#classicaltwitter ~ March 21, 2017

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CJ-Online Review ~ The Hellenistic World. Using Coins as Sources

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The Hellenistic World. Using Coins as Sources. By Peter Thonemann. Guides to the Coinage of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xxxii + 232. Paper, $34.99. ISBN 978-1-107-45175-9.

Reviewed by Philip Kiernan, Kennesaw State University

The first in a new series on ancient coinage organized by the American Numismatic Society, this book applies numismatic evidence of the Hellenistic world to four central themes: globalism, identity, political economy, and ideology. The goal is to open up a specialist field to a broader audience.

Thonemann begins with a narrative account of the Sinanpasa Hoard, a massive accumulation of silver coins of Alexander the Great that probably represents the retirement package of one of Alexander’s soldiers. The hoard serves to illustrate the huge quantities of coin struck by Alexander that would steer numismatic history for the next three centuries. Alexander’s coinage created what Thonemann calls a global “Hellenistic monetary civilization” which spread far beyond the range of his conquests.

This civilization is surveyed in the second chapter (The ‘Big’ Hellenistic World) thus continuing the theme of globalism, and includes, very rightly, imitations of Hellenistic coinages struck in “barbarian” regions of the ancient world. The survey ends in the easternmost extremity of this monetary civilization with the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek coins. Even if the function of these peripheral coinages differed from that of the Mediterranean basin, the imagery, form and ideas behind them were are certainly inspired by the Greek world.

Chapter 3 addresses civic identity, mostly in Asia Minor. The flood of Alexander’s coins into Asia Minor resulted in a reduction of civic issues as compared to the region under Persian rule. By 300 bc, the poleis of Asia Minor were striking copies of Alexander’s imperial coinage (the “civic Alexanders”), perhaps to express a new global Hellenistic identity. It is only in the third and second centuries bc that expressions of local identity re-appear on civic issues, taking the form of local divinities and symbols, such as Apollo Smintheus at Alexandria Troas. These issues were not meant to be new international trade coinages, competing with the older and well-recognized coins of Alexander, which were still plentiful, but rather expressed the vitality of civic life and the identity of the issuing polis.

Coins struck by allied groups of cities and collectives (koiná) are discussed in chapter four. Thonemann uses the Aetolians, the Achaean and Lycian leagues as examples of alliances that struck coins to create a sense of group identity. By contrast, the cistophori (“basket-bearers”), struck by the cities of Asia Minor after 167 bc, are effectively the royal coins of the Attalids, but in the guise of a collective coinage. With the cista on the obverse and a bow case intertwined with snakes on the reverse, these coins lack a founding ruler-portrait, reference to a shared foundational event, or anything truly common to the issuing cities. Since the Attalids had been gifted control of their territory by the Romans, these coins literally forged a koinón (pun intended), creating the impression of a shared identity and alliance.

Finally, Thonemann considers the little-known coinages struck for festivals organized by groups of cities. He highlights the festival of Athena Ilias, whose organizers struck festival coins every four years. These issues, Thonemann suggests, had more to do with expressing a group identity amongst the participating cities than with paying athletes or facilitating trade at the festival.

Thonemann’s last chapter on identity explores the Hellenistic identity of coins in ‘fringe’ areas (chapter 5). This includes the short-lived native dynasty that used the Achaemenid title fratarakā and reigned near Persepolis in the third century bc, as well as the Parthians, their allies, successors and neighbors. Not infrequently, the issues of these non-Greeks bear the profile bust of a ruler, albeit in native dress, with a seated divinity on the reverse comparable to the Zeus of Alexander or the Apollo of the Seleucids. The imagery of these dynasties is “Greek in style and form, but combatively Persian in content and meaning.” (91) A similar mixture of Greek and non-Greek elements can be found on the coins of the Bactrians and Indo-Greek kings. Thonemann explores the question Greek identity being expressed by their issuers, but one wonders if the adoption of Hellenistic-looking coinage and Greek weight standards had more to do with the need to create an accepted form of payment than an expression of identity.

Chapters 6 and 7 explore basic questions about the political economy of Hellenistic coins. Like other ancient coin issuers, the Hellenistic states lacked modern monetary policies, and struck coins largely to pay their bills. This explains the erratic issues of many cities. But states did pay attention to the circulation of their coins beyond this point. Some, like the Seleucids, opted for an open currency system, with coins struck on the international Attic weight standard that could move freely in and out of the issuer’s territory. Others, like the Ptolemies and Attalids, opted for a closed or ‘epichoric’ system in which coins struck at unusual weight standards did not generally circulate beyond their respective regions.

