Ancient Coins: What About Spartan Coins ?
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HomeAncient CoinsAncient Coins: What About Spartan Coins ?
Ancient Coins: What About Spartan Coins ?
By Mike Markowitz
September 12, 2018
Spartans disdained many things that other ancient Greeks valued. One of these things was money, even coins.
CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz …..
HUNDREDS OF GREEK CITIES issued coins between the birth of coined money around 650 BCE and the end of Greek civic coinage some time after 300 CE. The apparent exception was Sparta .
Many serious collectors of ancients have never seen Spartan coins. Some believe Sparta struck no coins at all. As usual in Classical Numismatics, however, there is a "Yes, but..." lurking in the weeds. Sparta issued Spartan coins, in small quantities, well after it had ceased to be a major power in the affairs of the Greek world.
Iron Money
The first-century historian Plutarch says of the legendary Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus (seventh century BCE):
“…[H]e commanded that all gold and silver coin should be called in, and that only a sort of money made of iron should be current, a great weight and quantity of which was but very little worth; so that to lay up twenty or thirty pounds there was required a pretty large closet, and, to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of oxen…For the iron money could not be carried into the rest of Greece, nor had it any value there, but was rather held in ridicule."
The purpose of this policy was to discourage Spartans from accumulating wealth so they could focus their energies on preparation for war. Plutarch’s chronology is shaky – if Lycurgus actually existed, he probably lived a century before Greeks began to use coins. The Greek word for roasting spits (obeloi,) however, is closely related to the word for a small silver coin (obol), so the connection is credible.
Other People’s Money
Among themselves, Spartans might use awkward bundles of iron spits for legal or ceremonial transactions, but in dealings with other Greeks they had to use current money. Because of their selective breeding and superb physical fitness, Spartans were serious contenders in the Olympic Games . And all Greeks attending the games, even Spartans, used the special coinage struck by the city of Elis , which managed the sacred site of Olympia .
Because Sparta sometimes allied with Persia and received Persian subsidies during its long wars with Athens , Spartans would have been familiar with the Persian daric – at 8.4 grams and over 95% pure, the most common high-value gold coin used by Greeks before the time of Alexander the Great .
Royal Spartan Coins
While other Greeks experimented with exotic political innovations like democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny, conservative Sparta clung stubbornly to its archaic dual monarchy: two equal kings from different dynastic families, the Agiads and the Eurypontids . It made sense to have a spare king on hand, considering the high risk that at least one king in every generation would die in battle.
Tetradrachm of Areus I<br>Areus , a member of the Agiad dynasty who ruled from 309 to 265 BCE, was the first Spartan king to issue coins in his own name. This break with tradition was driven by the need to pay mercenaries in his war against Macedonia , Sparta no longer having the manpower to raise a citizen army. Ironically, Areus’s silver tetradrachm was closely modeled on the widely circulating Macedonian coinage of Alexander, with the head of Herakles on the obverse and an image of Zeus enthroned holding an eagle on the reverse. Only the inscription “King Areus” indicates the source.
Just four examples of this remarkable coin are known; three in...