New Style Athenian Tetradrachms, 166/164 - 63/62 B.C.
Coins from Athens for sale in the Forum Ancient Coins shop
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de Callatay, F. "Athenian new style tetradrachms in Macedonian hoards" in AJN 3-4 (New York, 1992).
Caramessini-Oeconomides,M " An unpublished Athenian New Style Tetradrachm" SYMMEIKTA 1974/5
Flament, C. Le monnayage en argent d'Athènes. De l'époque archaïque à l'époque hellénistique (c. 550-c. 40 av. J.-C.). (Lovain-la-Neuve, 2007).
Forrer, L. Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Greek Coins formed by Sir Hermann Weber, Vol. II: Macedon, Thrace, Thessaly, North western, central and southern Greece. (London, 1924).
Habicht, Ch. "Zu den Münzmagistraten der Silberprägung des Neuen Stils" in Chiron 21 (1991), pp. 1-23.
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The "New Style" tetradrachms were issued by Athens as a semi-autonomous city under Roman rule. The new-style Owls are markedly different from the Owls of Periclean Athens or the "eye in profile" Athena head of the Fourth Century. They were struck on thinner, broad flans, typical of the Hellenistic period, with a portrait of Athena that reflected the heroic portraiture of the period. The owl now stands on an amphora, surrounded by magistrates' names and symbols, all within an olive wreath. The amphora is marked with a letter that may indicate the month of production. Letters below the amphora may indicate the source of the silver used in production.
Circ. B.C. 166 to time of
Augustus.
| Head of Athena Parthenos in Attic helmet with triple crest, adorned in front with the foreparts of horses, in the side with a griffin or Pegasos, and on the back with a scroll; border of dots. [BMC Attica, Pls. VIII-XIII.] |  Owl standing on Panathenaic amphora; in the field, two monograms, or two or three magistrates' names, and usually an adjunct symbol; on the amphora, usually, a numeral (Α-Μ, or sometimes Ν) and, as a rule, two or more letters beneath the amphora; the whole in olive-wreath. |
No one who compares the thick and irregularly struck coins of the 'old style', which survived at least down to the Macedonian conquest (B.C. 322), with the thinner money of the 'new style' (cf. BMC Attica, Pls. V and VIII) can fail to see at a glance that a considerable time must have elapsed between the two issues. During this interval, which includes the period of Macedonian supremacy, there were very few autonomous coins struck at Athens (see above, p. 375). Whether any considerable number of regal coins of Macedonian types were minted there, is doubtful. The Τετραχμα Αντιγονεια of Antigonus Gonatas, with the 'kalathos' as a distinctive Athenian mint-mark (Babelon, Traité, i. 485), are the only regal coins which can be positively attributed to Athens.1
About B.C. 229 Athens entered into friendly relations with Rome, and shortly afterwards a foedus aequum between the two cities was arranged (Tac. Ann. ii. 53). In these circumstances Athens may, in all likelihood, have been in a position to reorganize her mint, and from the produce of her silver mines to issue from time to time silver tetradrachms equivalent in weight and intrinsic value to those of the successors of Alexander.
When Athens, about this time, began once more to coin money in her own name, she adhered to the types of her old coins, so far as to place the head of Athena on the obverse and the owl on the reverse, but the difference in the mode of treatment of these types was very great.
The head of Athena on the new tetradrachms was certainly suggested by that of the colossal chryselephantine statue by Pheidias in the Parthenon, described by Pausanias (i. 24. 5) as having on each side of the helmet a griffin, and in the midst a sphinx. On the coins the griffin is frequently replaced by a flying Pegasos; the sphinx does not appear, but in its place, the fore-parts of four or more horses, which Pausanias omits to mention, but which must have been a leading feature in the model which the die-engraver had in his mind.
On the reverse other modifications of the old type attract our notice. The intimate connection of the coinage with the Panathenaic Festivals is further emphasized by the addition of the Panathenaic amphora beneath the owl, in place of the waning moon of similar, though less obvious, import; and the little olive-spray in the corner of the incuse square on the older coins is replaced by a complete wreath of olive enclosing 1
Specimens of these coins appear among the offerings in the Asklepieion between the years B.C. 261 and 253 (see supra, p. 232).
