Infrastructure and Distribution in Ancient Economies: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 28-31 October 2014 3700181086, 9783700181088

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BERNHARD WOYTEK (ED.) INFRASTRUCTURE AND DISTRIBUTION IN ANCIENT ECONOMIES

ÖSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN PHILOSOPHISCH-HISTORISCHE KLASSE DENKSCHRIFTEN 506. BAND

BERNHARD WOYTEK (ED.)

Infrastructure and Distribution in Ancient Economies Proceedings of a conference held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 28–31 October 2014

Angenommen durch die Publikationskommission der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Accepted by the publication committee of the Division of Humanities and Social S­ ciences of the Austrian Academy of Sciences by: Michael Alram, Bert G. Fragner, Andre Gingrich, Hermann Hunger, Sigrid Jalkotzy-Deger, Renate Pillinger, Franz Rainer, Oliver Jens Schmitt, Danuta Shanzer, Peter Wiesinger, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz

Diese Publikation wurde einem anonymen, internationalen Begutachtungsverfahren unterzogen. This publication was subject to international and anonymous peer review. Peer review is an essential part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press evaluation process. Before any book can be accepted for publication, it is assessed by international specialists and ultimately must be approved by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Publication Committee.

Umschlagbilder/Cover illustrations: Aureus of Trajan (mint of Rome, AD 112/113) featuring the personification of the VIA TRAIANA on the reverse. B. Woytek, Die Reichsprägung des Kaisers Traianus (98–117), Vienna 2010 (MIR 14), no. 397f. British Museum, Department of Coins and Medals, BMC Trajan no. 484. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Die verwendete Papiersorte in dieser Publikation ist DIN 6738 geprüft und erfüllt die Anforderungen der Lebensdauerklasse LDK 24 –85. Archivability tested according to the requirements of DIN 6738, Lifespan class LDK 24 –85. Surbalin erfüllt die Vorgaben der EN 71, Teil 3 und der REACH-Verordnung. Surbalin fulfills the standard requirements of EN 71, part 3 and of the REACH regulation.

Alle Rechte vorbehalten. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-3-7001-8108-8 Copyright © 2018 by Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Druck/Printed: Gerin Druck GmbH, Wolkersdorf Satz/Layout: Hapra GmbH, Puchenau https://epub.oeaw.ac.at/8108-8 https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at Made in Europe

Table of Contents

Foreword 7 Abbreviations used in this volume

9

Bernhard Woytek Infrastructure and Distribution in Ancient Economies: by Way of Introduction 11

Greek Economies Vincent Gabrielsen “Mankind’s Most Secure and Durable Institution”: State, Credit, Trade and Capital Accumulation in the Classical – Early Hellenistic Aegean 25 Gerhard Thür – Michele Faraguna Silver from Laureion: Mining, Smelting, and Minting 45 Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert Die-Sharing and the Transfer of Dies: Evidence for Orders and Shipments of Large Sums of Money in the Ancient Greek World (5th to 3rd Centuries BC) 59 Alain Bresson Coins and Trade in Hellenistic Asia Minor: the Pamphylian Hub 67

The Roman Economy Simon Keay The Role Played by the Portus Augusti in Flows of Commerce between Rome and its Mediterranean Ports 147 Claude Domergue – Christian Rico L’approvisionnement en métaux de l’Occident méditerranéen à la fin de la République et sous le Haut-Empire. Flux, routes, organisation 193 Kevin Butcher – Bernhard Woytek The Grand Scheme of Things. Modelling Coin Production and Coin Distribution in the Roman Empire in the First and Second Centuries AD 253 Suzanne Frey-Kupper – Clive Stannard Evidence for the Importation and Monetary Use of Blocks of Foreign and Obsolete Bronze Coins in the Ancient World 283

Roger S. Bagnall Papyrus Documents for the Study of an Ancient Economy: Methods and Materials from an Egyptian Oasis 355 Thomas Kruse The Transport of Goods through the Eastern Desert of Egypt. The Archive of the “Camel Driver” Nikanor 369 Thomas Corsten Negotiatores und lokale Märkte in Kleinasien. Überlegungen zu einer Rekonstruktion ländlicher Handelsnetzwerke 381 Annalisa Marzano Large-Scale Fishing and the Roman Production and Trade in Salted Fish: Some Organizational Aspects 393 Ben Russell Documentary Evidence and the Roman Stone Trade 409

Ancient Iranian Economies Robert Rollinger Between Deportation and Recruitment: Craftsmen and Specialists from the West in Ancient Near Eastern Empires (from Neo-Assyrian Times through Alexander III) 425 Udo Hartmann Wege durch Parthien – Straßen, Handelsrouten und Kommunikation im Arsakidenreich 445 Fabrizio Sinisi Some Remarks on the Patterns of Coin Production in the Parthian Empire 473 Nikolaus Schindel Sasanian Mints – Where and Why? 497 Contributors to this volume 519 Indices 521

Foreword

Research in the source disciplines of ancient history at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna goes back a long way: as early as 1890, the study of Greek inscriptions from Asia Minor was taken up by the – then Imperial Academy’s – “Commission für archäologische Erforschung Kleinasiens”, the well-known research unit since then generally referred to as “Kleinasiatische Kommission”. Eighty years later, in 1970, Austria’s proud tradition of academic numismatic research, dating back to the 18th century, was finally acknowledged by the foundation of the “Numismatische Kommission”, and in 1974, the “Kommission für Antike Rechtsgeschichte” was set up: its main areas of competence were the study of ancient Greek law (often on the basis of epigraphic documents), Byzantine law and ancient oriental laws, as well as juristic papyrology. As of the beginning of the year 2013, the study of epigraphy, numismatics, papyrology and the history of ancient law was concentrated in the newly created division “Documenta Antiqua” of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Culture of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in the course of major structural and administrative changes to the Academy overall. The division’s founding head was Michael Alram, who was succeeded in this capacity by the undersigned in June 2013. The creation of “Documenta Antiqua” was accompanied by a strong commitment to promoting research in the above-mentioned disciplines by the Austrian Academy: the in-depth study of documentary sources of the ancient world will be continued in a new environment encouraging interdisciplinary approaches. Ancient economic history is an obvious area of cooperation between our disciplines and archaeology; hence, it was decided to dedicate the inaugural conference of the new division, held in Vienna from 28 to 31 October 2014, to the study of “Infrastructure and Distribution in Ancient Economies”. In this conference with the subtitle “The Flow of Money, Goods and Services”, researchers of the division “Documenta Antiqua” as well as international guest speakers discussed the topic across different cultures, focusing not only on Greek and Roman, but also on ancient oriental economies: the study of the ancient Orient has always been one of the special fields of research at the Austrian Academy and will continue to be of particular importance in the future. The present volume contains the papers given at the Vienna symposium, with the exception of two.* It is readily apparent that this book is, of course, not a new handbook on ancient infrastructure as a whole – not all the facets of so vast a topic could receive equal attention in the conference. The focus of the present volume is on cross-cultural and polydisciplinary aspects of the subject instead, with a special emphasis on the integration of numismatic scholarship into research on ancient economic infrastructure: from the editor’s point of view, this is one of the innovative features of the present volume. Needless to say, research on several of the key questions of the topic is in a state of flux at the moment. This is, of course, reflected in the book, and no attempt has been made to harmonise divergent positions on disputed problems in different articles.1 It is my pleasure to thank all of my colleagues for their contributions to the conference and the stimulating discussions; the somewhat lengthy process of the preparation of the manuscript and the production of the volume has made it impossible for the authors to systematically take into account literature published after 2015/2016. Special thanks to Roger Bagnall (New York), who not only generously accepted to give the inaugural lecture, but also chaired the conference’s concluding discussion, which he opened with lucid remarks that influenced my introductory essay to this volume. I am obliged to the city of Vienna (Magistratsabteilung 7 – Kultur-, Wissenschafts

* Kaja Harter-Uibopuu, “Decrees and treaties – the legal framework for the successful flow of goods and money”; Michael Alram, “Money and coinage in the Achaemenid Empire: production and distribution”.

und Forschungsförderung) and especially to the Austrian Academy of Sciences for kindly sponsoring the event; the Austrian Academy also generously contributed towards the production costs of the present volume. For help with the editorial work I am grateful to Theresia Pantzer and to Katharina Preindl, who has also compiled the indices. Finally, I would like to thank the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press for their excellent cooperation in turning the manuscript of these proceedings into a book.

Vienna, December 2018 Bernhard Woytek

Abbreviations used in this volume

Ancient literary sources are cited according to the abbreviations listed in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (42012). References to corpora of inscriptions and other epigraphic publications are given according to F. Bérard et al., Guide de l’épigraphiste. Bibliographie choisie des épigraphies antiques et médiévales, Paris 2010. References to editions of papyri and ostraca and other papyrological publications are given according to the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets: The following abbreviations of series and standard works are the most noteworthy: AE

L’Année épigraphique.

Barrington Atlas

R. J. A. Talbert (ed.), Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, Princeton 2000.

BE

Bulletin épigraphique (in the Revue des Études Grecques).

BMC

British Museum Catalogue.

BNJ

Brill’s New Jacoby.

CH

Coin Hoards, London – New York 1975–

CIL

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin 1863–

CILA

Corpus de inscripciones latinas de Andalucía, Seville 1989–

CIS

Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum.

FGrH

F. Jacoby et al. (eds.), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Berlin etc. 1926–

FHG

C. Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, 5 vols., Paris 1841– 1873.

FIRA2

Fontes iuris Romani antejustiniani. Editio altera aucta et emendata, 3 parts, Florence 1940–1943.

HN Italy

N. K. Rutter (principal ed.), Historia Numorum. Italy, London 2001.

IG

Inscriptiones Graecae, Berlin 1873–

IGCH

M. Thompson – C. M. Kraay – O. Mørkholm, An Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards, New York 1973.

IGLS

Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, Paris 1929–

IGR

R. Cagnat et al. (eds.), Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes, Paris 1906–1927.

IK

Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien, Bonn 1972–

ILS

H. Dessau (ed.), Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 5 vols., Berlin 1892–1916.

LSJ

H. G. Liddell – R. Scott – H. S. Jones et al., A Greek-English Lexicon. With a Revised Supplement, Oxford 1996.

MAMA

Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, London 1928–

MIR

Moneta Imperii Romani, Vienna 1984–

OGIS

W. Dittenberger (ed.), Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectae, 2 vols., Leipzig 1903–1905.

PAT

D. R. Hillers – E. Cussini (eds.), Palmyrene Aramaic Texts, Baltimore 1996.

PIR2

Prosopographia Imperii Romani saec. I. II. III. Editio altera, Berlin 1933–2015.

RIB

R. G. Collingwood – R. P. Wright et al. (eds.), The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, Oxford 1965–

RIC

The Roman Imperial Coinage, London 1923–

RO

P. J. Rhodes – R. Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404–323 BC, Oxford 2003.

RPC

Roman Provincial Coinage, London – Paris 1992–

RRC

M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, 2 vols., Cambridge 1974.

RRCH

M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coin Hoards, London 1969.

SC

A. Houghton – C. Lorber, Seleucid Coins. A Comprehensive Catalogue, part 1: Seleucus I through Antiochus III, 2 vols., New York – Lancaster, PA – London 2002. A. Houghton – C. Lorber – O. Hoover, Seleucid Coins. A Comprehensive Catalogue, part 2: Seleucus IV through Antiochus XIII, 2 vols., New York – Lancaster, PA – London 2008. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum.

SEG SIG = Syll 3

3

W. Dittenberger (ed.), Sylloge inscriptionum graecarum. Nunc tertium edita, 4 vols., Leipzig 1915–1924.

SNG

Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum.

SNP

Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum, Vienna 2012–

SNS

Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum, Vienna 2003–

TAD

B. Porten – A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, 4 vols., Jerusalem 1986–1999.

Bernhard Woytek

Infrastructure and Distribution in Ancient Economies: by Way of Introduction In recent years, the emergence of China as the world’s new economic superpower has brought the infrastructure of long-distance trade into the spotlight of international media time and again. The establishment of rail corridors for huge express freight trains connecting economic hotspots of central China like Chongqing or capital cities of the coastal area like Shanghai and Beijing with various European hubs of commerce, whence consumer goods of Chinese production are redistributed on the European market, has been hailed as a “silk road revival”.1 The incentive for the development of these overland connections, linking China and Europe via Kazakhstan and Russia, was the desire to create faster and cheaper alternatives to the traditional water route through the China Seas, Indian Ocean and Red Sea to the Mediterranean. However, in response to the threat posed by reliable and quick rail connections, cargo shipping firms of course started to explore alternative waterways, too: since 2013, Chinese ships have occasionally been using the Northeast Passage from Dalian, China’s northernmost port city clear of ice, to Rotterdam. 2 This route – almost two weeks shorter than the southern sea-route – is becoming attractive especially in the summer, when cargo ships do not need to be accompanied by ice-breakers, due to the sea ice loss in the Arctic ocean. The principal determinants of connectivity – viz. cost, time and distance – of course have not changed over the past millennia, and were the very same for ancient traders and merchants as they are for modern multi-national companies. The general framework of their economic activity is defined, among other factors, by the ‘infrastructure’ at their disposal. This term, apparently attested only since the late 19th century, is multi-faceted and not easy to gauge. Primarily, it refers of course to the physical structures and facilities necessary for a community and its economy to function, and is most often applied to costly technical structures like roads, bridges, aqueducts, harbours or sewers. In antiquity such facilities had already been taken as belonging to one and the same category of buildings,3 long before the collective term ‘infrastructure’ was introduced. In his work de officiis, Cicero (106–43 BC) instructed Roman politicians to invest in structures that are “of service to the community” (quae ad usum rei publicae pertinent) in order to secure posthumous fame.4 The examples of such buildings he lists in this passage – walls, shipyards, ports and aqueducts – show a partial overlap with the class of buildings labelled opera opportunitatis by Vitruvius, in his most influential treatise de architectura, dedicated to Au K. Bradsher, Hauling New Treasure Along the Silk Road, The New York Times 20 July 2013 ; Erster direkter Güterzug zwischen China und Spanien, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 10 December 2014 [both accessed on 23 November 2017].  2 A. Fellendorf, Über den Norden von Ost nach West, Der Standard 13 August 2013 [accessed on 23 November 2017].  3 For the definition of the term in the context of classical studies, see Walter 1998, especially at 994.  4 Cic. off. 2.60: Atque etiam illae impensae meliores, muri, navalia, portus, aquarum ductus omniaque, quae ad usum rei publicae pertinent; quamquam enim, quod praesens tamquam in manum datur, iucundius est, tamen haec in pos­ terum gratiora. (“Again, the expenditure of money is better justified when it is made for walls, docks, harbours, aque­ducts, and all those works which are of service to the community. There is, to be sure, more of present satisfaction in what is handed out, like cash down; nevertheless public improvements win us greater gratitude with posterity”, translation by Walter Miller).

 1

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gustus.5 The historian and geographer Strabo (c. 63 BC – c. AD 23) specifically pointed out that the Romans – as opposed to the Greeks, who contented themselves with selecting the topographically most advantageous spots when founding new cities – also applied special care to equipping Rome with practical (‘infrastructural’) facilities, which they constructed with great competence; he explicitly mentions roads, aqueducts and sewers that could wash out the filth of the city into the Tiber.6 Pliny the Elder (23–79) emphasised that Rome’s water supply and aqueducts were admired all over the world,7 and Frontinus (c. 35–103) specifically called the diligent maintenance of the conduits magnitudinis imperii Romani vel praecipuum […] indicium.8 A passage in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (who was active in the second half of the first century BC), closely related to the statement in Strabo cited above, demonstrates that infrastructural buildings were considered emblematic of the grandeur of Roman rule, not only because they were useful, but also enormously expensive, and therefore becoming to the masters of the world.9 This notion is, in fact, underpinned by the contemporary numismatic evidence. Significantly, architectural depictions are hardly ever featured on autonomous Greek coins, but often on Roman ones, whether late Republican, Imperial or Roman Provincial.10 Within these architectural coin types, several different classes may be discerned, one of which are what in modern words would be termed “infrastructural buildings”. These types cluster in the High Principate, especially in the imperial coinage between Nero and Trajan, in a period of particularly intense public building activity. On Roman coins, we find the personification of the Via Traiana11 – chosen as the cover image of the present volume – and also aqueducts (the Aqua Marcia during the Republic,12 and later the Aqua Traiana13), the ports of Rome (both the one in Ostia, pictured in the Republic as well as under Nero,14 and the new Trajanic port of Portus15), furthermore a somewhat mysterious Vitr. 1.3.1 (these are defined by him as: communium locorum ad usum publicum dispositio, uti portus, fora, porticus, balinea, theatra, inambulationes ceteraque, quae isdem rationibus in publicis locis designantur).  6 Strabo 5.3.8 (p. 235 C.): ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἡ φύσις τῆς χώρας παρέχεται τὰ εὐτυχήματα τῇ πόλει, προσέθεσαν δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ τὰ ἐκ τῆς προνοίας. τῶν γὰρ Ἑλλήνων περὶ τὰς κτίσεις εὐστοχῆσαι μάλιστα δοξάντων, ὅτι κάλλους ἐστοχάζοντο καὶ ἐρυμνότητος καὶ λιμένων καὶ χώρας εὐφυοῦς, οὗτοι προὐνόησαν μάλιστα ὧν ὠλιγώρησαν ἐκεῖνοι, στρώσεως ὁδῶν καὶ ὑδάτων εἰσαγωγῆς καὶ ὑπονόμων τῶν δυναμένων ἐκκλύζειν τὰ λύματα τῆς πόλεως εἰς τὸν Τίβεριν. (“These advantages accrued to the city [sc. Rome] from the nature of the country; but the foresight of the Romans added others besides. While the Greeks had the repute of choosing most happily, when they founded cities, in that they aimed at beauty, strength of position, harbours, and productive soil, the Roman prudence was more particularly employed on matters which had received but little attention from the Greeks, such as paving their roads, constructing aqueducts, and sewers, to convey the sewage of the city into the Tiber.”)  7 Nil magis mirandum fuisse in toto orbe terrarum (Plin. HN 36.123).  8 Frontin. aqu. 119: ad tutelam ductuum sicut promiseram divertemus, rem enixiore cura dignam, cum magnitudinis Romani imperii vel praecipuum sit indicium. (“We will now, as I promised, come to the maintenance of the conduits, a thing which is worthy of more special care, as it is the most important indicator of the greatness of the Roman Empire.”) See also aqu. 16, where Frontinus effectively contrasts the usefulness of the structures built for Rome’s water supply with the pyramids or other famous, but useless buildings of the Greeks: Tot aquarum tam multis necessariis molibus pyramidas videlicet otiosas compares aut cetera inertia sed fama celebrata opera Graecorum.  9 Dion. Hal. 3.67.5: ἔγωγ᾿ οὖν ἐν τρισὶ τοῖς μεγαλοπρεπεστάτοις κατασκευάσμασι τῆς Ῥώμης, ἐξ ὧν μάλιστα τὸ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἐμφαίνεται μέγεθος, τὰς τε τῶν ὑδάτων ἀγωγὰς τίθεμαι καὶ τὰς τῶν ὁδῶν στρώσεις καὶ τὰς τῶν ὑπονόμων ἐργασίας οὐ μόνον εἰς τὸ χρήσιμον τῆς κατασκευῆς τὴν διάνοιαν ἀναφέρων […] ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰς τὴν τῶν ἀναλωμάτων πολυτέλειαν (“Indeed, in my opinion the three most magnificent works of Rome, in which the greatness of her empire is best seen, are the aqueducts, the paved roads and the construction of the sewers. I say this with respect not only to the usefulness of the work […], but also to the magnitude of the cost”, translation by Earnest Cary).  10 See, in general, Burnett 1999. Special studies on the topic include, most notably, Fuchs 1969 and Elkins 2015.  11 Woytek 2010, nos. 397f., 466, 476–478, 546. Under Augustus, the repair of roads had been commemorated on the coinage: RIC Augustus nos. 140–145 and 360–362.  12 RRC nos. 291/1 and 425/1 (dated to 114/13 and 56 BC respectively by Crawford).  13 Woytek 2010, nos. 359–361, 384, 448–450.  14 RRC no. 346/3; RIC Nero nos. 178–183, 440f., 513f., 586–589.  15 Woytek 2010, no. 470.  5

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bridge, most probably in Rome,16 and the Macellum Augusti, a market opened to the public and pictured on dupondii under Nero.17 One may add that two Roman Republican types feature the shrine of Venus Cloacina, evoking the cloaca maxima alluded to by Strabo and Dionysius, as mentioned above.18 If one were to include, in this overview, also buildings of a type which today would be labelled as “recreational infrastructure”, the list would become even longer: it would then comprise also the Colosseum coins of Titus and Severus Alexander19 as well as various coin types featuring the Circus maximus, from Trajan to Caracalla, 20 and the stadium of Domitian depicted on aurei of Septimius Severus. 21 Taken all together, this evidence suggests that infrastructural building activity may be regarded as a major factor in the self-perception of the Roman governing élite in the late Republic and especially of the emperors in the Early to High Principate. As has recently been pointed out, a specific emphasis on investments in that sector in imperial times, not only on coinage but especially in the form of exuberant building inscriptions, is to be interpreted as a strategy of self-promotion and of legitimising the respective emperors’ rule. 22 But let us return to the problem of terminology. Secondarily, the term ‘infrastructure’ is nowadays often used as a matter of course in a much wider sense, since it has come to be applied not only to buildings, physical installations or objects, but also to institutional concepts. 23 Examples include the social, educational and judicial systems of a state and its legislation 24 – as well as money, in its various forms, and the sphere of financial services. Coinage, doubtless the most important form of money in the classical world, is a hybrid in that it combines both the physical and the institutional aspects of the term. 25 In the final discussion of the Vienna conference, problems of definition of “infrastructure” understandably attracted a lot of attention. It is evident that the inclusive use of the term is not without problems insofar as a consequent enlargement of its meaning would have to go much further still: for example, if someone were to hold that writing, as a technology that was fundamental for the communities of the classical Mediterranean, the ancient Near East and Iran in pre-Islamic times to function, should be counted as part of infrastructure, too, one would have a hard time disproving him, without being able to agree entirely. In this author’s opinion, by using the word inclusively one is in danger of overstretching the term as such. If everything is infrastructure, then the concept is in danger of losing its utility or becoming entirely worthless. However, most of the current research on ancient infrastructure still deals with physical installations like roads, ports and aqueducts. Traditionally, the focus of study in this field has always been on Rome, rather than on the Greeks. This is partly due to the difference in attitude towards infrastructural buildings in Rome, as compared to the classical Greek world, a difference already alluded to above – and easily explained: in a large territorial state that is highly militarised and governed centrally like the Roman Empire, problems of communication, transport and distribution of course impose themselves more radically than in the compartmentalised world of Greek city states. Woytek 2010, nos. 314–316 (Trajan); RIC Septimius Severus no. 786. RIC Nero nos. 109–111, 184–189, 373f., 399–402.  18 RRC no. 494/42f. (42 BC).  19 RIC Titus nos. 184–186; for Severus Alexander, see BMC Sev. Alex. nos. 156–158 (for the middle bronze, see also Toynbee 1986, plate 29, no. 7) and Carson 1962, 54 as well as Elkins 2015, 103f.; there are also medallions of the latter emperor depicting the Colosseum, see Nomos 7 (15 May 2013), no. 183. Cp. also Pink 1931, 256, nos. 30f. (Gordi­ anus III).  20 Woytek 2010, nos. 175 and 182 (Trajan); RIC Caracalla nos. 211(B) and 500.  21 RIC Septimius Severus no. 260.  22 See Schneider 2014 (with too cursory an overview of the pertinent numismatic material on 44f.)  23 This meaning of the term is not considered by Walter 1998.  24 The term was also used in this sense and context by Gerhard Thür in the Vienna conference; see the contribution by him and Michele Faraguna in this volume.  25 For the expression “coinage infrastructure”, see most recently Burnett – Crawford 2014, 263.  16  17

