus belong to his grandson Antigonus Gonatas or Antigonus Doson.10 Of course his endeavor was to avoid anything that might seem to acknowledge the possibility of partition, and as long as the old man lived his son Demetrius, if he is to be regarded as an independent minting authority, followed the father's example. The first breach of tradition was that of Ptolemy about 320 when he substituted for the head of Heracles a head of Alexander wearing a headdress made of an elephant with jutting tusks and uplifted trunk (P LATE II, 4). This is the deified Alexander: above his cheek may be seen the ram's horn of his divine father Zeus Ammon. A few years later there was a more extreme innovation. The deified head remained but the familiar seated Zeus was replaced by an Athena with helmet, aegis, shield and thunderbolt. The earliest coins of this type bore the inscription ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΕΙΟΝ, a further deviation from tradition but a somewhat puzzling one which gave place again to the conventional AΛEΞANΞPOY. So far there had been no overt show of independence, but a step was taken which actually made for more independence than a change of type could. Ptolemy abandoned the Attic standard of 17.62 grams and began to strike tetradrachms of Rhodian weight (15.50 grams) and so cut Egypt off from the international currency of his rivals. Then, after the death of Alexander IV in 310 had left no legitimate monarch, Antigonus and Demetrius, Seleucus and Lysimachus took the title of king in 306/5 and 305/4, and Ptolemy joined them, now introducing his own portrait on the obverse and using as his reverse the eagle which had been on Zeus' hand. This became the standard Ptolemaic type and the Alexander coinage thus disappears from Egypt forever.

The development of types was different in other cases. Lysimachus had originally controlled no mint11 and it was not until 308 that he provided himself with a suitable capital by building the city of Lysimacheia near Cardia in Thrace. There he struck Alexanders on which about 303 he put a distinguishing mark: the forepart of a Hon, which was his own device; and his own name now stood in place of Alexander's. In 29612 he imitated Ptolemy in replacing the Heracles head with a portrait of the divinized Alexander, again with the horns of Ammon but without the elephant skin (P LATE II, 5). It is one of the most spectacular of Hellenistic portraits. The reverse shows a seated Athena holding Nike and leaning on her shield. The title is that of King Lysimachus, and with that he was content; his portrait never appeared on his coins, and since he had no heir his types would have died with him except that, like those of Alexander, they had caught the fancy of the cities and were imitated long after his death.

When the disaster of Ipsus had ended Antigonus' plans and ambitions Demetrius was left to gather the remnants of his father's great empire and, from the cities still in his control, he issued notice of his continued command of the sea: the magnificent tetradrachms bearing his name and showing Nike with a trumpet on a prow and Poseidon standing with menacing trident. Later there were two series with Demetrius' own portrait, one with Poseidon seated, the other with his foot on a rock, leaning on a trident.

The first change introduced by Seleucus was the substitution of his own name for that of Alexander after 306 when he took the title of king. This was at Seleucia-on-the-Tigris about 305.13 It became common about 300 and was the regular type for gold and silver in the West, though the bronze shows considerable variation. An apparent exception occurs in Pergamum where Seleucus' name is used on tetradrachms with horse's head/elephant. But those were actually issued by Philetaerus and his governor and were followed by a reversion to Alexander's type and name, and then to Alexander's type with Seleucus' name.14 In the East two other types were used for silver: the head of Zeus/Athena in a biga or quadriga of elephants;15 and head of Seleucus/Nike and trophy.16 It is interesting that the king confined the use of his own portrait to his eastern mints, and even there it did not entirely displace the older design as Ptolemy's portrait did in Egypt. In Susa, for instance, there is a reversion to the Alexander type with Seleucus' name after both of the others had been used17 and at Ecbatana Alexander's name appears in the latter half of Seleucus'

reign.18 By the end of that reign, however, the Alexander types had been abandoned.19

Mention must be made of three interesting uses of the Alexander type by lesser powers than the dynasts of whom we have spoken. One is the case of a client king, Nicocles of Paphos in Cyprus. A number of tetradrachms of that mint, apparently perfectly ordinary Alexanders, are found on close inspection, to have the name ΝΙΚΟΚΛΕΟΥΣ inscribed on the mane of the lion headdress in letters so tiny that they are not visible on a photograph and are frequently only to be seen on the coins themselves under a magnifying glass.20 J. M. F. May in an admirably complete treatment of them21 concludes that they were issued from 323, immediately after Alexander's death, to 320, which would allow for their appearance in the Demanhur Hoard, buried in 318/7. As he says, the legend has every appearance of being surreptitious and it is tempting to think that the Paphian king was a bit intoxicated by the feeling of liberty caused by the news from Babylon, but not so confident as to let his state of mind be obvious to the regents. We have no way of knowing whether his temerity escaped notice, or was indulged, or was punished. But none of his fellow kings copied his experiment. There are letters on coins of Salamis which may perhaps have stood for the names of the kings Nicocreon and Menelaus22 but those cases were undoubtedly official and were far less explicit. A similar license had been accorded kings of Byblus in Alexander's lifetime.23 But it seems that Nicocles was aiming at something more than that.

The second case is that of a tetradrachm of eastern appearance which, in addition to the usual inscription, has the name ΑΣΠΕΙΣΟΥ, under the arm of Zeus (P LATE III, 9). E. S. G. Robinson, publishing the specimen in the British Museum,24 called attention to a Persian named Aspeisas mentioned by Diodorus (XIX. 55. 1 ) as having been installed as satrap of Susiana by Antigonus in 316 after the defeat of Eumenes, and there can be no doubt that this is the same man. There was a mint in operation at Susa by 317/625 striking coins with the names of Alexander and Philip, and sometime between that date and 312 when Seleucus recovered the territory this piece must have been struck. Though it is without parallel and without consequence,26 it is worthy of attention, for it ventures on a show of independence which the greater Successors were slow to follow. Modesty or caution or both forbade the introduction of a new design. Who was Aspeisas that the East should accept his money? But he was more than the mint official who must be content to be known by a monogram or an ambiguous symbol and he saw to it that he should appear as a man of importance in the realm that had been Alexander's. One wonders whether he knew of the case of Nicocles and declined to use such a mixture of display and concealment. One wonders also what impression it made on Antigonus who had appointed him—Antigonus who was so scrupulous to maintain the old types unchanged.

The third instance is even more surprising. It is the issuance by Areus king of Sparta, 309-264, of a tetradrachm with Alexander's types and the inscription ΒΑΣΙΛΕΟΣ ΑΡΕΟΣ.27 Areus is chiefly known as the opponent of Macedon, as leader of the Peloponnesian League in 280 and again in the Chremonidean war until he fell in battle at Corinth. Beloch28 supposes that the act of striking his own money, unprecedented for a Spartan, was one of the manifestations of eminence and self-confidence which resulted from his victory over Pyrrhus in 272. No Spartan king for a long time had been so powerful, and it is easy to assume that his emulation of royal power of which Athenaeus speaks29 falls in this period. It might be a time suitable for the introduction of the silver with his own portrait,30 if that is indeed struck by him, but the use of his name on the Alexander type would be much more appropriate to the years 306-304 when the Successors whom he considered his rivals were taking the title of king. We know nothing of what he was doing from his accession in 309 to his first campaign in 280, and this may have been a kind of announcement that he also was one of the Successors, with Greece for his province. But at any juncture it is astonishing to have the types of Alexander vised by a king of the one Greek state which had been Alexander's consistent and pertinacious foe.31

The economy of these posthumous Alexanders is still unstudied. It is evident that after the change of standard, the silver of Egypt was isolated from the rest of the Hellenistic world,32 but what about the money of the other Successors? How much of their product remained in their own territory? How much was at the disposition of their rivals? I ventured remarks on this subject a few years ago33 suggesting that there might be evidence for the development of separate monetary districts. I did not have much material to go on, and how upsetting to reasonable conjecture the facts can be is clearly seen in a hoard from Basra, recently published by Georges Le Rider.34 This extraordinary collection, of which he saw 507 pieces, begins with a 5th century Attic owl and ends with a tetradrachm of Attambelus I of Characene struck in 45/4 B.C . It includes 4 drachms and 159 tetradrachms of Alexander. Of these 93 are from the mint of Amphipolis (60 being of the series with ∧ and race torch from the beginning of the 3rd century);35 23 more are imitations of Amphipolis. There are only 2 from Tarsus and 7 from Babylon. Such a proportion could not possibly have been anticipated. Surely the mint of Babylon could have supplied money to Basra (it did in fact supply 11 lion staters) without anyone getting coins from Macedonia ! Yet though at present we are at a loss, the accumulation of evidence will in time certainly show us something of the movement of currency in the early Hellenistic world. We are not without some indications. We know that the kings were not as rich as Alexander had been.36 We know that they issued much less gold and much more bronze. We know that they modified his geographical arrangement of mints: Lysimachus was served by some which had never struck for Alexander, and the Seleucids pushed eastward to Bactria itself (Map 4), showing that whatever were the dispositions of Alexander there they could not be made permanent. But these were phenomena that lie beyond the limits of this study.

After the death of Demetrius no one had any illusions about the possibility of keeping the empire together, and even before that, at the death of Cassander in 297 or of his sons in 294, the uniform types as a symbol of imperial unity had been abandoned. It would seem that Heracles and the seated Zeus had come to the end of their career. But in fact they reappear, not in the service of the kings but in that of the cities. Indeed, their use now is a sign of independence of the kings.37 These issues as related phenomena have had the benefit so far of only one serious study: Henri Seyrig's article "Parion au 3e Siècle avant nôtre Ère"38 in which he considers the posthumous Alexanders of northern Asia Minor together with the posthumous imitations of the tetradrachms of Lysimachus coined after 281 on both sides of the Propontis and on the Thracian coasts. There are two distinct periods to which the Alexanders belong, clearly distinguished in appearance. As to the earlier I can do no better than quote Seyrig's summary. ''We have in Seleucid Asia two kinds of money. At Sardes the types are royal, the name of the ruling sovereign is habitual; civic symbols are absent, the issue is continuous, the likeness of the coins to those of the eastern mints reveals the imperial centralization. In the other towns, on the contrary, the pieces have the traditional types of Alexander the Great, the name of the ruling sovereign is absent, the use of civic symbols is habitual, the issues are of limited importance. In other words, the coins of Sardes testify to immediate royal control while those of the other towns show no trace of it. The fact is that Sardes, the ancient capital, was left by Alexander under its Lydian laws and depended directly on the royal authority, while the other towns were Greek cities. The coins show, therefore, that the administrative capital in the first half of the 3rd century was still subject, while Seleucus had given the Greek cities a status which respected certain attributes of sovereignty."39

After the death of Antiochus I, however, the royal power encroached on this sovereignty, whatever its nature, and royal types reappear in various cities. This was the situation until the death of Antiochus Hierax in 229/8. There followed another period of quasi-independence under the friendly protection of Attalus I of Pergamum. This was celebrated in many towns by the issuance of Alexander type tetradrachms with low relief and very large flans. I illustrate one such from the mint of Myrina, Müller 934 (PLATE III, 10). On these, as on the earlier series, the symbols and monograms identify the issuing town, and they must be regarded as civic, not as royal issues. I have endeavored to put both series into their context in the case of Alexandria Troas.40

Seyrig observes, as to the earlier posthumous series, "the issues are of limited importance," and that would seem to be still more true of the later ones. They are, in fact, analogous to the civic types, also struck on large flans, whose explanation, I am convinced, is sentimental rather than economic. I have discussed this matter at length in regard to the tetradrachms of Ilium41 and I need not repeat the argument here. It is clear how wide a difference there is between these rare pieces and the great Macedonian issues which, more than a century before, financed the campaigns of Alexander.