Thonemann bravely adds a chapter on the place bronze coins in Hellenistic economies and their relationship to silver. As token coins, with a metal value not equal to their face value, bronze coins required laws to enforce their acceptance. Thus one would expect them to be purely epichoric, but many seem to have circulated outside of the realms of those who issued them, and (from epigraphic evidence) they were used for a surprisingly wide range of transactions.

Chapter 8 introduces political ideology, considering the visual languages of Hellenistic coins: royal and dynastic portraitures, the trappings and images of divinities, and other expressions of power. The ideological messages of Hellenistic coins would have been seen by far eyes than any statue, painting, or inscribed edict. Thonemann’s final chapter (9) discusses the earliest Roman coins of Macedonia and Asia from Flaminius onwards. In both regions, Roman interference with local coinage is surprisingly minimal, and was surely meant to convey a sense of continuity. The denarius does not arrive properly until the reign of Augustus. Roman period civic issues in the Greek East (the so-called ‘Greek Imperial Coinage’) were another function of civic pride with Hellenistic roots. Those same roots, Thonemann concludes, can be found in the coins of Rome’s client kings in Crimea, her Parthian and Sassanian enemies, and even in modern currency.

Apart from a brief appendix at the back of the book by Andrew Meadows, this is not, nor was it intended to be, a technical manual of Hellenistic numismatics. Nowhere is the procedure for calculating die outputs discussed, nor is there a guide to identifying Hellenistic coins. But those who require such information will easily find it elsewhere.[1]

The achievement of this book, and it is no small accomplishment, is a highly readable and up to date account of Hellenistic coinage that successfully connects coins to broad historical questions. This book is a must-read for Greek historians and numismatists alike. It has set a very high bar indeed for the next books in this new series.

Works Cited

de Callataÿ, F. 1995. “Calculating Ancient Coin Production: Seeking a Balance” NC 155: 289-311.
de Callataÿ, F. 1997. Recueil quantitatif des émissions monétaires hellénistiques, Numismatique Romaine. Wetteren.
de Callataÿ, F. ed. 2006. La quantification en numismatique antique. Choix d’articles 1984-2004. Moneta 52. Wetteren.
Head, B.V. 1911. Historia Numorum. A Manual of Greek Numismatics. Revised edition.  Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mørkholm , O.,  P. Grierson, U. Westermark 1991. Early Hellenistic Coinage: from the accession of Alexander to the peace of Apamea, 336-188 B.C. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nicolet-Pierre, H. 2002. Numismatique Gréque.  Paris: Armand-Colin.

[1] E.g. on the quantification of ancient coin production de Callataÿ  1995; 2006 and 2007; and on Greek and Hellenistic numismatics in general Head 1911; Mørkholm, Grierson and Westemark 1991; and Nicolet-Pierre 2002.

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#classicaltwitter ~ March 20, 2017

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CJ – Online Review ~ Two Oxen Ahead: Pre-Mechanized Farming in the Mediterranean

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Two Oxen Ahead: Pre-Mechanized Farming in the Mediterranean. By Paul Halstead. Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Pp. ix + 372. Hardcover $102.95. ISBN 978-1-4051-9283-5.

Reviewed by Jean De Groot, The Catholic University of America

Our knowledge of the technology of food production in the classical world comes from artistic and literary references, artifacts, and the archeology of towns and villas. Paul Halstead’s book Two Oxen Ahead: Pre-Mechanized Farming in the Mediterranean adds to these sources a fine-grained study of family (or bachelor) farming around the Mediterranean just before and after the Second World War. It is based on oral histories from the elderly, both men and women, compiled since the 1970s. Informants report from a variety of locations around the Mediterranean but mainly in Greece (4-5). Their experience, though relatively recent, extends backward in time insofar as pre-mechanized agricultural tutelage was intergenerational in families and between households. The personalities of his informants, conveyed by Halstead with wit and respect, enliven accounts of the unceasing drudgery of manual labor that constitutes small-scale farming.

