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Coins and Coinage at Euesperides1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

T. V. Buttrey
T. V. Buttrey*
Affiliation:
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
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Extract

The coinage of Euesperides was always minor in comparison with that of Cyrene, or even of Barca. But its sporadic issues do have an interest of their own. At this session we are also concerned with the city, and I wish to suggest what we can learn from the numismatic evidence — not just from the coins struck there, but from the coins of other mints which have been found there.

It is preferable to speak generally of the ‘coinage’ of Euesperides rather than of its ‘mint’, for it seems certain that some of the issues bearing the city's name were actually produced at Cyrene, as indeed were also some issues of Barca. The coinage of Euesperides was always small in comparison with the older and much richer coinage of Cyrene. It is instructive that the catalogue proper of Robinson's BMC Cyrenaica requires 90 pages to list the autonomous and Ptolemaic coins struck at Cyrene, 18 for those of Barca, just 4 for Euesperides.

For Euesperides there are no archaic tetradrachms, the denomination so prominent in a variety of types at Cyrene. The earliest Euesperidean coin in BMC, a drachm of types silphium/dolphin, is assigned by Robinson to before 480 BC.

Type
Greek and Hellenistic Periods
Information
Libyan Studies , Volume 25 , January 1994 , pp. 137 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1994

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Footnotes

1.

This account draws on material and arguments which will be enlarged in the excavation reports on the coins found at Cyrene in the Demeter Sanctuary, and at Euesperides by the Ashmolean excavation. Illustrations of the find coins will be published there, and the numismatic chronology suggested here will be supported in greater detail.

References

Notes

2. Robinson, E. S. G., Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Cyrenaica [in the British Museum] (London, 1927)Google Scholar [hereafter BMC]. Much additional material is included in his introduction, where the three cities require 150, 24 and 10 pages respectively.

3. BMC, 109 no. 1, pl. 38 no. 2.

4. BMC, 5, no. 16, p. xxviGoogle Scholar no. 21b.

5. BMC, clxxxix–xc nos la–c, pl. 38 nos 3–5.

6. BMC, 110–111 nos 2–5, pl. 38 nos 7–10.

7. BMC, 12 nos 48–52, pl. 6 nos 9–19.

8. BMC, cxcii–iii nos 5a–b, pl. 38 nos 11–12.

9. BMC, 75–76 nos 9–13, attributed to Cyrene, but the reverse type of club (sc. of Heracles) is enclosed not by the conventional dotted border but by an apple-wreath. Both club and wreath are appropriate to Euesperides, and in fact the type is sometimes accompanied by the trident symbol, again appropriate. Robinson was undecided about the mint attribution (cliv).

10. Compare the identical styles of BMC, 67 no. 346, pi. 27 no. 12 (Cyrene), and BMC, 112 no. 12, pl. 38 no. 20 (Euesperides).

11. BMC, 79 no. 29. Cf. the silver didrachm with head of Berenice, mentioned above; stylistically the Cyrenaican silver and bronze portrait coins of Berenice I go together, and are unlike anything else coming out of Cyrene.

12. Bond, R. C. and Swales, J. M., Surface finds of coins from the city of Euesperides, Libya Antiqua 12 (1965), 91–101Google Scholar.

13. The surface finds included two strays — a single Soter/Libya piece, for which see below, and a fragment from the Roman coinage of the first century BC.

14. BMC, 80–81 nos 30–33. Note that the legend BAΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΜΑΓΑ on two examples has been created by modern tooling; no original piece of the Soter/Libya series bears his name.

15. Laronde, A., Cyrène et la Libye Hellénistique (Paris, 1987), 362Google Scholar.

16. Naville, L., Les Monnaies d'Or de la Cyrénaïque (Geneva, 1951), 83–84Google Scholar.

17. Robinson, E. S. G., Num. Chron. 13 (1953), 163Google Scholar.

18. BMC, 75–79 nos 6–29.

19. Bagnall, R. S., Archagathos, son of Agathocles, Epistates of Libya, Philologus 120 (1976), 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Chamoux, F., Le roi Magas, Revue Historique 216 (1956) 18–34Google Scholar.

21. BMC, 75–79, nos 6–29.

22. BMC 80–81, nos 30–33, Group I.

23. BMC 68–71, nos 2–29.

24. BMC, 81 nos 34–38, Group Π; etc.

25. BMC, cli.

26. Eusebius, , Chronica 1.237. 18ffGoogle Scholar.

27. Laronde(n.l5), 390–394.

28. Bond and Swales (n.12), 93.

29. Laronde (n.15), 382–383, 393–394.

30. Niebuhr, B. G., Kleine Schriften I (Bonn, 1828), 233–238Google Scholar; Geyer in RE, s.v. Magas.

31. Chamoux (n.20), 30–31.

32. Laronde (n.15), 392–393. Laronde's dating (368) of the first Soter/Libya issue to the last decade of the fourth century is presumably just an oversight.

33. Laronde (n.l5), 405–406.

34. Lardone (n.15), 419.

35. Laronde (n.15), 405.

36. BMC, cxxxvi. See also 80, n. 1, ‘… all these coins have the bevelled edge and, all except Group I, the hole in the centre of the flan …’.

37. See BMC, clvi–clviii and 80–81, with descriptions at nos 30 and 34.

38. BMC, 68–71.

39. Robinson, , BMC, cxxxvGoogle Scholar.

40. The holes are denied by Bond and Swales (n.12), 93, but they are there.

41. Bond and Swales (n.12), 93.