There is no study comparable to Seyrig's for other districts and I will not embark on the complicated problems involved except by way of illustration. Coins are known, for example, certainly attributable to Miletus, Müller 1043 (PLATE III, 11) and to Rhodes, Müller 1160 (PLATE III, 12). These evidently contemporary series are confidently dated in the old catalogues to the period after the battle of Magnesia 190 B.C .42 But Head supposes that all the Alexanders of Miletus, Müller 1033-1057, belong to the same period, whereas Newell 43 puts Müller 1054 "about the first quarter of the third century B.C." and Seyrig44 thinks that most of the posthumous Alexanders ceased at the battle of Magnesia and that their attribution to the second century is very doubtful. There were exceptions: dated Alexander tetradrachms from Aradus go as late as 171 B.C .,45 and the series from Odessus in Thrace belongs to the 1st century B.C .46 Some comparative work is obviously called for here. The Peloponnesian specimens also invite and deserve investigation. In publishing the Olympia Hoard Newell called attention to the presence of some of those rare varieties and offered comments on them which were intended as only preliminary observations.47 Since then the publication of Noe's Sicyon has given us new information about that mint without altogether settling the questions raised by Olympia,48 and a hoard from Megalopolis has produced three Alexanders from that city, contributing a few more details of uncertainty.49 Someone should have the courage to go through the fragmentary history of Hellenistic Greece and try to discover whether the Alexanders belong to connected episodes or to independent ones and how they relate to the autonomous coinage.

The need for more systematic study of the posthumous Alexanders is really part of a much larger one: the need for more attention to the relation of one Greek mint with another. The study of Greek issues city by city has, of course, been a first necessity and has not yet been completed by any means. Nevertheless, the independence of Greek towns, important as it is, must not obscure the fact that their careers were parallel and that the fiscal fabric of antiquity must be judged by coincidences as well as by consequences. But that subject far transcends the concern of these essays which is only a single aspect of a picture almost infinitely complex. If we pursue the types of the Macedonian king into a period so long succeeding his death we may as well acknowledge that we are moved by sentiment as well as by science, and perhaps the best illustration that can be found of his place in the imagination of later generations is the fact that from 92 to 88 B.C. the Roman governors of a conquered Macedonia could find no fitter type for the coins they struck than the head of Alexander the Great (Plate III, 13).

End Notes

1
Demanhur 1637 with the same symbols as the Alexander issue, 1635. The coin is in the British Museum and seems to be unique. It is an odd piece with ΒΑΣιΛΕΩΣ upside down in the exergue.
2
Ibid., 4526–4609. This is the only mint that gives the impression of having coined more for Philip than for Alexander.
3
The few pertinent facts about Philip are to be found in Diodorus XVIII, XIX, sometimes confirmed by other sources. They may be summarized as follows:
323 The infantry supported him for the kingship. He was made king and his name changed from Arrhidaeus to Philip. (Diodorus XVIII. 2. 2–4).
322 Perdiccas took him on campaign to Cappodocia (16.1). After the defeat of Ariarathes they campaigned in Pisidia (22.1).
321 After the death of Perdiccas, Pithon and Arrhidaeus were elected regents and guardians of the kings (36. 7). At the conference of Triparadeisos, because of the interference of Eurydice, the guardians resigned and Antipater was elected in their place (39.1–4). He took the kings back to their fatherland, Macedonia (39.7).
319 On his death bed Antipater appointed Polyperchon regent and guardian (48. 4). Polyperchon invited Olympias to return from Epirus to take charge of Alexander's son until he should be of age (49. 4, 57. 3). Eumenes in Asia supported the kings against Anti-gonus (57. 3, 4).
318 On Eumenes' advice Olympias decided to stay in Epirus (58. 2–4). Polyperchon supported Eumenes by authority of the kings (58. 1, 59. 3, 62. 1, 2). Polyperchon and the kings were in Phocis. When Cassander came to the Piraeus Polyperchon moved into Attica but presently left part of the army with his son Alexander while he went to the Peloponnesus (68. 2, 3).
317 Eurydice assumed the regency (XIX. 11.1) (and transferred the command from Polyperchon to Cassander. Justin XIV. 5.1–3). Polyperchon, in alliance with Aeacides of Epirus brought Olympias with Alexander's son back to the kingdom (11. 2). Eurydice's army deserted her at sight of Olympias; Philip and Eurydice were captured and killed (11. 2–7).
We may suppose that Eurydice's activity caused the change of affairs between 318 and 317.
At once after the settlement of the question about the kingship the satrapies were dealt out, and there was a second distribution in 321 at the conference of Triparadeisus. From the point of view of the control of mint cities the result was very strangely proportioned. A full discussion of the satrapies will be found in Bervé's Alexanderreich I, pp. 221-290, but since not all of them contained mint cities we may abbreviate the lists to deal only with those which did. (I give merely mints whose position is fairly sure).
Macedonia and Greece. Antipater
Amphipolis
Pella
Hellespontine Phrygia. 1. Leonnatus 2. Arrhidaeus
Lampsacus
Abydus
Lydia. 1. Menander 2. Cleitus
Sardes
Teos
Colophon
Caria. Asander
Magnesia
Miletus
Patnphylia, Lycia and Greater Phrygia. Antigonus
Side
Cilicia. 1. Philotas 2. Philoxenus
Tarsus
In the earlier year both the kings were with Polyperchon in Phocis. He apparently did not take them with him to the Peloponnesus, where his failure to capture Megalopolis injured his reputation and induced most of the Greek states to desert him for his rival Cassander. It will have been at this time that Eurydice (who may have come back to Macedonia in 321 with the kings) achieved her coup d'état which must have been accompanied by the return of Philip to Macedonia and the flight of Alexander to his grandmother in Epirus. (Miss Macurdy believes that Roxane and Alexander IV stayed in Macedonia, Grace H. Macurdy, "Roxane and Alexander IV in Epirus," JHS 1932, 256-261). The role of Polyperchon is not quite clear. He generally speaks and acts in the name of "the kings," making no distinction between them, but when he invited Olympias to return to Macedonia to take care of "Alexander's son" he can hardly have believed that the result would be to Philip's advantage. For a long time he did not persuade her that it would be to hers either. There are two strange reappearances of Philip's name: on a tetradrachm of Marathus struck about 301, WSM, p. 195, no. 1241; and on a stater from an uncertain mint which must be even later in date, WSM, p. 373, no. 1688, Seyrig, "Parion au 3e Siècle," Centennial Publication of the American Numismatic Society, New York City, 1958, pp. 622f.
4
Diodorus XVIII. 37. 3, 4.
5
Ibid., 52. 7.
6
Ibid., 58. 1; 59. 3. Plutarch, Eumenes 13. 1 says that the letter came from Polyperchon and King Philip.
7
Diodorus XVIII. 62. 1, 2.
8
Thompson and Bellinger, pp. 30f.
9
HN, p. 228.
10
Newell, Demetrius, pp. 14f, n.1.
11
The early currency of Lysimachus is still a mystery. He cannot possibly have been without money from 323 to 308. He certainly used the Alexander types but as yet no city has been identified where he could have struck them. He may simply have had some arrangement with Antipater which allowed him to use the output of Amphipolis. It does seem odd that in 319 the kings, for whose needs the Macedonian mines ought to have been ample, should have to import money from Cilicia (above, n. 5). But an amicable division of coin between Lysimachus and Cassander does not seem likely.
12
Thompson and Bellinger, p. 11.
13
ESM, pp. 12-14.
14
WSM, pp. 316-318, nos. 1528-1535.
15
E.g., Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, ESM, pp. 23-25, nos. 29-41.
16
E.g., Susa, ESM, pp. 113f., nos. 300-302.
17
ESM, p. 116, nos. 309-313.
18
ESM, p. 177, nos. 485f., p. 178, no. 491, p. 179, nos. 494f.
19
The case is not so clear for Demetrius. There are instances in Newell's catalogue where Alexanders in gold and silver appear to follow the introduction of Demetrius' own types, Demetrius, p. 25, no. 19, p. 66, no. 59. But these might come at the beginning of their respective groups instead of at the end. The same is true of the tetradrachms from an uncertain mint, p. 74, no. 63. Newell suggests, to be sure, that some Alexanders were struck at Sicyon, Demetrius, p. 146 and Noe believes that they are to be recognized in his Group III, Sicyon, pp. 28f., but this can hardly be regarded as proved.
20
There is an enlarged drawing in Newell, "Nikokles, King of Paphos," NC 1919, pp. 64f. and an enlarged photograph used as a frontispiece for Sawyer McA. Mosser, The Endicott Gift of Greek and Roman Coins (NNM 97), 1941.
21
"The Alexander Coinage of Nikokles of Paphos," NC 1952, pp. 1-15.
22
"Some Cypriote Alexanders," NC 1915, pp. 310f., 315f.
23
Above, p. 53.
24
"Aspeisas, Satrap of Susiana," NC 1921, pp. 37f.
25
ESM, p. 107; Bellinger, "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos," p. 45.
26
A similar case, under Alexander, is that of Balacrus of Cilicia, above, The King's Finances, n. 177.
27
One specimen in Berlin. ZfN 1875, pp. 126, 285; BMC, Peloponnesus, p. xlvii. There is now a specimen in the ANS.
28
IV. I, p. 587.
29
IV. 142. b.
30
BMC, Peloponnesus, Pl. XXIV. 1. There is no inscription but ΛΑ.
31
On psychological grounds this is harder to explain than the use of Alexander types on the posthumous civic coins which troubles Kleiner so much.
32
Not completely, of course. It occurs frequently in the Peloponnesus: Newell, Alexander Hoards IV Olympia (NNM 39), 1929; Oscar E. Ravel, "Corinthian Hoard from Chiliomodi," Transactions of the International Numismatic Congress, 1936, pp. 98-108; David M. Robinson, "The Alexander Hoard of Megalopolis," MN IV, 1950, pp. 13-28.
33
"An Alexander Hoard from Byblos," pp. 47-49.
34
"Monnaies de Characène," Syria 1959, pp. 240-250.
35
The assignment of this series to Uranopolis in SNG Copenhagen is an error. It comes just before the issues of Demetrius from Amphipolis in 294, Demetrius, p. 102, notes 1-3.
36
Antigonus was assiduous in his search for funds. When somebody said "Alexander wasn't like that" he replied "Of course not. He was reaping Asia. I am gathering straw." Plutarch, Sayings of Kings 182 A.
37
It is this use of types as a declaration of independence which Kleiner feels would have been sentimentally unlikely, if not impossible, if they were associated in the minds of the users with the early days of Alexander and the destruction of Thebes. But the Greek world had been using Alexander's types for a great many years without any sign of hurt susceptibilities.
38
Centennial Publication of the American Numismatic Society, New York City, 1958, pp. 603-625.
39
Op. cit., pp. 620f.
40
Troy. The Coins. Supplementary Monograph No. 2, Princeton, 1961, pp. 82, 92f.
41
"The First Civic Tetradrachms of Ilium," MN 1958, pp. 11-24.
42
BMC, Ionia, p.l, BMC, Caria, Cos, Rhodes, p. cix.
43
Demetrius, p. 59.
44
Op. cit., p. 623.
45
HN, p. 789.
46
Behrendt Pick and Kurt Regling, Die Antiken Münzen von Dacien und Moesien, Berlin, 1910, pp. 534-540.
47
Olympia, pp. 19, 20.
48
Sicyon, p. 35, III.
49
"The Alexander Hoard of Megalopolis," MN 1950, pp. 13-28.