Some might be surprised that anything from the twentieth century could shed light on ancient agriculture. The history of agricultural technology, however, has always turned on a few of the five “powers” (Hero of Alexandria)-simple machines, in particular the zeugon, or yoke (balance), and the arotron or plough (wedge). Halstead’s research is part of the broad tradition established by Fernand Braudel’s pioneering work on the longue durée. Although the term has come to mean simply taking a long view or describing grand themes in history, Braudel’s longue durée tracked the constants of geographically situated subsistence culture, which outlive battles and the rise and fall of empires.

Halstead’s research fosters caution concerning expansive hypotheses about cultural change in pre-history (329-330, 336-338). He does not think that significant changes in agricultural technology, like the introduction of draft animals to the plough, can be made the sole drivers of other cultural changes in pre-history, like economic and social inequality (58-61). The evidence available from subsistence and cash crop farmers working without engines or seed catalogues, i.e. Halstead’s twentieth century informants, provides a more nuanced and complex picture of how farmers used different techniques on different terrains all at the same time.

Halstead’s portrait starts with breaking the ground (chapter 2) and proceeds through planting and harvesting (chapter 3) to the threshing floor or stook (a bound stand of sheaves in the field; chapter 4). Each chapter presents a dense account of traditional practices, tools, and environmental constraints in the Mediterranean. To give an example, how many times a field is plowed between plantings depends on the purpose of the field in the next round of planting and in what season it will be planted. Each plowing is in a different direction from the preceding one. Halstead continues:

In March to May, some fallow fields were planted in summer crops (e.g., maize, sesame), and once these were harvested, the fields should be plowed again. The number of plowings grew as Alexis [the informant] warmed to his theme. Other elderly villagers claimed that earlier generations had plowed nine times, citing a false folk etymology for niáma, the word used in many parts of Greece to denote tilled fallow or the first plowing of the fallow period. However exaggerated, these accounts underline the value placed on repeated plowing of fallow-echoed by the Cretan and Cypriot term for tilled fallow (kalourgiá, kalourkâ), which literally means ‘good working.’ (12-13).

Good working made for a cleaner crop, which saved labor in harvesting and could increase yield (335). Careful tilling also carried social benefits-the admiration of one’s neighbors and a reputation for high quality crops. Halstead interweaves diverse themes in each area he treats, creating a more complex picture of basic agriculture than would be possible without these testimonies.

He points out that the “agricultural regime” described in most ancient literary sources reflects experience on large land-holdings (60-61). His modern informants testify, however, to the advantage held even on a small scale by a household well enough off to own oxen, the strongest pull animals, or cattle. Draft animals are for both tilling and carting the crop to safe storage at harvest time. It is possible for the use of draft animals to outstrip human ability to reap the benefits of large-scale planting. Sheer time is a factor in harvesting, a problem ameliorated by having either a large family or hired help (chapter 6).

In his concluding Chapter 7, Halstead evaluates the method of “analogy” to still-existent traditional practices for its contribution to knowledge of ancient culture. He points out that oral tradition shows that Mediterranean farmers understood crop rotation, irrigation, and terracing (chapter 5). They combined reasoning with close observation to become adequate or master farmers. Cost-benefit analysis calculated with the measure of bags, stooks or grains per sheave is part of folk agronomy (344-45).

This book by a seasoned expert makes a substantial contribution to the study of what is “off the grid” of ancient archeology. It is, however, also of value to any scholar of antiquity interested in the context of literate ancient culture. Halstead’s informants raised the same crops mentioned in ancient texts and quite probably in the same terrains and for the same purposes. No one who reads this book can think of Heraclitus’ bitter vetch or Aristotle’s grain ruined on the threshing floor in quite the same way again.

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CJ – Online Review ~ Valerius Flaccus: Argonautica, Book III.

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Valerius Flaccus: Argonautica, Book III. Edited with commentary by Gesine Manuwald. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp.x+286. Paperback, $39.99. ISBN 978-1-107-69726-3

Reviewed by Jessica R. Blum, Wabash College

Long on the outskirts of the Classical canon, Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica has, in the last three decades, benefited from renewed interest in Flavian epic and emerged as lively new ground for study. The publication of numerous articles, a Brill’s Companion, and a remarkable number of commentaries (21 since 1980), has significantly advanced the field. In the midst of this wave of scholarship, however, Book 3 has been largely overlooked. Manuwald’s new text with commentary fills this signal gap.