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A lot of recent scholarly work has been done in the context of Roman road-building and mobility in the imperium Romanum in general. 26 A novel tool for the study of Roman travel, transportation and communication was provided by Walter Scheidel and Elijah Meeks (Stanford University) through the creation of “Orbis. The Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World” , launched in 2012. This model allows for a simulation of movement along the Roman road system, the navigable rivers and known sea routes of the Mediterranean and adjacent seas, taking into account not only the season of travel, but also the means of transport (and baggage) and, most crucially, the cost of the trip: “Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity.”27 In this respect, transport by sea is bound to have the edge over land transport, which is one of the reasons why research on Mediterranean ports currently plays a pivotal role in the study of Roman connectivity in general. 28 The dependence on foodstuffs imported by ship, in feeding Rome’s population, was one of the key reasons for the importance of the capital city’s ports in Roman life. Consequently, research into the mechanisms of supply and distribution of goods in the Roman Empire is closely connected to the study of Roman waterways and port systems. 29 Hence, the paper by the current excavator of Portus, Simon Keay, on “The role played by the Portus Augusti in flows of commerce between Rome and its Mediterranean ports” was one of the important cross-sectional contributions to our Vienna conference, whose proceedings are published here. Anne Kolb, who has published authoritative studies on transport and mobility in the Roman Empire,30 organised a symposium in Zurich in 2012 in which the connection between infrastructure and the organisation of Roman rule was explored in greater detail. 31 In that conference, special attention was accorded to the provincial area, and more specifically to the interaction of local and central initiatives in the creation of infrastructural facilities in the provinces: Kolb aptly defined infrastructure as an intersection point of central and local interests.32 According to her, the main result of the conference was that, with regard to infrastructural building activity, Fergus Millar’s classic model of the Roman government as conforming to the principle of “petition-and-response”33 needs to be amended: “Die imperiale Politik ist dabei im Sinne einer systematischen Planung und Umsetzung von Zielen zu verstehen, die über eine kurzfristige situationsbedingte Reaktion auf besondere Ereignisse, Notstände oder Wünsche hinausgehen.”34 The 2014 Vienna conference on “Infrastructure and Distribution in Ancient Economies” was completely different in scope and structure. On the one hand, its concept was based on a comparative perspective on the phenomenon, juxtaposing pertinent studies on the Greek world, the Roman Empire and ancient Iranian economies of different periods: up to now, similar undertakings are sorely lacking.35 On the other hand, perhaps even more importantly, the conference was designed to integrate all the source disciplines of ancient history into the study of ancient infrastructure and distribution: not only archaeology and epigraphy – disciplines traditionally playing an important role in this field, as may best be seen from the aforementioned conference See Adams – Laurence 2001, Frei-Stolba 2004 and Lo Cascio – Tacoma 2016. Scheidel – Meeks, [accessed on 23 November 2017]. See also Scheidel 2013 on this aspect.  28 See, most recently, Keay 2012 (this volume contains the proceedings of a Roman Port Networks workshop held in Rome in 2008) and Schäfer 2016.  29 For more recent collected volumes resulting from conferences on this topic, see e.g. Papi 2007 and Kislinger et al. 2010 (for the Byzantine period); see also Adams 2012.  30 See Kolb 2000 and 2014a.  31 For the proceedings of this conference, see Kolb 2014b.  32 Kolb 2014b, 16.  33 Millar 1992, 537 and especially 644f.  34 Kolb 2014b, 15.  35 For some shy attempts to cross the narrow boundaries of the field of classical studies in the research on mobility in ancient times, see Adams – Roy 2007 and, more recently, Olshausen – Sauer 2014.  26  27

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volume edited by Anne Kolb36 –, but also papyrology, providing unique insights from the ‘historical laboratory’ that is Egypt, and especially numismatics.37 Recent years have seen a paradigm shift in our understanding of the rhythms of coin production and distribution especially in the Roman world. It has become increasingly clear that bulk shipments of imperial or provincial coin, whether freshly struck or taken out of circulation, to distant regions of the Roman Empire were common practice over the centuries.38 Often, coins were of course shipped in order to be used – or re-used – as coin somewhere else, but in some cases they were transported to be restruck at some distant mint, or they were perhaps destined to be melted down. This reminds us of the export of Roman coins to India (a phenomenon still not well enough understood), 39 but more generally allows us to appreciate the fact that coinage was not only money, but at the same time one of the many kinds of goods that circulated in ancient economic zones: coins made of metal were shipped much like wine, oil, equipment or machinery and works of art.40 The small hoard of cistophoric tetradrachms closing in 67 BC, recovered from the famous Antikythera shipwreck which was full of marvellous things like sculptures and exquisite glassware (not to mention the mysterious mechanism, named after the site)41 is a particularly vivid testimony to this, as are – doubtless governmental – huge shipments of coins like the one attested through the “Syrna” (Dodecanese) hoard, from a wreck off Cape Fteni Punta on the island of Syrna, containing over 35,000 radiates up to Diocletian.42 To sum up, it is high time to fully integrate the study of coin production and coin circulation into the wider panorama of research into ancient commercial flows. No attempt shall be made here to comment systematically and exhaustively on all the contributions in the present volume. Rather, it seems desirable to discuss some of the main motifs of the three sections of the conference – as well as of the symposium as a whole. In the first section on “Greek Economies”, approaches governed by New Institutional Economics prevailed. This reflects the current popularity of this perspective in ancient economic history;43 a good example of this is the recent collected volume on the role of transaction costs in ancient economies – an approach right at the heart of New Institutional Economics.44 In the present volume of proceedings, the papers by Vincent Gabrielsen on “‘Mankind’s most secure and durable institution’: state, credit, trade and capital accumulation in the classical-early Hellenistic Aegean”, as well as by Alain Bresson on “Coins and trade in Hellenistic Asia Minor: the Pamphylian hub” are of a particular relevance in this respect. Gabrielsen’s contribution highlights how fluid the concept of ‘economic infrastructure’ still is, while at the same time sharpening our understanding of the interdependencies of many different factors in economic developments. Take the example of the Delian League, whose members sponsored the Athenian fleet with their tribute. The fleet acted as a maritime police of extraordinary power; its presence protected the Kolb 2014b. One of the few more recent volumes to provide a successful synopsis of numismatic, epigraphic and archaeological data in the context of ancient economic history is the sammelband edited by Archibald et al. 2005 (focusing on the Hellenistic age).  38 See especially Butcher 2004, Amandry – Burnett 2015 and Kemmers 2003.  39 For an overview, see Turner 1989.  40 For ancient coins in Rome’s eastern trade, where in some instances it seems to have been treated as a mere commodity, see the Periplus Maris Erythraei, §§ 6, 8, 24, 39, 49, 56. It goes without saying that the process of striking transformed metal from a commodity into coinage of the state, but in the foreign trade this distinction was of course to some extent blurred.  41 Tselekas 2012.  42 Touratsoglou – Dellaporta 2006. The contention by Kay 2014, 101, according to which “the risks involved militated against the transportation of large sums of coin by sea” in the Roman Republican period, is disproved by the material he gathers in notes 81 and 82 on the same page. For a diverging view, see also the contribution by Domergue and Rico in this volume.  43 See in greater detail Bresson 2016, 15–27.  44 See Kehoe et al. 2015.  36  37

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economic activity of merchants throughout the Athenian Empire and, consequently, generated a growth of trade. In this perspective, it seems evident that the fleet functioned as part of the Athenian Empire’s economic infrastructure; in Gabrielsen’s view, the transactional costs involved for the members of the League for participation in the ‘protected’ market were fairly low. Two aspects of Alain Bresson’s substantial contribution should be singled out here. Firstly, he takes a fresh look at the problem of long-distance overland trade in the Hellenistic period. In view of the above-mentioned high cost of land transport in antiquity, as compared to water transport,45 it is not surprising that the author notes a strong preference for high-value products with an attractive value to weight ratio like spices, perfumes, luxury products, wool, textiles and slaves for land transport. Other goods – from bulky foodstuffs to building materials – were normally transported by water.46 The issue of land transportation, constantly in discussion among economic historians especially since the release of the network model “Orbis” by Scheidel and Meeks, also plays an important part in the two papyrological contributions to this volume, by the way. In his keynote to the conference, Roger Bagnall provided a case study of the economy of the Dakhla Oasis in the Roman period, which is of a tremendous methodological relevance (“Papyrus documents for the study of an ancient economy: methods and materials from an Egyptian oasis”). Due to their location, the oases of Egypt were of course bound to rely on land transportation, a factor that had significant repercussions on the economic behaviour of their inhabitants, as Bagnall demonstrates. The second region of Egypt where the Nile could not function as the main artery of transport was, of course, the Eastern desert, which is in the focus of Thomas Kruse’s paper on “The archive of the ‘camel driver’ Nikanor”. The second aspect of Bresson’s paper that touches upon a fundamental problem related to ancient economic history are his considerations regarding the basic function of Greek coinages. He stoutly challenges the – increasingly popular – view, propagated by François de Callataÿ for Greek Hellenistic coins,47 but also repeatedly advanced for Roman Republican issues,48 according to which the production of (precious metal) coins is almost always to be connected with military expenses of the issuing authority. While of course acknowledging the fact that war expenses were of great significance in some circumstances, Bresson makes a good case for trade and other economic factors being responsible for the production of Hellenistic silver coins in other instances. The relevant section of Bresson’s contribution benefits from being read alongside Fabrizio Sinisi’s paper on the “Patterns of coin production in the Parthian Empire”, given in the section “Ancient Iranian Economies” of our conference. Apart from arguing cogently against the concept of “crisis”, employed so freehandedly and almost indiscriminately in many historical analyses of the Parthian state, Sinisi also critically examines the structural development of the Parthian mint network and takes a close look at rhythms of Arsacid coin production. According to his analysis, there is no hard and fast connection between periods of warfare and periods of heavy minting in the Parthian kingdom, which provides an interesting parallel to Bresson’s contention. Actually, similar observations have recently also been made by Michel Amandry, on the basis of a quantitative and chronological analysis of the patterns of Trajan’s provincial silver coinage.49 Amandry holds that there is, mostly, no good correlation between the rhythms of provincial coin produc-

On the problems connected with overland transport in general, see now Bresson 2016, 81–84. This is why nautical archaeology nowadays plays a crucial role in ancient economic history: see in particular the contribution by Claude Domergue and Christian Rico in this volume on the distribution of metals, for which ancient shipwrecks are the most important basis.  47 For example in de Callataÿ 1997.  48 Crawford 1974, 696f.; see also Woytek 2003, 533–536.  49 Amandry 2013, especially 845–848, and Amandry – Burnett 2015, 805–807.  45  46

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tion and military activity under Trajan, and suggests that generally other economic factors should have governed the production of provincial silver coins in the High Principate. In keeping with the current boom of Parthian studies, Sinisi’s paper was just one of the contributions dealing with the Arsacid state in the section on “Ancient Iranian Economies”. In “Wege durch Parthien – Straßen, Handelsrouten und Kommunikation im Arsakidenreich”, Udo Hartmann completely dismantles earlier reconstructions, according to which the Arsacid state held a key position in Rome’s eastern trade, with Parthians being the profiteers by acting as “middlemen” between Roman traders and the source countries of oriental luxury goods to be imported into the Roman Empire. From Hartmann’s re-assessment of the evidence it clearly emerges that the Parthians did not have a complex customs system that would have allowed them to cream off the profits of the long-distance-trade. Quite on the contrary, it seems that the Arsacid monarchs did not exercise a strict control over the trade flows through their territory and, more generally, that they did not actively operate what one could call an “economic policy”. Problems regarding the setting up and maintenance of monetary infrastructure were treated across time and space in the sections on Greek and Iranian Economies, as well as in the section “The Roman Economy”. It is easy to see why this topic occupied centre-stage: Philip Kay’s recently published monograph on “Rome’s Economic Revolution” has made it clear, by taking the example of the denarius in the late Roman Republican period,50 that the availability of a reliable coinage infrastructure could make a huge impact on the development of a pre-modern economy as a whole. Regarding ancient Iran, apart from Sinisi’s Parthian contribution, Nikolaus Schindel asks the question: “Sasanian mints – where and why?” Against the backdrop of contemporary developments in the Mediterranean, he outlines the specific features of the Sasanian administration’s approach to the organisation of coin production and tries to reconstruct the rationale behind the choice of Sasanian mint locations – especially in the period after the general introduction of mint signatures under king Wahram IV, at the end of the fourth century AD, when a radical decentralisation of minting seems to have taken place. He tentatively argues that in Sasanian Iran neither the local availability of silver nor military factors governed the geographical choices made, but rather local economic necessities. Obviously, this suggestion ties in well with the ideas Bresson, Sinisi and Amandry developed for the Hellenistic, Arsacid and Roman Provincial coinages, against the ‘military’ model for coin production proposed by Michael Crawford and François de Callataÿ. But does this mean that the tables have been turned? Not so fast. Developments in coin production and coin use in the west, briefly evoked by Schindel, are considered in detail by Kevin Butcher and this author (“The grand scheme of things. Modelling coin production and coin distribution in the Roman Empire in the first and second centuries AD”) as well as by Frey-Kupper and Stannard. Butcher and this author outline the periodic expansions and contractions of the network of minting establishments active in the Roman territory from the Late Republican period onwards, and in doing so detect a clear correlation between the spread of minting and civil wars (as a rule accompanied by a drastic surge in production), often followed by a reduction in the number of minting establishments during peace. Thus, a radical dismissal of a nexus between coinage and military activity definitely would mean to throw the baby out with the bathwater, at least for Roman (‘mainstream’) coinage. Obviously, it is seldom advisable to advocate monocausal explanations for the existence of some monetary issue or other; also, differences in the minting policy between the financial administrations of states belonging to different cultural spheres doubtless have to be admitted, as stressed by Schindel. In general, a balanced view of the manifold types of possible motivation for producing coin in ancient societies, as set out in a classic paper by Chris Howgego more than 25 years ago, 51 seems sensible to this author, although the debate sketched out above has just been re-opened. Kay 2014. Howgego 1990.

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A special section of the paper by Butcher and this author discusses the impact of important new metallurgical data for Roman silver coinage on the reconstruction of Roman imperial economic policy;52 from the numismatists’ point of view, Butcher and Woytek concur with the main result of Anne Kolb’s recent conference on infrastructure, reported in the citation above, viz. that the Roman emperors’ economic policy in the Early and High Principate went far beyond shortterm measures and did not conform to the principle of “petition-and-response”. On the contrary, systematic planning and the organised targeting (and achievement) of objectives, sometimes over a considerable timespan and several reigns, may be deduced from the numismatic material. Also, this paper specifically examines the transport of provincial coin not produced locally – a curious phenomenon that has been studied in greater depth only recently –, and integrates it into the wider panorama of coin movement in the Roman world. Shipment of coinage is a topic also addressed by two other numismatic papers in this volume, albeit from completely different perspectives. In the section “Greek Economies”, Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert presented some reflections on “Die-sharing and the transfer of dies: evidence for orders and shipments of large sums of money in the ancient Greek world (5th to 3rd centuries BC)”. He commented on the general function of Greek coinages in the pre-Hellenistic era, thereby participating in the overarching debate outlined above: according to Fischer-Bossert, there is no good evidence that in producing coins Greek city states wanted to satisfy the needs of the market, or that they had any other objectives in mind than to pay for their military expenses and to cover the costs of public building activity. He also reminds us of the practical aspects of the collection of the tributes from the member states of the Delian League in the fifth century BC: each year, the Athenian fleet, as an executive force of a centralised fiscal organisation, was responsible for enormous transports of coined money, stored in money-bags and hydriae, from the member states to Athens. Since the Athenian Empire was a political anomaly in classical Greece, these regular shipments of coin53 over middle distances are among the few early precursors of statal coin transports on a larger scale, in later territorial states, whether Hellenistic kingdoms or the Roman Empire. In a seminal paper, Suzanne Frey-Kupper and Clive Stannard collect “Evidence for the importation and monetary use of blocks of foreign and obsolete bronze coins in the ancient world”. They present five case studies, all dealing with small change, yet highly diverse between themselves, spanning the time from the second century BC to the fifth century AD and the geographical area from the Alpine region to the Indian subcontinent. These studies deal with: the transfer of a block of bronze coins struck in Kos in the second century BC to central Italy; bronzes of Ebusus that were shipped to Pompeii; movement of Roman Republican asses to military contexts north of the Alps in the first century AD; Gallic imitations of antoniniani (third century AD) turning up in North Africa; the transfer of late Roman bronze to India and Sri Lanka in the fifth century AD. One of the key questions arising from their observations of course is who the actors involved in these transfers of coin were. Were they private persons, for example negotiatores? Or were the shipments of blocks of coin organised through official administrative arrangements – which may also have been low-level agreements between local officials? In all probability, the answer will differ from case study to case study: while the export of third century and late antique Roman coins (official and imitative) to Africa or India and Sri Lanka was most probably an export of material of near scrap-metal value by private arrangement, the transfer of Republican asses from Italy to the North should have had some official (army-)background, with the other cases being less clear. Research into the metal sources of the imperial denarius coinage has just begun; in general, an alternation of the minting of freshly-mined metal and the use of recycled materials seems to be in evidence. The situation was obviously completely different from Athens in the classical period, when apparently the vast majority of the owls produced were struck from silver mined in Laureion: on the process of acquisition of silver by the Athenian mint, see the contribution by Thür and Faraguna in this volume.  53 For some considerations on this topic for ancient Greece, see also de Callataÿ 2006.  52

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Be that as it may, this question leads on to one of the important leitmotifs of the conference as such, as underscored by Roger Bagnall during the closing discussion, viz. the roles of the state and of private individuals in ancient economies. In many of the papers, there was obviously a striking emphasis on the role of the state, “mankind’s most secure (ἀσφαλέστατoν) and durable (πολυχρονιώτατον) institution”, as Xenophon (vect. 3.10) put it, in the well-known passage programmatically cited by Vincent Gabrielsen in the title of his contribution, in which the polis (with her empire, in the case of Athens) appears as the decisive economic actor, impacting directly all sectors of the economy.54 Other studies, however, paint a more nuanced picture presenting a vivid interplay between the state and private citizens engaging in economic activities. The article by Ben Russell on “Documentary evidence and the Roman stone trade”, to a large extent based on epigraphic material, may serve as an example of this: he shows that in a sector like quarrying, there was a balanced coexistence of public and private activity. Leaving aside the atypical case of imperial quarries like Mons Claudianus in Egypt, there is evidence for the contemporaneous operation of a range of ownership systems at the same sites, with imperial and non-imperial work (by private contractors) being carried out side by side in the same quarrying districts. An intriguing problem connected to this debate is posed by the case of the silver coin production of Athens in the classical period. From an early point in time onward, Athens exerted the monopoly on the extraction of silver from the mines in Laureion, but the mining was leased out to private lessees; Gerhard Thür and Michele Faraguna (“Silver from Laureion: mining, smelting and minting”) discuss various possibilities how the silver extracted by these private citizens could end up at the public mint, finally opting for the hypothesis of a proportional quota of silver per year, in addition to a yearly registration fee. This reconstruction certainly is attractive; but whether it is correct or not, what matters in the present context is that mining operations in classical Athens were obviously conducted through a close cooperation between the public and private sectors. In the subtitle of the conference, the “flow of services” figured alongside the “flow of money” and of “goods”. While the two latter aspects both received ample attention in several papers each, services form the focus of just one contribution to this volume, by Robert Rollinger (“Between deportation and recruitment: craftsmen and specialists from the West in Ancient Near Eastern empires, from Neo-Assyrian times through Alexander III”). Rollinger demonstrates that mobility was by no means limited to objects, but that from an early period onwards manpower circulated internationally, too: highly specialised professionals like élite soldiers, or skilled craftsmen like carpenters, stone-masons or painters from the West were active in Mesopotamia and Iran. However, local and international cooperation are shown to have been decisive for economic activities in several other contributions as well. In her paper on “Large-scale fishing and the Roman production and trade in salted fish: some organizational aspects”, Annalisa Marzano notes an economic intensification in various sectors in the early imperial period, and makes it clear that networks of persons were pivotal for fishing, fish-salting and also for the trans-national distribution and commercialisation of the finished products: in this sector, business partnerships (socie­ tates) and associations (collegia and corpora) whose activity spanned, for instance, Spain, North Africa and Italy are attested. Similarly – albeit on a geographically reduced scale – Thomas Corsten studies the importance of regional trade networks in Asia Minor for the activities of Roman agents (“Negotiatores und lokale Märkte in Kleinasien. Überlegungen zu einer Rekonstruktion ländlicher Handelsnetzwerke”). Champions of an inclusive interpretation of the term will happily regard these networks as belonging to the “infrastructural” sphere.

For an examination of the role of the state in the Roman economy (first century BC to fourth century AD), see the recently published collected volume edited by Wilson – Bowman 2017.

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C. Adams, Transport, in: W. Scheidel (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, Cambridge 2012, 218–240.

Adams – Laurence 2001

C. Adams – R. Laurence (eds.), Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire, London 2001.

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Amandry – Burnett 2015

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Archibald et al. 2005

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Burnett 1999

A. Burnett, Buildings and Monuments on Roman Coins, in: G. M. Paul – M. Ierardi (eds.), Roman Coins and Public Life under the Empire. E. Togo Salmon Papers II, Ann Arbor 1999, 137–164.

Burnett – Crawford 2014 A. M. Burnett – M. H. Crawford, Coinage, Money and Mid-Republican Rome. Reflections on a Recent Book by Filippo Coarelli, Annali dell’Istituto Italiano di Numismatica 60 (2014), 231–265. Butcher 2004

K. Butcher, Coinage in Roman Syria. Northern Syria, 64 BC – AD 253, London 2004 (Royal Numismatic Society Special Publication 34).

de Callataÿ 1997

F. de Callataÿ, L’histoire des guerres mithridatiques vue par les monnaies, Louvain-la-Neuve 1997 (Numismatica Lovaniensia 18).

de Callataÿ 2006

F. de Callataÿ, Le transport des monnaies dans le monde grec, Revue Belge de Numismatique 152 (2006), 5–14.

Carradice – Buttrey 2007 I. A. Carradice – T. V. Buttrey, The Roman Imperial Coinage, vol. 2 – part 1. Second fully revised edition. From AD 69–96. Vespasian to Domitian, London 2007. Carson 1962

R. A. G. Carson, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, vol. 6: Severus Alexander to Balbinus and Pupienus, London 1962.

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N. T. Elkins, Monuments in Miniature. Architecture on Roman Coinage, New York 2015 (Numismatic Studies 29).

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R. Frei-Stolba (ed.), Siedlung und Verkehr im römischen Reich. Römerstrassen zwischen Herrschaftssicherung und Landschaftsprägung. Akten des Kolloquiums zu Ehren von Prof. H. E. Herzig vom 28. und 29. Juni 2001 in Bern, Bern 2004.

Fuchs 1969

G. Fuchs, Architekturdarstellungen auf römischen Münzen der Republik und der frühen Kaiserzeit, Berlin 1969 (Antike Münzen und Geschnittene Steine 1).

Howgego 1990

Ch. J. Howgego, Why did Ancient States strike Coins?, Numismatic Chronicle 150 (1990), 1–25.

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Ph. Kay, Rome’s Economic Revolution, Oxford 2014.

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Keay 2012

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D. Kehoe – D. Ratzan – U. Yiftach (eds.), Law and Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy, Ann Arbor 2015.

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F. Kemmers, Quadrantes from Nijmegen: Small Change in a Frontier Province, Revue Suisse de Numismatique 82 (2003), 17–35.

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E. Kislinger – J. Koder – A. Külzer (eds.), Handelsgüter und Verkehrswege. Aspekte der Warenversorgung im östlichen Mittelmeerraum (4. bis 15. Jahrhundert). Akten des Internationalen Symposions Wien, 19.–22. Oktober 2005, Vienna 2010 (Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung 18).

