Book Review: The Bronze Coins of Eastern Mount Ossa in the Thessalian Perioikic Region of Magnesia: Homolion, Eureai, Eurymenai, and Meliboia

[kirispupis]

Recently, I stayed up all night and got to the bookstore at opening, where I stood in line for the bestselling The Bronze Coins of Eastern Mount Ossa in the Thessalian Perioikic Region of Magnesia: Homolion, Eureai, Eurymenai, and Meliboia by Anna Magdalena Blomley. I barely managed to snag one.

In reality, @Deinomenid mentioned this new reference to me based on coins I'd previously shared, so I ordered a copy and finished it last night.

Of the five mints covered in this book (for some reason Rhizous didn't make it into the title), I have representative coins from three of them. I believe this is now the definitive work for all five mints.

Not much of the history of these cities is covered, primarily because we don't know that much. However, the author does go on a limb and estimate the location of each city, which I hope someday to follow.

I'll get into the coins soon, but the following conclusions by the author I found the most interesting.

Denominations

In terms of denominations, the terms chalkous, dichalkon, and trichalkon are often used today, but Blomley mentions how flawed they are, since there's no proof that a "trichalkon" was worth three times as much as a "chalkous", and in fact there's considerable evidence against that. 

She instead divides at least the coinage of this area of Thessaly into four denominations, along with her estimation of value

• denomination I, 18.6-20.8mm, 6.8-8.9g (obol)
• denomination II, 16-18.5mm, 4.5-5.3g (hemi-obol)
• denomination III, 13.5-14.7mm, 2-3.6g (tetartamorion or 1/4 of an obol)
• denomination IV, 11-12mm, 1.5-1.9g (chalkous or 1/12 of an obol)

It's the authors belief that size was more important than weight in terms of value, given the high standard deviation of weights.

Dies

The main claim for this book is that it's the first attempt at naming dies for the bronzes of these cities. All the known dies are covered and the volume contains maps pairing obverse and reverse dies.

What I found interesting was the observation that some cities clearly shared dies. In one instance, Blomley clearly shows that a die was used in Larissa, then modified slightly and re-used for Eureai. Unfortunately, we don't know exactly why/how this occurred. Did masters bring their dies with them? Or were coins from multiple cities minted in the same place?

A postulation on the largest denomination

The author mentions that previous dating of these coins had assumed that production had ceased when they became part of Macedonia. However hoard data suggests otherwise, and the author postulates that the largest denomination (potentially an obol), was minted precisely for the Macedonian garrisons.

Die studies suggest that the denomination I was minted for a short time, and the author suggests this may be due to how soldiers were paid.

• The misthos or opsion, which are the soldiers' regular wages. These were likely paid in tetradrachms and other large denominations.
• The sitarchia, siteresion, or sitonion, which were used in lieu of daily rations

The suggestion is these obols were minted to provide these daily rations to the garrison. 

And on the smallest denomination

In Meliboia, on the other hand, many of the coins were of the smallest denomination and were found far more widely than those of the other cities. Given that Meliboia was the most important port in northern Thessaly, commerce likely explains the widespread finds.

In terms of the small denominations, she believes these may have been necessary for port fees, which often calculated to odd amounts that required these coins.

Moving on to my coins

Obviously, my hope was to obtain better attributions for my own coins. I'll start with Meliboia, the largest of the mints. Here's my coin, along with the attribution provided by the seller.

Thessaly. Meliboea Æ12 / Grapes
400-350 BCE 12.17mm 1.98g
Obverse: Head of nymph right
Reverse: ME-ΛI, bunch of grapes hanging from vine
Rogers 393
Ex CNG 250 (23 February 2011) 

 

According to Blomley, this should be M128, based on the auction sale, but the weight is completely wrong.

The plate confirms this.

I purchased this coin from Marc Breitsprecher in 2022, and I suspect the person he purchased it from gave him the wrong information. So, I looked to determine which dies mine has, and I believe M 134 is a match (for the dies, not the coin).

Looking it up in the catalog, this is Reverse 28, and from the die map it only appeared with Obverse 2.4, which also looks like a match to mine. Six coins in the catalog have this die combination, but I don't believe any of them are mine. The book includes a list of find spots, but none of these are mentioned.

So, the best I can do for my Meliboia example is remove the CNG provenance and add the obverse + reverse die information. Moving on to Homolion.

Thessaly, Homolion
ca 350 BCE
AE 20mm 6.6g
Head of Philoktetes right, wearing conical pileos /
ΟΜΟΛ-IEΩN; serpent coiled right, grape bunch above.
Helly, Quelques 25; Rogers 257

 

Here I was luckier. My exact coin is listed.

The obverse was used with four reverses, while the reverse was used with two obverses. This pair is quite common, with 15 examples in the catalog. None have known findspots, but the coins of Homolion didn't travel as well as those of Meliboia. So, I have a new plate coin! 

On to Rhizous, the most interesting.

Thessaly, Rhizous
4th century BCE
Æ Obol. 0.88g, 10mm
Female head to right / Star with city ethnic around.
BCD Thessaly II 725 var. (denomination); HGC 4, 103 var. (same). 

 

I purchased this coin from Roma in June of 2022, before I started collecting cities in earnest. The seller listed it as "Extremely rare unpublished denomination." and this appears to be true.

The coinage of Rhizous is relatively rare, with only 37 total examples noted by Bromley. The problem is the smallest coin mentioned for Rhizous in the volume is 1.51g. I pulled the coin out and weighed it, and found that Roma was correct.

With the P-I in retrograde, this matches exactly the description for denomination IV. However, I there are clearly no reverse die matches with any of the three examples and the obverse is difficult to tell.

If Bromley is correct about the size being more important than the weight, then I'm tempted to still list this as denomination IV - even though I couldn't find any example in this volume (from any of the five mints) that low (a Meliboia IV reached 1.2g).

[CPK]

Interesting review. Thanks for sharing!

Your interest and study into these little Greek bronzes is inspiring. I used to think they were the most boring ancient coins, but now I kind of like them and have a few myself. 🙂 

[kirispupis]

14 minutes ago, CPK said:

Your interest and study into these little Greek bronzes is inspiring. I used to think they were the most boring ancient coins, but now I kind of like them and have a few myself. 🙂 

Thanks! But your first inclination was correct!

These little coins are boring. I strongly suggest no one take an interest in purchasing them, especially the rare ones. 🙂 

[Deinomenid]

2 hours ago, kirispupis said:

If Bromley is correct about the size being more important than the weight

I’m not sure if it can directly help but in Clain-Stefanelli’s  “Fractional Silver Coinages“ she specially says a number of (admittedly silver) very low weight coins only made sense when looked at by size not weight. 
The point should not be exclusive to silver at all. 

[khaghogh]

The commentary by Alan Walker and BCD on the coins from these cities is a nice complement to the new study by Blomley. Here is the PDF version of the Nomos 4 catalog on CNG's ISSUU site:

Nomos Auction 4 by Classical Numismatic Group, LLC - Issuu

And there is more commentary on the coins from these mints in the BCD Thessaly 2 sale (Triton XV):

Triton XV BCD Thessaly Virtual Catalog by Classical Numismatic Group, LLC - Issuu

 

Edited November 28, 2024 by khaghogh
Corrected spelling