The Provincial Coinage of the Peloponnesos

Sale: CNG 81, Lot: 2755. Estimate $100.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009.  Sold For $300. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MEGARIS, Megara. Marcus Aurelius. AD 161-180. Æ Diassarion (7.55 g, 5h). Laureate bust right with traces of drapery / Asclepius standing right, head left, leaning on serpent-entwined staff. BCD Peloponnesos 46.3 (this coin); BMC 1908-12-1-6 (same dies). Good Fine, brown patina, rough. Very rare.

Ex BCD Collection (LHS 96, 8 May 2006), lot 46.3; Peiresc (25 November 1995), lot 7 (part of).

Historical Overview

Following the sack of Corinth in 146 BC, the remaining independent areas of mainland Greece, including the Peloponnesus, were organized as a Roman protectorate. The Achaean League, whose revolt had prompted the Roman intervention, was now disbanded. For almost the next 60 years, some of the city-states retained a measure of independence, including Sparta and Athens. The First Mithridatic War (89-85 BC) again threw Greece into turmoil when a number of Greek cities, inluding Athens, allied themselves with the King of Pontus in order to regain their independence. In retaliation, the Roman general Sulla sacked Athens in 87 BC after a lengthy siege. The following year he defeated the Pontic general Archelaus at Chaeronea; in 85 BC, he again defeated Archelaus at Orchomenus. Plundered by Sulla for its available art treasures, punished for its cities’ support of Mithridates’ war, and no longer a commercial rival to Rome, mainland Greece was reduced to provincial status as Achaea.

During the civil war, Achaea supported Mark Antony. In the Peloponnesus, Patrae was especially important, providing a base of operations and a possible mint; when Octavian defeated Antony at Actium, Patrae was punished with a refoundation. While certain cities – Delphi in central Greece, Athens and Eleusis in Attica, and Olympia and Epidaurus in the Peloponnesus – retained their traditional importance and enjoyed significant patronage in the Roman Empire, most of the remaining towns in the Peloponnesus are known during this period only through their rare coinage.

Only two emperors are known to have visited the Peloponnesus. In AD 66, Nero participated in the Olympic Games. The following year at the Isthmian Games, he proclaimed the “freedom of Greece,” just as Flamininus had done there two centuries earlier. During the winter of AD 124/5, Hadrian toured the Peloponnesus, visiting a number of cities and overseeing the restoration of their civic buildings; at Epidaurus, the citizens erected a statue of him in thanks. Mantinea was especially well rewarded, possibly because of Hadrian’s lover Antinous, whose home in Bithynia had a close association with that town. Toward the end of the reign of Gallienus (AD 253-268), the Goths and the Heruli invaded Greece on two occasions: during the first, they besieged Athens and penetrated as far as the Peloponnesus, where they ransacked Olympia and Sparta. Taking advantage of the death of Theodosius I in AD 395, the Visigoths under Alaric invaded Greece. They too penetrated as far as the Peloponnesus, razing the cities of Corinth, Argus, and Sparta, and enslaving their inhabitants. Alaric and his forces, however, were shut up in the mountainous border area of Elis and Arcadia by the Roman commander Stilicho. Alaric escaped and headed north, eventually crossing into Italy. With Alaric’s departure, the Peloponnesus suffered no more invasions.

The Coins

The provincial coinage of the cities of the Peloponnesus is very rare. Many cities struck coins only during a single reign and these isues were very small with numerous die links across different reverse types. The majority of extant specimens have been located outside of the Peloponnesus, particularly in the Levant, carried there either through overseas trade, deployment of locally-mustered soldiers, or emigrés. Some Peloponnesian cities did produce a sizeable coinage over a long period. Because of its importance as a seaport, Patrae did strike issues for most of the emperors from Augustus to Caracalla. Sparta, too, struck coins for most of the emperors until the Severans, and, along with Argus, was one of the only two cities in the Peloponnesus to strike coins for Gallienus and his wife Salonina. It was during the period of Septimius Severus and his family (A