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Ancient Coins From Greece and the Roman EmpireIntroduction - The Origin of Ancient Greek and Roman CoinsIt is generally believed that coins were first made in Lydia, near the west coast of Asia Minor. (Some claim that the Greek settlement of Ionia, right on the coast, was actually the first to produce coins.) These archaic Lydian coins were made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver. Soon, the use of coins spread throughout the Mediterranean area, which was at the time dominated by the Greek city-states. Typically, each of these Greek cities had their own coinage and coins show a characteristic style. Ancient Greek coins often display a superb level of artistic skill, in my opinion even unsurpassed to this day. Indeed, they may be stunning pieces of miniature art; in a few cases they are even signed by the artist. The coins were now usually made of pure silver. As the Greek influence expanded enormously during the reign of Alexander the Great, Greek-style coinage spread eastward far into the Orient. Later, as the empire built by Alexander split up and the Romans became the new rulers of the Mediterranean area, the emerging Roman empire essentially took over the technique of coin-making used by the Greeks. Ancient Roman coins were made of both gold, silver, and bronze (at first of bronze only), and they sometimes display excellent artistic craftmanship. Ancient Coins Were First Made in Asia MinorThe most ancient coins known to us were probably those made in the kingdom of Lydia, in western Anatolia, shortly before 600 BC. It seems the use of coins then spread very rapidly over ancient Greece. In the Mediterranian region, precious metals had already long been used for commercial purposes before the invention of coinage. Gold or silver could be used in the form of spiral rings, easy to split up into pieces, or as ingots corresponding to local units of weight. With the invention of coinage, an issuing authority - usually the state - marked the pieces of metal with an official stamp, as a guarantee that their value corresponded to a recognised standard of weight. This simplified the exchange of goods, as there would now be no need for weighing and examining each piece of precious metal when buying or selling something. The very early coins from Lydia were all made of "electrum", an alloy of gold and silver. The reason seems to be that deposits of this alloy (called "white gold" by Herodotos) occurred naturally in riverbeds of Lydia. Those early coins tend to be very small and look like thick lumps of metal. Typically, they have an image showing an animal or deity on one side while the other side only has a deep punch mark.
While the most ancient coins seem to have been minted in Lydia, the use of coins spread rapidly to adjacent regions such as Ionia, on the East coast of the Aegian sea, and further into ancient Greece. The first of these ancient Greek coins closely resemble the Lydian coins, except that they were usually made of pure silver rather than the "electrum" alloy. | Buy ancient coins: You can find a variety of ancient coins at eBay. Examples below show current bid prices - Click to see details. | |||||
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