The role of “the state” and early electrum coinage

Working Paper v.31.1.2014 ©Peter van Alfen

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The role of “the state” and early electrum coinage

Peter van Alfen

1.1 Introduction1

In many discussions of the development of early electrum coinage the state looms

large.2 Given the inherent variability of the gold-silver ratio in the native electrum

thought to have been found in western Asia Minor and the extreme value differential

between the two alloyed metals (roughly 1:13), monetizing electrum presented significant

problems: to determine the exact value of every nugget required a great deal of time to

measure its weight and gold-silver ratio, a laborious process adding substantial costs to

every transaction.3 The solution to the electrum problem, it is argued, was coinage: small

pre-weighed ingots bearing an official mark that guaranteed a fixed price for the coin no

matter what the actual commodity price of the alloy contained within it may have been.

Because this price would of necessity have to be fixed at a point comfortably above the

commodity price of the alloy in order to make the whole operation economically sound,

this artificially fixed price required high levels of trust, if not outright coercion and

enforcement to maintain, something that presumably only the state could muster. To be

sure, there was money before coinage, and some limited degree of state involvement in

its production and use, but nothing prior to electrum coinage could boast of such heavy

handed state involvement4; the introduction of electrum coinage marked, as Georges Le

1 My thanks to François de Callataÿ, John Kroll, Müserref Yetim, and especially Robert Wallace, for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. None, of course, are responsible for any shortcomings found here. 2 See, for example, Radet 1893: 158; Bolin 1958: chp. 1; Wallace 1987; Le Rider 2001: chp. 2. 3 Earlier studies had suggested that the native alluvial electrum found in and around Sardis while variable tended to be composed of c. 70% gold and 30% silver; cf. Ramage 2000: 17. Cahill, Hari, Önay and Dokumacı (this volume) argue, however, that the “electrum” found around Sardis is rather nearly pure gold. They also discuss the possibility that electrum may have been procured from Lydian controlled areas in northwestern Anatolia in the Troad, Mysia, and near Adramytteion where there are silver-rich gold deposits. 4 Much of the recent work by John Kroll has demonstrated the widespread use of monetized Hacksilber in the Aegean region, and the eastern Mediterranean more broadly, throughout the archaic and into the classical period; see for, example, Kroll 2008 and his 2009 survey of monetary instruments before coinage. For aspects of state monetary control prior to coinage see Le Rider 2001: chp. 1. Other differing views on the existence of money before coinage have been expressed by Schaps 2001; 2004, and Seaford 2004, especially pp. 318-333.


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Rider has observed, a turning point between anonymous, informally regulated money,

and marked, formally regulated currency.5

Having taken the reins of monetary control, the state was presented with an

unprecedented opportunity; while it could fix the price of coinage at a rate just a few

points above the commodity price of the alloy, whether natural or modified, it could just

as well fix it as high as it believed the price could be enforced, subsequently reaping

significant profits from the production and issuance of coins.6 Where on this spectrum of

price fixing the state stood has defined several major approaches to early electrum

coinage. Robert Wallace, for example, has argued for the low end, suggesting the state

stabilized the price of electrum via slightly overvalued coinage7; at the other end Sture

Bolin infamously characterized the state’s extreme overvaluation of electrum coins as a

“large-scale swindle.”8 Although he did not comment on the morality of the state’s

intentions, Georges Le Rider has also argued that the state fixed the price of coinage at a

very high and profitable 15-20% over alloy commodity price.9 These arguments, Bolin

and Le Rider’s particularly, require a strong and capable state to monopolize coin

production, to control functions like guaranteeing the value of the coins through the

mechanism of redemption, and to police and enforce its decisions.

This picture of state monopolized coin production is, however, complicated by the

huge number of series observed among the earliest electrum issues; Stefan Karweise

5 Le Rider 2001, especially pp. 81-83. 6 Head 1911, p.lvii; Bolin 1958: chp. 1; Le Rider 2001: chp 2, especially pp. 79-84. On the profitability generally of ancient coin production see Bransbourg 2011, and particularly p. 103, where he suggests that levels of profitability, especially for Greek silver coins, was never very high. There was, however, awareness in antiquity that coin production could generate revenues: Ps.-Arist. Oec. II; Pol. Onom. 9.79; Plin. NH 33.13.44–45; OGIS 339 (“Sestos decree”, 2nd century BCE). 7 Wallace (1987) does not say what the state’s intentions were, only that it acted to stabilize the value of electrum used in transactions, while (p.395) generating only enough revenue from the process to cover its expenses. Holloway (1978), in contrast, suggests that early electrum coin producers, mostly private actors in his view, sought to eliminate electrum price variability for the public good. 8 Bolin 1958: 36: “The very contrast between appearance and reality—on the one hand the care with which the weights of the coins were tested and their alleged equal value, and on the other hand their strongly varying percentage of gold and the impossibility of checking it—makes it possible to regard the introduction of coinage as an imposture, a large-scale swindle.” 9 Le Rider 2001: 95; 116: “En surévaluant de 15 à 20% leur monnaie, les États d'Asie Mineure occidentale avaient établi un système qui, à cette date, ne manquait pas d'originalité.”