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A. Kolb, Transport und Nachrichtentransfer im römischen Reich, Berlin 2000 (Klio Beihefte Neue Folge 2).

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A. Kolb, Communications and Mobility in the Roman Empire, in: Ch. Bruun – J. Edmondson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy, Oxford 2014, 649–670.

Kolb 2014b

A. Kolb (ed.), Infrastruktur und Herrschaftsorganisation im Imperium Romanum. Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis III. Akten der Tagung in Zürich 19.–20. 10. 2012, Berlin 2014.

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GREEK ECONOMIES

Vincent Gabrielsen

“Mankind’s Most Secure and Durable Institution”: State, Credit, Trade and Capital Accumulation in the Classical – Early Hellenistic Aegean Building on the theories of the New Institutional Economics, this paper seeks to elucidate the positive impact of state institutions on economic activity. However, while most other studies using the same approach emphasize the role of the judicial system (constitutions, law, lawcourts, weight and measure standards, etc.), the present one emphasizes two other, relatively neglected fields of state activity: (1) the propensity of imperial exactions (mainly tribute) to stimulate the economy; (2) the establishment of credit-supplying institutions that offered private investors safe profits and facilitated the accumulation of publicly-owned capital for financing commercial infrastructure. The first point is here exemplified through Athens’ replacement of tribute with a 5% tax on trade (Thuc. 7.28.4–5); the second through Xenophon’s proposal (in Vect. 3.6–8) to create a start-up capital fund, aphorme.

1. Introduction In an interview, Quentin Skinner, a leading expert in the history of the state, categorically dismissed predictions about the modern state’s imminent demise. To drive home his point that the institution of the state is still very much alive and kicking, Skinner referred to the world financial crisis in 2008, particularly to how the state – in the UK, Europe and the USA – rapidly stepped in to avert the collapse of the banking system by taking over the role of supreme moneylender, thus in effect (but not expressed in words) nationalizing its banks. States, Skinner concluded, still issue currency, enforce contracts, wage war and impose taxes. “No other institution than the State can do all these things”.1 This view has famous antecedents. In 355 BC, the Athenian Xenophon, presenting a number of proposals about how to improve Athens’ finances, emphasized the role of the state (here the polis) to the point of calling it “mankind’s most secure (asphalestaton) and durable (polychronotaton) institution” (Xen. Vect. 3.10). Nevertheless, this statement (which I use in the title of my paper) and its implications continued to receive little scholarly attention, as the dominant voices were those of the doubters of the state’s capabilities and willingness to take growth-producing economic action: it was a cardinal thesis of the reigning orthodoxy that, apart from its involvement in securing vital supplies, the ancient state had only a negative impact on the economy. Forceful levies, hampering rather than stimulating growth, remained the main preoccupation throughout this period.2 Guided by the theoretical insights of New Institutional Economics, however, recent scholarship on the ancient economy has brought the state back in. The state, it is argued, provided mechanisms that eased the conduct of economic operations, dealt with market imperfections, lowered transaction costs and on the whole created positive stimuli for the economy.3 I subscribe to this latter approach. But whereas most contributions tend to emphasize the impact of institutions related to the judicial system (constitutions, law, lawcourts, enforcement of contracts, regulation of weight and measure standards, etc.),4 this paper concentrates on two rather neglected aspects in Classical Greek and Hellenistic scholarship. The first, dealing head-on with the issue of forceful Kathimerini 12 August 2012, Section ‘Ideas’, p. 4. Finley 1999.  3 North – Thomas 1973; North 1990; North 2005.  4 Frier – Kehoe 2007; Greif 2006; Ober 2015; Kehoe et al. 2015.  1  2

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levies, is the effect of imperial tribute on the economy of payers. The second is the state’s direct involvement in private financial investment, capital accumulation and the supply of credit. Linking these two aspects together is maritime trade. My historical example to elucidate the first aspect is the fifth-century BC Athenian Empire. In section 2, special attention will be paid to a major change in the tributary obligations imposed by Athens on the cities under its rule (arche). As regards the second aspect (treated in section 3), my historical examples derive from a number of states, including Athens, and cover the period from late Classical to early Hellenistic times. However, our discussion in section 3 will proceed from a closer look at a proposal made by Xenophon in 355 BC on how to increase Athens’ revenues. Each of the topics I chose is vast and rife with vexing questions that cannot be treated here in great detail without losing sight of the issues central to this paper. Therefore, in the following two sections I offer suggestions rather than try to prove a case. What matters most is our attempt to expose the wider historical significance of the points to emerge, something which strongly recommends a combination of source analysis with a generalizing approach.

2. Tribute (phoros) and maritime trade Two things more than anything else organically link the tribute of the Athenian Empire to maritime trade: an event; and a lasting transactional relationship between imperial power and subjects. I begin with the event. For more than six decades in the fifth century, the cities subject to Athenian rule (formally the First Delian League) were each under an obligation to pay Athens an annual sum of money in tribute (phoros). How much a city had to pay was determined through four-yearly assessments; the assessment of 425 BC, for instance, envisaged a yearly total of 1,460 talents.5 The tribute was regarded as exclusively Athenian income (prosodos), and a major expense for which it was used was war, from 431 to 404 particularly the Peloponnesian War. However, in 414/413, after about sixty-five years of uninterrupted enforcement, this time-honoured system of imperial exactions saw a drastic change. Thucydides, who dates the event before the end of the Sicilian expedition (415–413), explains briefly that, seeing their financial ability weakening due to increasing war expenses and loss of revenues, the Athenians decided “to impose on their allies, instead of tribute, a 5% tax [technically, an eikoste, ‘one-twentieth’] on everything imported and exported by sea, thinking [or ‘recognizing’] that more money will be forthcoming this way”.6 Tribute was thereby replaced by a 5% tax on maritime trade. What does this measure tell us about the empire and the economy of its members? Modern commentators still discuss the intriguing questions raised by this change.7 Above all, how was the 5% tax collected in each of the empire’s harbours and how did it reach Athens? Did it last until the empire’s dissolution in 404, or was the tribute re-introduced before that year? And was the new measure a success, i.e. did it actually increase Athens’ yearly revenue? Few would now endorse the older view that tribute was re-introduced in 410,8 and indeed the evidence for that view Standard accounts: ATL 3; Meiggs 1972; Osborne 2000; Samons II 2000. Special issues: Mattingly 1996; Ma et al. 2009. Assessment of 425: IG 13, 71, 1, 100–101; 3, 121–123; 4, 124–125, 181.  6 Thuc. 7.28.4–5: δι’ ἃ καὶ τότε ὑπό τε τῆς Δεκελείας πολλὰ βλαπτούσης καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀναλωμάτων μεγάλων προσπιπτόντων ἀδύνατοι ἐγένοντο τοῖς χρήμασιν. καὶ τὴν εἰκοστὴν ὑπὸ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον τῶν κατὰ θάλασσαν ἀντὶ τοῦ φόρου τοῖς ὑπηκόοις ἐποίησαν, πλείω νομίζοντες (5) ἂν σφίσι χρήματα οὕτω προσιέναι. αἱ μὲν γὰρ δαπάναι οὐχ ὁμοίως καὶ πρίν, ἀλλὰ πολλῷ μείζους καθέστασαν, ὅσῳ καὶ μείζων ὁ πόλεμος ἦν· αἱ δὲ πρόσοδοι ἀπώλλυντο. See Hornblower 2008, ad loc. (p. 594– 595). For the possibility that νομίζοντες here can mean ‘recognizing’, see LSJ s.v.  7 The change from tribute to a 5% maritime tax is treated at some length by Samons II 2000, 250–254; Kallet 2001, 137–138, 195–225; Figueira 2005. See also Blamire 2001; Kallet 2013.  8 ATL 3, 148; Meiggs 1972, 369, 438–439, followed by Samons II 2000, 253–254.  5

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does not stand up to closer scrutiny.9 Most, however (including those who doubt the re-introduction of tribute), consider the eikoste to have been a failure.10 Furthermore, while it is recognized that the change had economic ramifications, analysis is limited to one aspect only, notably the burden of the eikoste on the allies compared to the tribute, since the principal concern is with politics: was Athens trying to appease discontented subjects by lessening their fiscal burdens?11 A radically different view is taken here. The replacement of tribute with the eikoste is one of the most significant events not only in the history of the Athenian Empire, but also in the economic history of the Classical Greek world. To appreciate fully the economic significance of the change, a shift in perspective is needed. Instead (as most scholars tend to do) of looking only at how the 5% tax on trade fared from its introduction in 413 to the end of the empire in 404 BC, we should also – indeed, primarily – look at what had happened in the preceding period to make the eikoste tax a better income-raising alternative to tribute. The decision in 414/413 to introduce it marked the culmination of a long process and rested on the assurance that maritime trade alone could now serve as the fiscal base of the empire. But first we must briefly deal with the view that the eikoste, allegedly a panic measure,12 proved to be unsuccessful, because it supposedly failed to bring in as much money as tribute had done previously; and/or because its collection was supposedly fraught with practical difficulties (among the difficulties envisaged is the inability to find enough individuals who would buy the collection of the tax and others who would act as sureties).13 All this is conjectural and can be dismissed immediately. We do not know the size of the yearly tribute received immediately prior to 414/413. One modern estimate sets it at 900 talents, which, on the assumption that the eikoste yielded at least as much, means that the overall trade taxed was worth 18,000 talents.14 Is this realistic? The few fig Neither of two pieces of evidence that have been adduced in support of a re-introduction is conclusive (see Kallet 2001, 223; Figueira 2005, 98–103): (i) IG 13, 100, interpreted by Meritt (1936, 386–389) to be the tribute assessment of 410, is dated by Mattingly (1996, 159) to 418; (ii) In the context of 408, Xen. Hell. 1.3.9 mentions the obligation of the Kalchedonians to pay tribute to the Athenians: πρέσβεις Ἀθηναίων ἀναγαγεῖν, καὶ ὅρκους ἔδοσαν καὶ ἔλαβον παρὰ Φαρναβάζου ὑποτελεῖν τὸν φόρον Καλχηδονίους Ἀθηναίοις ὅσονπερ εἰώθεσαν καὶ τὰ ὀφειλόμενα χρήματα ἀποδοῦναι, Ἀθηναίους δὲ μὴ πολεμεῖν Καλχηδονίοις, ἕως ἂν οἱ παρὰ βασιλέως πρέσβεις ἔλθωσιν. But, as has been pointed out, phoros here has not necessarily its technical meaning, and the Kalchedonian case may have been a special arrangement: Kallet 2001, 223; Figueira 2005, 103–104, esp. 115: the eikoste lasted until the end of the empire, cf. Mattingly 1996, 158–159, 205–208 (tribute was never reimposed).  10 Kallet 2001, 224: “(...) the eikoste was likely to fail in practice simply because of the military and political situation in which the Athenians found themselves following the Sicilian expedition”, and p. 225: “Both measures [the eikoste and the ‘Standards Decree’] may well have flopped”, with p. 226: “Both likely (...) were, after all, dead letters”. If, however, as is suggested by Kallet (2000, 196), the eikoste represents the culmination of a shift in the Athenians’ conception of their arche from a political system to more of an economic system, one must, in view of the preceding statements, conclude that that conception would have been abandoned soon after the supposed flop. See also note 9 above.  11 Figueira 2005, 117–123, 128–129 (esp. 97 for the view that the 5% tax was a normal piece of imperial financing, and one especially appropriate to colonial allies; we cannot determine whether the tax could bring in an amount equal to or greater than the tribute); Kallet 2001, 204–205, 225–226.  12 Fawcett 2006, 278.  13 Meiggs 1972, 369, 439; Samons II 2000, 253 (local tax farmers had trouble collecting the tax, or it was more difficult to find buyers and sureties for the taxes), 254 (the tax was not sufficient compared to tribute); Burke 2005, 28 (collection of the eikoste was made difficult by the Spartan fleet); Fawcett 2006, 90–91, 93, 278, 314.  14 Gomme et al. 1970, 408. Others use as the basis of their calculation the estimated amount of tribute assessment (i.e. 1,000 talents) and so set the total of taxable trade at 20,000 talents: Figueira 2005, 118; even though Figueira assumes a level of tribute of c. 1,000 talents, he concludes (p. 130) that “we lack the data or comparanda to determine whether the tax could bring in an amount equal to or greater than 1,000 T in revenue”). cf. Samons II 2000, 252. But Kallet (2000, 199 n. 60, following Andreades 1933, 298) is right to point out that Thucydides does not say that the Athenians hoped to collect more than what has been theoretically fixed as tribute, but simply more than what they would actually have collected at this time.  9

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ures we have about what ports earned in taxes indicate that indeed it is. In the mid-fourth century, the Thracian king Kersobleptes’ annual revenue from the emporia under his control amounted to 200 talents, i.e. about one-fourth of the estimated pre-413 tribute of 900 talents.15 If Kersobleptes’ revenue, as seems likely, mainly accrued from the usual 2% import/export tax (the pentekoste), the trade taxed would amount to 10,000 talents; if taxed at 5%, this same trade would have yielded 500 talents in tax revenue, i.e. more than half of the estimated, pre-413 tribute of 900 talents; and this, we should note, only from an area roughly corresponding to the Thraceward district under the Athenian Empire. Another indicator of how much port taxes yielded comes from Piraeus: in 402/401, the 2% import/export tax there was farmed out for 30 talents, and in the next year for 36 talents (Andoc. 1.133–134). Around 414/413, allied ports perhaps received less, but hardly much less trade than Piraeus did in 402–401, i.e. two years after a damaging trade blockade and defeat by Sparta. So, considering that from 414/413 onwards a large number of allies, some of them major maritime cities, levied the higher tax of 5% in their ports, there is no difficulty in accepting that the revenue from the eikoste amounted to, and perhaps exceeded, 900 talents. Yet the figures game is here strictly speaking unnecessary. The fact remains that the Athenians, by 414/413 seasoned empire-builders, found the shift from tribute to eikoste to be financially advantageous; and that ought to be enough for us.16 The modalities of collection are likewise unknown. At Athens and elsewhere, taxes, like the exploitation of public property, were normally farmed out by auction and in return for the provision of security,17 and this was probably also done with the eikoste.18 In that case, Athens’ revenue from the new imperial tax would consist of either one of two amounts: that for which an allied city had sold its eiskoste in a given year; or that collected by that city’s tax farmers (not necessarily its citizens). The latter can be dismissed as unlikely, since the relevant sum of money would have included the tax farmers’ own profits/losses, depending on whether the actual value of trade taxed was higher/lower than the price they had paid. Thus, instead of tribute, subject cities now (much like tax brokers) simply surrendered the yearly sales price of the new tax on trade to Athens; private tax farmers, for their part, paid (either up front or in installments) the purchase price of the tax and kept any surplus likely to accrue therefrom. Aristophanes (Ran. 363) mentions by name an eikostologos on Aigina in 405, but neither the aspersions he casts on his person nor modern theories built on these aspersions19 help us to understand the real duties of the whole group of eikostologoi. Perhaps all we can say from the Aristophanes passage is that non-tributary cities like Aigina also became liable to pay eikoste.

Dem. 23.110, cf. Gomme et al. 1970, 408–409. Unless, of course, one is prepared to accept an unrealistically low tribute total prior to 413. Negative assessments of the success of the eikoste in raising more money than tribute are partly based on Thucydides’ remark (7.28.4– 5): πλείω νομίζοντες ἂν σφίσι χρήματα οὕτω προσιέναι. At most, this can be interpeted as expressing reservation: Thucydides is suspending judgement on the effectiveness of the new measure. But it cannot be made to imply that the new measure was not working, or that the Athenians’ expectation of increased revenue was misguided: so Kallet 2001, 139 and 224 (Thucydides “implies strongly that the decision was a grand mistake”). On the possibility that νομίζοντες means ‘recognizing’, see note 6 above.  17 Xen. Vect. 3.14: (...) καὶ ταύτας [sc. τριήρεις δημοσίας] ἐκμισθοῦν ἐπ’ ἐγγυητῶν ὥσπερ καὶ τἆλλα δημόσια. Kyme was regarded as exceptional, because for 300 years it did not farm out its harbour taxes: Strabo 13.3.6 (p. 622 C.).  18 So also Samons II 2000, 251; Kallet 2001, 203.  19 Ar. Ran. 361–365: (...) ἢ τῆς πόλεως χειμαζομένης ἄρχων καταδωροδοκεῖται, / ἢ προδίδωσιν φρούριον ἢ ναῦς, ἢ τἀπόρρητ’ ἀποπέμπει / ἐξ Αἰγίνης Θωρυκίων ὢν εἰκοστολόγος κακοδαίμων, / ἀσκώματα καὶ λίνα καὶ πίτταν διαπέμπων εἰς Ἐπίδαυρον, / ἢ χρήματα ταῖς τῶν ἀντιπάλων ναυσὶν παρέχειν τινὰ πείθει. Cf. Pollux 9.29 (citing the middle poet Anaxilas’ Glaukon [fr. 8 Kock]). See Samons II 2000, 253–254; Figueira 2005, 94–97. The scholiast explains the eikostologos as “he who collects the eikoste-taxes in time of crisis, that is, when the strategoi demanded the eikoste-taxes from the harbours and the islands and paid for military expenses from these sums”. Jansen (2007, 416) accepts this testimony and connects it to the argyrologia by Athenian generals.  15  16

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Was the eikoste, then, a failure because of the practical difficulties in collecting it (lack of technical means, administrative experience, etc.)? In the early 380s (possibly as early as 392/391) the Athenians reimposed the eikoste on Klazomenai and Thasos and probably also on several other cities under their influence.20 This does not look like a sign of a failure experienced previously. Moreover, the view that in order to pay their phoros most or many allies primarily taxed one form of wealth, land, and thus mainly relied on an Athenian-style eisphora system, lacks firm support.21 More likely, tribute-paying cities cast their own fiscal net wider, also using revenue from taxes on maritime trade.22 Consequently, they would have had administrative experience in that area. And if it were the case that the Athenians themselves lacked the experience and techniques for such a novel and large-scale tax-collecting expedient, these skills were already possessed by others and could easily be acquired: the Ahiqar Customs Account of Persian Egypt documents the successful employment of a technically ˙sophisticated and accurate system of trade-tax collection (with the appropriate bookkeeping methods) at a specific port in Egypt. Collectors in imperial service were meticulously registering the rates paid (a) on each imported/exported kind of commodity, (b) according to a ship’s size and ‘nationality’ (i.e. Ionian [= Greek] or Phoenician), as well as the time of payment and, most important of all, the total amount set aside for shipment to the royal (Persian) treasury.23 This system, operative in 475 or 454 BC, may have offered itself as an inspiration and a model for Athenian fiscal practices in the empire, in the same way that Persian practices are now argued to have influenced Athens’ system of tribute.24 In the early fifth century the Persians were demonstrating how, in addition to tapping the wealth from within their empire, through taxes on maritime-trade they were also able to tap the wealth from without their empire, and this in fact was also a signal result of the Athenian eikoste of 414/413. It expanded Athens’ fiscal catchment area well beyond the political limits of its arche. At the same time, it made the maritime trader (regardless of his place of origin, political affiliation or cultural identity) the primary source of the revenue needed to finance the Athenian Empire and its institutions of violence. A clearer acknowledgment of the magnitude and stability of the trader’s profits is hard to come by. Thus, in 414/413, trade alone started feeding the empire.25 But until then it was the empire that had been feeding trade. There is no other way – with theories of failure and impracticality having been discredited – in which the replacement of tribute with the eikoste can be explained in institutional and economic terms. The change was the nearly inevitable consequence of a significant long-term rise in the profits from trade not only in Piraeus, but in all other ports of the empire.26 Which institutions were responsible for this development? Here, two will be singled out for their special role, the one ensuring security (asphaleia) at sea, i.e. the uninterrupted, safe-from-raiding – IG 22, 28 = Rhodes – Osborne 2007, no. 18 (387/386 BC), ll. 7–11, for Klazomenai; IG 22, 24a (from between 389– 386), ll. 3–6, for Thasos. See Rutishauser 2012, 147.  21 Landed wealth: de Sainte Croix 1954/1955. Eisphora: Samons II, 2000, 252, cf. Antiph. F 51 ‘On the Tribute of Samothrace’ (Thalheim), with Meiggs 1972, 241 (to pay their tribute the allies used a system like the fourth-century Athenian symmories).  22 Tenger 1995; Kallet 2001, 202–203. Figueira 2005, 124–129 divides payers into (a) maritime economies, (b) agricultural economies with a small commercial sector and (c) agricultural economies producing for a market.  23 Yardeni 1994 (date: 475 BC); Briant – Descat 1998 (date: possibly 454); Bresson 2000, 68–73. Later parallels of these practices include: P.Cair.Zen. 1, 59012 (259 BC); SB 18, 12167 (mid-2nd cent. AD); P.Bingen 77 (2nd cent. AD); I thank my Copenhagen colleague Dr Kasper Evers for bringing the last three examples to my attention.  24 Raaflaub 2009. Figueira (2005, esp. 120–121) argues that Athens was already using the eikoste before 413 as a funding device in its colonies.  25 Even though Kallet (2001, 196) takes the eikoste to represent the culmination of a shift in the Athenians’ conception of their arche from a political system to more of an economic system, she maintains (p. 202) that this maritime tax eliminated the cities’ potential to derive state profit from trade.  26 See also the insightful analysis of Pébarthe 1999.  20

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and so cheaper – movement of goods and persons; the other easing the conduct of commercial transactions empire-wide through the enforcement of a uniform system of payment and measurement, which, backed by a powerful government, was turned into an effective cost-reducing, trust-generating mechanism, the fuel of trade. The first of these is represented by the imperial navy, the second by the imperial regulation and supervision of the standards applying to coinage, measures and weights, enforced by the so-called Standards Decree (which might have been a series of enactments).27 Even though no text explicitly connects the Standards Decree and the eikoste, there is good reason to follow those scholars (most recently Kallet 2001) who argue for a close connection between the two: the first facilitated the second.28 However, their complementarity does not require them to be contemporaneous, i.e. to suppose that the Standards Decree was introduced close to 413 to facilitate the collection of the eikoste,29 and it is still possible that the Standards Decree was an earlier initiative, perhaps of 425/424 BC,30 designed to serve a broader purpose: to provide infrastructural support for the conduct of commerce (maritime or other) throughout the empire. Thus, in economic terms, the eikoste can be seen as the logical, long-term consequence of a unified, imperially guaranteed system of coinage and metrological standards. Both institutions mentioned above functioned as prime, growth-producing infrastructural expedients. The principal reason why they did so function, however, is that imperial Athens, well before 413, had started combining successfully its monopoly on violence with a pervasively participatory attitude towards the allies. The economic outcome of this was a durable transactional relationship between imperial power and subjects. Emblematic of the violence monopoly is, inter alia, Thucydides’ account of how the League fleet was at an early stage converted into an Athenian imperial fleet (1.99.1–3), as well as Isokrates’ remark (8.36) that imperial Athens did not permit anyone to sail the sea who was not willing to pay the tribute. Both testimonies are, moreover, backed by Pseudo-Xenophon’s listing of the benefits of the Athenians as thalassokratores or hoi archousi tes thalasses (Ps.-Xen. Ath. Pol. ch. 2) and by other equally well-known evidence as well.31 One way in which thalassocracy could translate into an effective violence monopoly was to deprive others of control over the means with which to challenge that position. Yet implicit in all these testimonies is also the participatory attitude of the empire. It is reflected in the fact that tribute, instead of being solely the quintessential expression of rent-seeking, the instrument of compulsion and exploitation it is often perceived to be, a “Zwangsinstrument”,32 actually constituted one half of a transaction whose other half was made up of the services derived by payers in return for their payments. Essentially, tribute represented the price of a good which the empire was able to provide to its members by virtue of possessing a violence monopoly.33 A prime service thus purchased was the protection of maritime traffic.34 Provided that the price paid was low in relation to the quality of the service rendered (the measure of ML 45; IG 13, 1453. Kallet 2001, 205, 218–222; Figueira 2003, 88, and esp. Figueira 2006. Hornblower (2008, 595) finds Kallet’s view (2001, 205–213) speculative. Even so, I agree with Kroll (2009, 201–202) that there is much to recommend the complementarity it posits between the two measures. A close link between the Standards Decree and trade is also made in Giovannini 1968, 114–118; Martin 1985, 203–206; Figueira 2003; Pébarthe 2008, 114–118.  29 Kallet 2001, 205–213.  30 Mattingly 1996, 51–52, 478 (Mattingly 1961, 148–169), revising the older view that the decree dated from the midfifth cent. BC (See ML 45). Kallet, in line with Cavaignac (1953, 6–7), argues for a date close to 413 (Kallet 2001, 205–225), but see Figueira 2005, 125 note 177.  31 E.g. Athens’ exclusion of the Megarians from the port and markets of the empire (the Megarian decrees): Thuc. 1.67.4, cf. 1.42.2: Plut. Per. 29 ff.; Diod. 12.39.4 ff. See, additionally, IG 13, 40 (446 BC) with Pébarthe 2004, esp. 92.  32 Meyer 1960, 499; cf. Finley 1981, 47.  33 The old debate about the “popularity of the empire” (de Sainte Croix 1954/1955; Bradeen 1960) is not directly relevant here. What we should note is the absence of firm evidence for tribute being the cause of revolts: Phillips 2010.  34 Gabrielsen 2001; Gabrielsen 2007.  27  28

