Greek coinage reached extraordinary heights of technical and artistic merit during the Classical Period. The prevalence and popularity of the Athenian coinage, however, resulted in the Attic standard becoming the pre-eminent weight standard by the end of the fifth century BC. Over the course of the preceding Archaic period, a number of regional weight standards developed, which became problematic as international trade flourished into the early Classical period. Still others used particular local flora and fauna, such as the turtles and tortoises of Aegina.ĭuring the Classical period (479-336 BC), the Athenian tetradrachm predominated as the international currency. Other designs reflected each city’s local deity, such as the bee used by Ephesos (an insect sacred to Artemis), or the head of Athena along with her sacred bird, the owl, at Athens. Often these symbols provided a pun on the town’s name, such as the parsley-leaf ( selinos) design on the coins of Selinos. Early coins featured geometric designs, but these were soon replaced by iconography representative of each city. The gold stater and silver siglos and their fractions became the first international currency prior to the introduction of the Persian gold daric and silver siglos at the end of the sixth century BC.Īt the same time, to the West, from the Aegean islands to Magna Graecia and Sicily, the Greek city-states began to mint coins. Featuring a lion and bull on the obverse and two punchmarks on the reverse, these Kroiseids, as they were later called, had several denominations. Under Kroisos (561-547 BC) coins in both gold and silver were struck for the first time. Soon a type was introduced on the other side of the coin by placing the blank on an engraved surface when the punch was applied.
While these early coins were little more than ingots, they typically included one or more punchmarks, applied to indicate either the purity or issuing authority. About the same time, cities in Ionia also began to strike electrum coins. The Lydians may have been the first to produce coins by exploiting the naturally-occurring electrum found in the local Paktolos River. During this period the Greeks moved from a currency struck in electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) to a bi-metallic one of silver and gold. The earliest period, the Archaic, covers the time from the introduction of coinage in Asia Minor sometime in the seventh century BC to the end of the Greco-Persian Wars in 479 BC. Ancient Greek coinage can be divided into three periods that generally conform to the traditional periods of Greek art.