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claims there are over 300 different types or series.10 Even though Liselotte Weidauer

(1975) was able to demonstrate that shared reverse punches linked several discrete

obverse types, indicating that certain series were probably produced in the same

workshop and under the same authority, the number of non-linked and non-attributed

series still greatly outnumber the polities in western Asia Minor that could have been

responsible for the coins.11 Because of this sizeable array of unattributed electrum issues,

numerous scholars have suggested that states did not possess monetary monopolies, but

that various economic elites, usually described as bankers or merchants, were also

producing so-called private coinages in parallel with the official issues of the Lydian

kings and Greek poleis.12 This idea of private electrum coinage has long been voiced, and

continues to be voiced, but its detractors have argued against the possibility of private

coinage by focusing primarily on the high level of authority needed to guarantee the

overvaluation of the coinage, something that again only the state would possess and not

private individuals.13

Another solution to this problem of multiple types and monopoly has been to

suggest that the Lydian king or other state authority “allowed” these individuals to

produce coins, a suggestion that maintains the idea of monopoly, but decentralizes the

administration and production of coinage. Similar notions of royal warrant are used as

well to explain a handful of coinages, including some with royal Lydian types, which 10 Karweise 1991. It is unclear from his statements if he means that these 300 different types represent as many discrete series. In my own attempts, I have identified roughly 250 discrete series of early electrum coins, including those attributed to the Lydian kings and Greek poleis. But since we lack a complete corpus of early electrum coinage, verifying the accuracy of this count at the moment poses difficulties. Nevertheless, I believe it would be safe to say that there are certainly more than 100 unattributed series, and probably more than 200. 11 This assumes, of course, that obverse types would have functioned in some way analogous to the way they did in the classical period, with each polity generally restricting itself to a limited number of obverse types. The most notably exceptions to this general practice, Cyzicus, Mytilene and Phokaia, produced electrum coinage with obverse types changing at least once a year; on the administrative aspects of this see Furtwängler 1982. Possibly with these examples in mind, Wallace (1987: 394) suggests that in the case of the early electrum coins “…although every type cannot have represented the “badge” of a particular city, such coins nonetheless might have been struck at official mints.” Unlike the coinage of Cyzicus, Mytilene, and Phokaia, which generally maintained consistency in style and fabric with each successive issue, and added subsidiary civic symbols, all of which helped to identify the individual mint despite the changing obverse types, no such consistency or additive symbols are found amongst the majority of early electrum issues. My sense is that these early coins were produced under nearly as many (private) authorities and in nearly as many “mints” as there are series. 12 See, for example, Babelon 1897: 114; Head 1911: 644; Seltman 1955: 17-18; Holloway 1978; Price 1983; cf. Kroll 2010: 146; Furtwängler 2011; Konuk 2012: 47. 13 Wallace 1987; Howgego 1995: 4; Le Rider 2001: 72.


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bear personal names that are not historically recorded.14 Although not private individuals

in the sense of the bankers and merchants just mentioned, these individuals are thought to

have had close relations with the Lydian king, who extended to them his sovereign right

to coin.

In this paper, I explore the problem of the state monopolization of early electrum

coin production. I argue that the current framework for approaching the problem is

dependent upon an anachronistic and fixed conception of “the state,” which in turn

weakens the power of this framework to explain why or how monopolization may have

occurred rather than why it just is. I therefore seek a different framework. However, the

avenues open to us for exploring the problem of monopolization are greatly restricted by

the lack of contextual data for the coins, particularly economic data like prices. Since we

are better informed, albeit barely, about political structures and events, the approach I

develop here looks more towards the economies of political interaction than the

economies of transactions. My focus therefore is on the political function of early

electrum coinage, not as a site of ideological dispute, but rather as a site of political

bargaining. This took place within a context of highly dynamic, and in some cases

comparatively early stages of state formation characterized by autocratic rule and serious

internal and external threats to that rule. As these tyrants and kings sought to consolidate

their position, they bargained over control of coin production with their political

competitors. These negotiations occurred at a number of different levels simultaneously:

between Greek tyrants and other Greek elites; between Greek tyrants and the demos;

between Greek tyrants and the Lydian king; between the Lydian king and Lydian elites,

and so on. What was at stake in these negotiations was the potential of electrum coinage

to generate wealth, and possibly other goods like prestige, through control of its

production and distribution. To enhance this simple bargaining framework, I borrow from