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that quality being the imperial navy’s standard and effectiveness), then those traders who received that service enjoyed the advantage of operating with reduced transaction costs, with a corresponding increase in their profits as a result. Was, then, the price paid by the subject cities high or low? Comparison of three sets of figures indicates an answer.35 1) The average total cost of the imperial navy (ships, gear, operations and land-based facilities) is estimated at 250–300 talents a year.36 2) In a reasonably well documented year, 441 BC, when the total amount paid in tribute is estimated at 407 talents, 71% of 205 payers each paid 1 talent or less (in all 55 talents/14% of the total), while the remaining 29% of payers paid 352 talents (86% of the total), with only two cities (Aegina and Thasos) each paying as much as 30 talents,37 though until c. 444/443 Thasos was paying a mere 3 talents.38 3) In the period 411–404, a wealthy Athenian citizen paid in civic taxes a yearly average of 9,100 drachmas. In this same period, the share of his civic taxes that were related to war only totalled 7 talents, 1,000 drachmas;39 and there is no reason to assume that all these financial burdens were markedly less in the preceding period.40 The first observation to be made is that the incoming tribute was generally enough to cover the costs of the navy plus a little more, but no more than that.41 The second observation is that a wealthy Athenian citizen’s contribution to Athens’ main violence institution exceeded what 71% of the subjects cities each paid in tribute. Granted, the tribute assessment of 425 BC substantially raised what was expected of the subjects, as it aimed at a maximum of 1,460 talents, i.e. c. three times as much as the estimated amount collected in 441 (see above). Yet, against this theoretical maximum we should reckon the reality of (a) interest-bearing loans totalling about 5,600 talents, which the Athenians contracted from their own sacred treasuries from 433/432 to 423/422;42 and (b) the decision, in 428, to make affluent Athenian citizens and metics liable to a war tax (eisphora) for the first time.43 To conclude, the vast majority of the merchants throughout the empire were being secured at sea by a first-rate naval power at a fairly low price. If ever there was a clear indication that the empire had created what Alain Bresson has called “la cité marchande”, this is it.44 The Athenian Empire did not rely solely on extractive (or ‘closed social order’) institutions, but increasingly also on inclusive (‘open social order’) institutions.45 A similar observation was Virtually all of the figures which our literary sources give for the yearly total of tribute are contested: Thuc. 1.96.2 (original assessment of 478/477: 460 talents), but Thuc. 2.13.2–3 (431/430: 600 talents); Xen. Anab. 7.1.7 (1,000 talents); Plut. Arist. 24.4–5 (1,300 talents under the demagogues). Caution is advised with the epigraphic evidence, too: even though the tribute lists of the 430s suggest totals of less than 400 talents (a figure that conflicts with Thuc. 2.13.2–3: 600 talents), it is not known what exactly these totals cover. The cash reserve of 9,700 talents stored on the Acropolis (Thuc. 2.13) is left out of consideration here.  36 Gabrielsen 2008a, 48–60; Gabrielsen 2013, 334.  37 Nixon – Price 1990, 142–143; 166–170; Osborne 2000, 90–91, 93.  38 IG 13, 264, 268.  39 Lys. 21.1–5, with Gabrielsen 2013, 341–344, for the description ‘civic taxes’.  40 Ps.-Xen. Ath.Pol. 1.13; Thuc. 6.16.1–4; Ant. Tetr. 1 β 12; [And.] 4.42.  41 True, 600 talents were spent on building the Parthenon (447/446–433/432: IG 13, 436–450), in addition to the cost of the gold and ivory statue of Athena (IG 13, 453–460) and the cost of the Propylaia (IG 13, 462–466). However, not all Athenians accepted the logic of spending money from the empire on public building projects; one of those who did not was Thucydides son of Melisias, who saw himself ostracized. Giovannini (1990 and 1997) doubts that tribute financed the Parthenon.  42 ML 72, with tables on pp. 214, 217.  43 Thuc. 3.19.1, with Hornblower 1991, 404.  44 Bresson 2000.  45 Growth under extractive (or ‘closed social order’) institutions means that the violence monopoly is used to ensure that wealth and power remain within the power-holding elite. Growth under inclusive (‘open social order’) insti  35

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already made in 1884 by Karl Julius Beloch, who described the introduction of the eikoste-tax as “ein mächtiger Schritt auf der Bahn zum Einheitsstaate, den der Bund machte”.46 Instead of distributing the material benefits of its violence monopoly to only a narrow elite, the Athenian Empire generously allowed these benefits to ‘trickle down’: not only to the poorer Athenian citizens, who are customarily regarded as the principal beneficiaries of the empire (as recipients of political pay, naval pay, land in the klerouchies, etc.47); but also to its tribute-paying subjects, the co-beneficiaries of an inexpensive, but highly efficient trade-servicing infrastructural facility.48 Our interpretation of the evidence discussed above seems to be in alignment with the part of modern Public Choice Theory (in economics and political science) that is known as the Calculus of Consent.49 The direct and positive relationship between (a) naval empire, (b) an increase in navigation and (c) the efflorence of emporia was perceived by Thucydides as a universally valid law of historical development, which (in the Archaeology) he used in order to explain the incipient increase in wealth in Greece from king Minos onwards. Thucydides was very probably projecting into the past a development occurring in his own day. To sum up, the Athenian Empire and its tribute-paying allies were entangled in a transactional relationship of the first order. Full recognition of the sturdy economic outcome of that relationship led to its timely – and, indeed, necessary – re-adjustment in 413: maritime trade would now singlehandedly underwrite the bill of the empire.

3. State, credit and capital accumulation Among Xenophon’s proposals in 355 BC of how Athens could obtain more revenue, there is one which includes trade infrastructure among its special, long-term financial aims.50 It is the creation of a capital fund, or, more correctly, a start-up capital fund, aphorme.51 Before detailing it, Xenophon reminds the Athenians (by offering concrete examples) of their willingess in the past to contribute large sums to otherwise risky, state-organized projects of uncertain outcome, namely, military/naval expeditions, “the only certain thing of which is that the contributors will never receive back their contributions, nor will they any longer have any share in these contributions”. This, however, will not be the case with the proposed aphorme. Xenophon (Vect. 3.9–10) writes: “But no investment can yield them [sc. the contributors] so fine a return as the money advanced by them (protelesosin) to form the start-up capital fund (aphorme). For in those cases in which a contribution (eisphora) of 10 minai [1,000 drachmas] is made, the yield will be, like in maritime loans (nautikon), about twenty per cent (epipempton), and so each contributor will receive three obols a day. And in those cases in which 5 minai [500 drachmas] are contributed, the yield will be more than one-third (epitriton). But most Athenians tutions, on the other hand, means that the violence monopoly is used for making the wealth-creating mechanisms accessible to a broader circle. See Acemoglu et al. 2005; Acemoglu – Robinson 2012. In North et al. 2009, the ‘closed social order’ type of institutions are said to distinguish the natural state, which, according to the authors, was the predominant form of society until the 19th cent. AD. Although I do use their terminology here, I do not subscribe to their historical interpretation that most states before the 19th cent. AD must be classified as being the natural state type.  46 Beloch 1884, 44. Quoted by Figueira 2005, 123 with note 174.  47 Finley 1981.  48 This participatory attitude is further manifest in the imperial policy (adopted after the conversion of the League fleet into an Athenian fleet) holding “that such allied cities as possessed no triremes should be supplied with them by us [the Athenians]” (Andoc. 3.38). See, e.g., IG 13, 127: loan of triremes to Samos in 405 BC.  49 Buchanan – Tullock 1962.  50 That infrastructure, which includes the acquisition of a state-owned merchant fleet, is detailed at Vect. 3.12–14, cf. 4.33–34.  51 On aphorme, see e.g. also Arist. Pol. 1320b 39–40 (6.3.4): ἀφορμὴν ἐμπορίας καὶ γεοργίας; Dem. 36.44. Cf. Bresson 2000, 253.

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will receive more in a year than the sums they separately contribute; for those who advance (protelesantes) one mina [100 drachmas] will draw an income (prosodon) of nearly two minai [200 drachmas], and this whole arrangement will be backed by the state (polis), which is agreed to be mankind’s most secure and durable institution.”52 Appended to this proposal is a recommendation that contributors be written up as “benefactors (euergetai) for all time”. This, according to Xenophon, will likely attract many foreigners (xenoi) as well as certain poleis to contribute (eisenegkein). Indeed, his own hope is that even some kings, tyrants and satraps would wish to participate “in this award of gratitude” (ταύτης τῆς χάριτος: Vect. 3.11). The contributions, as exemplified by Xenophon, are each going to give the same return (about 3 obols, or, to be exact, 3.28 obols a day), despite the fact that they are of three different sizes.53 Therefore, the principle followed – the smaller the contribution, the larger the return – gives a greater advantage to contributors of smaller amounts, which seems to be in accord with Xenophon’s prediction that the number of such contributors is going to be preponderant. ‘Popular capitalism’ may be a fitting description for Xenophon’s principle. The main issue discussed in connection with this proposal is the character of the arrangement. Scholarship has attempted to establish the relationship of the monetary contributions to known financial institutions. The older view, that they were forced loans advanced to the state, was rightly rejected by Philip Gauthier in his commentary on Xenophon’s treatise:54 with loans, the principal belongs (and is repayable) to the lender; in Xenophon’s scheme there is, indeed, payment of interest, but the contributions themselves (i.e. the principal) are non-repayable. Gauthier himself identifies the scheme with the extraordinary war tax in Athens, the eisphora.55 While acknowledging the possible participation of foreigners living outside Athens and the receipt of interest by contributors, Gauthier nevertheless regards this an eisphora tax of a special kind, a ‘peace eisphora’, though still, as far as the citizens were concerned, technically an eisphora like all the other tax levies under that name.56 Gauthier’s intepretation is guided by the words Xenophon uses to describe the contributions (eisphora/eispherein) and by his own belief that these words always refer to the eisphora tax.57 Vect. 3.6–10 (author’s translation). Εἰς μὲν οὖν τὰς τοιαύτας αὐξήσεις τῶν προσόδων οὐδὲ προδαπανῆσαι δεῖ οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ ψηφίσματά τε φιλάνθρωπα καὶ ἐπιμελείας. ὅσαι δ’ ἂν ἄλλαι δοκοῦσί μοι πρόσοδοι γίγνεσθαι, γιγνώσκω ὅτι ἀφορμῆς δεήσει εἰς αὐτάς. οὐ μέντοι δύσελπίς εἰμι τὸ μὴ οὐχὶ προθύμως ἂν τοὺς πολίτας εἰς τὰ τοιαῦτα εἰσφέρειν, ἐνθυμούμενος ὡς πολλὰ μὲν εἰσήνεγκεν ἡ πόλις, ὅτε Ἀρκάσιν ἐβοήθει ἐπὶ Λυσιστράτου ἡγουμένου, πολλὰ δὲ ἐπὶ Ἡγησίλεω. ἐπίσταμαι δὲ καὶ τριήρεις πολλάκις ἐκπεμπομένας σὺν πολλῇ δαπάνῃ, καὶ †ταύτας γενομένας†, τούτου μὲν ἀδήλου ὄντος εἴτε βέλτιον εἴτε κάκιον ἔσται, ἐκείνου δὲ δήλου ὅτι οὐδέποτε ἀπολήψονται ἃ ἂν εἰσενέγκωσιν οὐδὲ μεθέξουσιν ὧν ἂν †εἰσενέγκωσι†. κτῆσιν δὲ ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ἂν οὕτω καλὴν κτήσαιντο ὥσπερ ἀφ’ οὗ ἂν προτελέσωσιν εἰς τὴν ἀφορμήν· ᾧ μὲν γὰρ ἂν δέκα μναῖ εἰσφορὰ γένηται, ὥσπερ ναυτικόν, σχεδὸν ἐπίπεμπτον αὐτῷ γίγνεται, τριώβολον τῆς ἡμέρας λαμβάνοντι· ᾧ δέ γ’ ἂν πέντε μναῖ, πλέον ἢ ἐπίτριτον. οἱ δέ γε πλεῖστοι Ἀθηναίων πλείονα λήψονται κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἢ ὅσα ἂν εἰσενέγκωσιν. οἱ γὰρ μνᾶν προτελέσαντες ἐγγὺς δυοῖν μναῖν πρόσοδον ἕξουσι, καὶ ταῦτα ἐν πόλει, ὃ δοκεῖ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἀσφαλέστατόν τε καὶ πολυχρονιώτατον εἶναι. Some translate οὐδὲ μεθέξουσιν with “share in the profits from the war” (Jansen 2007, 339, following Gauthier 1976, 91), but that is not what the text says.  53 The calculation in each of these three cases is as follows. (i) If the principal is 1,000 drachmas, the annual interest will be epipemptos (i.e. 1/5 or 20%): 1,000 drachmas = 6,000 obols, one-fifth of which is 1,200 obols, divided into 365 days = 3.28 obols a day. (ii) If the principal is 500 drachmas, the annual interest will be ‘more than epitritos’ (i.e. 1/3 or 33 and-one-third %): 500 drachmas = 3,000 obols, one-third of which is 1,000 obols, divided into 365 days = 2.73 obols a day, but (in light of the ‘more than’) the correct figure must be two-fifths of 3,000 = 1,200 obols, which divided into 365 days = 3.28 obols a day. (iii) If the principal is 100 drachmas, the annual interest is [term unattested] (0.5): 100 drachmas = 600 obols, 0.5 of which is 1,200 obols, divided into 365 days = 3.28 obols a day (= 199.53 drachmas a year).  54 Gauthier 1976.  55 Gauthier 1976, 88–97, 90–91. The ‘forced-loans’ view: Thiel 1922, 48–56; Bodei Giglioni 1970, lxxxiii–lxxxvii; Schütrumpf 1982.  56 Gauthier 1976, 99, 101. But see the objections of Jansen 2007, 343.  57 Gauthier 1976, 98.  52

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However, this identification is untenable. Firstly, it cannot accommodate the contributors from outside Athens, some of whom are envisaged to be rulers and city-states. Secondly, contributions earning the payers a profit can in no way be called a tax, whether a wartime or a peacetime one. Thirdly, the words eisphora/eispherein are in this case a poor guide to the nature of the scheme, since they sometimes have a non-technical sense, referring simply to contributions, while at other times they specifically refer to contributions that are certainly not a tax, for instance, loans.58 A more recent proposal, that Xenophon’s contributions have the character of epidoseis, correctly emphasizes their voluntary character,59 but ultimately it fails to become a better alternative for the simple reason that epidoseis were state solicited donations of money as a free gift.60 Although the amount thereby collected could form a capital fund to be used in moneylending operations, and although such a fund could be called aphorme, the interest accruing from these operations, as far as we know, never became the rightful profit of the contributors themselves; they had waived that right when giving their money as a free gift to the state. Xenophon’s aphorme arrangement, in sum, does not fit any of the financial institutions known from pre-355 Athens. It has four principal features: (1) the start-up capital will consist of voluntary contribution of non-repayable amounts of money; (2) the scheme is envisaged to be permanent, bringing the contributors a fixed annual income; (3) this income is reckoned on the basis of rates that favour smaller contributions over larger ones – though the largest of the contributions mentioned are to receive interest comparable to the lucrative maritime loans; finally, the feature most insufficiently appreciated by commentators, (4) the start-up capital is to be used on extending interest-bearing loans, and it is the interest accruing from these (not the capital initially collected) that is going to finance Xenophon’s proposals: it is only by being lent out that the capital fund could yield a profit, and it is only through loans at interest rates higher than those offered to contributors that the profit could be large enough to cover both the annual return received by the contributors and the expenses of Xenophon’s project proposals.61 Aphorme here covers both the original contributions/investments and the interest they are expected to yield. In short, this is a permanent capital-accumulation-through-moneylending scheme, launched with cash deposits from private investors, and run and guaranteed by “mankind’s most secure and durable institution”, the state. The sum collected through cash deposits is to be put to work (and is expected to grow) with the aim of turning the proceeds from large-scale moneylending partly into life-long dividends cashed in annually by the investors, partly into the solid financial base required for the infrastructural improvements proposed by Xenophon. So much for the proposal. But was it just an imaginative individual’s dream? Has the direct involvement of the state it suggests – in capital accumulation, moneylending and private profit-making – any basis at all in the reality of the Greek city? Alain Bresson has, in my view correctly, pointed out the close similarity between Xenophon’s scheme and the fund established at Samos through the famous Samian Grain Law of the early second century or of c. 260 BC.62 The extension of interest-bearing loans is here made one of the principal tasks of the Samian Grain Fund commissioners. Recurring, large-scale moneylending of

Non-technical sense: Arist. Pol. 1271b 11–18 (2.6.23), 1272a 14–16 (2.7.4): the Spartans and the Cretans pay eisphorai to finance their common messes. Loans: I.Amyzon (Robert – Robert 1983, 217–226) no. 28, 2; IG 22, 835, l. 7 (Attica, c. 229 BC); I.Priene 108 and p. 310 = Migeotte 1984, no. 94 (extract) (150–130 BC).  59 Jansen 2007, 338–352.  60 Migeotte 1998, 345.  61 Gauthier (1976) and Schütrumpf (1982) hold that Xenophon’s measures aim only at increasing public revenues. For the correct observation that they also are economically advantageous to private investors, see Bresson 2000, 247–527; Jansen 2007, 20 et passim.  62 Syll3 976. Bresson 2000, 253–257, contra Gauthier 1976, 248, and Schütrumpf 1982. See, in addition, Thür – Koch 1981; Gargola 1992. The earlier date of c. 260: Tracy 1990.  58

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this kind also distinguished the Grain Funds of other early Hellenistic cities,63 which sometimes had to turn a ruler’s disapproval of such practices into approval: for instance, it was only after hard negotiations that Antigonos I Monophthalmos granted the city of Lebedos, in c. 303 BC, permission to establish a moneylending-based Grain Fund of 1,400 gold staters.64 However, in our search for parallels to Xenophon’s aphorme, it is possible to go further than that and demonstrate that still more elements of Xenophon’s proposal were part of the financial reality of several cities. Two cases will be mentioned briefly here. They are selected from a larger group of instances for being particularly illustrative on two central points. The first of these points illustrates the high degree of financial security (asphaleia) provided by the state to private individuals partaking in its schemes. The second point illustrates the neat and advantageous terms attending the payment of dividends from such expedients to private investors.

1. State-provided asphaleia In a year between 325 and 275 BC, the city of Arkesine on Amorgos borrowed 18,000 Attic drachmas (3 talents) from Praxikles of Naxos for an unspecified period of time and at 10% interest. Praxikles’ loan took the form of a bank deposit to be used by the public moneylenders (daneistai) of Arkesine for the extension of loans.65 The contract offered by Arkesine to Praxikles details the “draconian measures”66 adopted with the aim of providing maximum security to Praxikles’ investment and the profit to be made from it. Here is a summary. 1) Praxikles’ loan is guaranteed against all risks (akindynon pantos kindynou). 2) As collateral Arkesine provides all the public and private possessions in the city, both landed (eggaia) and maritime (hyperpontia),67 of the Arkesinians and of the foreigners dwelling in Arkesine. 3) If the city treasurers fail to pay the annual interest in the manner agreed, they will be liable to pay Praxikles 150% of the amount owed from their own means. In addition, if the city defaults on the interest, Praxikles is to receive interest on the unpaid interest. 4) The principal is to be repaid to the lender within three months from the day he gives notice. 5) Payment of the principal and/or interest shall be made in Naxos to Praxikles personally or to a representative appointed by him. 6) Payment of the principal and/or interest shall be made in Attic coinage, or coinage of Alexander or of Demetrios I (Poliorketes); in each case the coinage shall be (a) “intact” (oloscheres), (b) “of good value”/“tested” (dokimon), (c) “not subject to seizure in reprisal” (asylon), (d) not hypothecated (anepaphon) and (e) exempt from all taxes (ateles panton).68 Equally draconian are the clauses prescribing the legal proceedings to be used against anyone who breaches the clauses of this contract. For instance, if the Arkesinians do not pay back the money according to the written contract, they shall owe Praxikles six talents, and he shall be permitted, free of penalty, to exact this money by all manner of execution from all the property in Arkesine (the city’s property as well as the private property of the citizens and the foreigners living in Arkesine), both the whole amount from one individual and from all alike. In addition to placing the stele in the sanctuary of Hera, the Arkesinians, to further guarantee the contract, decide that

See Migeotte 1990a (Samos); Migeotte 1993 (Coronea); Migeotte 1990b and 1991 (Hellenistic cities). Welles, RC 3/4, with Gabrielsen 2011, 238–245.  65 Syll3 955; IG 12, 7, 67–B; Migeotte 1984, no. 49; Bagnall – Derrow 2004, 121, no. 72. Discussion of the document, particularly of the meaning and duties of the public daneistai, in Gabrielsen 2005, 145–146.  66 Migeotte 1984, 175.  67 On the meaning of hyperpontia: Gauthier 1980, 197–205.  68 Oloscheres meaning “intact”: Picard 1996, 243–250. Anepaphon meaning “no one can lay hands (i.e. a claim) on it”: Darmezin 1999, 76, 109 (= IG 7, 3198), 77, 110 (= IG 7, 3199), Orchomenos, late 3rd–early 2nd cent. BC.  63  64

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nothing shall take precedence over it, neither law nor decree nor resolution nor strategos nor any other magistrate. The contract with Praxikles is one of five almost identical contracts dating from the same period (325–275 BC) and concluded between Arkesine and foreign moneylenders; in one case, though, there is a group of creditors (five Astypalaians), and in another the borrowers are all three cities of Amorgos (Arkesine, Aigiale and Minoa). Three points emerge. Firstly, through loans from foreigners, Arkesine repeatedly raised capital to be used as deposits in state-organized moneylending operations. Secondly, these five contracts seem to be the surviving specimens of a larger assemblage, which in turn indicates that this arrangement continued for a long period of time, possibly also prior to 325 BC. Thirdly, the degree of security offered to the investor/depositor is fully in accord with the abilities Xenophon attributes to the state in this field, namely, its being unsurpassable by any other type of economic actor. This feature becomes even more accentuated in the third century BC, when the state is seen to equip itself, technically and institutionally, for entering the competitive fray as a big-time player in credit operations, a process that culminates with the appearance of the Public Bank (demosia trapeza).69 The degree of asphaleia offered in Arkesine’s contracts bears testimony to how this type of supplier tried to outbid competitors.

