Notae Numismaticae - Zapiski Numizmatyczne (7.2012)

PROBLEMS IN THE POLIT1CAL ECONOMY OF ARCHAIC GREEK COINAGE

counterparts, could generate (substantial) income from the production of coinage
through fiduciary and market mechanisms. In this vein, George Le Rider23 has sug-
gested that this was the primary motivation for the earliest electrum coins: the abil-
ity to enforce an overvaluation of 15-20% madę minting coins a highly lucrative
activity for the State. Even a lesser mark up, the norma! 3-5% ratę on silver coins,
could generate sizeable profits for coinages in great demand.24
Despite the polarization that sometimes occurs between the political and eco-
nomic systems of interpretation, the two are by no means exclusive. A number
of studies, those focusing on the Hellenistic world especially, have shown how
political and economic motivations become entwined, or at least how, in certain
cases, one cannot be considered without the other.25 The ąuality of textual sources
and the changing naturę of the political and economic landscape, not to mention
the changing naturę of coinage itself, make the melding of the two systems of
interpretation obvious, and desirable for the Hellenistic period. For the archaic
period we need to ask: where are the limits of each system, where are the points
of intersection, or, morę boldly, do the two systems even ask the right ąuestions?
We cannot be so surę.
CURRENT METIIODOLOGIES: (NON-) NUMISMATIC
There have been in recent years several studies demonstrating the signifi-
cant cultural, social, and to a lesser degree economic impact of the introduction
of coinage in the Greek world.26 Written in the main by literary critics and social
historians with little background in numismatics, these studies have highlighted
how money (not always clearly distinguished from coinage) was implicated in the
power contests of the archaic poleis, or in the case of Richard Seaford’s27 study,
how early Greek communal practices set the stage for the explosive adoption of

23 LE RIDER, La naissance de la monnaie....
24 P.G. VAN ALFEN, “Hatching owls: the regulation of coin production in later fifth-century Athens”, [in:]
F. DE CALLATAY, E. LO CASCIO (eds.), Quantifying monetary supplies in Greco-Roman limes. (Pragmateiai,
no. 19), Bari 2010, pp. 1-47, provides a discussion of the evidence in the case of Athens. G. BRANSBOURG,
“Fides etpecunia numerata: chartalism and metallism in the Roman world. Part 1: The Republic”, AJN23, 2011,
pp. 91, 103, however, ąuestions how profitable minting silver coinages might actually have been, particularly for
Iow volume production.
23 E.g. F. DE CALLATAY, L’histoire des guerres mithridatiąues vuepar les monnaies. Louvain-la-neuve
1997; MEADOWS, “Money, freedom...”; G. OLIVER, “The politics of coinage: Athens and Antigonus Gona-
tas”, [in:] A. MEADOWS, K. SHIPTON (eds.), Money and its uses in the ancient Greek world, Oxford 2001,
pp. 35-52; VON REDEN, Money in Ptolemaic Egypt...; C. HOWGEGO, “Why did ancient States strike coins?”,
NC 150,1990, pp. 1 -25 seminal overview of the reasons why ancient States struck coins also provides a conspec-
tus of political and economic motivations from the archaic through Roman periods.
26 Notably L. KURKĘ, Coins, bodies, games and gold: the politics of meaning in Archaic Greece, Princeton
1999; VON REDEN, Exchange in ancient Greece; SCHAPS, The invention of coinage...; SEAFORD, Money and
the early Greek mind....
27 SEAFORD, Money and the early Greek mind....