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

The following list is intended to serve a restricted purpose: to give a chronological framework for the years while Alexander's types were being issued by the Conqueror and his successors, and to mention some of the events which may be of importance for the understanding of those issues. Of course, it is not a history of the period, which would include much material foreign to this inquiry. Such histories are available in Vol. VI of the Cambridge Ancient History; Karl Julius Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, ed. 2, Vols. III-IV, Berlin, 1924-1927; Gustave Glotz, Pierre Roussel and Robert Cohen, Histoire grecque, Vol. IV, Part I, Alexandre et le Démembrement de son Empire, Paris, 1938; M. L. W. Laistner, A History of the Greek World from 479 to 323 B.C ., London, 1936, and M. Cary, A History of the Greek World from 323 to 146 B.C., 2nd ed. London, 1951. Lists of special studies may be found in the bibliographies of these works, though many have appeared since their publication which must be sought for in the periodicals.

Under each entry I have set a reference to the ancient source. In the interests of brevity I have generally given one reference only, though the event may be attested in a number of places, since it is the fact and not its interpretation which is important to us; when there are more references than one it is because the second provides some important information which the first does not. The commonest ancient Greek chronological system is the list of eponymous archons of Athens. I have used the archon years, indicating closer dating only when some evidence is given in the source.

The only continuous ancient account that we have is that of Diodorus of Sicily whose Greek Bibliotheca Historica, in 40 books, was written under Caesar and Augustus. Books XVII-XX, which deal with our period, are preserved complete. The work is invaluable but very fallible; the author used good sources and used them assiduously, but his power of organization was not equal to the demands of constructing a world history. He was not unaware of the seriousness of the difficulties, and in XX. 43. 7 he makes apology for history which cannot present simultaneously simultaneous events. But his attempt to combine episodic treatment with a chronological reckoning by Roman consuls (who took office in January) and Attic archons (who took office in July) has led to great confusion which the ingenuity of modern scholarship has not wholly dispelled, and never will. Nevertheless, I have followed their conclusions— fortunately fairly harmonious for this period—as best I could, and have not indicated the places where I depart from his chronology. Nor have I called attention to his errors as to consuls and archons. To have argued the justification for these deviations would have occupied a quite unreasonable amount of space, and might not have been convincing in the end.1 The chronology here presented may be called reasonably orthodox at the present time. There is a Loeb Library text and translation of Diodorus XVIII-XX by Russel M Geer: Vol. IX, 1929; Vol. X, 1933.

For the lifetime of Alexander a more reliable source is The Anabasis of Alexander written by Arrian in Greek in the 2nd century A.D. His subject was more limited than that of Diodorus and his historical sense better, and most of what we need to know is in his pages. His special study of India is printed as Book VIII of the Loeb Anabasis by E. Iliff Robson: Vol. 1,1954; Vol. II, 1949. Arrian also wrote a continuation, τimage μ∊τimage ΑλέξανδρΟν, Post Alexandrum, which is excerpted in the Bibliotheca of Photius. The Greek text is published in Felix Jacoby's Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker II, Berlin, 1929, no. 156. There is an English translation in J. H. Freese, The Library of Photius, Vol.1 (no more published), London and New York City, 1920, XCII, pp. 159-167.

The History of Alexander by Quintus Curtius, a Latin work of uncertain date, while it gives more extended accounts of many episodes, provides no reliable data of importance not given by the two preceding authors, and is not cited here. More useful are two other Greek works: the Parallel Lives of Plutarch, and the Geography of Strabo. The former is a series of biographies of notable Greeks and Romans written in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. They are ethical in purpose and do not confine themselves to the use of impeccable sources, but the lives of Alexander, Eumenes and Demetrius preserve some significant facts not given elsewhere. Strabo published his monumental Geography about 7 B.C. He sometimes furnishes us with special information about places connected with Alexander.

The sparse references to other authors and to inscriptions should not mislead the reader into supposing that the scattered evidence for this period is slight. On the contrary, it is abundant, but very little of it provides otherwise unknown events for such a list as this.

It will be seen that our main authorities are far later than their subjects and though that has little importance for this study, for general historical purposes it is important to know where they got their information and how they used it. A characteristically brilliant analysis of the sources for Alexander is to be found in W. W. Tarn's Alexander the Great, Cambridge, 1948, Vol. II, pp. 1-133, while Beloch's much briefer "Quellen und Literatur," Vol. IV, Part 2, pp. 1-19, deals also, to some extent, with modern works as well as with ancient. Lionel Pearson's book, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great, Philological Monographs XX, American Philological Association, 1960, which appeared too late for me to use extensively, will be found to contain a great deal of valuable criticism.

The composition of the list—the decision which items to include and which to exclude—has been difficult and has certainly been imperfect. Something of the kind has already been done in the "Zeittafeln" of Beloch, Vol. Ill, Part 2, pp. 450-464 and Vol. IV, Part 2, pp. 623-639, which I have found very helpful, but those were not devised to serve our special need. Since we are concerned with the striking of coins, the basic question is: who was in control of a certain territory at a certain time? Generally the answer bears on the operation of particular mints, but sometimes it is important to know that a ruler controlled such-and-such a place but did not operate a mint there. When we know the location of a mint—as we do of the most important ones—we can follow its history and fortunes so far as the sources give us information, which is not as complete as one could wish. There are others, to be sure, not yet exactly located, as to which there is perhaps more to be known than we realize, and future scholars may wish that this or that piece of information had been included. But it is not my purpose here to record every mention of every place that has or may have connection with a mint. I am trying to give more general guidance, and since the decision that an item is worth citing must be a subjective one, I cannot hope that the reader's judgment will always coincide with mine. I have omitted, with entire confidence, all reference to Italy, Sicily, and to Cyrene after its first surrender to Alexander. I have omitted, with less feeling of certainty, affairs in Epirus, Aetolia and the barbarian countries of Asia lying outside the empire. I do not believe that any of these produced Alexander coins during the period treated—but I may turn out to have been mistaken.

Since others besides Alexander struck his types and name it has been necessary to carry the entries down beyond the date of his death. But as posthumous Alexanders appear very much later I have had to set a terminus, and the one selected has been the battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C . when Antigonus died, who was that one of Alexander's marshals who clung most tenaciously to the hope of himself controlling all the empire, and who never issued gold or silver except with the traditional types and names. Later revivals, by younger rulers, are brief and intermittent phenomena for which a complete chronology is not so necessary. The list might have been continued to the death of Cassander in 297, for Cassander also never issued his own types in the noble metals, but the portion of Diodorus which is complete ends with the 20th book, just before Ipsus, and thereafter the materials for an outline are even less satisfactory than before. It has seemed wise to deal with later issues separately without trying to work them into an historic scheme.

The abbreviations used are A for Arrian, D for Diodorus, P for Plutarch, S for Strabo.

365/5 Elpines archon

End of July 356 Birth of Alexander

P. Alexander 3.3 6 Hekatombaion "which the Macedonians call Loos"2

336/5 Pythodelos archon

Accession of Alexander

A. I. 1. 1 Pythodelos (mss. Pythodemos) archon

Alexander about 20

D. XVII. 2. 1 Euainetos archon (D's archon list is unreliable) presumably at the beginning of the Attic year, since it is the first event mentioned under that archon-ship

Congress of Corinth. Alexander elected general of the war against Persia. Sparta hostile A. I 1. 2

Spring 335 Expedition against the northern barbarians

A. I. 1. 4-6. 11. In the spring he went toward Thrace

335/4 Euainetos archon

Oct. 8-12, 335 Revolt and destruction of Thebes

A. I. 7. 1-10. 6

P. Camillus 19. 6. At the time of the Mysteries

Early spring 334 March to the Hellespont

A. I. 11. 3. At the beginning of spring

Alexander at Ilium

A. I. 11. 7-12. 5

(S. XIII. 1. 26 puts the visit after the Granicus)

March to the Granicus

A. I. 12.6. Arisbe, Percote, passing Lampsacus and Colonae, Hermotos

Priapus surrendered

A. I. 12. 7

May 15-June 14, Battle of the Granicus

334 A. I. 13. 1-16.7

P. Alexander 16. 1-8. Daisios

P. Camillus 19. 4. Thargelion

Capture of Dascylium by Parmenio A. I. 17. 1

Surrender of Sardis

A. I. 17. 3

334/3 Ktesikles archon

Capture of Ephesus

A. I. 17. 10-13. There is no indication of the month so that this may have taken place at the end of Euainetos' year

Surrender of Magnesia and Tralles

A. I. 18. 1

Reduction of the towns of Aeolis and Ionia A. I. 18.1

Aug. 334 Capture of Priene

Hiller von Gaertringen, Inschriften von Priene, Berlin, 1906, no. 2, Metageitnion 2

Capture of Miletus

A. I. 18. 3-19. 6

Dittenberger, Sylloge,3 no. 272. Alexander eponymous 334/3

Capture of cities between Miletus and Halicarnassus

A. I. 20. 2

Beginning of the siege of Halicarnassus

A. I. 20. 2

Appointment of Ada as Satrap of Caria

A. I. 23. 7

Conquest of the Lycian and Pamphylian coast: Hyparna, Telmissus, Pinara, Xanthus, Patara

A. I. 24. 4

Mid-winter 334/3 Campaign in the Milyas mountains

A. I. 24. 5. Mid-winter

Surrender of Phaselis

A. I. 24. 5

Capture of Perga

A. I. 26. 1

Surrender of Aspendus

A. I. 26. 2, 3; 27. 1-4

Capture of Side

A. I. 26. 4, 5

Siege of Termessus

A. I. 27. 5-28. 1

Capture of Sagalassus

A. I. 28. 2-8

Surrender of Celaenae

A. I. 29. 1, 2

Reunion with Parmenio at Gordium

A. I. 29. 3, 4

333/2 Nikokrates archon

March from Gordium to Ancyra

A. II. 4. 1. There is no indication of the month, so that this may have taken place at the end of Ktesikles' year

Surrender of the Paphlagonians

A. II. 4. 1

Conquest of much of Cappadocia

A. II. 4. 2

March to the Cilician Gates

A. II. 4. 4

Persian desertion of Tarsus and Alexander's entry

A. II. 4. 5, 6

Occupation of Anchialus

A. II. 5. 2

Occupation of Soli

A. II. 5. 5

Campaign in the Cilician mountains

A. II. 5. 6

News of the capture of Halicarnassus, Myndus, Cannus, Thera, Callipolis, Cos and Triopium