2. Dividends to private investors In 211/210 BC, the citizens of Miletus decided to implement a scheme that would raise the money needed to cover the deficit in the current year’s city budget.70 Citizens were invited, on their own or on another’s behalf, to each contribute 3,600 drachmas to a common fund. Payments were to be made to the trapezitai, the public officials in charge of Miletus’ Public Bank, in two installments, the first of 2,000 drachmas, the second of 1,600 drachmas. A total of 37 citizens (12 adults and 25 minors) paid contributions, or had contributions paid on their behalf. The amount collected totalled 140,400 drachmas, which in the Public Bank’s books appeared as ‘credit’ in the city’s account. In return for their payments/deposits, the contributors were then to receive part of the profits earned by the Public Bank from putting the 140,400 drachmas to work. Starting from the first month of the following year (210/209), each contributor was to receive a lifetime annuity (called siteresion) of 30 drachmas per month (360 drachmas a year); these amounts were to be paid from the public treasurers’ account in the Public Bank. Additionally, on his/her death the contributor was to receive 150 drachmas as burial money. If a person had given on behalf of another, the relevant annuity was to be received by the actual payer as long as he/she lived (i.e. a parent who had paid on his own behalf and on behalf of a child, received a double annuity). It is this financial arrangement that comes closest to Xenophon’s aphorme scheme. Indeed, the two are almost identical. They both seem to represent a hybrid between a loan and an epidosis, but in reality they are permanent, interest-bearing deposits that, through the mediation of state mechanisms, are channelled to the credit market. In this way the moneylending institution (the state) accumulated capital, and the investors harvested life-long dividends.71 At Miletus, the first city attested to have a Public Bank (c. 230 BC),72 the operation was conducted by this relatively novel institution, and the contributors each received a 10% return from uniform investments. In Xenophon’s proposal, however, the return (a) differs according to the amount invested, (b) favours smaller investors (the ‘democratic capitalism’) and (c) the moneylending operation is, as in the case of Arkesine, to be conducted by an institution other than the Public Bank.

Gabrielsen 2005 and 2008b. Milet 1, 3 (Delphinion) 147; Migeotte 1984, no. 97. For the date: Migeotte 1992, 229, following Wörrle 1988, 428– 448. Discussion: Gabrielsen 2005, 147–148.  71 Andreades (1933, 389) was correct in describing Xenophon’s aphorme as “a sort of a loan on a lifetime annuity”.  72 Public Bank at Miletus: Milet 1, 3 (Delphinion) 141 ll. 51–53, cf. Gabrielsen 2008.  69  70

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The similarity between Xenophon’s proposal and several, actually attested financial schemes of later dates (whose earliest deployment, however, remains unknown) raises two questions. (1) Was Xenophon inspired by blueprints developed and already in use elsewhere? (2) Was his recommendation on this point (i.e. the aphorme) implemented in one form or another in Athens? No definite answers are forthcoming. As regards the first question, we might suspect that certain of Xenophon’s proposals were not all that original: for instance, Olbia probably already at that time possessed the state-owned merchant navy that Xenophon proposes for Athens.73 As regards the second question, scholars generally agree that the Athenians to some extent did follow Xenophon’s recommendations, and point particularly at Lycurgus: his close links to trade and traders, the infrastructural projects attributed to him, and, not least, his improvement of Athens’ finances.74 Most relevant for us is an item of information preserved in Pseudo-Plutarch’s version of the posthumous decree (of 307 BC) honouring Lycurgus ([Plut.] Mor. 851F–852E).75 One of Lycurgus’ achievements is said to be this: Πολλὰ δὲ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν διὰ πίστεως λαβὼν καὶ προδανείσας καὶ εῖς τοὺς τῆς πόλεως καιροὺς καὶ τοῦ δήμου τὰ πάντα ἑξακόσια καὶ πεντήκοντα τάλαντα, κτλ. ([Mor.] 852B) “Having received, on account of the trust he enjoyed, great amounts of money from private individuals, he lent it in advance in order to meet the exigencies of the polis and the people, six hundred and fifty talents in all, etc.” In a seminal article analysing the historical development of the word pistis, Michele Faraguna, following Leopold Migeotte, identifies this sum of 650 talents as the capital to be used for moneylending operations, and points out that Lycurgus was able to raise the money on account of his personal credit.76 In this case, then, personal trust would have been blended with institutional trust, especially if, as is most likely, Lycurgus so acted while holding the office of ho epi tei dioikesei, superintendent of Athens’ financial administration (338–c. 325). What he did with the 650 talents he received (λαβών) from private individuals is described with the verb προδανείσας, which is usually rendered “advanced”.77 Indeed, this would indicate that the procedure employed by Lycurgus was pretty similar to that of an already existing institution, the proeisphora, where the individuals liable to that liturgy had to pay “in advance” the whole eisphora tax. However, since the preposition pro- is here prefixing daneizo (“I lend”), prodaneizo properly means “I lend in advance” (that is, “I sub-lend”); additionally, in a number of instances prodaneizo appears as a synonym of daneizo.78 On the basis of this we must conclude that the 650 talents had the character of (perhaps unrepayable) bank deposits, which Lycurgus used for extending loans. Were these loans interest-bearing? They would almost certainly have been so. No other purpose for the amount collected is mentioned except for its being lent out. Moreover, while there are several instances of non-interest-bearing loans (atoka) extended by private individuals to a state,79 I know of no instance in which a state extended such loans to one or more individuals (though it might do so to a friendly state). Xen. Vect. 3.14 (olkadas demosias); Syll3 495 = IosPE 12, 32 (3rd cent. BC), ll. 146–151 (ta ploia ta demosia), wrongly taken by Gauthier (1976, 108) to be warships.  74 See, e.g. Cawkwell 1963, 64; Bodei Giglioni 1970, lxxxii; Burke 1984; Faraguna 1992, 195–209; Jansen 2007, 333.  75 Analysis of this version and that in the preserved fragments of the Stratocles decree (IG 22, 457): Faraguna 2003, 487–491.  76 Faraguna 2012, 355–356; Migeotte 1984, no. 3, with commentary.  77 Migeotte 1984, no. 3, p. 25: “avance”; Faraguna 2012, 355.  78 Synonym of daneizo: e.g., Milet 1, 3 (Delphinion) 138 = Migeotte 1984, no. 96 (Miletus, 283/282 BC), l. 6: προδανεισμοῦ τῶν χρημάτων, to be compared with l. 23: τοὺς δανείσαντας χρήματα τῆι πόλει, l. 27: τοῖς δανεισταὶς, and ll. 30–31: ἂν ἕκαστος δανείζει, καθότι τὸμ | προσδανεισμὸμ ποιεῖται, cf. Migeotte 1984, 302 note 153. In the sense, “I lend on behalf of someone”: see the evidence discussed in Gabrielsen 2005, 147, 150, 153–155.  79 E.g. IG 12, 7, 5 = Migeotte 1984, no. 48 (357/356 BC): atoka loans extended by the Athenian Androtion to the city of Arkesine.  73

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Lycurgus’ scheme seems therefore to have several features in common with those attested in Arkesine, Miletus and other early-Hellenistic cities: state-organized, large-scale and profit-yielding moneylending from private donations-qua-deposits. More importantly, Lycurgus’ scheme seems also to be in accord with Xenophon’s aphorme proposal. As Véronique Chankowski has shown,80 already in the fifth century BC the treasuries of Athenian public units (e.g. the deme Plotheis) had been engaged in interest-bearing moneylending, thus functioning as “laboratoires d’éxperiences financières” to be emulated at the polis level.81 However, any assertion of a firmer connection between Xenophon’s aphorme and Lycurgus’ moneylending activities must at present remain hypothetical.

4. Conclusion The two sets of historical examples treated in the preceding sections illustrate the ways in which the ancient state directly impacted on the economy, its private sector included. Without wishing to minimize the importance of institutions related to the judicial system, the primary concern of other studies, the present study has emphasized instead the substantial stimulus to the economy provided partly by the institutions of violence of a tributary empire, the fifth-century Athenian Empire (section 2); partly by the institutionalized financial tools developed by the state (here, the late-classical and early Hellenistic city-state) to facilitate its involvement in private financial investment, capital accumulation and credit supply (section 3). In both sets of examples, the state is seen to provide valuable infrastructural support for the expansion of trade and credit operations. And in both sets the chief asset that ensures the state’s effectiveness as an economic actor, and at the same time increases the wealth of those qualifying for a share of it, is security. In section 2, we saw how imperial Athens and her subject cities were tangled into a lasting transactional relationship, an observation that seems in accord with the Calculus of Consent theory of modern economists. Rather than undermining the economies of the allied cities, tribute helped them to grow in affluence, since their yearly payments can said to have represented the (relatively low) price at which they obtained an eminently costly, top-quality commodity: security (asphaleia) at sea. An institution with a leading role in this commoditization of security was the imperial navy. Its principal, long-term impact on the economy, it was suggested above, went in tandem with the impact of another imperial scheme, one that besides security generated trust in economic transactions empire-wide: the enforcement of a uniform system of payment and measurement through the Standards Decree. Both institutions reflect the State’s capabilities and willingness to take economic action. What ensured their function as growth-producing infrastructural expedients, however, was Athens’ success (at least from the 420s on, if not before) in coupling its acclaimed violence monopoly with a pervasively participatory attitude towards the allies. The durable transactional relationship existing between them was precisely the outcome of this coupling. A further and more important outcome was the remarkable increase in the profits from trade across the empire. The decision of the Athenians to replace tribute with the eikoste tax ought to be evaluated primarily from the perspective of this very process, which preceded it. When it was introduced in 414/413, the eikoste did mark a major change in the tributary obligations of Athens’ subjects. But equally importantly, it also marked the apex of a longer development during which the economies of Athens and its imperial subjects had been undergoing a fundamental transformation: to a far greater degree than previously their prosperity had come to rely on an expanded trade within and beyond the bounds of the empire. Accordingly, the eikoste, suitably designed to tap also on commerce-generated wealth from outside the realm, enriched Athens with a new fiscal zone, an extra-imperial one, the exploitation of which depended not on the employment of force, Chankowski 2005, 77. IG 13, 428 (425–413 BC); Davies 2001, 124.

 80  81

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39

but on the attractiveness exercised by the harbours of the empire as lucrative commercial nodes. In short, market mechanisms rather than military might decided how large a share this extra-imperial fiscal zone would yield in the total amount of eikoste collected each year by Athens. Whereas before 414/413 the empire was feeding trade, after that year the roles reversed: trade became the fiscal lifeline of the empire. The discussion of Xenophon’s aphorme proposal (Vect. 3.6–8) was our point of departure in section 3. Xenophon, it was argued above, proposes that an institutionalized financial tool be introduced and run by the State. Its core elements are: (a) the interest-yielding but non-repayable monetary contributions of investors-cum-depositors – private as well as public, from within and outside Athens; and (b) the use of these contributions in large-scale moneylending operations. Contrary to what has been suggested, these contributions are unrelated to the eisphora tax and bear only a partial resemblance to epidoseis. The scheme’s principal aim was to finance improvements in Athens’ commercial infrastructure with a view to increasing public revenue and enabling the contributors to make a profit from their investments. Indeed, the rate of interest proposed for investors of the largest sums is almost as high as that of maritime loans. Investors of the smallest sums, though, are also to be adequately rewarded through application of a system that might fittingly be called “popular capitalism”. Yet the bedrock on which the whole scheme rests is the ability of the state as such to provide the investors an unsurpassable degree of security. Evidence from other cities indicates that what Xenophon was proposing for mid-fourth-century Athens was not without historical parallels. The evidence from the Amorgan cities, particularly Arkesine, provides a clear illustration of the state’s direct involvement in moneylending operations. Most clearly illustrated are the specific means used by the state (perhaps as early as 325 BC) to commoditize security during the process of obtaining foreign cash – technically in the form of a loan, but actually as a deposit – to be employed in moneylending. In this, Arkesine and other states were responding both to the need for adequate security on the part of cash-strong lenders, and to a far greater demand for credit. In our presentation of the evidence from Miletus, which, too, attests to a state-organized financial scheme (211/210), it is the payment of dividends to investors that has been emphasized. As in Xenophon’s aphorme, contributors are here to receive a lifetime annuity. But unlike Xenophon’s scheme, all contributions/deposits are of equal size and receive the same rate of interest (10%). Whether the large-scale moneylending reportedly conducted by Lycurgus (338–c. 325) from private cash (Mor. 852B) was connected to Xenophon’s proposal is impossible to say. Yet, along with the evidence from Arkesine and Miletus, this piece of evidence confirms that Xenophon’s aphorme proposal presaged more than one important financial-institutional development of subsequent periods. The state’s increasingly active role in moneylending led to the appearance of the Public Bank (demosia trapeza), the earliest attestation of which comes from Miletus. Similarly, Xenophon’s recommendation that foreign contributors to the aphorme scheme be written up as “benefactors (euergetai) for all time” does seem to look forward to the rising prominence of those Hellenistic “benefactors”, whose main (if not only) justification for the title were the loans they had extended (sometimes interest-free) to a state. However, as the examples discussed above may have shown, the state could boast of its contribution to the economy already from the fifth century BC. Not only could it issue currency, enforce contracts, wage war and impose taxes. In economic transactions – to close with Xenophon’s words – it was regarded as “mankind’s most secure (asphalestaton) and durable (polychronotaton) institution”.

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Gerhard Thür – Michele Faraguna

Silver from Laureion: Mining, Smelting, and Minting* In the first part of this article, Thür investigates how Athens encouraged private people to engage in prospecting silver ore and in leasing and exploiting the mines. The focus is on the legal framework, public and private, of ‘producing’ silver. Thür holds with Palme against Lambert that IG 23 433 concerns prospecting silver ore and not exploiting agricultural land. For leasing the mines by auction, some insights come from the recently published Hyperides speech Against Timandros. In the second part, Faraguna focuses on the ‘distribution’ of the extracted silver. Since metallurgical analyses have shown that Athenian coinage was mostly struck from Attic silver, the question arises of what strategies the Athenian mint employed to acquire the metal necessary for its massive output. An examination of different possible explanations leads to the conclusion that Athens profited from the mines through a variety of taxes, including a significant share in the silver produced by the lessees.

I. Legal infrastructure of mining and smelting in fourth-century Athens: some notes on prospecting for ore and the procedure for leasing and controlling the mines 1. Prospecting In the huge volume of literature on the mining lease records, based since 1991 on the collection of M. K. Langdon in the Agora volume 19, the topic of prospecting has been neglected. Indeed, only one Athenian inscription that might be relevant exists: dated to 337–325? BC, it was carefully re-edited in 2012 by S. Lambert as IG 23, 433 (IG 22, 411). The text, a contract between the polis and a non-Athenian, Sokles, has been known since 1839 and is still an extremely controversial issue. While until 1935 it was held to be a lease of public land, A. Wilhelm1 and E. Schönbauer2 considered it as leasing silver mines,3 B. Palme (1987) as a prospecting agreement, and finally S. Lambert (2010) holds that the subject was a license for collecting wild honey, medicinal herbs or trapping some wild bird or animal in a large area owned by numerous private persons. In fact, the resource to be exploited is not mentioned in the text as far as it is preserved, and A. Wilhelm’s restorations appear to be arbitrary.4 I would uphold B. Palme’s view with some modifications. Certainly S. Lambert is right in stating that the surface of the Laureotike was well explored5 and there was no need to prospect for new silver ores in the soil, and also that in Lykourgan times Athens was anxious to improve the city’s revenues in an unorthodox way. Nevertheless, collecting natural products would not have required such high assets of capital and labour that it would necessitate the income being shared alternately year by year between the polis and Sokles for 25 years. Additionally, no public authority that might have been responsible for this new job is mentioned. In fact, in mining affairs Athens had a well operating administration. Thus, if Sokles had discovered mineable ore, exploitation of it by lessees was sufficiently regulated, and dividing the income over 25 years was the right means of sharing the risk. Considering new studies on mining and leasing, the system of galleries, old and new, ran over Part I is by Gerhard Thür, part II by Michele Faraguna. Wilhelm 1935, 206–215.  2 Schönbauer 1935.  3 Doubtful Behrend 1970, 71–72: “Zweifelderwirtschaft?”.  4 Especially εἰς [βάθος ὀρύξας] l. 8 and τὴ[ν ἀργυρῖτιν] l. 9.  5 Lambert 2010, 120; since prehistoric times, see Kakavogiannis 2005, 93.

*



1

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a length of many miles and down to a depth of 119 m, and during the fourth century experience in mining techniques had advanced more and more.6 I, therefore, believe that Sokles’ task was preparing subsurface mining in operational and deserted galleries, by exploring new veins of silver or, possibly, of another metal in order to improve the polis’ revenues (like the kind of subsurface exploration regulated in the Lusitanian lex metallis dicta7). ‘Prospecting’ metal in general – unorthodoxly not restricted to silver – might have been the reason why the text only speaks of prosodos instead of arguritis. To meet his goal, I think Sokles was allowed to enter any privately owned real estate containing shafts: [κ]ύρ[ιον πάντων τῶν ἐδαφ|ῶ]ν,8 ὅθεν φησὶν τὴμ πρόσ[οδον ἔσεσθαι τῶι] | δήμωι (ll. 6–8). To make one additional observation on prospecting: it is only from l. 25 onwards that the text speaks of ἐργασία and ἐργάζεσθαι, whereas the terms used at the beginning are κάρπωσις, καρποῦσθαι, καρπεία and συλλογή. The first refers to the contract, namely for work and labour, the second to the reward. Therefore, ἐργάζεσθαι does not mean that Sokles had to “work” during the 25 years when he was enjoying his reward. A reference to the “contract of work and labour” could already be found in the lacuna of l. 8, where I would suggest restoring: ἐπειδὰν δὲ εἰσ[ίων ἐργασίαν φαν]|ερὰν καταστήσηι τὴ[μ πρόσοδον …] (“when he starts working and establishes the revenue …”). The Greek contract of work and labour was made binding not by the consensus from the parties, but rather by setting about working.9 The missing article (τήν) seems odd, but the same is probably the case in l. 5: δεδόχθαι δ[ήμωι τῶι Ἀθηναίων …10

2. The procedure of leasing the mines Despite the huge number of poletai records containing the result of the leasing we have only very few examples of evidence for the procedure. Consistently with the poletai inscriptions, in the first sentence Ath. Pol. 47.2 uses the term πωλεῖν, to “sell” (to lease by auction), from which the name of poletai for the competent magistrates is derived. In mining issues they had to co-operate with two other financial magistrates in the presence of the Council, and, finally, the poletai ratified the persons to whom the Council had attributed the lease by a show of hands.11 The following lines of Ath. Pol. deal with roughly classifying the mines – the terms are inconsistent with those used in the inscriptions – and how long the leases of the different types of mines lasted, the latter burdened with a palaeographic problem12 and not mentioned in the inscriptions at all. This passage does not say anything about the leasing procedure, and therefore I need not enter this thorny field. The main question of procedure is: did the poletai farm out the mines by auction? According to the inscriptions, in most cases they did not. We find a lot of small lump sums such as 20 and often 150 drachms, which could not possibly have resulted from highest bids, in contrast to some figures of up

Aperghis 1997–1998, 6; Kakavogiannis 2005, 100 with plate 2 and the map of Southern Attica. FIRA 12 no. 104 (AD 117–138) section 7, ll. 38–39: Proc(urator) explorandi novi metalli causa ternagum a cuniculo agere | permittito, ita ut ternagus non plures latitudinis et altitudinis quam quaternos pedes habeat (ternagus, Iberian, “exploratory shaft”; cuniculus, “mine”) – contrary to the Sokles case seen earlier by Thür 2004, 182–183. Speaking of parent and ‘spawn’ mines Aperghis 1997–1998, 8–10 suggests a similar mining technique and administration (by the poletai) in Laureion.  8 In the poletai records mines are usually located as: ἐν τοῖς ἐδάφεσιν… Granted that Sokles and his crew were also exploring within working mines operated by lessees, the penal clause on theft and preventing him from working added at the end (ll. 34–37) makes excellent sense.  9 Thür 1984, 514.  10 Thus dubitanter Lambert 2010, 124, omitted in IG 23.  11 Ath. Pol. 47.2: [μ]ισθοῦσι δὲ τὰ μισθώματα πάντα, καὶ τὰ μέταλλα πωλοῦσι καὶ τὰ τέλη μετὰ τοῦ ταμίου τῶν στρατιωτικῶν καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ τὸ θεωρικὸν ᾑρημένων ἐναντίον τῆς [βουλῆς], καὶ κυροῦσιν ὅτῳ ἂν ἡ βουλὴ χειροτονήσῃ, καὶ τὰ πραθέντα μέταλλα, τά τ’ ἐργάσιμα τὰ εἰς τρία ἔτη πεπραμένα, καὶ τὰ συγκεχωρημένα τὰ εἰς [Γ? Ζ? Ι?] ἔ[τη] πεπραμένα. For the treasurer of the Stratiotic Fund see Faraguna in part II with notes 30–31.  12 3, 7 or 10 years: see Aperghis 1997–1998, 2 and 14–15 (10 years).  6  7

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to 17,750 drachms,13 which do indicate competitive bidding. The lump sums have been temptingly explained as ‘registration fees.’ Nevertheless, the inscriptions make no distinction in specifying low and high sums; they generally note: ὠνητής (lessee), name, sum. In this context the sum can only be the price (rent) and not an ἐπώνιον or some other transaction cost. Technically speaking, a lessee at the lowest rate was also a “buyer” and the state guaranteed his right to exploit the mine – at his own financial risk. To be vested in any right, in Greek law the purchaser had to pay the consideration.14 It was payment, not registration, that established the license for exploiting minerals. Did the Council vote on each of these trivial cases? I could imagine that it voted on undisputed matters en bloc. Only when two or more claimants had previously registered for one and the same mine was specific voting necessary. In this case, it was primarily the right person and not the amount of the rent that was at stake. Competitive bidding could, thus, have taken place. If the best bid automatically got the award, one may ask what sense co-operating with the Council made. Voting by a show of hands – after a few words addressed to the Council by the claimants in person – was a simple means of considering the claimants’ personal qualifications in addition to the amount of rent they offered. In this way, the poletai shared their responsibility for safely exploiting Athenian soil resources with the Council. The leasing out of an orphan’s estate worked in a very similar way to this procedure, as documented in the recently published Hyperides fragment Against Timandros.15 Here a law court, instead of the Council, after listening to the claimants’ speeches, votes to determine which person will administrate the estate “in child’s best interest”, notwithstanding the highest bid.16 To conclude this point: Ath. Pol., in combination with the poletai inscriptions, demonstrates that polein was not an auction as we understand it, automatically giving the award to the highest bid. The Sokles inscription also mentions the leasing procedure (ll. 20–22): “Sokles shall have the same means of gathering (the proceeds) as regards sale, valuation, and enforcement of money as there would be for the polis.”17 Since the foreigner, Sokles, could not have held the same authority as the poletai, one must understand this provision as meaning that, on the one hand, the leasing (prasis) of the new mines Sokles had explored took place in the same way as all the other ones specified in the Ath. Pol.; on the other hand, concerning enforcement (praxis) of money owed to him by the lessees, Sokles had the same privileges as the polis: entering the debtors in the records of the polis.18 But what does the term timesis mean? In the given order, mentioned between prasis and praxis, a new mine was to be continuously assessed and classified. This, I believe, was the responsibility of the state authorities, the poletai. Then further leasing could go on. Hidden in ll. 15–16 I see a reference to the way in which this assessment could have taken place: “Each shall bring in the proceeds at their own expense.”19 Since the state leased out the mines, all the costs of mining and smelting were borne by the lessees, the polis and Sokles alternately receiving only the profit. For both of them the only expense would have been that of assessment. Mining and smelting was strictly controlled by the state. Xenophon’s Poroi (4.49) mention public revenues “from the furnaces”.20 The most effective way of assessing – and thereby classifying – a mine is controlling the output of the furnace. Whether a percentage of the metal was also collected thereby and at what rate is not preserved. Anyway, I think that the poletai engaged high The figures are: 1,550 (Langdon 1991, no. P5, ll. 47–51), 3,500 (P19, l. 4), 6,100 (P26, l. 94) and 17,750 (P19, ll. 26–30). For the ‘cash sale principle’ see Pringsheim 1950, 181–182.  15 Tchernetska et al. 2007; Horváth 2008.  16 Thür 2008a, 658; Thür 2008b, 132–133; Thür 2010, 14–15.  17 IG 23, 433 ll. 20–24: ὁ αὐ]τὸς δὲ τρόπος ἔστω τ[ῆ]ς συ[λλογῆς περὶ τ]ῆς πράσεως καὶ τῆς τ[ι]μή[σεως καὶ τῆς πρ]άξεως τῶγ χρημάτων Σωκλ[εῖ καθάπερ ἂν] τῆι πόλει γίγνηται (translation Lambert 2010, 117).  18 Dem. 37.24: ἐγγραφῆναι τὸ διπλαιοῦν τῷ δημοσίῳ.  19 IG 23, 433 ll. 15–16: κομίζεσθαι [δὲ τὴν καρπεία|ν] τοῖς αὑτῶν τέλεσιν ἑκ[άτερον (translation Lambert).  20 Xen. Vect. 4.49: καὶ ἀπὸ καμίνων καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων πρόσοδοι ἂν πολλαὶ γίγνοιντο. This passage will be discussed thoroughly in part II, where Faraguna (at the end of this paper) argues that in the Sokles case it is not the amount of the refined silver (for starting to auction the mines), but rather that of the silver ore that was to be assessed (for taxation).  13  14

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ly qualified metallurgical engineers in these places, and in the years in which he enjoyed the revenue Sokles had to pay for their employment. At any rate, timesis was essential for the procedure of leasing.