In keeping with the Cambridge Greek and Latin Series, Manuwald brings the Argonautica to a wider audience, with a commentary aimed at graduate and advanced undergraduate students as well as specialists. One of the volume’s most valuable features, therefore, is its presentation of the Argonautica as an archetype of Flavian epic: both commentary and poem offer an accessible and engaging entry point into the field as a whole.

As Manuwald notes, Book 3 particularly lends itself to this project, and she convincingly presents it as a distillation of the poem’s main themes. Two principal episodes may be read separately or together: the Argonauts’ night-battle in Cyzicus, in which they are tragically blown back to friendly shores and unwittingly attack their hosts, and the rape of Hylas in Mysia, which precipitates Hercules’ departure from the expedition. These two sequences exemplify Valerius’ distinctive engagement with, and revision of, traditional material, principally from Apollonius Rhodius and Virgil. Both episodes, furthermore, illuminate key issues for the Argonautica’s interpretation-its representation of the gods and fate, and its characterization of the protagonist Jason. Both introduction and commentary keep these issues to the fore throughout the volume.

The introduction comprises four sections, on poet, poem, Book 3, and text. It begins with a survey of the scant historical evidence for Valerius and summarizes the much-disputed question of the Argonautica’s date of composition. This debate centers on whether Valerius was working primarily under Vespasian, whom he addresses in the proem, or Domitian, who completed the Templum gentis Flaviae to which Valerius may refer at Arg.1.15-6. Manuwald wisely does not offer a definitive answer, but rather-and more importantly-explains its interpretive significance-how the Argonautica’s possible Roman points of reference (e.g. its frequent criticism of tyrant figures) may be read as commenting on contemporary society. She shows how the theme of the Argo’s opening of the seas unifies the poem and informs its historical relevance to the Flavian political program. Addressing the poem’s intended length and degree of completeness, she summarizes the structural evidence for an original eight books, with the final half-book either incomplete at the time of the poet’s death or lost at an early stage of transmission. The text largely agrees with Liberman’s (1997); textual problems and emendations are thoughtfully and thoroughly discussed.

Highlights of Manuwald’s introduction are her discussion of Valerius’ interaction with his poetic models (Section 2.6, and passim) and a detailed outline of Book 3 (Section 3.1). She well shows the correspondences between Book 3’s two episodes and emphasizes their indebtedness to Virgilian models; the text will thereby be readily accessible to students familiar with the Aeneid. This approach likewise addresses one of the Argonautica’s most distinctive features: its pervasive system of multi-level and multi-genre allusion. Valerius’ language and narrative are notoriously elliptical, regularly relying on allusion to supply information and meaning. This poetic technique not only resists straightforward interpretation, but is also partially responsible for the traditional dismissal of Valerius as derivative-a highly Virgilian ‘successor of Virgil’. Manuwald’s focus on engagement rather than imitation demonstrates how this quality produces richness rather than sterility, and so introduces the poem on its own terms.

The introduction draws on Manuwald’s prior scholarship, identifying the knowledge gap between men and gods as a key element of Valerius’ response to the literary tradition and to contemporary Stoic doctrine (Sections 2.4, 2.5). Without access to a divine plan, not only Jason but the reader as well is left uncertain as to the significance of his actions. This interpretation informs the discussion of the place that Valerius’ Jason occupies within a literary tradition that frequently questions his heroic status in comparison to (e.g.) Hercules or pius Aeneas. Book 3 is particularly apt for this inquiry. Jason’s remorse after inadvertently killing his host Cyzicus, and his distress over whether the crew should leave Hercules behind in Mysia, act as litmus tests of his heroic character.

The commentary itself is structured by the two principal episodes (Cyzicus, 1-461, and Hylas, 481-740) and an interlude (the rowing contest). Each section begins with a detailed introduction to its content, major themes, and relevant bibliography. For teachers, a particularly attractive feature of the commentary is the frequent explanation of how discrete sections fit together in structure and theme, which helps the student to move beyond the minutiae of grammar. Detailed explanations of mythological and literary references will provide a welcome starting-point for discussion. Some notes seem oriented more to the undergraduate than the graduate student and pay far more, perhaps inordinate, attention to references to Virgil than those to Apollonius, who most often is noted as a point of contrast.

While the interpretive angle of Manuwald’s commentary will not surprise those familiar with her scholarship on Valerius, this is by no means a limiting factor. The volume is an engaging introduction to the Argonautica, which offers in-depth philological analysis while setting the poem in its literary and historical contexts.

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