A. II. 5. 7

Occupation of Mallus

A. II. 5. 9

Abortive rising of Agis of Sparta. Crete held by Spartan mercenaries

A. II. 13. 4-6

Nov. 333 Victory at Issus

A. II. 7.1-11. 10. Nikokrates archon. Maimakterion

Capture of Damascus by Parmenio

A. II. 11. 10

March to Phoenicia

A. II. 13. 7

Surrender of Aradus, Marathus, Sigon and Mariamne

A. II. 13. 7, 8

Surrender of Byblus and Tripolis

A. II. 15. 6

Surrender of Sidon

Curtius IV. 1. 15-26

Jan.-July 332 Siege of Tyre

A. II. 17. 1-24. 6. Tyre captured in Hekatombaion in the archonship of Niketes. Hekatombaion 1 = July 22

P. Alexander 24. 3. Siege of seven months

Surrender of the kings of Cyprus during the siege

A. II. 20. 3

Campaign in Antilebanon during the siege

A. II. 20. 4, 5

332/1 Niketes archon

Sept.-Oct. 332 Siege of Gaza

A. II. 26. 1-27. 7

D. XVII. 48. 7. Siege of two months

Invasion of Egypt

A. III. 1. 1-5

Founding of Alexandria

A. III. 2. 1, 2

Submission of Cyrene

D. XVII. 49. 2

Spring 331 Departure from Egypt

A. III. 6. 1. At the beginning of spring

Spartan victory over Macedonians in the Peloponnesus Aeschines, Against Ktesiphon 165

331/0 Aristophanes archon

July-Aug. 331 Crossing of the Euphrates at Thapsacus

A. III. 7. I. Hekatombaion

Sept. 331 Crossing of the Tigris

A. III. 7.5

Sept. 20, 331 Eclipse of the moon

A. III. 7. 6

P. Alexander 31. 4, Boedromion

Oct. 1. 331 Battle of Gaugamela

A. III. 8. 1-15. 7. Aristophanes archon. Pyanepsion (in error)

P. Alexander 31. 4. On the nth day following the eclipse

P. Camillus 19. 3. Boedromion 25

Spartans beaten at Megalopolis

D. XVII. 63

Surrender of Babylon

A. III. 16. 3, 4

Stay of over 30 days in Babylon

D. XVII. 64. 4

Surrender of Susa

A. III. 16. 6, 7. Journey of 20 days

Conquest of Persis

A. III. 17. 1-18. 10

Jan.-May 330 Stay in Persepolis

P. Alexander 37. 3. He spent four months there3

Conquest of Paraetacae

A. III. 19. 2

Arrival at Ecbatana

A. III. 19. 5

Conquest of Hyrcania

A. III. 19. 7

March to Rhagae

A. III. 20. 2

330/29 Aristophon archon

July 33° Death of Darius

A. III. 22. 2.

Aristophon archon. Hekatombaion

March to Zadracarta

A. III. 23. 6-25. 1

Campaign in Parthia and Aria

A. III. 25. 1, 2

Bessus proclaimed king in Bactria

A. III. 25. 3

Revolt and reduction of Aria

A. III. 25. 5, 6

Foundation of Alexandria in Aria

Pliny, Natural History VI, 92, 93. The date is not given

Execution of Philotas and Parmenio

A. III. 26. 1-4

Reduction of Drangiana and Gedrosia

A. III. 28. 1

Conquest of the Arachoti

A. III. 28. 1

Mid Nov. 330 Through the Paropamisadae to the Caucasus (Hindu Kush)

S. XV. 2. 10. At the setting of the Pleiades Foundation of Alexandria A. III. 28. 4

Spring 329 Crossing the Hindu Kush

A. III. 28. 9.

Deep snow Capture of Aornos and Bactra

A. III. 29. 1

Capture of Bessus

A. III. 30. 3-5

Late spring 329 Reduction of seven Bactrian strongholds

A. IV. 2. 1-3. 5.

The winter water courses were low

Foundation of Alexandria Eschata

A. IV. 1. 3; 4. 1

Pliny K. H. VI. 49

329/8 Kephisophon archon

Victory over the Scythians across the Tanais

a. IV. 4. 1-9

Defeat by Spitamenes and Scythian allies

A.IV.5.2-6.5

Winter 329/8 Winterquartersat Zariaspa(Bactra)

A.IV.7.1

Campaign in Sogdiana

A. IV. 15. 7-17. 7. As there are no indications of dates or duration, I have assumed that the campaign occupied all the time from the winter of 329/8 to that of 328/7

328/7 Euthykritos archon

Campaign in Sogdiana

A. IV. 15. 7.1-17.17

Winter 328/7 Winter quarters in Nautaca

A. IV. 18. 2

Spring 327 Reduction of the Rock of Sogdiana

A. IV. 18. 4-19. 4. The beginning of spring

Marriage of Alexander and Roxane

A. IV. 19. 5

Surrender of the Rock of Chorienes in Paraetacene

A. IV. 21. 1-10

Summer 327 Crossing the mountains to India

A. IV. 22. 3. When spring was over

S. XV. 1.17. After the setting of the Pleiades

327/6 Hegemon archon

Alliance with the king of Taxila

A. IV. 22. 6. Taxiles

D. XVII. 86. Mophis, Taxiles' son and successor

Conquest of the country to the

Indus A. IV, 24.1-30. 9

Winter 327/6 Winter quarters in the mountains

S. XV. 1. 17

Spring 326 Descent into the plain

S. XV. 1. 17. At the beginning of spring

Crossing the Indus and arrival at Taxila

A. V. 7.1-8. 3

Apr. 326 March to the Hydaspes

A. V. 8. 3

S. XV. I. 17. The first rain at Taxila. Hogarth, Philip and Alexander of Macedon, London, 1897, p. 293

Apr.-May 326 Victory over Porus

A. V. 8. 4-19. 3. Hegemon archon. Munychion. Hogarth, 1. c, who will not use Arrian's dates by months, puts the battle in mid-summer on the basis of indications of weather in S. XV. 1. 17

Foundations of Nicaea and Bucephela

A. V. 19. 4

Campaign against the younger Porus

A. V. 20. 1-24. 8

Capture and destruction of Sangala

A. V. 24. 4-8

Refusal of the army to cross the Hyphasis

A. V. 28. 1-4

326/5 Chremes archon

Return to the Hydaspes

A. V. 29.1-3

Early Nov. 326 Start down the river

A. VI. 3.1-5

S. XV. I. 17. A few days before the setting of the Pleiades

Hogarth, p. 293

Campaign against the Malli

A. VI. 6. 1-11. 2

Revolt in Bactria and Sogdiana

D. XVII. 99. 5

325/4 Antikles archon

Early Aug. 325 Arrival at Pattala

A. VI. 17. 5

S. XV. 1.17. At about the time of the rising of the Dog

Star; the trip took 10 months

P. Alexander 66. 1. The trip took 7 months. This would agree better with the meteorological data

Hogarth, p. 294, n. 1

Departure from Pattala

A. VI. 21. 3

Sept. 325 Departure of Nearchus with the fleet

A. Indica 21. 1. Kephisodoros archon (in error) Boedromion 20

March through Gedrosia and Carmania

A. VI. 21. 3-28. 4

News of the murder of the Satrap of India

A. VI. 27. 2

Meeting of Alexander and Nearchus

A. VI. 28. 5

Arrival at Pasagardae

A. VI. 29. 1-11

Arrival at Persepolis

A. VI. 30. 1-3

Arrival at Susa

A. VII. 4. 1

Flight of Harpalus

D. XVII. 108.6. On the chronology of the flight of Harpalus see E. Badian "Harpalus" JHS 1961, pp. 42f.

Arrival of Nearchus at Susa

A. VII. 5. 6

Mutiny at Opis

A. VII. 8. 1-11. 9

324/3 Hegesias archon

July 324 Decree restoring the exiles sent to Greece

D. XVII. 109. 1. Read at the Olympic Games

Stay in Ecbatana

A. VII. 14. 1

Conquest of the Cossaeans

A. VII. 15. 1-3

Arrival at Babylon

A. VII. 16. 5

June 13, 323 Death of Alexander

A. VII. 28. 1. Hegesias archon. Age 32 years, 8 months Reign 12 years, 8 months

P. Alexander 76. 4. Daesius 28 according to the Ephemerides

P. op. cit., 75. 4. Daesius 30 according to Aristobulus

323/2 Kephisodoros archon

Compromise of the generals: Philip Arrhidaeus king; Perdiccas regent

D. XVIII. 2. 1-4. Kephisodorus archon

Division of the satrapies and offices

D. XVIII. 3.1-5

Aug. 323 Birth of Alexander, son of Roxane; made king with Philip

A. Post Alexandrum FGH 156. 1. 9

Justin XIII. 2. 5

Revolt of the Greeks in the eastern provinces and its suppression

D. XVIII. 4. 8; 7.1-9

Expulsion of the Macedonian garrison by Rhodes

D. XVIII. 8. 1

Beginning of the Lamian war against Antipater

D. XVIII. 9. 1-11. 5

Drawn battle in Thrace between Lysimachus and Seuthes

D. XVIII. 14. 2-4

Reinforcement of Antipater

D. XVIII. 14. 4, 5

Raising of the siege of Lamia; retirement of Antipater

D. XVIII. 15.1-7

Perdiccas' conquest of Cappadocia

D. XVIII. 16. 1-3

March 322 Macedonian naval victory at Amorgus

Parian Chronicle. Kephisodorus archon

T. Walek "Operations navales pendant la Guerre lamia-que" Revue de Philologie 1924, pp. 27f.

322/1 Philokles archon

Aug. 6, 322 Antipater's victory at Crannon

D. XVIII. 17. 1-5

P. Camillus 19. 5. Mategeitnion 7

Sept. 18 Macedonian garrison in Athens

D. XVIII. 18. 5, 6

P. Camillus 19. 6 Boedromion 20

Ptolemy's annexation of Cyrene

D. XVIII. 21. 9

Spring 321 Death of Craterus in battle with Eumenes in Asia Minor

D. XVIII. 30. 1-32. 4

Assassination of Perdiccas on campaign against Ptolemy

D. XVIII. 33.1-36. 7

321/0 Archippos archon

Surrender of Tyre to Attalus, Perdiccas' brother-in-law

D. XVIII. 37. 3, 4

Redistribution of offices at Triparadeisos in Syria

Antipater the kings' guardian

D. XVIII. 39. 5-7

Return of Antipater with the kings to Macedonia

D. XVIII. 39. 7

A. Post Alexandrum FGH 156.11. 45

Winter 321/0 Eumenes in winter quarters at Celaenae

P. Eumenes 8. 4

320/19 Neachmos archon

Victory of Antigonus over Eumenes at Orcynii in Cappadocia

D. XVIII. 40. 6-8

P. Eumenes 9. 2

Eumenes besieged in Nora in Cappadocia

D. XVIII. 41. 1

Antigonus' campaign in Pisidia

D. XVIII. 44. 1-47. 5

319/8 Apollodoros archon

Death of Antipater. Polyperchon the kings' guardian

Cassander second in command

D. XVIII. 48. 4, 5

Raising of the siege of Nora

D. XVIII. 53. 5.

The siege lasted a year Conquest of Syria by Ptolemy

D. XVIII. 43. 1, 2

Parian Chronicle. Apollodoros archon

Antigonus' conquests in Asia Minor

D. XVIII. 52. 5, 8

Edict of freedom for the Greek cities issued by Polyperchon in the name of the kings