Margaret Levi’s rational choice theory of predatory rule, which allows us to plot how

changes in a ruler’s predatory behavior might strengthen or weaken his bargaining

position and regime stability. This framework, I suggest, has greater explanatory power

than the one currently in use. It recognizes monopolization, like state formation itself, as

14 Thompson 1966; Wallace 2006; cf. Spier 1998; Le Rider 2001: 55-58; Konuk 2012: 47.


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a dynamic and irresolute process. This approach also helps to explain the wide variety of

early electrum coin types and variations in alloy composition.

2. Definitions, Assumptions and Framework 2.1 Monopoly, Trust and Early Electrum Coinage

My focus is on the electrum coinages of western Asia Minor and the adjacent

islands produced between c. 630 BCE, when the first coins appeared in the region,15 and

the collapse of the Lydian Empire two or three generations later, c. 550 BCE. I make no

claims to explain why coinage first appeared, how it spread, or how exactly it was used

within fiscal or market systems, if indeed either of these were the original intended target

of the coins.16 I assume, however, like most commentators, that the notional value of

individual coins was higher, to some lesser or greater degree, than the commodity value

of the metal contained within the coins, and that this overvaluation had something to do

with the invention of coinage and its initial restriction to electrum.17 The acceptance of

this overvaluation by those receiving the coins, due either to convention, coercion or

guarantee, meant that the ability to produce coins would be cherished and protected by

those possessing electrum bullion they wished to deploy. How exactly the acceptance

mechanism(s) worked would depend on the immediate context in which the coins were

first issued--who the issuing authority was, who the recipients were, and the intended use

of the coins as a store of value, medium of exchange, or revenue-generating device—as

well as the context(s) of subsequent use. Georges Le Rider (2001), for example, has

argued for the state as the sole issuer, the general population as first and secondary

15 For the dating of the first electrum coins in Asia Minor I follow Kerschner and Konuk (this volume); cf. Konuk 2012: 48. 16 Price (1983), for example, suggested the coins were a form of “bonus” payment to soldiers in the employ of various elites. As Seaford (2004: 134) notes: “The motivation for the invention of coinage is irrecoverable, and may anyway be irrelevant to its subsequent significance. The use of the very first coinage might have been quite different from its subsequent rapid and widespread adoption, especially as the context of the former (at least partly Lydian, with coins perhaps issued by individuals) might have been very different from the context of the latter (issued by the Greek city-states).”

17 If, as Price (1983: 4) remarks, the first coins were made of natural electrum the notional value would likely have been fixed at highest point of the range of their intrinsic value thus providing for a range of overvaluations within any given batch of coins. In any event, metallurgical analysis has demonstrated that many coins were produced using man-made alloys indicating attempts to adjust commodity values relative to notional values. See Bolin 1958: chp 1; Cowell and Hyne 1998; Ramage 2000: 169-174; Le Rider 2001: 95; Konuk 2005.


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recipients, and profit as the intent, with guarantee and a touch of coercion as the primary

acceptance mechanisms. But as Martin Price (1983) maintained, there are also contexts

we can envisage in which coins could be issued and acceptance mechanisms successfully

engaged by individual elites and not by a monopolizing state. Here I would like to expand

on Price’s observations.

The success of the state alone to generate acceptance is based on two points: a

particular conception of a strong and capable state; and the ability of that state to generate

the necessary levels of trust in coinage through the mechanisms of guarantee.18 We shall

examine in more detail the conception of the state in the next section, but here there are a

couple of preliminary observations to make. First, we cannot be certain that the power of

the state in the late 7th or early 6th century, or its ability to foster trust, was significantly

greater than that possessed by individual elites or associations of elites. Indeed, for

certain groups of hetairoi, their loyalty and trust may have extended no further than the

group itself or an elite patron.19 Second, the state’s ability to monitor and enforce its

policy may have been limited by ineffective or rudimentary policing and legal systems,

corrupt state agents, and elites flouting the law, all of which could be found in archaic

polities.20 Unanswered refusals to accept overvalued coins by secondary users or by state

agents would quickly erode trust in the state’s currency. This then brings us to

observations on trust and the mechanism of guarantee. First, the generation of trust and

