The Coinage of Thebes

CNG 84, Lot: 372. Estimate $5000. Sold for $3500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BOEOTIA, Thebes. Circa 450-440 BC. AR Stater (19mm, 11.86 g). Boeotian shield / Female figure (Harmonia?), wearing long chiton, seated right, holding crested Corinthian helmet, hand on her hip, foot resting on a footstool; ΘEBA upward on left; all within incuse square. BCD Boiotia 417 (same dies); Head, Boeotia p. 32, pl. II, 10 = BMC 42 = Traité III 233 (same rev. die); Myron Hoard pl. Α, 31 (same dies). Good Fine, toned, area of roughness on reverse. Very rare, perhaps the sixth known example.

Thebes was one of the oldest cities in Boeotia and certainly the most influential. Founded by Kadmos, the brother of Europa and renowned as the man who brought the alphabet to Greece, the city provided the source for much of the mythology that is considered today to be “Greek”. It was the birthplace of the hero Herakles and the home of Semele, the mother of the god Dionysos. It could count as its kings Oidipous, solver of the Sphinx’s riddle, killer of his father, and husband of his mother; Kreon, who condemned Antigone, daughter of Oidipous, to being buried alive; Polynikes and Eteokles, sons of Oidipous, whose rivalry for the throne brought the destruction of the city as told in Seven Against Thebes; and Pentheus, the young ruler whose failure to accept the divinity of Dionysos resulted in his own destruction at the hands of his mother. Homer described Thebes as “having a well-built citadel” (Iliad 2.505). This fortified acropolis, known as the Kadmeia, became the visible symbol of Theban power.

It was Thebes in the late sixth century BC, in part to offset the influence of its rival, Orchomenos, that organized the alliance that later became the fully-developed Boeotian League. Shortly thereafter, along with Haliartos and Tanagra, the city issued a series of drachms and fractions with the Boeotian shield on the obverse and a patterned punch, typically a mill-sail, on the reverse. During the fifth century BC, Thebes’ fortunes rose and fell as it sought to control its neighbors. The city was divided during the Persian invasion: some joined in the Greek cause at Thermopylai, while others submitted to the Persians. In 457 BC, Thebes allied itself with Sparta, but was overwhelmed by Athens at Oinophyta. When Athens invaded the region the following year, it established pro-Athenian democracies in a number of Boeotian cities. It was around this time, perhaps a little earlier, that Thebes briefly revived its civic coinage, continuing the standard shield obverse, but with an amphora on the reverse. In the middle of the fifth century, Thebes regained its ascendancy, and this period witnessed many developments in Theban coinage including a separation of the mint into two workshops.

When Sparta, from whom Thebes was now estranged, imposed the Thirty Tyrants on Athens, the Boeotian city welcomed Athenian refugees and, in 395 BC, joined with the them against Sparta in the Corinthian War. The Spartan victory dissolved the League and severely curtailed Theban power. In 382 BC the Spartans seized the city, holding it until 379 BC, when a popular uprising expelled them. Thebes thereupon again reconstituted the Boiotian League under its control and, after the victory at Leuktra in 371 BC, dominated all of Greece for the next decade under the commanders Epaminondas and Pelopidas. During the events of this 25 year period, 395-371 BC, Thebes’ coinage radically changed. First, a very rare electrum series was issued, combining the two mythological types that dominated Theban coinage over the previous half-century: the profile of Dionysos on the obverse and the infant Herakles strangling two serpents on the reverse. This was followed by the massive “magistrate” series which lasted until the battle of Khaironeia in 338 BC.

Epaminondas’ death in 362 BC from wounds received at Mantineia precipitated the end of Theban power. Thebes’ losses during the Third Sacred War and opposition to Philip II of Macedon led to Thebes’ eventual downfall. In 335 BC Alexander III sacked the city, virtually destroying it. Though Thebes was refounded by Kassander in 315 BC, it never again exerted the influence it once enjoyed.