D. XVIII. 56.1-8

Eumenes' levy against Antigonus in Cilicia

D. XVIII. 61. 4, 5

War of the eastern satraps against Peithon

D. XIX. 14. 1-4

Occupation of the Peiraeus by Cassander

D. XVIII. 68. 1

Democratic governments reestablished in the Peloponnesus

D. XVIII. 69. 3, 4

Polyperchon's unsuccessful siege of Megalopolis

D. XVIII. 70. 1-72. 1

318/7 Archippos archon

Command of the sea won by Antigonus

D. XVIII. 72. 2-9

Adhesion of the cities of Greece to Cassander

D. XVIII. 74. 1

March east of Eumenes, followed by Antigonus

D. XVIII. 73. 1, 2

Winter 318/7 Their winter quarters in Mesopotamia

D. XIX. 12.1; 15.6

Hostility of Seleucus to Eumenes

D. XIX. 12. 1-13. 5

Junction of Eumenes with the eastern satraps

D. XIX. 14. 4-15. 1

317/6 Demogenes archon

Alliance of Antigonus, Seleucus, and Peithon

D. XIX. 17. 2

July 317 Victory of Eumenes over Antigonus at the Cophrates river

D. XIX. 18. 1-7. The time of the Dog Star's rising

Sept. 317 Killing of Philip III by Olympias

D. XIX. 11. 5. He had reigned 6 years, 4 months

Drawn battle between Antigonus and Eumenes in Paraeta-cene

D. XIX. 30. 1-31. 5; 34-7

Dec. 317 Battle in Gabiene. Betrayal and death of Eumenes

D. XIX. 37. 3; 42. 1-44. 2. About the time of the winter solstice

Antigonus' winter quarters in Media

D. XIX. 44. 4

Antigonus' execution of Peithon

D. XIX. 46. 1-4

Antigonus' distribution of the eastern satrapies

D. XIX. 48. 1-5

Cassander's capture of Pydna, Pella and Amphipolis

D. XIX. 50. 5-8

Founding of Cassandreia

D. XIX. 52. 2

Seleucus' flight from Antigonus to Ptolemy

D. XIX. 55.5; 56.1

316/5 Demokleides archon

Rebuilding of Thebes

D. XIX. 54. 1-3. In the 20th year after its destruction

Nov. 316 Antigonus' winter quarters in Cilicia

D. XIX. 56. 5. After the setting of Orion

Coalition of Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Cassander against Antigonus

D. XIX. 57. 2

Summer 315 Building of Antigonus' fleet in Phoenicia, Cilicia and Rhodes

D. XIX. 58.1-6. He planned to launch it "that same summer"

His capture of Joppa and Gaza

D. XIX. 59. 2

His successes in the Peloponnesus and Asia Minor

D. XIX. 60. 1-4

Edict of freedom for the cities of Greece

D. XIX. 61. 3

Beginning of the siege of Tyre

D. XIX. 61. 5

Counter-edict by Ptolemy

D. XIX. 62. 1

315/4 Praxiboulos archon

Campaigns in the Peloponnesus

D. XIX. 63. 1-64. 3

Alliance of Polyperchon's son Alexander with Cassander

D. XIX. 64. 4

Naval victory of Ptolemy's admiral Polycleitos

D. XIX. 64. 5-7

314/3 Nikodoros archon

Antigonus' capture of Tyre

D. XIX. 61. 5. The siege lasted a year and 3 months

Cassander's unsuccessful attempt to conquer Caria

D. XIX. 68. 5-7

Antigonus' march across the Taurus, leaving his son

Demetrius in Syria

D. XIX. 69. 1, 2

Winter 314/3 Antigonus' winter quarters at Celaenae

D. XIX. 69. 2

Lysimachus' victory over a coalition of cities, Thracians and Scythians D. XIX. 73.1-10

Successes of Antigonus' general Telesphoros in the Peloponnesus

D. XIX. 74. 1, 2

Antigonus' capture of Miletus, Tralles and Caunus

D. XIX. 74. 3-5

313/2 Theophrastos archon

Capture of Chalcis, Thebes and Phocian cities by Antigonus' general Ptolemaeus

D. XIX. 78. 2-5

Ptolemy's pacification of Cyprus and raids in Syria

D. XIX. 79. 4-7

Winter 313/2 Antigonus' winter quarters in Asia Minor

D. XIX. 77. 7

Spring 312 Defeat of Demetrius at Gaza by Ptolemy and Seleucus

D. XIX. 80. 5; 83. 3-84. 8. The troops were brought out of winter quarters

Recovery of Babylon by Seleucus

D. XIX. 90. 1-91. 5

His conquest of Susiane and Media

D. XIX. 92. 1-5

312/1 Polemon archon

Antigonus' recovery of Syria and Phoenicia

D. XIX. 93. 7-94, 1

Oct. 7, 312 Beginning of the Seleucid Era in Syria. Dios 1 = Pyanopsion 1

Apr. 3, 311 Beginning of the Seleucid Era in Babylonia. Nissanu 1 =

Munychion 2

Beloch IV. 2, pp. 50f.

Demetrius' raid on Babylon

D. XIX. 100. 5-7

Peace treaty of Antigonus with Cassander, Ptolemy and

Lysimachus; Seleucus not included

D. XIX. 105. 1

R. H. Simpson "The Historical Circumstances of the Peace of 311" JHS 1954, pp. 25-31

311/0 Simonides archon

War between Antigonus and Seleucus in Babylonia

CAE VI, p. 493

Founding of Seleucia-on-the-Tigris

Beloch IV. 1, p. 146, n. 2

310/09 Hieromnemon archon

Assassination of Roxane and Alexander IV by Cassander

D. XIX. 105. 2

Founding of Antigoneia in the Troad S. XIII. 1. 33

Louis Robert, Etudes de Numismatique grecque, Paris, 1951, PP-5f.

309/8 Demetrios of Phaleron archon

Alliance between Cassander and Polyperchon

D. XX. 28. 2, 3

Winter 309/8 Winter quarters of Polyperchon in Locris

D. XX. 28. 4

Founding of Lysimacheia

D. XX. 29. 1

Surrender of Corinth and Sicyon to Ptolemy

D. XX. 37. 2

Treaty between Ptolemy and Cassander in Greece

D. XX. 37. 2

308/7 Kairimos archon

June 11, 307 Freeing of Athens by Demetrius

P. Demetrius 8. 3. Thargelion 25

307/6 Anaxikrates archon

Taking and destruction of Munychia by Demetrius

D. XX. 45. 5-46. 1

Founding of Antigoneia-on-the-Orontes

D. XX. 47. 5

Naval victory of Demetrius over Ptolemy off Salamis in Cyprus

D. XX. 51. 1-52. 3

306/5 Koroibos archon

Taking of the title of king by Antigonus and Demetrius

D. XX. 53. 2

Oct.-Nov. 306 Failure of their expedition against Egypt

D. XX. 73. 1-76. 6. The time of the setting of the Pleiades

Beginning of Demetrius' siege of Rhodes

D. XX. 83. 1-88. 9

305/4 Euxenippos archon

Taking of the title of king by Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Seleucus and Cassander

Parian Chronicle between archons Koroibos and Pherekles

D. XX. 53. 3, 4

P. Demetrius 18.1,2 says that Cassander did not use the title on his letters; his bronze coins bear it, however, HN, p. 228

End of the siege of Rhodes. Treaty with Demetrius

D. XX. 99. 1-100. 01. The siege had lasted a year

304/3 Pherekles archon

Demetrius' campaign in central Greece

D. XX. 100. 6

His capture of Sicyon

D. XX. 102. 2

His capture of Corinth

D. XX. 103.1-3

His campaign in the Peloponnesus

D. XX. 103. 4-7

Revival of the Hellenic Confederacy at the Isthmus

P. Demetrius 25. 3

IG. IV. 1, 68

Treaty of Seleucus with Sandrokottos

Justin XV. 4. 20, 21

303/2 Leostratos archon

Alliance of Cassander, Lysimachus, Ptolemy and Seleucus against Antigonus

D. XX. 106. 2-5

Cassander's invasion of Thessaly

D. XX. 107. 1

Lysimachus' invasion of Asia

D. XX. 107. 2

Successful campaign of his general Prepalaus in Asia Minor

D. XX. 107. 3-5

302/1 Nikokles archon

Demetrius and Cassander stale-mated in Greece

D. XX. 110. 2-6

Demetrius' raids on the coast of Asia

D. XX. 111. 3

Antigonus' march north from Syria

D. XX. 108. 2, 3

Winter 302/1 Antigonus' and Lysimachus' winter quarters in Asia Minor

D. XX. 109. 4-6

Ptolemy's campaign in Syria

D. XX. 113. 1

301/0 Klearchos archon

Battle of Ipsus. Defeat and death of Antigonus

P. Demetrius 29. 3-5

End Notes

1
Beloch IV. 1, p. 134, n. "Natürlich gibt es immer Leute, denen der Buchstabe höher steht, als die Sache, sogar wenn es sich um Diodor handelt."
2
The Attic and Macedonian months are as follows:
Attic Macedonian
1. Hekatombaion (ca. July) 1. Dios (ca. October)
2. Metageitnion 2. Apellaios
3. Boedromion 3. Audenaios
4. Pyanopsion 4. Peritios
5. Maimakterion 5. Lystros
6. Posideion 6. Xanthikos
7. Gamelion 7. Artemisios
8. Anthesterion 8. Daisios
9. Elaphebolion 9. Panemos
10. Mounychion 10. Loos
11. Thargelion 11. Gorpiaios
12. Skirophorion 12. Hyperberetaios
3
This stay, not otherwise attested, but agreeing with Arrian's date for the death of Darius, creates a difficulty by allowing Alexander too little time to reach the Hindu Kush. C.A. Robinson, The Ephemerides of Alexander's Expedition, Providence. 1932, Appendix: "When did Alexander reach the Hindu Kush"? disposed of the problem by making Alexander leave Persis in March instead of in May. D. G. Hogarth, Philip and Alexander of Macedon, London, 1897, Appendix, pp. 288-305, settles it by supposing that he spent a winter in Drangiana (unrecorded) and that the two winter quarters recorded for Bactria were really one. W. W. Tarn, Cambridge Ancient History VI, p. 390, concludes that he did not go into winter quarters at all in 330/29. Since the question is of little importance for the present purpose, I repeat the dates in the sources without trying to resolve their contradiction.

BACK

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GENERAL WORKS

Ernest Babelon, Les Perses achéménides, Paris, 1893. Ernest Babelon, Les Rois de Syrie, Paris, 1890.

Ernest Babelon, Traité des Monnaies grecques et romaines. Part II, Vols. 1-4, Paris, 1907, 1910, 1914, 1932.

Helmut Berve, Das Alexanderreich auf Prosopographischer Grundlage, Munich, 1926.