II. From bullion to owls: silver mining and coin production in classical Athens In the first part of this paper Professor Thür presented a new reconstruction of some of the administrative mechanisms underlying the public leasing of the Laureion silver mines in the fourth century BC, focusing on the thorny question of how the epigraphic and literary evidence can be combined into a coherent whole. In what follows I would like to add another dimension to the problem, namely the relatively unexplored processes by which the Athenian mint acquired the silver it needed for conversion into large, if not enormous, volumes of owls, tetradrachms and also smaller denominations. Recent investigations have confirmed that there was a direct correlation between Athenian monetary output and the intensity of mining activity at Laureion: metallurgical analysis of a random sample of standardized tetradrachms from the second half of the fifth century has shown that, even allowing for some few exceptions, well over 90% of the coins appear to have been struck from Attic silver.21 Conversely, reconsideration of the Athenian coinage of the first half of the fourth century and the realization that, far from being quantitatively insignificant, it was “one of the most voluminous civic coinages of its time”, have enabled scholars to conclude that the silver mining industry at Laureion had not come to a standstill after the end of the Peloponnesian War and the old mines, at least, were still being exploited.22 Based on the assumption of a tight interrelation between mining and minting, three points need to be emphasized. First, there is an almost total vacuum of information on the administrative procedures governing the mine leases for precisely the period when the mint’s output reached its highest peak after c. 450 BC with the production of staggering amounts of standardized owls.23 The only exception is represented by some loci in Aristophanes’ comedies. In the Knights the sausage-seller boasts that he “will purchase mines” (362), showing that the lease system and the relative terminology we encounter in the poletai records were already in operation in the 420s. O. Picard has recently suggested that in actual fact they may well have gone back to the late sixth century when the third contact was discovered at Laureion.24 In the Frogs (721–725) the chorus alludes to the old silver nomisma, which was the finest of all coins and was valid “everywhere among the Greeks and the barbarians”, thus reflecting contemporary perceptions about its international status and its attractiveness beyond the limits of the Greek world. Second, even considering the almost overwhelming consensus of the sources, literary and epigraphic, pointing to a lease system whereby private individuals (or partnerships) acquired the right to exploit a mining concession in exchange for rent – whether this was a one-off, annual or prytany payment is a question that can be left aside for now – there is some indication that the state profited from the mines by means of a wider set of taxes. The poletai inscription P26, ll. 474–477 mentions an otherwise unknown telos, the ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις πεντεδραχμία, a five-drachm tax, which must, in some way, be connected to the exploitation of the mines.25 Xen. Vect. 4.49, referring to Flament 2007a; see also Kroll 2009, 196–198; Flament 2011, 47–49, esp. note 53. In Ar. Av. 1105–1109 the Athenian owls are significantly styled as Laureiotikai, “from Laureion”.  22 Kroll 2011a (the quotation is from p. 17). Cf. also van Alfen 2011b.  23 Cf. Kroll 2009, 198: “These wide variables allow for a possible use of as many as 450 dies or as few as 55 dies per annum, which, at an assumed production life of 20,000 tetradrachms per die, would mean that Athens was annually minting between 6,053 talents (about nine million coins) and 733 talents (about one million). A realistic estimate should fall somewhere in between. As Meadows writes, ‘This is a stunning amount of coinage, even at the lowest end of the estimate.’”  24 Picard 2001; see also Aperghis 2013; van Wees 2013, 101–104.  25 Shipton 1998. I find her attempt to interpret this five-drachm tax as the fixed fee paid by all lessees per prytany unpersuasive. 20 drachms, the most frequently recorded price in the poletai inscriptions, would thus equate to four  21

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revenues ἀπὸ καμίνων, may allude to some fiscal charge (again a tax?) levied at the furnaces where the silver was produced after smelting.26 In addition, two entries in the lexicographic tradition appear to suggest that the state also made a profit by taking a share in the silver produced by the lessees. According to the Suda (s.v. ἀγράφου μετάλλου δίκη), mining operators who wanted to open a new “cutting”, in other words a kainotomia, had to register it with a view to paying a 1/24th tax on (the product of) the new mine. The passage has generally been dismissed as reflecting later, perhaps Roman-Imperial practice, but in view of the fact that all entries concerning judicial institutions in the Suda (and Photius) were meant to illustrate questions posed by the Attic orators, this seems rather unlikely.27 As stated in the lemma, exploiting a mine without registering was an offence subject to an ἀγράφου μετάλλου δίκη, for which, again, we have a parallel in fourth-century oratory (Hyp. Eux. 34). The second entry concerns the technical term ἀπονομή. Its earliest occurrence is in Harpocration (s.v.; cf. also Suda, Phot. and Lex. Seg.). Here ἀπονομή is explained as a synonym of apomoira (ἀπόμοιρα) denoting the polis’ share (μέρος) from the yield of the mines (μέρος τι τῶν περιγιγνομένων ἐκ τῶν μετάλλων λαμβανούσης τῆς πόλεως). As indicated in the entry, the term recurred “several times” (πολλάκις) in the speech Against the children of Lycurgus by Dinarchus, the Athenian politician and finance expert whose interest in the Laureion silver mines is also attested elsewhere (Hyp. Eux. 36; [Plut.] Mor. 843D). Although the importance of Harpocration’s lemma has generally been underestimated, an Athenian fourth-century context is, in this case, beyond any doubt. Further evidence is finally provided by IG 22, 1443, ll. 12–88,28 recording an inventory of 28 talents of unminted silver (ἀσήμου ἀργυρίου), 140 “cake” ingots (φθοῖδες) weighing 1,200 drachms each,29 stored in the Parthenon by the treasurers of Athena in 344/343 BC after they had been set aside as reserve, presumably for military purposes, by the treasurer of the Stratiotic Fund, Nikeratos of Kydantidai (ll. 12–14: [ἀσή]μου ἀργυρίου τοῦ εἰς τὰ στρατιωτικὰ ἐξαιρεθέντ[ος] παρὰ ταμίου στρατιωτικῶν παρελάβομεν Νικηράτ[ου] Κυδαντίδου…).30 We can only guess at the source of such a large quantity of silver bullion. It cannot, of course, be ruled out that it had been incorporated into the treasure of Athena as war booty or on some other account,31 but, in view of the direct involvement of the treasurer of the Stratiotic Fund in the administration of the mine leases (Arist. Ath. Pol. 47.2), the simplest, and most plausible, explanation is that the bullion originated as a part of the portion of silver claimed by the polis. Third, very little is known about the mint at Athens, including its precise whereabouts. The evidence on the argyrokopeion has recently been reviewed by C. Flament and P. G. van Alfen.32 The mint worked under the supervision of a board of epistatai but all decisions about short-term and long-term policies on monetary output must have ultimately rested with the Council and Assembly. Concerning the interplay between mining and minting, the question of the location of the mint is not of secondary importance. J. McK. Camp and J. H. Kroll have identified a large square building in the south-eastern corner of the agora as the site where the minting of bronze coins took place.33 The building was constructed in c. 410 BC and this leaves open the question of where silver coinage was produced both before and after the final years of the fifth century. Camp and months, a period of exploitation too short to make investment worthwhile (cf. Aperghis 2013, 11: “a deep mine would require a year or more of preparation before exploitation could commence”). Similarly, high prices such as 1,550, 6,100 or 17,750 drachms can hardly be explained on this basis.  26 Text quoted above, note 20. On silver production processes at Laureion cf. Rihll 2001.  27 On the entry see MacDowell 2006, 122–123, who has no qualms in referring it to fourth-century Athens.  28 Harris 1995, 123–127 (no. 67).  29 On the meaning of φθοῖς cf. Kroll 2001a, 9 with note 11.  30 As pointed out by Migeotte 2014, 431–433, 481–482, the total weight of the silver must have been larger (30 talents?) because there is a lacuna at the end of the list.  31 Cf. e.g. van Alfen 2004–2005a, 20: “mines, taxes, or booty”.  32 Flament 2010, 5–29; van Alfen 2011b, 135–139.  33 Camp – Kroll 2001.

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Kroll cautiously suggested the possibility that silver coinage might have been struck somewhere in the Laureion district, possibly at Sounion, close to the sources of the silver and the installations where the ore was processed and smelted. Sections 10 and 14 of the Standards Decree (IG 13, 1453), providing for public display of the decree itself and other written documents “in front of the mint” (ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ ἀργυροκοπίο), however, somehow imply a potential audience for such records, and I wonder whether a location in the city would be more appropriate on this account. The question is, at any rate, worth posing because it forces us to focus on the administrative mechanisms ensuring that the silver extracted from the mines by private individuals made its way to the public mint. In order to shed light on such mechanisms I propose to start with two ‘theoretical’ passages in Xenophon’s Poroi, which, despite being set in different thematic sections of the treatise, can be combined to form a coherent argument. In chapter 4 Xenophon makes the point that, unlike other commodities, gold included, the value of silver (ἀργύριον) never decreases, even when this precious metal is available in large quantities, for “no one has acquired such a quantity that he no longer has the need for more” (4.7: ἀργύριον δὲ οὐδείς πω οὕτω πολὺ ἐκτήσατο ὥστε μηκέτι προσδεῖσθαι). This statement has been taken as evidence of Xenophon’s naiveté and lack of understanding of economic phenomena.34 A. Bresson, however, has correctly noted that the meaning of ἀργύριον is, to some extent, ambiguous, since the term can refer not only to silver, but also to coined money. As is manifestly indicated by 4.9 (καὶ εἰς ἐπιτήδεια καὶ εἰς ἐπικούρους νομίσματος δέονται), Xenophon was clearly thinking in terms of silver currency here because he distinguishes between the ordinary goods needed in the management of the household (τὰ ἔπιπλα), for which demand was necessarily limited, and τὸ περιττεῦον, any surplus that can be thesaurized and hoarded for future conspicuous consumption or, in difficult times, for grain imports or military purposes, so that the value of money remained stable.35 In other words, Xenophon’s argument focuses on the peculiar quality of money, which makes it different from other commodities. The same concept recurs, though in a different form, at 3.2. Here Xenophon emphasizes the commercial advantages offered to merchants at Athens, where they could either load a great variety of goods on their ships as return cargo or they could export excellent merchandise, taking away silver (ἀργύριον ἐξάγοντες καλὴν ἐμπορίαν ἐξάγουσι), for “wherever they sell it, everywhere they make more than the capital they invested” (ὅπου γὰρ ἂν πωλῶσι αὐτό, πανταχοῦ πλέον τοῦ ἀρχαίου λαμβάνουσι). In an illuminating article, G. Le Rider has demonstrated admirably how Xenophon’s statement can be made sense of in technical terms by distinguishing between the intrinsic, nominal and commercial value of coins.36 Owing to their reputation for good quality and wide circulation, some international coinages, the Athenian owls being foremost among them, also retained an elevated commercial value outside the boundaries of the issuing polis, especially in regions where the supply of silver was scarce.37 More significantly, Xenophon’s assertion has been proved reasonably accurate by the large numbers of hoards containing Athenian owls, or imitations thereof, discovered, in particular, in Egypt and the Near East. The evidence has recently been surveyed and tabulated in a number of articles by J. H. Kroll and P. G. van Alfen.38 Athenian owls already appear in Levantine and Egyptian hoards in the archaic period and their numbers grow in a stunning fashion from the second half of the fifth century. During the fourth century, the proportion of owls in hoards in the Levant remains constant at c. 60%, while in Egypt it approximates 100%. The dominance of Athenian Gauthier 1976, 120 and 131–132. For a different assessment of Xenophon’s economic thought see Jansen 2007; Figueira 2012.  35 Bresson 2005, 52–54.  36 Le Rider 1989, 159–167.  37 Kroll 2011b, 28–33 argues that, starting from the last quarter of the sixth century, Athens produced her coinage in surplus quantities to supply the demand for silver.  38 Kroll 2001a; van Alfen 2004–2005b; van Alfen 2011a; van Alfen 2012.  34

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coinage is, moreover, reflected by the large numbers of imitation owls, which, despite already appearing in the fifth century, are “primarily a fourth-century phenomenon”.39 The hoard evidence nonetheless indicates that tetradrachm owls were, for a long time, mostly used as bullion to be weighed on the balance scale and that “[i]t is only at the end of the fifth century that the first hints of a shift to using coins as coins begin to appear”,40 while mixed hoards assembling large silver ingots, dumps, Hacksilber, coins and fragmented coins, although largely attested for the earlier period, do not disappear in the fourth century.41 Laureion silver thus also had wide circulation in the Eastern Mediterranean as unmarked bullion in ingot form.42 We must consequently assume that not all of the refined metal extracted from the mines was immediately converted into coins and that, leaving thesaurization aside, an unquantifiable, though perhaps not negligible proportion remained in private hands and entered a market of its own, being sold for minting by other poleis or exchanged for other commodities, thus flowing into the commercial networks. The fourth-century monetary decree from Olbia (SIG3 218; Dubois 1996, no. 14), for instance, set the rules for the circulation of coined (ἐπισήμου) silver and gold within the polis territory, the implication being that the decree did not concern ἄσημον gold and silver, in other words gold and silver bullion, which could circulate without restrictions.43 To quote an earlier example, the early fifth-century Achaemenid customs register from Elephantine (TAD 3, no. C3.7) records duties paid in gold and silver by 42 Greek and Phoenician ships at a port on the Delta at a rate of roughly 10% on the imported and exported goods.44 The register concerns ships originating from some limited regions of the Eastern Mediterranean over the span of less than two years. Yet, according to van Alfen, the total amount of the duties levied on the ships equalled 7,500 tetradrachms that “represent[s] a considerable transfer of precious metal from the Aegean region to Egypt”.45 Within this Aegean context, where silver was in high demand as bullion as much as it was as coined money and where the interests of the polis and those of Laureion investors could, therefore, potentially collide, we have to go back to the question of the mechanisms enabling Athens to acquire the silver it needed to mint large volumes of tetradrachms. However speculative the argument may appear, three possible scenarios can be envisaged on the basis of the available evidence. The first scenario goes back to an article published by R. J. Hopper in 1953.46 The prices we find in the poletai records, as suggested by P5, where the list of mine leases is organized by prytany (cf. e.g. l. 40: μέταλλα ἐπράθη ἐπὶ τῆς Ἱπποθωντίδος πρώτη), represented prytany payments and correspond quite closely to the amounts of the prices recorded in Demosthenes’ speeches. On this calculation the income for the year 342/341 would amount to 160 talents, thus representing approximately 40% of the total annual revenue of 400 talents attested by Demosthenes’ Fourth Philippic (10.37–38).47 Hopper’s estimate is certainly correct for the average prices of the inscriptions48 in

Van Alfen 2012, 15. For an overview of bronze coin dies used for producing imitations of Athenian tetradrachms in fourth-century Egypt see Meadows 2011.  40 Van Alfen 2004–2005a, 26.  41 Kroll 2001a; van Alfen 2004–2005a.  42 As noted by Kroll 2001a, 10, while in some cases, like the Selinous hoard from Sicily, lead isotopic analyses of ingots have revealed that the silver is almost certainly from Laureion, “the most suggestive evidence for the origin of most ingots in Egyptian (and Levantine) bullion hoards is provided by the Greek coins that were found with them; for if most of the coined silver in Egypt came as it did from the mining districts of the northern and central Aegean basin, these should also be the sources that ... were supplying most of the unminted silver to Egypt as well”.  43 See the commentary by Muller 2010, 387–389 (no. 19).  44 For a detailed study of the document cf. Briant – Descat 1998.  45 Van Alfen 2012, 18 with note 32.  46 Hopper 1953, 224–227; Flament 2007b, 72–77.  47 On the figure of 400 talents see the commentary by Hajdú 2002, 304–305. Cf. also Flament 2007b, 45–47, 60–64; Migeotte 2014, 434–435.  48 Flament 2007b, 77 calculates the average price of a mine as “un peu plus de 222 dr.”  39

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so far as the spectrum of the most frequently recurring sums ranges from 20 to 200 drachms, but cannot account for the highest recorded prices, such as 1,550 (P5, ll. 47–51), 3,500 (P19, l. 4), 6,100 (P26, l. 94) and 17,750 (P19, ll. 26–30), which, if multiplied by ten, would result in astronomical yearly rents (over 7 talents and 29 talents respectively for the last two leases). Hyperides (Eux. 35) indeed refers to a very productive mine, from which the income of the wealthy Athenians who had a stake in the enterprise made 300 talents in three years, but he was alluding to a penalty that was the equivalent of the total return on their investment and not to the price paid in order to be awarded the lease.49 Secondly, assuming that the state’s revenues from the mines only consisted in the prices paid by the lessees, it remains to be explained how Athens obtained the pure metal for its coin production. It is generally believed that Athenian silver coins were valued at a percentage of 3 or 5% over their intrinsic value,50 and, in particular, that the commercial ‘market’ mina used for the weighing of bulk silver bullion was 5% heavier than the monetary mina, so that minting allowed the issuing authority a slight profit to cover minting fees and, possibly, a value-added premium. We would therefore have to allow for the possibility that the state purchased large amounts of bullion from the producers at the market (or at a discount) price in exchange for owls.51 This was, however, shown to be incorrect by J. H. Kroll, who observes that “[a]s is clear from Athenian inventories of precious-metal dedications in sanctuaries, the Athenian silver/coin weight system was used for weighing all items of gold and silver in whatever form, even bullion.”52 As J. H. Kroll concludes, “[a]ny profit extracted from the minting of silver coins would not therefore automatically result from the 5% differential between the two minas.”53 The second scenario was proposed by C. Flament in his recent book on Athens’ moneyed economy.54 It is based on the notion that the driving force behind the massive output of coins by the Athenian mint was the needs of the mine investors. As argued by Flament, the annual yield of the Laureion mines at their peak period can be estimated in the range of 750–1,000 talents of silver.55 He arrives at this result based on the fact that operations in the mine district entailed huge outlays of money on the part of the lessees to cover rents and taxes, the expenditure involved in leasing, feeding and maintaining the slave workforce as well as the costs of equipment and of the processing and refining of the ore, which Flament calculates to be at least 750 talents per year, so that we can safely assume that, in order for mining operations to be economically viable, the profits must have at least equalled the expenses. Other scholars have proposed lower estimates, between 450 and 600 talents56 – and we must be aware that any attempt at quantification is to some extent impressionistic – but, leaving this question aside, the second part of Flament’s argument is that investors in the silver industry desperately needed to convert their bullion into coins in order to cover such huge outlays and, in the case of the economic elite, on top of this, to perform the liturgies they were expected to undertake. The production of tetradrachm owls was thus driven by those private individuals who took their silver to the mint for coining at a modest cost, as witnessed by the Delphic apousia accounts of 336 BC, where the mint master Dexios obtained approximately 2% of the total silver coined as compensation for manufacturing the silver Amphictyonic coinage (CID 2, 75). MacDowell 2003, 125–127. Mørkholm 1982, 290–292; Le Rider 2001, 257–260; Kroll 2011c, p. 237 note 23.  51 Van Alfen 2011b, 145–146.  52 Kroll 2011c, 237 note 23 followed by van Alfen 2011b, 142 with note 44. Cf. also Kroll 2001b, 89 note 9: “the silver mina was apparently used for weighing all gold and silver, whether in coin, bullion, or in worked objets d’art.”  53 Kroll 2001b, 89 note 9.  54 Flament 2007b, 241–250.  55 Flament 2007b, 245–247: “ce n’est sans doute pas moins de 1000 T qui devaient être produits chaque année aux périodes les plus florissantes de l’industrie.” In Flament 2011, 40–43 the author lowered his estimate to “au moins 750 T.”  56 Pébarthe 2008, 89–91.  49  50

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Despite its prima facie attractiveness, this scenario is also not without its difficulties. Even if we allow for the possibility that, pace F. de Callataÿ,57 ‘free minting’ was a well-known, and frequently resorted to, practice in antiquity,58 the most serious objection concerns the role it attributes to private initiative in the production and supply of coinage at Athens. Granted that coinage was perceived as a common good, the production of which aimed at facilitating economic life, as is suggested by the sophistic treatise of the Anonymus Iamblichi (89 D. K., fr. 7.1–9),59 and that it was in the general interest of the community to enforce all possible methods to guarantee an adequate supply of currency, Flament’s hypothesis contradicts everything we know about the relationship between nomos and nomisma in classical Athens. On the contrary, the evidence we have in this respect, from the issue of Athens’ fiduciary silver-plated bronze coinage in 406/405 (Ar. Ran. 718–733) to the decree that withdrew it from circulation (Ar. Eccl. 815–822),60 the law of Nicophon on the dokimastai of silver coinage of 375/374 (RO 25),61 or the massive reminting programme of the ‘pi-style’ tetradrachms in 353 BC, all point to state interventionism and tight political control.62 On a more general level, we should not underestimate the simple fact that, from early times, the polis exerted a monopoly on the extraction of silver from the Laureion mines.63 Moreover, a fragmentary decree from the late fifth century (IG 13, 90; 416? BC) contained a clause in which the Laureion mines were mentioned in connection with coinage (ll. 10–13), while an unpublished law proposed by an Epikrates in 354/353 dealt with “several measures concerning the festival of Hephaistos and Athena Hephaistia, coinage, the mint,” with a view to producing revenue for the dioikesis, as well as “with the industrial processing of silver” referring to “silver ore” (ἀργυρῖτις), “furnaces” (κάμινοι), bullion and the refining of the precious metal.64 While we must await the publication of this fragmentary legislation, it is still significant that the polis was in some way regulating activity in the Laureion district by means of a law. As a result, the third and, in my opinion, most probable and intriguing scenario is that Athens obtained at least a large portion of the silver it needed for minting as a proportional quota of the silver extracted from the mines. As we have seen, the existence of such proportional quota cannot be doubted because it is independently attested by sources directly or indirectly going back to the fourth century. One may, of course, question what happened to the portion of silver retained by private mine investors. It cannot, obviously, be ruled out that, apart from being exported and/or exchanged on the market as a commodity, silver bullion could also be converted into coins at the Athenian mint at discount rates (‘free minting’),65 but the evidence seems to support the assumption that Athens obtained the bulk of the silver it needed for coinage by means of administrative methods, in other words through taxation. Provided this reconstruction is correct, the lease system would thus appear to have been based on two forms of payment: a one-off or yearly registration fee, which we find recorded in the poletai inscriptions, and a percentage of the silver extracted. What remains obscure and, owing to a lack of information, can only be a matter of speculation and inference, are the level of the percentage and the mechanisms according to which the state exerted control over the output of the mines and obtained its share, determining the size of its portion. As far as I know, the only extant ancient doc De Callataÿ 2005. That ‘free minting’ was both a medieval and an ancient phenomenon was underlined by many participants in the discussion following my paper at the Colloquium. Cf. Kroll 2009, 203–205; van Alfen 2011b, 139–147.  59 Musti – Mari 2003, 254–332; Faraguna 2012, 360–363.  60 On the question of the date of this enactment, before 393 but possibly “when the war ended in 404 or when democratic government was restored a year later”, cf. Kroll 2011a, 6–8.  61 See most recently Psoma 2011; Kroll 2011a, 18–19 note 41, with diverging interpretations of the provision on “foreign currency” (ξενικὸν ἀργύριον) and of Athenian “monetary policy” in the first half of the fourth century.  62 Cf. Pébarthe 2012, 248–256.  63 Faraguna 2006 with the response of Thür 2006.  64 Faraguna 2006, 151–152; Kroll 2011c, 238–239.  65 Van Alfen 2011b, 143–146.  57  58