guarantees in exchange does not always require state intervention or backing. Indeed, in

some cases, state intervention is decidedly to be avoided. While states can serve to 18 Coercion has played only a minor role in arguments on the acceptance of early electrum; see, for example, Le Rider 2001: 94-95. There is, nevertheless, evidence for ancient populations being compelled to use overvalued coins: Timotheos forced his soldiers to us a bronze coinage in the 4th century BCE (Ar. Oec. II.2.23); 3rd century BCE citizens of Gortyn were forced to use new bronze oboloi under pain of a fine of silver staters (IC, iv, 163; Syll.3 525). 19 This is succinctly captured in Herodotus’ (5.66) narrative of the Cleisthenic democratic revolution in Athens in 508/7 BCE: Cleisthenes attempted attempt to “make the demos his hetairos” (ὁ Κλεισθένης τὸν δῆμον προσεταιρίζεται) in his bid to gain political control. The rare verb prosetairizesthai underscores both the loyalty that was expected of these groups and their use by elites competing for political primacy. 20 For weak monitoring and enforcement capabilities in archaic poleis: Gagarin 2006: 267; on corrupt(able) state agents Harris (2006: 305), who notes: “…distrust of magistrates is evident in the laws from many poleis. Penalties for magistrates that do not carry out the law are attested in laws from many poleis throughout the Greek world. One of the most striking features of early Greek laws are the numerous penalties for magistrates who fail to perform their duties.” The early 6th-century Scythian philosopher Anacharsis is said to have observed that laws are like spider webs, they snare the weak but are ripped to pieces by the rich and powerful (Plut. Sol. 5.2-3).


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mitigate transactional chaos through their various formal institutions, like market

regulators and courts, there are numerous non-state institutional responses to the same the

problems, including reputation and trust networks, that can be just as effective,

particularly when the geographical scope and population size in question is

comparatively small.21 And lastly, there is no necessary relationship between states and

monetary instruments, like coinage; there often is a functional relationship between the

two, but the state is not a necessary component for generating trust, even for fiduciary

instruments.22 Many examples of privately issued monetary instruments demonstrate this

to be so: the profusion of bank notes and “store cards” (tokens) in the US in the early 19th

century; the profusion of tokens in late 18th and early 19th century England; gold coins

from mid-19th century California; German Notgeld in the 1920s, and so on. From

antiquity there is perhaps evidence of low value private issues in the Athenian kollyboi of

the late 5th century BCE and 2nd-1st century bronze issues of Italian “pseudo-mints”, as

well as higher value coins in the imitative phenomenon more generally.23 In cases where

we have contextual evidence, problems of trust were overcome primarily through private

guarantee mechanisms.24

Since I find the arguments that only the state could effectively generate trust and

guarantees, and that private coinages could not succeed less than convincing, I do not see

the necessity for statutory monopolies on electrum coin production ab initio. I assume

21 I have demonstrated elsewhere (van Alfen 2011a) how these types of non-state institutional responses would operate in ancient markets. For these types of institutions more generally see Greif 2005. For trust networks see Tilly 2005. 22 On the non-necessity of the relationship between states and money see Cohen 1999; Dodd 1994: chp. 2; Zelizer 1999; on the functional relationship between (modern nation) states and money see Gilbert and Helleiner 1999 and Helleiner 2003. Concluding his study of British commercial tokens, Selgin (2008: 302) remarks: “The commercial coinage story shows, most patently, that private coinage need not be a recipe for disaster. Despite what William Stanley Jevons claimed, the effects of competition in coining weren’t all that different from its effects in other realms.” 23 On the Athenian kollyboi see most recently Figuiera (1998: 504, 521; 2002: 89) and Bubelis (2011), who contend that these were privately issued monetary tokens; this view is not shared by Kroll (1993: 24; forthcoming), who argues they were symbola. On the central Italian pseudo-mints see Stannard and Frey-Kupper 2008. On the possibility of privately produced imitation Athenian owls from Egypt see van Alfen 2011b: 69; Nicolet-Pierre and Kroll (1990: 18-19), suggest that the 3rd century BCE ‘heterogenous’ owls appear to be carefully prepared privately produced imitations meant to blend in with the pool of circulating owls. Many privately produced imitations like these owls would mimic state produced coinage, however, and so would be plugging into the acceptance mechanisms generated by the state, rather than the private producer. On the imitation phenomenon in antiquity more generally see van Alfen 2005.