Joseph Eckhel, Doctrina Ntimorum Veterum, Part I, Vol. 2, Vienna, 1839.

Hugo Gaebler, Die antiken Münzen von Makedonia und Paeonia II, Berlin, 1935.

Percy Gardner, A History of Ancient Coinage 700-300 B. C, Oxford, 1918.

Curt Gebaur, "Alexanderbildniss und Alexandertypus" Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Institut, Athenische Abteilung, 1938/9, pp. 1-106.

B. V. Head, Historia Nutnorum, Oxford, 1911.

G. F. Hill, Historical Greek Coins, London, 1906. Gerhard Kleiner, Alexanders Reichmünzen, Berlin, 1949.

L. Muller, Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand, Copenhagen, 1855.

E. T. Newell, The Coinage of the Eastern Seleucid Mints from Seleucus I to Antiochus III, New York City, 1938.

E. T. Newell, The Coinage of the Western Seleucid Mints from Seleucus I to Antiochus III, New York City, 1941.

E. T. Newell, The Coinages of Demetrius Poliorcetes, Oxford, 1927.

E. T. Newell, The Reattribution of Certain Alexander Tetradrachms, New York City, 1912.

E. T. Newell, Royal Greek Coin Portraits, New York City, 1937.

S. P. Noe, A Bibliography of Greek Coin Hoards, ed. 2, New York City, 1937.

Charles Seltman , Greek Coins, London 1933 and 1955.

MINTS

Abdera

Müller, pp. 155-157-

Abydus

Demetrius, p. 74, no. 63.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 16f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 150-158, 224-229.

Acanthus

Müller, p. 138.

Acroathon

Müller, p. 141.

Aegae

Müller, p. 310.

Aegina

Müller, pp. 225f.

Ake

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia" Nomisma IV, 1909, pp. 1-15.

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous" MN 1960, pp. 27f.

C. F. Lehmann, "Der erste syrische Krieg und die Weltlage um 275-272 v. Christ" Klio 1903, PP. 496-547, esp. pp. 51f., n. 4.

Müller, pp. 303f.

Demanhur, pp. 55f, 134-139, nos. 3769-3975.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phénice" JIAN 1901, pp. 193-232.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 177-178, 275-276.

Alabanda

Müller, pp. 257f.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 319.

Alexandria in Egypt G. K. Jenkins,

"An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 24.

Müller, pp. 319f.

Demanhur, pp. 64, 144-147, nos. 4610-4826.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 186-189, 299.

Alexandria Troas

Müller, pp. 236f.

WSM, p. 340. Cf. Seyrig, "Parion au 3e Siècle avant notre Ere," p. 622 and n. 82.

Amathus

Demanhur, pp. 44f., 108-110, nos. 2683-2714.

Amphipolis

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27. Müller, pp. 127-134.

Demetrius, p. 102.

Demanhur, pp. 26-32, 65-71, nos. 1-1582.

Kyparissia, pp. 9-11, 15-17, nos. 16-30.

Andritsaena, pp. 5-8, nos. 1-32.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 135-143, 195-203.

Antigoneia on the Orontes

WSM, pp. 84f, nos. 1-5.

Antioch in Caria

Müller, pp. 264-266.

Antioch in Pisidia

Müller, pp. 264-266.

Aphytis

Müller, pp. 142f.

Apollonia on Athos

Müller, p. 141.

Apollonia in Thrace

Müller, p. 180.

Aptera

Müller, p. 230.

Aradus

E. Babelon, "Aradus" RN 1891, pp. 283-314.

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 1-15.

J. G. Milne, "The Coinage of Aradus in the Hellenistic Period" Iraq V, 1938, pp. 12-21.

Müller, pp. 293-298.

Demanhur, pp. 50-52, 119-121, nos. 3269-3585.

Andritsaena, p. 12, nos. 63-67.

WSM, p. 192.

J. Rouvier, "Le Monnayage alexandrin d'Arados" RN 1900, pp. 36-52, 137-151.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies phéniciennes" NC 1877, pp. 177-239.

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 12, nos. 63-67.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 269-273.

Argos

Sicyon, p. 35.

S. P. Noe, "The Corinth Hoard of 1938" MN 1962, pp. 37-39.

Ascalon

C. F. Lehmann, "Der erste syrische Krieg und die Weltlage um 275-272 v. Christ," pp. 496-547, esp. p. 517, n. i.

Müller, pp. 308 f.

Aspendus

Müller, pp. 267-270.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 324-325.

Assus

Müller, pp. 237f.

Astypalaea

Müller, p. 261.

Atarnea

Müller, p. 238.

Athens

Kleiner, Alexanders Reichmünzen, pp. 31f.

Attuda

Müller, pp. 261f.

Azotus

Müller, p. 308.

Babylon

N. Breitenstein, "Studies in the Coinage of the Macedonian Kings" Acta Archaeologica 1942, pp. 242-258, esp. 252-256.

G. F. Hill, BMC Arabia, pp. cxli-cxlviii, 176-187, 191.

Sir Henry Howorth, "Some Coins attributed to Babylon by Dr. Imhoof-Blumer" NC 1904, pp. 1-38.

F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Die Münzstätte Babylon zur Zeit der Makedonischer Satrapen und des Seleukos Nikator" NZ 1895/6, pp. 1-26.

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 28.

Demanhur, pp. 57-64, 140-143, nos. 3980-4609.

Andritsaena, pp. 13-15, 20, nos. 74-83.

J. P. Six, "Monnaies grecques inédites et incertaines" NC 1898, pp. 193-245.

J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazzaïos" NC 1884, pp. 97-159.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 179-183, 277-295.

Berytus

Müller, p. 310.

Demanhur, pp. 53, 126, no. 3653.

Botrys

Müller, p. 310.

Byblus

Müller, p. 310.

Demanhur, pp. 52, 122-125, nos. 3586-3652.

Andritsaena, pp. 12f., nos. 68-71.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 172.

Cabyle

T. Gerassimov, "The Alexandrine Tetradrachms of Cabyle in Thrace" Centennial Publication of the American Numismatic Society, pp. 273-277.

T. Gerassimov, "Rare Coins of Thrace" NC 1957, pp. 1-5.

G. K. Jenkins, "Recent Acquisitions of Greek Coins by the British Museum" NC 1959, pp. 23-45.

Calchedon

Kurt Regling, "Neue Königstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis" Klio 1929, p. 298.

Callatis

Müller, pp. 181f.

Kurt Regling, "Neue Königstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis," pp. 292-302.

G. Severeanu, "Consideratiuni asupra Tetradrahmelor batute in Kallatis" Buletinul societatii numismatice romane 1924, pp. 20-29. SNG Berry Collection I, no. 191.

Cardia

Müller, pp. 159-164.

Carne

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," p. 5.

Demanhur, pp. 50, 117-119, nos. 3267f.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phénice," pp. 64-66.

Carrhae

WSM, pp. 40f.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 296.

Chalcis

Müller, p. 210.

Demetrius, p. 139, n. 4.

Chios

N. Breitenstein, "Studies in the Coinage of the Macedonian Kings" Acta Archaeologica, pp. 242-258.

P. Gardner, "The Financial History of Ancient Chios" JHS 1920, pp. 160-173.

Müller, pp. 252f.

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 40.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 318.

Cilicia

Müller, pp. 277-282.

Citium

E. T. Newell, "Some Cypriote Alexanders" NC 1915, pp. 294-322.

Demanhur, pp. 43, 106f., nos. 2545-2666.

Andritsaena, p. 11, no. 59.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 170.

Clazomenae

Müller, pp. 244f.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 314.

Cnidus

Müller, pp. 258f.

Coela

Müller, pp. 166f.

Colone

Müller, p. 237.

Colophon

Müller, pp. 246-248.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 20-22.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 233-242, 315.

Commagene

Müller, p. 286.

Cos

B. V. Head, BMC Caria, p. cix, 200.

Müller, pp. 259f.

Crithote

Müller, p. 162.

Curium

D. H. Cox, Coins from the Excavations at Curium, 1932-1953, New York City, 1959, pp. 3, 90f.

Cydonia

Müller, pp. 230f.

Cyme

Müller, pp. 239f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 312-313.

Cyprus

D. Pierides, "On the Coins of Nicocreon, one of the Kings of Cyprus" NC 1869, pp. 19-24.

E. J. Seltman, "Rare Gold Staters with Types of Alexander III" NZ 1913, p. 209. Cf. E. T. Newell "Some Cypriote Alexanders," p. 313, n. 21.

Cyrene

BMC Cyrenaica, pp. cxxxviii-cxl.

Müller, pp. 320f.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 190.

Cyzicus

Müller, pp. 233f.

Damascus

G. F. Hill, JHS 1923, p. 159, n. 8 quoting Newell.

Müller, pp. 287-289.

Demanhur, pp. 48-50, 115f., nos. 2898-3266.

Dionysopolis

Müller, p. 171.

Dioscurides

G. Severeanu, "Tetradrachme d'Alexandre le Grand frappee par Dioscurides" Buletinul societatii numismatice romane 1924, pp. 29-31.

Dium in Pieria

Müller, pp. 148f.

Ecbatana

ESM, pp. 163-179.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 297-298.

Ephesus

Müller, pp. 248f. Demetrius, p. 66, no. 59.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 40f.

Epidaurus

Paul Lambros, Νομίσματα αimageς Νimageσου 'Άμοργοimage, Athens, 1870, p. 19.

Erythrae

Müller, pp. 245f.

Euboea

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 42.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 212.

Heraclea in Ionia

Müller, pp. 250f.

Heraclea Pontica

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 310.

Heraclea Sintica

Müller, pp. 135-137.

Heracleum in Pieria

Müller, pp. 149f.

Hierapolis-Bambyce

Demanhur, pp. 48, 114f, no. 2897.

Histiaea

Müller, pp. 210f.

India

B. V. Head, "The Earliest Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Indian Coins" NC 1906, pp. 1-16.

A. von Sallet, "Die Nachfolger Alexanders d. G. in Baktrien und Indien" ZfN 6, p. 285. R. B. Whitehead, "The Eastern Satrap Sophytes" NC 1943, pp. 60-72.

Istros

Kurt Regling, "Neue Königstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis," pp. 292-302.

Itanus

Müller, p. 229.

Joppa

Müller, p. 307.

Lamia

Müller, p. 187.

Lampsacus

Agnes Baldwin Brett, "The Gold Staters of Lampsakos" American Journal of Numismatics 1924, pp. 1-76, esp. 65-72.

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27. Müller, p. 235.

Demanhur, pp. 36, 82-87, nos. 1687-1747.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 13-15.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos, 145-149, 214-223.

Laodicea-ad-Mare

Müller, pp. 289f.

Laodicea in Thrace

Müller, p. 146.

Larissa in Troad

Müller, pp. 290-293.

Limyra

Müller, p. 276.

Locris

Müller, p. 208.

Lysimacheia

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 42.

Lyttos

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 19.

Müller, p. 229.

Magnesia on the Maeander

Müller, pp. 251f.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 23f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 243-249, 316.

Magnesia in Thessaly

Müller, pp. 182-185.

Mallus

Müller, pp. 282-284.

Marathus

E. Babelon, "Monnaies de Marathus" RN 1888, pp. 497-528.

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 1-15.

