Collecting coins can be a drug but I am not an addictive personality: the soulless activity of yet another one has an empty ring about it. The fact there was a brilliant book, “The
New Style silver coinage of
Athens”, Margaret
Thompson,
ANS 10 1961, that described a single series of many coin
types plus the great big flans and financial in-reach sums needed to buy examples naturally attracted me to the beautiful Athenian
New Style tetradrachm.
I quickly discovered the brilliant book
had flaws and
had raised quite heated discussions: now this is a drug.
I discovered I
had a fascination for the early
monogram types: can I find out if they are really single year issues? Sadly I quickly found that apparently all the very early examples are
rare in the market and thus expensive and thus not a likely fruitful
area.
Still I collected them fascinated by the non-seamless way they moved to month controls added a somewhat mysterious second control swapped their positions or forgot about one or the other or both, until a consensus was eventually reached.
This naturally gave rise to examining the chronology. I could find no upto date list so I set about collecting references and compiling a modern list incorporating them into one. I uncovered various arguments and unanswered questions and wondered if I could contribute and not just be an on-looker.
Post Sullan examples are essentially like the very early specimens, rarer than hen’s teeth, so other than trying to bag one for forms sake that was also a closed avenue.
More reading of papers uncovered the
work by de
Callatay and echoed by
Meadows on the “over-represented” New Styles of the mid-120’s BC.
What was needed was an
obverse die match between the issues but my searches could not find one: anyway Andrew
Meadows seems to have re-ordered those
types without a vital
obverse die match in a most satisfactory way.
I collected one example of each and that is that.
It was obviously pointless in trying to collect all the Athenian New Styles but I collected ones that appealed to me: reverses rather than obverses. I could look for new magistrate and control combinations, maybe with a different
obverse and most
rare of all, any new obverses and a die-link between
types.
This is just filling in the record. Interesting and instructive but
still somehow somewhat soulless-I needed a focus.
This occurred with my penultimate purchase of 2012. A
New Style “
Roma”
tetradrachm: my 16th
tetradrachm and 15th
New Style for that year.
I
had known of the controversies about the
Thompson “high” dating and the
Lewis “low” were summed up in a paper by Otto Morkholm, “ The chronology of the
New Style coinage of
Athens”,
ANSMN 29 1984 .
The arguments for the low chronology centred on the
king Mithradates issue and he
had produced a list that
had footnotes about
restored coins and a moved issue both with question marks. He wrote about the politics and historical sense and frequency tables and the like. It looked interesting, full of references and controversies.
I couldn’t read
German and I couldn’t read the reference (and I have
still never read
Boehringer 1972), but I knew quickly that “
Kernos” was wrong-it didn’t look right, Morkholm wasn’t convinced that is why he put a question mark by it.
Just a year earlier than
Boehringer,
Mattingly had published 2 papers with lists based on the low chronology that advocated a year’s issue gap: one caused by a slave revolt and the other due to anarchia.
I decided to investigate and collect the coins where available.
I read about Athenion and Aristion,
Rome,
Athens and Mithradates and focused on Mithradates and the Mithradatic wars.
The coins studies yielded controversies about the
symbols and the identities of the magistrates, and it is with the symbol that I made the first breakthrough.
In
buying the “
Roma” coin and in reading reviews of Margaret
Thompson’s
work I found that R
Holloway had queried the identity of the symbol. Without this base then the die linked coin “
Roma &
Nike’s” identity would also be doubtful.
I found that
Thompson also
had written of an imitation of the Athenian original with a similar yet different symbol which she identified with possibly being
Aetolia.
Co-incidentally there came up for
auction an example, mis-attributed, (to my
joy), of this very
type which I acquired.
I came to the conclusion that this coin was a mocking of the original. Using this model it then means that the original symbol and thus the allegiances of the magistrates are politically defined.
My only post-Sullan
owl, (originally to my angst, now to my
joy), I also found amongst Margaret
Thompson’s imitations. This lead to my second breakthrough.
