Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons^™

Why Did The Greek "Polis" Originally Need Coins?, Thomas R. Martin

Classics Department Faculty Scholarship

Why did the ancient Greek polis originally need coins? This question, so simple to pose and so difficult to answer, leads to more specific queries such as what practical purposes coins served in the polis and what messages they communicated either explicitly through their types and legends or implicitly by their very creation as products of the political community of the polis.

Sovereignty And Coinage In Classical Greece, Thomas R. Martin

Holy Cross Bookshelf

This book examines the common assumption that coins were produced in classical Greece to serve as symbols of the political sovereignty of the state, much like flags of modern nations. Since the beginning of modern numismatics studies, scholars have used this assumption to establish the chronology of numerous Greek coinages and, in turn, to make hypotheses about important historical events, especially the intervention in Greek affairs of Philip II, Alexander the Great, and their early successors.

The author challenges the standard opinion , refuting the notion that a conquered state automatically lost its "right of coinage" and establishing that the …