Müller, pp. 298f.

WSM, pp. 194f.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phénice, "pp. 125-152.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies phéniciennes" NC 1877, pp. 177-239.

Marium

E. T. Newell, "Some Cypriote Alexanders."

Demanhur, pp. 45, III, no. 2715.

Maronea

Müller, pp. 158f.

Megalopolis

S. P. Noe, "The Corinth Hoard of 1938" MN 1962, pp. 39-41.

von Prokesch-Osten, NZ 1869, p. 48.

D. M. Robinson, "The Hoard of Megalopolis" MN 1950, pp. 16f.

J. N. Svoronos, Εimageρημα Σοφιĸĸimage Έπιδανρίας, JIAN 1907, p. 36.

Melitaea

Müller, pp. 185-187.

Mende

Müller, p. 144.

Mesembria

N. Breitenstein, "Studies in the Coinage of the Macedonian Kings," pp. 251f.

Percy Gardner, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC 1886, p. 251.

T. Gerassimov, "Trésor de Tetradrachmes de Mesembria et d'Odessos" Bulletin de la Société archéologique À Varna X, pp. 65-78.

Müller, pp. 175-179.

Kurt Regling, "Neue Königstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis," p. 296.

Methymna

Müller, p. 242.

Midaeum

Müller, pp. 263f.

Miletus

Müller, pp. 249f.

Demetrius, pp. 59-61.

Demanhur, pp. 37, 93-96, nos. 1751-1818.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 25f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 161-163, 250-256.

Mylasa

Müller, pp. 256f.

Askidil Akarca Les Monnaies qrecqucs de Mylasa, Paris, 1959, pp. 55—59.

Myra

Müller, p. 275.

Myriandrus

Müller, pp. 46-48, 112-114. Myriandros.

Myrina

Müller, pp. 238f.

Mytilene

Müller, pp. 241f. Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 39f.

Nagidus

Müller, pp. 285f.

Demanhur, pp. 57, 139f., nos. 3976-3978.

Nisyrus

Müller, pp. 260f.

Odessus

T. Gerassimov, "Trésor de Tetradrachmes de Mesembria et d'Odessos" Bulletin de la Société archéologique À Varna X, pp. 65-78.

Müller, pp. 171-175.

B. Pick and Kurt Regling, Die Antiken Münzen von Dacien und Moesien, Berlin, 1910, pp. 529-540.

Kurt Regling, "Neue Königstetradrachmen von Istros und Kallatis," p. 296.

Paltus

Müller, p. 298.

Paphos

J. M. F. May, "The Alexander Coinage of Nikokles of Paphos" NC 1952, pp. 1-18.

E. T. Newell, "Some Cypriote Alexanders."

Demanhur, pp. 43f., 107f., nos. 2667-2682.

Parium

H. Sèyrig, "Parion au 3e Siècle avant notre Ère" Centennial Publication of the American Numismatic Society 1958, pp.603-625.

Pelagonia

Müller, p. 146.

Pella

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27.

Müller, pp. 124-127.

Demanhur, pp. 32-34, 71-74, nos. 1583-1638.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 204-211.

Perga

G. Le Rider, Monnaies À Légende grecque et Monnaies des Rois d'élymatde, Paris, 1960, p. 25, n. 2.

Pergamum

F. Imhoof-Blumer, Die Münzen der Dynastie von Pergamon, Berlin, 1884.

E. T. Newell, The Pergamene Mint under Philetaerus (NNM) 1936.

WSM, p. 317.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 311.

Perinthus

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27. Müller, pp. 170f.

Phalasarna

Müller, p. 231.

Pharsalus

Müller, pp. 187f.

Phaseiis

Müller, pp. 275f.

Demanhur, pp. 37f, 96-102, nos. 1819-1973.

Andritsaena, pp. 9f., nos. 41-50.

Philadelphia

Müller, pp. 308f.

Philippi

Müller, pp. 137f.

Philomelium

Müller, pp. 266f.

Phocaea

Müller, pp. 242f.

Phocis

Müller, p. 209.

Phoenicia

R. Dussaud, "L'ère d'Alexandre le Grand en Phénicie" RN 1908, pp. 445-454.

J. Rouvier, "Nouvelles recherches sur l'ère d'Alexandre le Grand en Phénicie" RN 1909, pp. 321-354.

Priene

Müller, p. 249.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 317.

Rhodes

BMC Caria, p. cix.

Churchill Babington, "On an unpublished Tetradrachm of Alexander III Struck at Rhodes with some Observations on the Rhodian symbol and other matters connected with Rhodes" NC 1864, pp. 1-6.

Müller, p. 260.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 320-323.

Salamis

G. Le Rider, RN 1961, pp. 9f.

Demetrius, pp. 19-25.

Demanhur, pp. 42, 105f., nos. 2436-2544.

Andritsaena, pp. 10f., no. 58.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 171, 268.

Salymbria

Müller, pp. 169f.

Samos

Percy Gardner, "Samos and Samian Coins" NC 1882, pp. 210-290.

Müller, p. 254.

Samothrace

Müller, pp. 157f.

Sardes

Demanhur, pp. 36-93, nos. 1748-1750.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 27-31.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 164-167, 257-266.

Scione

Müller, p. 143.

Scythopolis

Müller, pp. 300f.

Seleucia on the Tigris

ESM, p. 14.

Sestus

Müller, pp. 165f.

Sicyon

George Finlay, "Thoughts about the Coinage of the Achaean League" NC 1868, pp. 21-35.

F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Griechische Münzen aus dem Museum in Klagenfurt und anderen Sammlungen" NZ 1884, pp. 244-246.

G. K. Jenkins, "Recent Acquisitions of Greek Coins by the British Museum" NC 1959, p.31.

Müller, pp. 218-225.

Demanhur, pp. 34f., 75-80, nos. 1649-1673.

Sicyon.

E. J. Seltman, "An unpublished Gold Stater of Sikyon" JIAN 1912, pp. 177-180.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 144, 213.

Side

Müller, pp. 270f.

Demanhur, pp. 37f., 96-102, nos. 1819-1973.

Andritsaena, pp. 9f., nos. 41-55.

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 41.

SNG Berry Collection I, no. 168.

Sidon

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 6-10.

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous," p. 27.

C. F. Lehmann, "Der erste syrische Krieg und die Weltlage um 275-272 v. Christ," pp. 496-547, esp. p. 517, n. 2.

Müller, pp. 299-302. Sidon and Ake.

Demanhur, pp. 53f., 127-133, nos. 3656-3768.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phénicie," pp. 117-121.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies phéniciennes" NC 1877, pp. 195-221.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 173-176, 274.

Sigeum

Müller, p. 235.

Sillyum

Müller, p. 270.

Sinope

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexander Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 6-10.

E. T. Newell, The Alexandrine Coinage of Sinope, New York City, 1919.

Smyrna

Müller, pp. 243f.

Soli

Müller, pp. 284f.

Demanhur, pp. 45, 111f., nos. 2716-2718.

Sozusa

Müller, pp. 306f.

Stratonos Pyrgos

Müller, p. 306.

Susa

E. S. G. Robinson, NC 1921, pp. 37f. SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 184-185.

Sycaminum

Müller, pp. 300f.

Synnada

Müller, pp. 262f.

Tarsus

L. J. G., "Decouvertes et Nouvelles" Revue Archélogique 1845, p. 178.

Müller, p. 280.

Tarsos.

Demetrius, p. 48.

Demanhur, pp. 39-42, 103-105, nos. 1974-2435.

J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazaïos" NC 1884, pp. 97-159.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 169-267.

Temnos

Müller, pp. 240f.

Tenedos

F. Lenormant, "Note sur deux ateliers monétaires d'Alexandre le Grand" RN 1863, pp. 169-175.

Müller, p. 255. Thompson-Bellinger, p. 39.

Teos

Percy Gardner, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC 1886, p. 151.

Müller, p. 246.

Thompson-Bellinger, pp. 18f.

SNG Berry Collection I, nos. 159-160, 230-231.

Terone

Müller, p. 142.

Thebes

G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous." p. 27.

Müller, pp. 209f.

Therma

Müller, pp. 144-146.

Thessalonica

Müller, p. 146.

Thrace

Thompson-Bellinger, p. 42.

Traelium

Müller, pp. 134f.

Tricca

Müller, pp. 188f.

Tyre

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Alexandrine Coinage of Phoenicia," pp. 1-15.

Müller, pp. 302f.

E. T. Newell, Tyrus Rediviva, New York City, 1923, pp. 1-23.

Demetrius, pp. 44f.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phénicie," pp. 276f.

J. Rouvier, "L'ère d'Alexandre le Grand en Phénicie (note complementaire)" RN 1904, pp. 239-251.

H. Seyrig, "Sur une prétendue ère Tyrienne" Antiquites syriennes 1957, pp. 93-98.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies pheniciennes," pp. 189-195.

Uranopolis

N. Breitenstein, "Studies in the Coinage of the Macedonian Kings" Acta Archaeologica 1942, pp. 248-251. Müller, pp. 138-141.

Xanthus

Müller, p. 275.

HOARDS

1765 J. Pellerin, Latakia Hoard Mélange de diverses Médailles Vol. I, Paris, pp. 104-140.

1853/54 Charles T. Newton, (Communicated by W. S. W. Vaux) "A Hoard of Coins of Alexander the Great, discovered near Patras in 1850" NC, pp. 29-37. 1865

W. H. Waddington, "Trouvailles de Saida et de Marmara" RN, pp. 1-28. 1871

R. H. Long, "Treasure-trove in Cyprus in Gold Staters" NC, pp. 229-234. 1905

G. Dattari, "Comments on a Hoard of Athenian Tetradrachms found in Egypt" JIAN, pp. 103-114.

1907 J. N. Svoronos, Εimageρημα Σοφιĸĸimage Έπιδανρίας, JIAN, pp. 35-46.

1908 A. J. B. Wace, "A Hoard of Hellenistic Coins" Annual of the British School at Athens, pp. 149-158.

1912 E. T. Newell, Reattribution of Certain Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great (Reprinted from American Journal of Numismatics).

1921 E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards I. Introduction and Kyparissa (NNM 3).

1923 E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards II. Demanhur 1905 (NNM 19).

1923 E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards III Andritsaena (NNM 21).

1925 Archäologischer Anzeiger, p. 64.

1929 E. T. Newell, Alexander Hoards IV Olympia (NNM 39).

1931 E. T. Newell, The Küchük Köhne Hoard (NNM 46).

1932 C. Lambert, "A Hoard of Phoenician Coins found on the Site of Ake" The Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine, pp. 10-20.

1934 E. T. Newell, A Hoard from Siphnos (NNM 64).

1947 E. S. G. Robinson, "The Tell El-Mashkuta Hoard of Athenian Tetradrachms" NC, pp. 115-121.

1948 E. S. G. Robinson, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC, pp. 43-59.

1949 BCH "Chronique," p. 520.

1950 D. M. Robinson, "The Alexander Hoard of Megalopolis" MN 4, pp. 13-28.

1950 E. S. G. Robinson, "A 'Silversmith's Hoard' from Mesopotamia" Iraq, pp. 44-51.

1950/51 A. R. Bellinger, "An Alexander Hoard from Byblos" Berytus, pp. 37-49.