The “Ares” imitation is one of three different reverses paired with a single
obverse of quite clear non-Athenian origin. The three reverses consist of one pre-Sullan
reverse and two post Sullan ones. Thus the
mint must be in the
Roman camp and using the argument of the
Roma –
Aetolia model then the symbol of the reverses must be politically acceptable and thus defines the politics of the “Headdress of
Isis” magistrates.
The “Headdress of
Isis” symbol I investigated for political affixations , ("Headdress of
Isis:who wears the crown? on my academia.edu page below),and found that I could make a case that after the epiphany of
Isis at the siege of Rhodes the symbol could only reasonably be used by pro-Roman supporters. This conclusion re-enforces the case above.
Andrew
Meadows had in a review of Delian
coin hoards noted two anomalies; the absence of “
Kernos” and the position of “Hermes/No Symbol”.
I also did a chart of coin
types present in Delian
hoards and confirmed
Meadows’s conclusion about "
Kernos"and my own original doubts:I
had thought it just a place-filler anyway.
“
Kernos” is now removed. Now like the other researchers I am left with a gap to deal with.
I
had forgot about
Mattingly’s 1971 article, (“Some third magistrates in the Athenian
New Style coinage”, J. Hell. Studies 1971), and found the anarchia as a no coinage year an excellent solution.
I
had discounted an earlier gap due to a slave revolt, (confusingly it was supported by
Mattingly in “Some problems in second century Attic prosopography” ZAG also in 1971), due to lack of convincing evidence in the coinage and on reading “
Athens in 100 BC” by S.V.Tracy, (
Harvard studies in classical philology
vol. 83, 1979).
I then proposed a new Rome-Pontic times Athenian
New Style chronology based on Morkholm but with the
kernos removed and a no coinage year in 88/7 BC.
Another change I have pioneered is based on the symbol drinking
pegasos. Is this really a Pontic symbol and Aristion the first magistrate the Aristion the later tyrant? Doubts
had been raised but it is too much of a coincidence.
Had Aristion influenced
king Mithradates in the
choice of the
pegasos symbol I deemed unlikely but was an argument raised in a review of
Thompson’s
work by G K
Jenkins.
To give this symbol time to percolate into the Athenian’s political consciousness from its introduction into Pontic and Pontic influenced coinage from 97/6 BC, I found I could swap the positioning of the die linked pairings “Winged Agon” and “Coiled
Serpent” with “
Gorgon Head” and “
Pegasos” to no obvious objection.
“Hermes/No Symbol” I left in place between the pairings but it could precede it and bring them into juxtaposition. I await Andrew Meadow’s conclusions on this.
Francois de
Callatay’s
work, " L’histoire
des guerres Mithradatiques vue
par les monnaies ", Louvain le Neuve 1997 proposed that "
Roma" and "
Roma &
Nike" should be conflated. I did not find
his arguments convincing and came up with counter–precedents to
his evidence. ( see:"
Roma" & "
Roma &
Nike":a one years wonder?, my academia article below).
Another problem I found in
his plates was of a “
Star and 2 Crescents”
king Mithradates and Aristion example. I published my views on academia.edu titled “Mithradates in
Paris and
London” and this piles more evidence that my model of the
attribution of the
symbols especially of the “Headdress of
Isis” is correct.
Now I have published my chronology my
work on the New Styles have come to a conclusion unless others comment on my conclusions that overturn my views. I shall continue to collect and look for patterns in the
hoards that are sold piecemeal in
auctions un-provenanced from which I obtained an example of the very first
New Style with an unknown
reverse.
My last coin was a fitting end to my Rome-Pontic
work; a drinking
pegasos tetradrachm of
King Mithradates with a realistic
portrait dated to the beginning of the fateful Mithradatic wars: Bithynian-Pontic year 209= 89/88 BC.
John Nisbet
3rd January 2014