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ument addressing similar administrative problems is the lex metallis dicta from Vipasca (FIRA 12 no. 104), concerning the organization of silver and copper extraction in the Roman imperial province of Lusitania in the first half of the second century AD, where the occupant, in order to obtain full ownership of the puteus, had to pay ex more half of the extracted ore (venae) to the fiscus (sect. 1, 2 and 5) and the division of the production occurred at the shaft, or in any case before smelting (sect. 9).66 In the case of the Laureion mines, it is doubtful that the polis’ share was as large as 50% but it must have been very significant,67 because we could not otherwise justify the large volume of the mint’s output.68 L. Migeotte has plausibly suggested that the 28+ talents of silver bullion recorded in the inventory of the treasurers of Athena of 344/343 BC (IG 22, 1443, ll. 12–88) were, in actual fact, a tithe of the portion of the silver extracted from the mines going to the city in that year. If this is correct, the polis’ share of the profits for 344/343 BC can be estimated in the range of 280–300 talents.69 In addition, it has been noted that the affluent members of the Athenian economic elite investing in the mining industry were more active as owners of land and installations for the processing of the ore than as lessees working in the extraction sector. Such an investment pattern appears to indicate that leasing a mine entailed lower costs but also involved higher risks and limited profit. It can be surmised that, alongside the risk factor, what made investment in extraction less attractive was the large share of the production taken by the polis as tax. Conversely, investment in land and ergasteria, though requiring more capital, minimized risk and guaranteed adequate long-term returns.70 As for the modes used by Athens to collect its portion, it cannot be ruled out that this happened at the shafts where the ore was heaped after it was carried to the surface, but it seems more likely that the division was made at the furnaces which, as we have seen, were, according to Xenophon, a source of income (πρόσοδοι) for Athens (Vect. 4.49). To conclude: returning to the enigmatic contract between the polis and Sokles (IG 23, 433), we are left with the intractable problem of interpreting the provision concerning the rights which the polis and Sokles enjoyed in alternate years with regard to the exploitation via subcontracting and the “gathering” (συλλογή) of the profits from the mine leases (ll. 21–24: ὁ αὐ]τὸς δὲ τρόπος ἔστω τ[ῆ]ς συ[λλογῆς περὶ τ]ῆς πράσεως καὶ τῆς τ[ι]μή[σεως καὶ τῆς πρ]άξεως τῶγ χρημάτων Σωκλ[εῖ καθάπερ ἂν] τῆι πόλει γίγνηται). In the first part of this paper, Professor Thür cogently proposed a ‘legal’ explanation of the clause whereby Sokles was placed on equal terms to the polis in respect of the leasing procedure (prasis), the assessment with a view to classification (timesis) of the mines as well as enforcement (praxis) in the event that the lessees defaulted on their contracts.71 Tying up the threads of my discussion, I wonder, however, whether an ‘economic’ interpretation may not be equally possible, so that it could be suggested that the clause alluded to the two different forms of revenue Athens obtained from the mine leases: first the registration fee when the mine was “sold” (Arist. Ath. Pol. 47.2; P5, l. 40) and then the silver ore, the amount of which needed to be “assessed,” “estimated” before being “exacted” (cf. LSJ s.v.). However, owing to the fragmentary state of the inscription, this question must inevitably remain open.

Lazzarini 2001, 131–147, 167–176; Hirt 2010, 262–269, discussing earlier literature. Cf. also Domergue 1983, esp. 114–141; Domergue 1990, 295–299.  67 I consider that it must have been much higher than 10%, as suggested by Aperghis 1997–1998, 17–19.  68 It is now the prevailing view in scholarship that during the course of the fifth century all silver currency needed for ordinary external commercial and public transactions increasingly came to be provided by Athenian coinage and that the Standards Decree was enacted in the 420s or 410s when the supply system started to collapse or when the 5% harbour tax (εἰκοστή) replaced the annual φόρος; cf. Figueira 1998, esp. 265–73; Kroll 2009; Flament 2011, 45–51. See also the contribution by Vincent Gabrielsen in this volume.  69 Migeotte 2014, 481–482.  70 Bissa 2008; cf. also Shipton 2000, 31–37.  71 On praxis as “enforcement of penalties” see Rubinstein 2010. I would like to note, however, that, assuming this was the meaning of the clause, the restored expression συλλογὴ περί (?) followed by τ]ῆς πράσεως καὶ τῆς τ[ι]μή[σεως καὶ τῆς πρ]άξεως τῶγ χρημάτων sounds somewhat awkward and pleonastic.  66

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Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert

Die-Sharing and the Transfer of Dies: Evidence for Orders and Shipments of Large Sums of Money in the Ancient Greek World (5th to 3rd Centuries BC) Until the fourth century BC, the Greek overseas trade appears to have worked without the transfer of large sums of coined money. The modest local influx of foreign currencies is a result of silver trade rather than payments. Even in territorial states such as the realm of Dionysius I in Sicily the distribution of specie to the local markets was barely performed by state authorities. However, numismatic evidence demonstrates that sometimes large sums of money were dispatched, predominantly as inter-state payments. This can be deduced from some cases of die-sharing. The evidence is often ambiguous: where experienced mints accepted charges to produce coin issues for foreign customers it was easier to dispatch the personnel than to transfer the metal. Even in the case of the Athenian Empire there is no evidence for satellite mints operating in remote areas: the transfer of large sums of money was obviously an option.

The purposeful supply, distribution, and transport of money known from Roman imperial times1 is a phenomenon based on two conditions: first, a centralized state, and second, vast territories. In the small world of the Greek city-state the second condition occurred only rarely. Western Sicily under the sway of the Dionysii can be called a territorial state (a Flächenstaat, the size of which in relation to population is much larger than in densely populated urban regions), and this is also true for the Macedonian kingdom before Philip II. As far as the numismatist can tell, both of these states appear to have employed only one mint each. The relevant rulers are likely to have occasionally had large sums of money transported, particularly for paying soldiers in remote areas. While it is possible to draw maps of circulation areas by paying attention to hoard finds, we might have a hard time establishing the ways and the purposes of the monetary flow. Frankly, I do not see any evidence as to whether, and if so, how far, the early territorial states cared about the supply of money, small change in particular, for the markets (pace Thomas Figueira).2 The monetary policy of the Greek city-state was focused on enforcing the proper currency in the local markets, thereby forcing foreign traders to change money. From this point of view, the circulation of a state’s currency was a result of its preference within the boundaries rather than a directional supply. This is not the whole story. Trading works without coined money. The overseas trade in the Mediterranean seems to have managed without any substantial money flow for a long time after the invention of coins, possibly until the early fourth century BC.3 Sometimes, an influx of foreign money can be deduced from the hoard evidence. In the fifth century there is a steady flow of Athenian money towards the Levant, and at the same time Corinthian money flowed to Southern Italy and Sicily. It is hard to say whether this is the result of payments. In areas without local silver supply – this goes for the Levant as well as Sicily – foreign silver coins were a commodity. In short, the need to keep the markets flooded with local money could have been less urgently felt than we might expect. The traders were able to do most of the transactions without using coins, particularly since loans played an important role in the overseas trade.4 Before the time of Alexander the Great, money flows across state boundaries (as indicated by hoard evidence, overstrikes and abundant imitations) are rarely the Van Heesch 2006; Wolters 2006. I agree with Sheedy’s reservations (2006, 123–125) against Figueira’s reconstruction of the Athenian monetary policy in the fifth century BC (Figueira 1998).  3 Salmon 1993, 3–5.  4 Salmon 1984, 150f.; Cohen 2008. Furthermore, see Lawall 1995 [non vidi].  1  2

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result of large-scale payments, much less targeted monetary policies. The Athenian Empire of the fifth century BC is the exception that proves the rule; I will deal with this evidence later. However, numismatists can add some incidental evidence that alters the picture. The evidence is ambiguous, but as a whole it tells us that things are much more complex than outlined above. I will begin with a numismatic feature that is well-known in the Roman Empire: die-sharing. In his last and unfinished book on pseudo-autonomous mints in Asia Minor, Konrad Kraft established a network of obverse die linkages among numerous city-mints.5 While details are controversial, the system of die-sharing as a whole may be explained as the result of regional or travelling workshops supplying dies and know-how to cities which issued coins in waves or even sporadically. The die-sharing points to mobile craftsmen and co-operating mints rather than to monetary flows. Die-sharing is known for the pre-Roman era as well.6 A famous example is provided by the mints of Leontinoi and Syracuse. In the early fifth century (soon after the battle of Himera, 480 BC) the mint of Syracuse was producing large-sized issues, the so-called Massenprägung. We do not need to discuss the historical background; suffice it to mention that at this time Syracuse and some neighbouring cities were ruled by the dynasty of Gelon. Leontinoi was one of the cities within Gelon’s realm. A minor city compared to Syracuse, Leontinoi had a smaller output of coins. Curiously, at one point a quadriga die of Leontinoi was combined with an Arethusa head die of Syracuse. Close study of each of the relevant die-sequences has revealed that both dies had been in use before that: the Syracusan head die is known by three earlier die-combinations, and the quadriga die of Leontinoi was in use both before, and after, the pairing in question. The Arethusa head die was recut slightly before eventually being combined with the quadriga of Leontinoi. So the sequence is perfectly clear.7 Interpreting the evidence is another matter. In his die-study of Syracusan coinage, Erich Boehringer holds that in producing the large-scale issues Syracuse was desperate to engage die-engravers from abroad. Since Leontinoi was under Gelon’s rule, it was easy to have an engraver dispatched to the capital. Boehringer did not know that the quadriga die did not remain in use at Syracuse until it was worn out. According to Christof Boehringer’s still unpublished die-study of Leontinoi, this quadriga die seems to have been brought back to Leontinoi for another die-combination: possible, but unlikely. I agree with Christof Boehringer’s conclusion: it was the Syracusan reverse die that was shared. Leontinoi produced an issue of Syracusan coins, probably for remitting a payment to the capital. Afterwards the Syracusan die was destroyed. If this is correct, the die-sharing in question points to a transport of coined money. In the fifth and fourth centuries BC, die-sharing between neighbouring city-mints was a widespread phenomenon, although it has never been systematically studied. In most cases, the evidence of the die-sequences is much more limited than that of Leontinoi. So it is often hard to say whether it is the obverse or the reverse die that was shared, and even if so, whether the die was willingly shared or seized. From the early third century we know of hybrid issues of the diadochs, for instance die-links between the issues of Demetrius Poliorcetes and Lysimachus, or Lysimachus and Antiochus Hierax.8 In such cases a single die might have been kept in use after the relevant city and her mint was captured by the opponent.9 These are curiosities, not much more, but they should Kraft 1972. Furthermore, see Johnston 1974; Johnston 1982/1983; Butcher 2005; Watson 2016. Die-sharing is a feature even known for the earliest coinages of Lydia and Ionia, but it is the typeless reverse punchdies that are shared, and so it is controversial which conclusions should be drawn; see Weidauer 1975, 66–68; Spier 1998, 331–333.  7 Boehringer 1929, 22 and 79; Boehringer 1998, 44f. pl. 10, 4–7. On the dating of the relevant groups of Syracuse, see Arnold-Biucchi 1990, 64f.  8 Demetrius Poliorcetes and Lysimachus: Gorny & Mosch 212 (5 March 2013), no. 1298. Lysimachus and Antiochus Hierax: Gemini 11 (12 Jan. 2014), no. 111.  9 Hybrid issues of this kind are also known from Huns (Alram 2014, 268 with pl. 41, 17; 278 with pl. 43, 28) and Goths (Bursche and Myzgin 2015).  5  6

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be understood as serious warnings against jumping to conclusions. For the question of monetary flows, it makes a difference whether it is about a die with, or without, the legend of the issuing authority. To enlarge on this, I will discuss a few examples. When studying the mints of fifth and early fourth-century Campania, Keith Rutter came across various die-links among these cities, and between city-states and Italian tribal issues.10 For instance, Hyria and Nola shared at least four dies with each other, Neapolis shared two dies with Nola, and so forth. Interestingly, Cyme, Neapolis and Hyria shared also dies with the Campanians and with an obscure Oscan community named Fenserni. Due to the then limited material, Rutter was not able to delineate all the die-sequences in question as clearly as the one of Leontinoi and Syracuse. At first glance it appears that it is always the obverse die that moved from one mint to the other. It is also possible that some city-mints occasionally operated on behalf of foreign communities – whether the silver was brought to the city in question, or whether the city allowed the personnel of her mint to pay the requesting foreign community a visit, we cannot tell. The same problem arises when discussing league coinages. Whichever is true, we get the impression of a network of co-operating city-mints, overlaid with some developmental assistance. Two more die-links discovered by Keith Rutter remind us that each case needs to be studied carefully. Among those coinages sharing the obverse type of the facing Hera Lacinia, he discovered an obverse die-link between Thurii in Lucania, a city at the shore of the Ionian Sea, and the mint of Fenserni.11 It is hard to understand why the Thurians would have offered technical assistance to an obscure little community in Campania. The same is true for another obverse die-link between Poseidonia in Lucania and Hyria in Campania.12 In fact, the coin of Poseidonia is plated. So it is the reverse die from Hyria that was shared or, to be more precise, it was stolen and used for producing hybrid forgeries. True cooperative coinages took pains by having clear responsibilities and keeping the transfer of sensitive material such as dies and silver as low as possible.13 The coinage of the Arcadian league of the fifth century fell into three series that were struck side by side. While all coins bear the same ethnic, ΑΡΚΑΔΙΚΟΝ, they can be distinguished by tiny details in the paraphernalia of the deities depicted. According to Roderick Williams, the three mints were located at Cleitor, Tegea and Mantineia.14 There is no die-sharing. Since the fabric of their coinages is fairly uniform, it is quite possible that these cities employed a mobile mint that started operating whenever and wherever it was necessary. It is much easier to dispatch the personnel of a mint than to transport uncoined silver, not to mention the problem of security. In some cases the evidence has been interpreted in favour of a central mint that accepted orders from outside. For instance, Kenneth Jenkins, Silvia Hurter and most recently Keith Rutter have shown that in late fifth-century western Sicily a central mint, most likely Panormus, was temporarily operating in charge of three cities: Segesta, Motya, and Panormus herself.15 The central mint was active for a few years only, most probably from 410 through 408 BC, when a Carthaginian army was deployed in western Sicily for the purpose of attacking Segesta’s opponent Selinus. Thus the cooperation of the three mints might have had political rather than financial reasons. During these years, the security problem of silver transportation from Motya and Segesta to Panormus and vice versa was easily solved by the Carthaginian expedition forces. An experienced mint that accepts orders from neighbouring cities or rulers: this is a popular way of interpreting die-links or imitative issues. The mint of Damastium in Illyria shared an ob Rutter 1979, 60, 102; Rutter 2001, 62; Burnett 2013, 443f. Rutter 2001, 67; Rutter 2002, 177.  12 Rutter 1979, 60.  13 Cf. Mackil – van Alfen 2006.  14 Williams 1965, 8–15.  15 Hurter 2008, 46f. Most recently, see Rutter 2013; Morcom 2013.  10  11

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verse die with Patraos the ruler of Paeonia.16 According to Strabo, Damastium (the precise location of which is still undetermined) was situated near to silver mines. No doubt, the city flourished by selling silver within the region: perhaps not only uncoined silver. However, this case needs more research, particularly since the unique Patraos coin in Paris is a bit suspicious.17 The idea that some Greek city-mints readily accepted orders from neighbouring rulers or acted as collective mints within a network of neighbouring cities is increasingly popular. According to Ulrike Peter, some Thracian rulers had their coins struck by Greek cities; hence the imitative character of these coins.18 According to the late Leo Mildenberg, the city of Gaza ran a Lohnmünzstätte for tribal issues in the Negev and the Hidjaz.19 While his theory was not well-received, Haim Gitler and Oren Tal have recently shown that the coinages of Gaza and Ashdod are connected by a die-link.20 Whether this is pointing to a ‘collective mint’ (thus Gitler and Tal) or rather to a mobile workshop is not clear. It should be mentioned that the coin standards of the Philistian cities differed slightly from each other.21 This was certainly manageable for a single workshop, but the evidence is not conclusive so far. The case of the archaic and early classical coinage of Paros is more intriguing. Jonathan Kagan has recently pointed out that within the setting of Cycladic coinages this series has clear anomalies: first, there is the absence of fractions; staters and drachms are the only denominations. Second, the weights are extraordinarily consistent, whereas most coinages fluctuate and tend to be underweight. And third, the fabric, the quadripartite square incuse in particular, is reminiscent of coins from Northern Greece. Kagan therefore suggested that the whole of Parian coinage was not minted on Paros herself but by her colony Thasos, either because Thasos had easy access to the silver mines in Thrace or as a tribute to the mother-city.22 The odd consistency of the coin weights is indeed hard to explain unless the producer of the coins gained profit from seignorage. If Kagan’s theory is correct (and I am inclined to agree with him), it could throw some light on the interdependencies between the coinages of cities like Corinth, Teos and Miletus on one side and the coinages of their respective colonies on the other.23 We definitely need more die-studies in this field. I should like to add a strange case from my own desk. In the early third century BC Cyrene produced a small group of tetradrachms and a vast series of didrachms, possibly for financing the lingering war of Cyrene’s ruler Magas against Ptolemy II. Ten years ago I did a die-study of these didrachms that comprised more than 250 die-combinations: a huge coinage indeed.24 Curiously enough, not a single one of these coins has been found in Cyrenaica, except possibly for one specimen that was given to the British Museum by a former vice-consul at Benghazi.25 As far as the provenance of the other specimens is known, all were found in hoards from Crete. Since earlier issues of Cyrene and Barce also were found in Crete in large quantities, Georges Le Rider has suggested that the didrachms of Magas were brought home by Cretan mercenaries who had fought in Magas’ army.26 I wonder whether the total absence at the place of production can be explained in this way. This transfer of money may well have been enacted by state authorities rather than by migrating mercenaries.

May 1939, 6. According to Schwarz 2012, the obverse die of the Patraos coin was produced by hubbing.  18 Peter 1997, 142 (Teres), 147 (Spokes).  19 Mildenberg 1998, 84f.  20 Gitler – Tal 2009, 23f.  21 Fischer-Bossert 2010, 145–152.  22 Kagan 2008, 107.  23 For Teos and Abdera, see now Van Alfen 2014. For Corinth and her colonies, see Kagan 2013.  24 Fischer-Bossert 2016.  25 Robinson 1927, 55, no. 261, pl. XXIV, 9.  26 Le Rider 1966, 191f.  16  17

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Last but by no means least, Athens. The monetary policy of Athens is a battlefield of opinions. Up to now, we know of three Athenian coinage decrees, one from the fifth, the other two from the fourth century BC. Reconciling the epigraphic with the numismatic evidence is not an easy task. John Kroll has recently shown that the introduction of the so-called pi-style coinage is dated precisely by the third coinage decree.27 However, interpreting both of the earlier decrees continues to be tricky. Down-dating the first coinage decree to the 420s apparently solved serious problems insofar as the ban of non-Athenian coinage from the territory of the Delian League was no longer challenged by the findings of some coinages involved. However, since the chronology of Aegean coinages in the second half of the fifth century is far from being certain (the chronology of Athenian issues in particular), the first coinage decree cannot be tested for its numismatic validity. I am not to add new evidence or some new insights that would throw a fresh light upon the much-debated monetary policy of the Athenians. I would like to underline some basics instead. Although the Athenian navy of the fifth century had the task of policing the Aegean Sea, and in doing so became involved in conflicts against Persian forces in Southern Asia Minor, Cyprus and Egypt, the Athenians managed the collateral monetary issues by employing a single mint at home. Charles Seltman’s theory that some parts of the early owl coinage had been produced by satellite mints in Paeonia and Euboea has been discarded.28 The single specimen that has long been regarded to be the product of an Athenian colonial mint has now turned out to belong to the socalled eastern owls, that is to say, pseudo-Athenian issues of satrapal mints in the Levant.29 As I said at the beginning, there is no clear evidence that any Greek city-state cared about the supply of money to the market. However, it is evident that the Greek city-state took pains when paying its soldiers. Beside the payments for official building activities, this was the most important item on the financial agenda.30 For a ruler of the seas that maintained numerous garrisons abroad this meant enormous shipments of money. The Athenian navy was experienced in doing this anyway. At the beginning of the sailing season each spring, the tributes of the allies had to be collected, a challenge to naval logistics.31 As far as the Athenian tribute-quota lists state, the tribute was paid in coined money, as it was accounted for in this way. The document relief of the decree of Cleonymus, issued in 426/5 BC, illustrated what the collected tributes looked like: bags and hydriae.32 It is worth noting that the treasurers recorded two currencies: the main one which is not specified but is, of course, the Athenian, and the electrum coins from mints like Cyzicus and Lampsacus.33 The mint of Cyzicus, active throughout the fifth century in spite of the first coinage decree, has therefore been called a satellite mint of Athens.34 Some allies such as Tenedos paid their tribute in Cyzicene currency.35 In fact, the Cyzicene mint was no satellite workshop of the Athenian mint; accepting Cyzicene staters meant only acknowledging their high status in the Black Sea trade. In short, the monetary policy of Athens during the fifth century was based on the traditional means of the Greek city-state: a centralized fiscal organization that made use of a well-trained navy in order to deal with both ebb and flow in distributing money. Even during the Ionian War, when security increasingly became a problem, the Athenians did not think of decentralizing their fiscal organization. The rest was pragmatic action. Kroll 2011. Seltman 1924 (group F: Paeonia; group P: cleruchy mint, Euboea). Seltman’s arrangement was challenged by Robinson 1924, Jongkees 1945, and Kraay 1956.  29 Weiser 1989, 268 no. 9 pl. 16. During the past ten years, more specimens have emerged, one of them with the ‘Samian’ symbol in incuse.  30 For the financial implications of the building activities of the Greek city-states, see Rumscheid 1999. For the financial agenda of Greek city-states in general, see Howgego 1990.  31 For details, see Meiggs 1975, 234–254.  32 Meyer 1989, 265, no. A 3.  33 Bodenstedt 1976, 64–73.  34 Cf. Mildenberg 1998, 127–135.  35 Meiggs 1975, 239; Bodenstedt 1976, 65.  27  28

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Boehringer 1998

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Burnett 2013

A. Burnett, Nummi Italici. A Numismatic Commentary on “Imagines Italicae”, Numismatic Chronicle 173 (2013), 437–456.

Bursche – Myzgin 2015

A. Bursche – K. Myzgin, Gold coins, Alexandria Troas and Goths, in: R. Bland – D. Calomino (eds.), Studies in Ancient Coinage in Honour of Andrew Burnett, London 2015, 237–257.