1951 BCH "Chronique," p. 104.

1952 BCH "Chronique," p. 205.

1952 D. M. Robinson, A Hoard of Silver Coins from Carystus (NNM 124).

1953 D. H. Cox, A Third Century Hoard of Tetradrachms from Gordion. Museum Monographs University Museum, Philadelphia.

1954 Margaret Thompson, "A Countermarked Hoard from Biiyukçekmece" MN 6, pp. 11-34.

1955 Margaret Thompson and A. R. Bellinger, "Greek Coins in the Yale Collection IV: a Hoard of Alexander Drachms" Yale Classical Studies, pp. 3-45.

1956 W. P. Wallace, The Euboean League and its Coinage (NNM 134), pp. 50-52, 59-61.

1956 BCH "Chronique," p. 227.

1957 BCH "Chronique," p. 497.

1958 P. R. Franke, "Zur Geschichte des Antigonos Gonatas und der Oitaioi. Ein Schatzfund griechischer Münzen von Phayttos" Archäologischer Anzeiger, pp. 38—62.

1960 G. K. Jenkins, "An Early Ptolemaic Hoard from Phacous" MN, pp. 17-37.

PERSIANS AND SATRAPS

R. P. Austin and M. N. Tod, "Athens and the Satraps' Revolt" JHS 1944, pp. 98-100.

E. Babelon, "Les Monnaies des Satrapes dans l'Empire des Perses Achéménides" RN 1892, pp. 227-328, 413-463.

E. Babelon, Catalogue des Monnaies grecques de la Bibliothèque nationale. Les Perses achéménides Paris, 1893, pp. xx-xxiii.

O. Blau, "Aramäische Legenden auf Münzen athenischen Geprägs" NZ 1872, pp. 181-184.

O. Blau, "Satrap Orontas" NZ 1876, p. 233.

O. Blau, "Barsine, Gemahlin Alexanders des Großen" NZ 1876, pp. 234-237.

O. Blau, "Die achaemenideschen Feldzugmeister und ihre Münzen" NZ 1879, pp. 1-52.

G. Dattari, "Comments on a Hoard of Athenian Tetradrachms found in Egypt" JIAN 1905, pp. 103-114.

H. Droysen, "Die Münzen der persischen Satrapen in Kleinasien" ZfN 1875, pp. 309-319.

Percy Gardner, "New Greek Coins of Bactria and India" NC 1887, pp. 177-184.

J. Hackin, "Repartition des Monnaies anciennes en Afghanistan" Journal asiatique 1935.

B. V. Head, The Coinage of Lydia and Persia from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Dynasty of the Achaemenidae, London, 1877.

G. F. Hill, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC 1921, pp. 161-178.

G. F. Hill, "Notes on the Imperial Persian Coinage" JHS 1919, pp. 116-129.

G. F. Hill, BMC Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia, pp. cxx-cxl, 148-175.

H. Howorth, "A Note on some Coins generally attributed to Mazaios, the Satrap of Cilicia and Syria" NC 1902, pp. 81-87.

F. Imhoof-Blumer, "Antike griechische Münzen," Revue suisse 1913/4, p. 9.

C. M. Kraay, "Greek Coins recently acquired by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford" NC 1954, pp. 15f.

G. Le Rider, "Le Tresor de Basra" Syria 1959, pp. 229-53.

M. A. Levy, "Die aremäische Legende auf einer Drachme athenischen Geprägs" NZ 1871, PP. 433f.

A. H. Lloyd, "Hoarding of the Precious Metals in India" Transactions of the International Numismatic Congress 1936, London, 1938.

H. de Luynes, Essai sur la Numismatique des Satrapies et de la Phénice sous les Rois achéménides, Paris, 1846.

E. Merzbacher, "Satrapenmünze mit arama'ischer Schrift" NZ 1871, pp. 427-429.

E. T. Newell, Miscellanea Numismatica, Cyrene to India (NNM 82), pp. 62-75, 82-88.

Tarsos, pp. 16-22.

E. J. Pilcher, "Philistine Coins from Lachish" Palestine Exploration Quarterly 1921, pp. 134-151.

E. J. Rapson, "Note on Ancient Coins collected in Seistan by Mr. G. P. Tate I Coins derived from Greek Sources" Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1904, pp. 673-675.

K. Regling, "Dareikos und Kroiseios" Klio 1915, pp. 91-112.

E. S. G. Robinson, "The Tell El-Mashkuta Hoard of Athenian Tetradrachms" NC 1947, pp. 115-121.

E. S. G. Robinson, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum 1938-48" NC 1948, pp. 43-59.

J. Rouvier, "Répartition chronologique des Monnayage des Rois phéniciens d'Arvad avant Alexandre le Grand" JIAN 1898, pp. 263-298.

J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des Villes de la Phénice" JIAN 1901, pp. 35-63; 1902, pp. 99-134, 229-284.

A. von Sallet, "Satrapenmünzen mit griechischer Inschrift" NZ 1871, pp. 419-426.

J. P. Six, "Monnaies grecques inédites et incertains" NC 1895, pp. 169-210.

J. P. Six, "Monnaies d'Hierapolis en Syrie" NC 1878, pp. 103-131.

J. P. Six, "Le Satrap Mazaios" NC 1884, pp. 97-159.

J. P. Six, "Monnaies grecques inédites et incertains" NC 1888, pp. 97-137.

J. P. Six, "Observations sur les Monnaies phéniciennes" NC 1877, pp. 221-239.

R. B. Whitehead, "The Eastern Satrap Sophytes" NC 1943, pp. 60-72.

Some Additions to Müller's Catalogue

1859 A. de Longpérier, "Médailles grecques de la Collection Palin" RN, pp. 109-123.

1861 F. Lenormant, "Distatère d'or de Philippe II" RN, pp. 397-401.

1868 E. H. Bunbury, "On some unpublished Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great" NC, pp. 309-320.

1869 Baron de Prokesch-Osten, "List des Alexandres de ma Collection qui ne se trouvent pas dans le Catalogue de M. L. Müller" NZ, pp. 31-63.

1870 Baron de Prokesch-Osten, "Inedita meiner Sammlung 1870" NZ, pp. 268-270.

1871 Baron de Prokesch-Osten, "Suite des Monnaies inédites d'or et d'argent d'Alexandre le Grand" NZ, pp. 51-72.

1883 E. H. Bunbury, "Additional Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great" NC, pp. 1-17.

1883 F. Imhoof-Blumer, Monnaies grecques, Amsterdam, pp. 118-123.

1886 P. Gardner, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC, pp. 249-264.

1890 W. Wroth, "Greek Coins acquired by the British Museum" NC, pp. 311-329.

1891 NC, p. 122. 8, pp. 26f.

1893 NC, pp. 10f.

1894 NC, p. 3. 2.

1897 G. F. Hill, "Notes on Additions to the Greek Coins in the British Museum 1887-1896" JHS, pp. 78-91.

1909 J. de Foville, "Les Monnaies grecques et romaines de la Collection Valton" RN, pp. 305f.

1913 E. J. Seltman, "Rare Gold Coins with Types of Alexander III" NZ, pp. 203-210.

1919 NC, p. 8.

1928 NC, pp. 7f.

1936 NC, p. 174.


INDEX TO THE PLATES

All coins are in the collection of The American Numismatic Society except PLATE I: 9-10 (British Museum), 12-13 (British Museum); PLATE II: 6 (Paris), 7 (British Museum)

PLATE I, PAGE

1. Philip. Gold Stater. 3,7
2. Philip. Silver Tetradrachm. 7
3. Philip. Silver Tetradrachm. 7
4. Alexander. Distater. 26
5. Alexander. Stater. 3
6. Alexander. ½ Stater. 26
7. Alexander. ¼ Stater. 26
8. Alexander. ¼ Stater. 26
9. Alexander. ⅛ J Stater. 26
10. Alexander. Decadrachm. 27
11. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Amphipolis. 3. 18
12. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Phoenician Weight. 27, 75
13. Alexander. Decadrachm. 27, 79
14. Alexander. Didrachm. 27
15. Alexander. Drachm. 27
16. Alexander. Hemidrachm. 27
17. Alexander. Obol. 27
18. Alexander. Hemiobol. 27
19. Alexander. Drachm. 28
20. Alexander. Drachm. 28
21. Alexander. Drachm. 28
22. Alexander. Tetrobol. 28
23. Alexander. Hemidrachm. 28
24. Alexander. Hemidrachm. 28
25. Alexander. Diobol. 28 26. Alexander. Obol. 29
27. Alexander. Hemiobol. 29 28. Alexander. Quarter Obol. 29
29. Alexander. Bronze Unit. 3, 29 30. Alexander. Bronze Half. 29
PLATE II, 1. Corinth. Silver Stater. 5
2. Ilium. Tetradrachm. 5
3. Ilium. Bronze Unit. 5
4. Ptolemy. Tetradrachm. 8, 17, 86
5. Lysimachus. Tetradrachm. 8, 17, 87
6. Flamininus. Gold Stater. 10
7. Agathocles of Bactria. Tetradrachm. 14
8. Macedonia. Bronze. 15
9. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Sidon. 18
10. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Babylon. 18, 23
11. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Sidon. 19, 23
12. Alexander. Tetradrachm. Sicyon. 19
13. Arcadia. Hemidrachm. 22
PLATE III, 1. Mazaeus. Shekel of Tarsus. 49, 60
2. Alexander. Tetradrachm of Tarsus. 49
3. Mazaeus. Lion Stater. Babylon. 62
4. Mazaeus. Lion Stater. Babylon. 63
5. Mazaeus. Imitation Athenian Owl. 66
6. Alexander. Double Daric. 67
7. Persic Stater. Tarsus. 78
8. Persic Stater. Tarsus. 78
9. Aspeisas. Tetradrachm. Susa. 88
10. Posthumous Alexander. Tetradrachm. Myrina. 92
11. Posthumous Alexander. Tetradrachm. Miletus. 92
12. Posthumous Alexander. Tetradrachm. Rhodes. 92
13. Aesillas. Tetradrachm. 93

PLATES

I

I - 1

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1

I - 2

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2

I - 3

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3

I - 4

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4

I - 5

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5

I - 6

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6

I - 7

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7

I - 8

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8

I - 9

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9

I - 10

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10

I - 11

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11

I - 12

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12

I - 13

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13

I - 14

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14

I - 15

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15

I - 16

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16

I - 17

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17

I - 18

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18

I - 19

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19

I - 20

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20

I - 21

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21

I - 22

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22

I - 23

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23

I - 24

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24

I - 25

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25

I - 26

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26

I - 27

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27

I - 28

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28

I - 29

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29

I - 30

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30

II - 1

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1

II - 2

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2

II - 3

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3

II - 4

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4

II - 5

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5

II - 6

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6

II - 7

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7

II - 8

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8

II - 9

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9

II - 10

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10

II - 11

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11

II - 12

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12

II - 13

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13

III - 1

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1

III - 2

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2

III - 3

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3

III - 4

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4

III - 5

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5

III - 6

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6

III - 7

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7

III - 8

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8

III - 9

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9

III - 10

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10

III - 11

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11

III - 12

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12

II - 13

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13