Across the field of the new coins are the names of the two annual magistrates (at first in monogram form), accompanied by a subsidiary type or adjunct symbol, chosen by the magistrate whose name stands first (Macdonald, Coin Types, p. 54). To these two magistrates; names there is added during the greater part of the second century (and rarely after circ. B.C. 100) the name of a third magistrate, which is frequently changed, in some series as many as twelve times, in the course of the period during which the other two principal magistrates hold office. That this period is a year is proved by the numeral letters that are placed on the amphora beneath the owl. It has been conclusively shown (N. C., 1899, p. 288) that these indicate the month of the ordinary or lunar year in which the coins were struck. It is not, however, to be supposed that coins were minted with undeviating regularity year by year, or even month by month, in the years when they were issued. The supply was regulated by the demand. It was only during years of considerable activity that issues bearing all the month numerals Α-Μ (or even Ν in intercalary years, when there were thirteen lunar months) took place.
Various plausible arguments have been adduced in favor of the identification of the two annual magistrates with the occupants of important offices, e.g. the στρατηγος επι τα οπλα (strategos epi ta opla, generals for the Arms) or the στρατηγος επι την παρασκευην (strategos epi ten paraskeyen, generals for the preparation) (Reinach, Rev. dev. Etudes gr., i. 163); but these arguments have been effectively disposed of by Preuner (Rh. Mus., xlix. 396) and Kirchner (Z. f. N., 1898, 74), who have shown that the officers in question were not the chief magistrates of the state, but usually members of influential families, sometimes foreign princes, and very often closely related members of one and the same family, such as father and son, or two brothers. The names of some of these same individuals are also met with previously in more dignified offices, such as the archonship, while on the other hand they must occasionally have been under thirty, the minimum age for the holder of a regular αρχη (arci, government authority) at Athens (Sundwall, Undersuchungen, etc., p. 108).
At Rome the magistrates responsible for the coinage formed a triumvirate (Triumviri Monatales). At Athens they were, for circa. B.C. 229, a duumvirate; but the responsibility of these annual duumviri would seem to have been shared, during the greater part of the second century, but a third official, whose name appears beneath those of his two annually appointed colleagues.
Sundwall, after an exhaustive examination of the available evidence, concludes that the duumviri at Athens were not magistrates in the strict sense of the term; their office was an honorary επιμελεια (epimeleia, magistrate) and carried with it a λειτουργια (leitourgia) (op. cit., p. 108). he has also given good reasons for supposing that there was an intimate association between the Athenian mint and the Areopagus. It seems probable that, on the later coins, one of the two επιμεληται (epimeletai, magistrates) always an ex-archon (op. cit., p. 106). Moreover, this arrangement would appear to have superseded an even stricter system of control, to which the presence of a third official's name bears witness. A scrutiny of the names that actually occur suggests that during the greater part of the second century a committee of twelve Areopagites was annually appointed and specially entrusted with a more direct responsibility for the purity, etc., of the coins, the members of this committee holding office in rotation; whenever a fresh issue of coins was required the signature of the committee-man whose turn it was to take duty was added beneath that of the ordinary επιμελητει (op. cit., p. 69). The signature of this third official has also an important bearing on an interesting problem of Athenian chronology. That there was a close correspondence between it and the numeral letter on the amphora had long been noted; but the frequent differences remained unexplained until MacDonald (N. C., 1899, p. 317) suggested that they were to be connected with the double system of time reckoning, which we know from inscriptions to have been in vogue at Athens during a considerable part of the second century B.C. (G. F. Unger, Die attischen Doppeldata in Hermes, xiv. p. 593). He inferred that, while the amphora letter denoted the lunar month, the period of office of the third magistrate was reckoned κατα θεον, or in terms of the solar year, and that consequently we have in the coins of the new Style, as now interpreted, the most extensive, though not, of course, the most detailed, series of documents in which the double dates can be recognized'. Sundwall, while confirming this inference, has made it the starting-point for a careful investigation, as the result of which he has been able to determine, by a comparison with the astronomical testimony, the precise dates of several of the series. Incidentally, the numismatic evidence suggests that epigraphists have ante-dated by one year the list of Athenian archons (op. cit., p. 73).
The minute precautions which seem to have been taken to differentiate the issues of silver coins at the Athenian mint are further exemplified by the addition, beneath the amphora, of various initial letters of doubtful import; thought by some to stand for the names of the various officinae of the mint. But they are more probably, as Svoronos has suggested, the names of the various silver mines in Laurium from which the metal was procured. If these initials are to be interpreted in the latter sense, it would appear that some half-dozen mines were in almost constant work, while the rest, about twenty in number, were only occasionally resorted to.
CHRONOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF THE ATHENIAN COINS OF THE 'NEW STYLE
The following chronology of new
style issues below refers to the plates and dies in Margaret Thompson's,
The New Style Silver Coinage of Athens, ANSNS 10, (1961). Dates have been
corrected to reflect the most recent scholarship.
PDF Plates Online
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