Gold Taken from Athena Parthenos

Triton XIX, Lot: 2041. Estimate $100000. Sold for $265000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ATTICA, Athens. 295 BC. AV Stater (17mm, 8.60 g, 9h). Head of Athena right, with profile eye, wearing crested Attic helmet decorated with a “pi-style” palmette, disk earring, and pearl necklace / Owl standing right, head facing; olive sprig and crescent to left, AΘE and Eleusis-ring to right. J. Kroll, “The Reminting of Athenian Silver Coinage, 353 B.C.” in Hesperia 80 (2011), fig, 12, b; Svoronos, Monnaies, pl. 21, 17 = Jameson 1193 (same rev. die); HGC 4, 1577; SNG Copenhagen 83; BMC 129–31; Boston MFA 1099; Gillet 946; Gulbenkian 925 = Weber 3499. Near EF, a few scattered marks, minor deposits on reverse. Very rare.

From the collection of Dr. Lawrence A. Adams. Ex Numismatic Fine Arts XXX (8 December 1992), lot 71; Distinguished American Collection (Leu 52, 15 May 1991), lot 74; Christie’s New York (22 September 1986), lot 8.

On the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, his empire was divided up among the Diadochoi, or “successors,” who were the top generals in Alexander’s army. With the aid of Antigonos I Monophthalmos, ruler of Phrygia, Kassander seized Macedon and most of Greece, including Athens (319-317 BC). Antigonos, however, had ambitions of his own. Planning to reunite Alexander’s empire under his own leadership, he frightened the other Diadochoi, including Kassander, to join forces in the First Diadoch War (315-311 BC). Though he was slowed, Antigonos’ plans were not altogether thwarted. He continued in his attempts to reunite Alexander’s empire under the title ‘liberator of Greece.’

The Second Diadoch War broke out in 310 BC and lasted until 301 BC. During this war, in 307 BC, Antigonos’ son, Demetrios I Poliorketes, ousted Demetrios of Phaleron, Kassander’s governor of Athens, and reestablished the old Athenian constitution. The grateful Athenians venerated Antigonos and Demetrios as divine saviors (theoi sōtēres). The freedom granted by the Athenian constitution, however, would prove to be a thorn in the side of Poliorketes. Soon, a demagogue by the name of Lachares came to power in the city and secretly allied himself to Kassander. Kassander pushed Lachares to increase his power, hoping to use the tyrant as a puppet through which he could exert his influence over Athens. Meanwhile, Demetrios lost favor with the Athenians as a result of various publicly financed extravagances and his sacrilegious installation of a harem in the Parthenon. Upon the death of Kassander in 298 or 297 BC, however, the Athenians were left in a vulnerable position. In 296 BC, Demetrios returned to Greece, temporarily blockading the city, until he was pulled away to deal with events in the Peloponnesos. Having secured his southern territory, Poliorketes again returned to besiege Athens in 295 BC. This siege lasted until early 294 BC, when the Athenians, starving and isolated, surrendered. Upon the fall of Athens, Lachares fled to Thebes, taking with him as much treasure as he could carry. Demetrios soon caught up to the tyrant, conquering his city of refuge. Thereafter, until 279 BC, when mention of him is lost, Lachares seems to have run from city to city, desperately trying to flee his many enemies.

This gold coin is thought to have been struck by Lachares during the siege in order to help finance the war effort (see Kroll, supra, pp. 251–4 for a full analysis). The gold used to produce this issue, according to Pausanias (Description of Greece 1.XXV.7), was taken from the statue of Athena Parthenos, created during the massive Periklean building projects of the Thirty Years Peace. Such use of sacred gold would not be alien to the Athenians, who had previously used the gold from the statue during the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, ii.13). Perikles himself commissioned the sculptor Pheidias to craft the colossal chryselephantine statue. Today, the sculpture survives in a few small-scale copied votive sculptures, as well as on bronze coins of Lysimachos of Thrace and Athenian bronzes of the third century BC. In addition, a reproduction of the statue stands in the replica of the Parthenon in Centennial Park, Nashville.

A story is told of Lachares by Polyaenos (Stratagems 3.7). As Lachares was fleeing Athens, he was pursued by a squadron of Tarentine cavalry. To distract his pursuers, the tyrant scattered “gold darics” (τῶν δαρεικῶν) on the road. The Tarentines stopped to pick up the money, giving Lachares enough time to escape. It is very possible, if not likely, that Polyaenos is not referring to Persian darics, but rather, the gold coins minted by Lachares. The Persians had been expelled from Greece two hundred years previously, and the Persian Empire itself had fallen to Alexander nearly 50 years before the time of Lachares. Therefore, it is unlikely that Persian darics were in circulation in Greece at the time. Since the Athenians, however, did not regularly mint gold coins, it is possible that when Polyaenos is using the word for daric, he is using it simply to mean “a gold coin,” and that the story refers to these emergency gold coins minted by Lachares.