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W. Fischer-Bossert, Notes on the Coinages of the Philistian Cities, in: M. Huth – P. G. van Alfen (eds.), Coinage of the Caravan Kingdoms. Studies in the Monetization of Ancient Arabia, New York 2010 (Numismatic Studies 25), 133–196.

Fischer-Bossert 2016

W. Fischer-Bossert, The Didrachm Coinage of Magas, in: M. Asolati (ed.), Le monete di Cirene e della Cirenaica nel Mediterraneo. Problemi e prospettive, Atti del V Congresso Internatzionale di Numismatica e di Storia Monetaria, Padova 17–19 marzo 2016, Padova 2016, 57–64.

Gitler – Tal 2009

H. Gitler – O. Tal, More Evidence on the Collective Mint of Philistia, Israel Numismatic Journal 4 (2009), 21–37.

Hurter 2008

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J. H. Kagan, Paros, Melos and Naxos: Archaic and Early Classical Coinages of the Cyclades, American Journal of Numismatics, 2nd series, 20 (2008), 105–111.

Kagan 2013

J. H. Kagan, Epidamnus, Anactorium, and Potidaea: Corinthian-style Pegasi at the Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, American Journal of Numismatics, 2nd series, 25 (2013), 1–9.

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J. H. Kroll, The Reminting of Athenian Silver Coinage 353 B.C., Hesperia 80 (2011), 229– 259.

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Le Rider 1966

G. Le Rider, Monnaies crétoises du Ve au Ier siècle av. J.-C., Paris 1966.

Mackil – van Alfen 2006

E. Mackil – P. G. van Alfen, Cooperative Coinage, in: P. G. van Alfen (ed.), Agoranomia. Studies in Money and Exchange Presented to John H. Kroll, New York 2006, 201–246.

May 1939

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Morcom 2013

J. Morcom, Evidence for Mint Sharing in Western Sicily?, and a Reattribution from Sicily to Italy, in: P. G. van Alfen – R. B. Witschonke (eds.), Essays in Honour of Roberto Russo, Zurich – London 2013, 59–63.

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Rutter 2013

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Schwarz 2012

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van Alfen 2014

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van Heesch 2006

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Weiser 1989

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Alain Bresson

Coins and Trade in Hellenistic Asia Minor: the Pamphylian Hub* This article analyses the case of the countermarks applied to the coins of four cities of the Pamphylian region in the second century BC: the Alexanders of Phaselis (in Lycia), Aspendos, and Perge, and the autonomous tetradrachms of Side. The so-called “cistophoric” countermarks were applied in the Attalid kingdom. The anchor and Helios countermarks are here definitively shown to have been applied in Seleucid territories. Previously, a time span of up to two decades between the two countermarkings, the Attalid and the Seleucid one, has been conjectured. Here it is argued that their beginning was almost simultaneous, shortly after 175 BC, the Attalid one coming first. This new arrangement allows us to make sense of the peculiarities of the two countermarking processes. It is shown that the countermarks were a privilege granted by the Attalid and Seleucid kingdoms to the Pamphylian cities – above all to Side, Pamphylia then being the hub of commercial exchange between Attalid Asia Minor and Seleucid Syria and Babylonia.

The question of the role of coinage in the ancient economy, especially in the Hellenistic period, has been hotly debated in recent years. It was formerly thought to be self-evident that coins were used for trade. The authority of Aristotle and common sense alike led to the seemingly obvious conclusion that coins were minted in order to facilitate trade exchange, whether it be for international trade and ‘big business’ in general or for daily exchange in the agora.1 The recent reevaluation of the conditions under which precious metal coins were minted has suggested radically different conclusions. At least for the states that did not have mines of precious metal in their territories – that is to say the vast majority of the minting states – minting in precious metal was most often connected with periods of war and with military campaigns. This fact is now well established. 2 Among the expenses of ancient Greek states, just as for European states in the early modern period, war was certainly the first item in the budget.3 It is thus perfectly understandable that states also minted fresh coins to finance war operations. The payment of soldiers supposed large accumulations and then disbursement of coins. Besides, war was also an economic undertaking and it could yield large profits, which in large part took the form of accumulations of coins. On this basis, it may seem tempting to assume that coin circulation was almost exclusively linked, whether directly or indirectly, to military operations. Indeed, many cases of hoarding or coin transportation are linked to the payment of soldiers or to military operations. It will suffice here to cite the Meydancikkale hoard of c. 240–235 BC, which in all likelihood was the chest of a Ptolemaic garrison in Cilicia, or the massive transfer to Macedon and Thrace of many Athenian stephanephoroi tetradrachms in the years 123–120.4 This reevaluation might seem to justify the conclusion, not Earlier versions of this paper were presented before various audiences at San Antonio, Glasgow, New York (ANS) and Yale. Over the years, conversations with Richard Ashton, Gilles Bransbourg, François de Callataÿ, Panagiotis Iossif, Thomas Keith, Catharine Lorber, Joe Manning, Andy Meadows, Olivier Picard and Peter van Alfen have much helped me to improve my argument. François Velde encouraged me to include the “Seleucid side” of the question. All these colleagues have also commented upon various preliminary drafts of this paper. This provides me with the opportunity to convey to them my special gratitude. It should be clear that I remain solely responsible for the thesis defended here and for any mistakes that might remain. 1 For Aristotle, see Eth. Nic. 1133a–b and Pol. 1256b–1257b.  2 See de Callataÿ 1997, 2000 and 2008 (especially 39 and 53–54).  3 See Aperghis 2004, 184–211, for the Seleucid kingdom and de Callataÿ 2000 for a parallel between the Hellenistic world and early modern/modern Europe.  4 See respectively Davesne – Le Rider 1989 and de Callataÿ 1991–1992. *

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only that states minted coins mostly to finance war, but also that money circulation was mainly or exclusively linked to war operations. From the beginning to the end, coinage in the ancient Greek world would have been linked to war, which would have a considerable impact on our understanding of the ancient Greek economy. Yet this analysis presents difficulties. First, it remains to be proved that all coins were minted to fund war expense. Other factors, such as building programs and the simple necessity of facilitating trade operations, should not be neglected, although admittedly in aggregate terms strikes for military purposes certainly represented the bulk of coin production in the cities and kingdoms. In some privileged cases, it can be proved that the mints directly served the interests of international trade.5 Besides, for the states that had gold and silver mines in their territories, precious metal was an item of export, partly in the form of ingots (about which we know almost nothing) but also frequently in the form of coins. In the late Archaic and Classical period, Athens and Thracian tribes or cities are famous examples of states that minted coins that were exported in large quantities, although of course these states also had their own war agendas. That said, it must still be stressed that one should not assume that ancient Greek states (whether cities or kingdoms) minted coins merely because they were providers of ‘public goods’, to satisfy the need of the populations. When they did fill this role – and indeed they did – this was also because this was in their direct interest.6 Two points are worth making in this regard. The first is that coinage made it easier for the states to collect taxes, which was vital for getting the resources necessary to maintain their very existence. The second is that, within the borders of a state, coin circulation was based on an apparatus of laws and other state institutions that ensured that coins would circulate according to the best interest both of the state and of the community. The involvement of the state in coin circulation thus cannot be denied – one should even go one step further and say that coin circulation was structured by the state – but precisely for this reason an ‘all-military’ approach cannot be accepted. In fact, the connections among state, war, coinage and private business are more complex than hitherto assumed. In analysing coin circulation in the ancient world, hoards are a fundamental source of information. Often, hoards were buried, and not retrieved, in connection with wars and other military operations: the threat of invasion, of plunder, commonly led to hoarding. The fact that the hoards were not retrieved certainly provides proof that their owners were frequently justified in their fears, although of course in this perspective other explanations can never be excluded, like the sudden natural death of the owner and of his whole family circle following an epidemic. This would seem to put the emphasis once again on political events, in a world that was indeed one of high uncertainty. However, the picture should be nuanced. Despite peaks linked to periods of high insecurity, for many hoards there is no clear chronological indication of a war context that would have justified their burial.7 But what happened to the coins before they were buried? Saxa loquuntur, but apparently nummi do not. There are however exceptions, and they are what is at stake in this paper. In chapter 19 (“I Am a Gold Coin”) of his novel My Name Is Red, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk gives voice to an Ottoman gold coin. This coin – originally in fact a Venetian counterfeit – tells us how it passed from the hands of a money changer to the pocket of a peasant and how it reached the capital where it changed hands 560 times: “I’ve wandered through Istanbul in belts made See Bresson 2015 for the traders coming to Alexandria in 258 BC, and 2006 for that of the stephanephoros coinage of Athens in the second and early first century BC.  6 For a global interpretative framework, see Bresson 2005 and the quantified analysis by Meadows 2014b.  7 For the case of Hellenistic Syria, see Duyrat 2011, who stresses the significant peak in hoarding between 150 and 130 BC due to the frequent wars in the region in a context of progressive disintegration of the Seleucid kingdom, but who shows also that for the burial of many other hoards in previous periods there is no clear indication of a specific context of insecurity.  5

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of camel leather, jacket linings made from checkered Egyptian cloth, in the thick fabric of shoe lining and in the hidden corners of multicolored shalwars [women’s trousers] … I’ve known hundreds of hands: dirty, hairy, plump, oily, trembling and old.”8 The coin was concealed in all kinds of locations, including (among others) the mouths of some bearers. Thanks to the imagination of the novelist we can follow the track of the gold coin. The difficulty we have with coins in general is that they are usually less talkative than their fictional Ottoman counterparts, and this is also true for the coins of the ancient world. This does not mean however that the situation is totally desperate. Firstly, analysing their wear allows us to estimate the speed of circulation of coins, which is correlated to their loss of weight compared to the time when they were minted. Each manipulation of a coin results in a loss of weight, and it is generally agreed that ancient silver coins seem to have lost by attrition around one per thousand of their weight every year that they remained in circulation, albeit with significant and telling variations. Secondly, as concerns those coins that come from hoards the provenance of which is certain or those that were found during archaeological surveys, we know their ‘place of death’, namely the place where their ancient circulation ended. When the place of hoarding is different from that of the city of origin, this proves at least that the coin had travelled from its place of minting to its last place of concealment. This logically provides the basis of many studies on the circulation of coins in the ancient world. However, such an analysis does not reveal the ‘life’ of the coin before its final voyage and ‘death’. A glimpse of it can be caught thanks to the graffiti – if there are any – scratched on them by individuals or thanks to the countermarks applied to them (normally by states in the later periods). It is this second track that will be explored here with the case of the countermarked Hellenistic Pamphylian silver tetradrachms. For decades, the meaning of the Attalid and Seleucid countermarks on (mainly, but not only) tetradrachms of Pamphylian cities minted in the mid-Hellenistic period has remained a vexing question. The meaning and date of the cistophoroi, the famous new coinage inaugurated in the kingdom of Pergamon by Eumenes II, are still no less debated. A new treatment of this dossier is now possible thanks to a series of recent major publications, especially studies on the Attalid and Seleucid countermarks and on the coinages of Side and of the Seleucid kingdom. The time has come to propose new answers to old questions, which, in turn, may contribute to a better understanding of the link between coins and trade in the Hellenistic economy. 1. Pamphylian coins, countermarks and trade routes 1.1 Pamphylian coins and countermarks 70 1.2 Attalid countermarks and cistophoroi 73 1.3 The Seleucid indemnity hypothesis 74 1.4 Attalid countermarks, hoards and trade routes 76 1.5 Between Asia Minor and Syria: the circulation of countermarked Pamphylian tetradrachms in Southern Asia Minor 87 2. The dates of the Attalid and Seleucid countermarks 2.1 The date of the Attalid countermarks 92 2.2 The date of the Seleucid countermarks 94 2.3 The common interval 101 3. Cistophoroi and countermarks: a tale of two kingdoms 3.1 The cistophoroi and the Attalid countermarking 101 3.2 The Seleucid countermarking 109 3.3 Seleucid vs. Attalid countermarking 119 4. The Pamphylian hub 125 Pamuk 2001, 105–106.

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5. Conclusion 131 Chronological Conspectus 134 Appendix 1: Pamphylian tetradrachms east and west 135 Appendix 2: Hoards with Pamphylian tetradrachms for which findspot (or region of discovery) is unknown or other crucial information is lacking 135 Bibliography 136

1. Pamphylian coins, countermarks and trade routes 1.1 Pamphylian coins and countermarks As for the information on coin circulation supplied by countermarks, one of the best cases is in fact provided by a cluster of coins from cities located on the Gulf of Pamphylia, minted in the late third and beginning of the second century BC. They were countermarked in large quantities in both the Attalid and Seleucid kingdoms in the second century BC, and they may occasionally show other countermarks applied by various cities that did not belong to these kingdoms. These coins consisted of two series of Attic-weight tetradrachms: posthumous Alexanders of Phaselis, Aspendos and Perge (obverse: head of Herakles to the right; reverse: Zeus seated on a throne to the left), and autonomous issues of Side (obverse: helmeted head of Athena to the right; reverse: Nike to the left, carrying a wreath, in the left field a pomegranate, a canting reference to Side). The Alexander tetradrachm series has the indication of a year in a local era. The beginning dates of these eras are not explicitly defined in our sources, but it seems most likely that Perge minted its tetradrachms between 223/222 and 191/190, Aspendos between 213/212 and 185/184, and Phaselis between 216/215 and 184/183 BC.9



1.1

1.2



1.3 1.4



1.5 1.5a 1.6

Meadows 2009 and 2013, 171; de Callataÿ 2013, 223–224 (short presentation of other hypotheses in Hoover 2010, 133).

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1.7 1.7a

1.8

71

1.8a

Fig. 1: Pamphylian tetradrachms and their countermarks 1.1 Alexander tetradrachm from Phaselis (year 11). Price 1991, no. 2849. Courtesy of the Martin Griffiths Collection. 1.2 Alexander tetradrachm from Perge (year 13). Price 1991, no. 2925. Courtesy of cngcoins.com. 1.3 Alexander tetra­ drachm from Aspendos (year 5). Price 1991, no. 2884. Courtesy of freemanandsear.com. 1.4 Side tetradrachm. Seyrig 1963, p. 63, type no. 7. Courtesy of cngcoins.com. 1.5 Side tetradrachm with Attalid countermark from Sardis. SNG France 3, 660–661 (for the coin type). ANS 1984.5.106, with permission. 1.5a Detail of the Attalid countermark. 1.6 Cistophoros minted at Pergamon. Kleiner – Noe 1977, series 8. Courtesy of cngcoins.com. 1.7 Side tetradrachm with Seleucid anchor countermark. SNG Aulock 4792 (for the coin type). ANS 1944.100.50920, with permission. 1.7a Detail of the Seleucid anchor countermark. 1.8 Alexander tetradrachm from Perge (year 11) with Seleucid Helios-head countermark. Price 1991, no. 2923. ANS 1944.100.33186, with permission. 1.8a Detail of the Seleucid Helios-head countermark.

These countermarks are of two types. Those of the first type, the so-called “cistophoric countermarks”, were applied by the Attalids. They appear only on the above-mentioned Attic-standard tetradrachms of Phaselis, Aspendos, Perge, and Side. The second type corresponds to Seleucid countermarks, consisting of an anchor or a facing radiate head, conventionally identified as Helios. They appear mainly, but not only, on the above mentioned series of tetradrachms. It is by examining the former (Attalid) countermarks that this analysis will begin. The Attalid countermarks were analysed in detail in a fundamental study by R. Bauslaugh in 1990.10 These countermarks “consist of a round field 6–10 mm in diameter with a bowcase at the centre flanked by the abbreviated name of the countermarking authority”.11 In their abbreviated forms can be identified the names of Pergamon (ΠΕΡ-ΓΑ), Ephesos (ΕΦΕ), Tralleis (ΤΡΑΛ), Sardis (ΣΑΡ), Synnada (ΣΥΝ), Apameia (ΑΠΑ), Laodikeia (ΛΑΟ), Stratonikeia (ΣΤΡΑ), Adramyttion (ΑΔΡΑ), Sala (ΣΑΛΗ), Toriaion (ΤΟΡ) as well as a still mysterious recently published new location (?ΕΛΗΣ).12 This distribution thus covers the whole post-Peace of Apameia Attalid territory, when the kingdom expanded to encompass the whole western part of Asia Minor. The chronology and meaning of these countermarks have been the subject of an intense debate, itself directly connected to the still unresolved question of the chronology of the famous Attalid cistophoric coinage.13 Indeed, the bowcase and snake countermark on the Pamphylian tetradrachms is the same type that can be found also on the reverse of the cistophoroi. The cistophoroi are the new Attalid coinage that shows on the obverse the cista mystica or basket of the Mysteries of Dionysos, in a wreath, and on the reverse a bow in its case flanked by two entwined snakes. Introduced during the reign of Eumenes II (who reigned from 197 to 159 BC), these were tetradrachms – with related fractions – on a reduced weight standard, minted in the name of a series of cities located all over the Attalid kingdom. Indeed, under the form of monograms the names of these cities appear on the reverse of the cistophoroi. One would expect that these names were those of the mints that produced Bauslaugh 1990; see also de Callataÿ 2013, 218–227. Bauslaugh 1990, 38.  12 For the identification of Sala and Toriaion, see Thonemann 2008, 43–53 (who kindly notes [51, note 30] that the present author had independently reached the same conclusion for the identification of Toriaion); for the mysterious countermark ?ΕΛΗΣ (the reading of the first letter is difficult), see Thonemann, ibid., 58–60 (on a Sidetan tetradrachm), as well as Arslan 2007, 439, no. 3, for another specimen (also a Sidetan tetradrachm).  13 See Meadows 2013, 170–173 and 175–205, for a combined presentation of the cistophoroi and countermarks question.  10  11

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the coins. In fact, as proved by various features (especially, but not only, by die links), the mint of Pergamon produced (mainly) the cistophoroi tetradrachms in the names of Pergamon, Sardis, Synnada and Apameia. The mint of Ephesos minted (mainly) the tetradrachms in its own name, and so did the mint of Tralleis, which however minted the larger part of the cistophoric fractions (didrachms and drachms).14 Nevertheless, there are reasons to think that the minting in the names of Sardis, Synnada and Apameia cannot have been a pure fiction, a point that will have to be clarified in another study. Above all, it remains clear that the main countermarking centres are the same cities that were the main real or “pseudo” mints of the cistophoroi.15 For this reason, it may seem tempting to associate the “cistophoric countermarks” with the cistophoroi in one way or the other. However, despite the connection to the minting centres and the graphic similarity between the Attalid countermarks and the reverse of the cistophoroi, there has so far been a general consensus (with the exception of H. Seyrig) that no link can be established between the Attalid countermarks and the cistophoroi.16 This opinion has been based on two main considerations. The first one is that there seems to be no clear chronological connection between the Attalid countermarks and the cistophoroi, all the more so as the chronology of both remains uncertain. The second is that the motives behind the countermarking on the one hand and the introduction of the cistophoroi on the other are envisaged as being independent from one another. It has been generally agreed that the Attalid countermarks correspond to the Seleucid indemnity after Apameia.17 As for the introduction of the cistophoroi, the most commonly held view has been that they correspond to the introduction of a closed currency system.18 On this basis, the introduction of the cistophoroi could be placed in the 180s, 170s, or 160s, but this did not alter the conviction that there existed no link between the Attalid countermarking and the introduction of the cistophoroi. Even the very idea that there might have been any kind of connection between the “cistophoric countermarks” and the cistophoroi has been recently called into question by A. Meadows, who stresses that the countermarks bear no cista (“basket”). A. Meadows has also argued that the bow type was traditional in the Pergamenian coinage (the Philetairoi have a bow featured behind Athena on the reverse). Furthermore, he sees a chronological gap of almost two decades between the Attalid countermarks, applied in the 180s, and the cistophoroi, which would have been introduced in 167/166 only.19 This would mean that even the designation of “cistophoric countermark” would be inappropriate and that these countermarks should be referred to as “Attalid” rather than as “cistophoric”. With this caveat in mind, a brief update on the question of the chronology of the cistophoroi can provide a useful starting point. The many chronological hypotheses that have been proposed range from 192 BC to c. 150 BC. 20 It remains striking that in the two most recent works where the question has been treated, the 2012 book on the coinage of Pergamon by M.-C. Marcellesi and the contributions by various authors in the 2013 volume edited by P. Thonemann on the Attalid kingdom, no consensus has been found and very different solutions have been proposed. 21 The basic Kleiner and Noe 1977, 120–127. See Thonemann 2013b, 30–34, for a comparison between the cistophoric coinage and the federal coinages of the time. For the connection between countermarking centres and the “mints”, see Bauslaugh 1990, 49, and below Tables 1–2 and Fig. 2 for a detailed analysis.  16 For H. Seyrig’s views, see below section 3.1.  17 On this point see below section 1.3.  18 On this point, see below section 3.1.  19 Meadows 2013, 170–173 and 178.  20 De Callataÿ 2013, 219 and note 41, with full literature, which need not be repeated here.  21 Marcellesi 2012, 131–145, who keeps a date before 190 for the introduction of the cistophoroi on the basis of Livy’s testimony (see Ashton 2013, 245–250, for literature on the debate). But what is at stake in Livy (37.46.3; 58.4; 59.3–4; 39.7.1) is a matter of standard, not of Attalid coins (this point will merit a separate demonstration). Given what we know about the pattern of minting of the cistophoroi, i.e. the fact that they were minted in the names of a series of centres all over the post-Apameia kingdom (see above p. 71–72), a date before 188 is in any case impossible. See the various contributions in Thonemann 2013a and below for the detail of the chronological discussion.  14  15

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reason for this uncertainty is the lack of any explicit direct source, whether literary, epigraphic or numismatic, that would allow us to peg the chronology of the cistophoroi to an incontrovertible fixed point. We do have however a terminus ante quem. The Delian inventory (ID 1409 Ba I, lines 11–18) of 165/164 BC mentions the dedication of a cistophoros tetradrachm. 22 We lack however an explicit terminus post quem. Sooner or later this information will certainly surface, but for now only estimates can be made. While both the very early chronology (before or in 192 at the beginning of the Antiochic war) and the very late (c. 150) can certainly be precluded, it has been difficult to decide among a beginning of the cistophoroi in the 180s, 170s or early 160s. It will be demonstrated here that the analysis of the countermarks suggests conclusions that have direct consequences for the chronology and meaning of the introduction of the cistophoroi.

1.2 Attalid countermarks and cistophoroi The similarity in pattern noted above between the countermarks of Pamphylian tetradrachms and the cistophoroi is reflected, to a certain extent, in the quantitative distribution of the countermarks and the cistophoroi. Cities

Adra

Per

Stra

Thya

Sar

Sal

Lao Apol Eph

Tra

Syn

Apa

Tor

Kor

?Eles

Total

Countermarks

8

35

5

0

35

2

8

0

3

17

6

26

4

0

2

151

Number of specimens of cistophoroi

1

319

3

14

56

0

21

9

362

258

16

119

0

2

0

1180

Obverse dies of cistophoroi

1

121

1

3

21

0

4

2

100

97

6

48

0

1

0

405

Table 1: Countermarks on Pamphylian tetradrachms and production of cistophoroi (in absolute numbers of identified countermarks, cistophoroi specimens and cistophoroi obverse dies)23 Adra

Per

Stra

Thya

Sar

Sal

Lao Apol Eph

Tra

Syn

Apa

Tor

Kor

?Eles

Total

Counter­marks (%)

5.5

23

3.5

0

23

1.5

5.5

0

2

11.5

4

17

2.5

0

1

100

Number of specimens of cistophoroi (%)