24 See, for example, Selgin (2008: 250) for guarantees on privately issued British commercial coins.


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therefore that the so-called right of coinage was not limited to the state alone, but was

rather a (property) right held universally. This assumption does not negate the view that

profit may have been a motivation for coinage; it simply introduces more competitors to

the field.

Finally, I also assume that those who produced coins had fairly unregulated

access to precious metal bullion, including electrum. It is generally thought that states in

the ancient world controlled mining and therefore access to precious metal bullion. While

state control of mining by the end of the archaic period seems to have been fairly

widespread, as the cases of Athens, Thasos and Siphnos demonstrate,25 there are as well

indications that archaic elites individually could gain access to mines far away from the

oversight of their home state, and might have had unfettered access to mines within their

home territory as well. In the middle of the 6th century BCE, the Athenian Peisistratus, for

example, gained access to mines in the Strymon district of Thrace, the proceed of which,

Herodotus tells us (1.64), were instrumental for securing his tyranny; a couple of

generations later, Histiaeus, the Milesian tyrant in exile, was granted the Thracian

settlement of Myrkinos by the Persian King, with its ready access to silver mines.26 Later

still, the Lydian Pythios offered Xerxes his wealth of 2,000 talents of silver and 3.9

million gold coins for the war effort against the mainland Greeks; presumably this

represented at least in part revenue from his mines in the Lydian countryside.27 If these

examples were in any way typical, then we can imagine that there were a fair number of

elites who had the ability to amass great stocks of precious metals without interference

from any immediate overlord. This metallic wealth, combined with the right to mint it as

25 The evidence for state ownership and control of Athenian, Siphnian and Thasian mines has been usefully collected in Bissa 2009: chp. 1. 26 Hdt. 1.64; Ath. Pol. 15.2. Lavelle (2005: 117-131) discusses Pesistratus’ activities in the north at length, suggesting that he most of what he did there was with Eretrian permission and cooperation; Bissa (2009: 36) believes Peisistratus obtained a mining concession from the Thracians. For Histiaeus at Myrkinos see Herodotus (5.11, 23-24), who notes that the Persian satrap, Megabazus, was sufficiently worried about Histiaeus’ ability to generate wealth there and thus threaten Persian interests, that he asked Darius to put an end to Histiaeus’ involvement in the settlement. 27 Hdt. 7.27; Plut. Mor. 262d-263e. Briant (2002: 401) makes the case for private ownership of mines in Lydia, although by the time of Persian hegemony at least part of the proceeds went to the King; Bissa (2009: 46), on the other hand, argues that the mines were always in the hands of both the Lydian and Persian kings, basing her arguments primarily on Near Eastern comparanda. See also Talamo (1979: 96, 145), who argues that Mermnad involvement in northwestern Asia Minor (Croesus as archon in Adramytteion, Nicolas of Damascus fr. 45) was in order to directly the control mineral resources found there. Cf. Roosevelt 2009: 74.


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they pleased, gave them the potential for great political power, and so were a threat to any

incumbent autocrat. The ruler’s political skill would be tested by how well he could

bargain with them, or eliminate them.

2.2 The State, State Formation, and Empire

As noted earlier, the relationship between the state and early electrum coinage

presents a number of unresolved problems revolving primarily around notions of

monopolization. Much of this has to do, of course, with the confusing evidence of

variable gold-silver alloys and the abundance of coin types, but the problem is

compounded as well by the way we think of “the state.” This is a complex topic. Rather

than explore it at length, my purpose here is to make a number of observations on how

different notions of the state affect our approach to monopolization. We will look at this

at two levels, the conceptual and historical, neither of which is mutually exclusive.

2.1.1 The Conceptual State At the conceptual level, how we choose to define “the state”—or not--has bearing

on our approach to these problems. In numismatic literature, “the state” can frequently be

found used simply as an alternative term for whichever government or political authority

is responsible for the specific coinage under discussion; in the case of early electrum

coinage, “the state” is generally equated with either the political structures around the

Lydian king or those around the tyrants of the Greek poleis.28 Oftentimes too it serves

simply as a generalized term for any ancient government or authority.29 Either way, for

scholars of the ancient world, “the state” offers elegance and brevity, conveying in a

single word pages of secondary meaning that go far beyond just “government” or

“authority.” But this brevity and conveyance come at a price: the easy equation between

ancient polities and “the state” presents serious epistemological and historiographical

complications.30 These have been reviewed at length elsewhere in the context of ancient

28 This equation can be found, for example, in Radet 1893; Bolin 1958: chp. 1; Wallace 1987; and Le Rider 2001. 29 As found, for example, in the title of Bolin’s (1958) book, State and currency, and Howgego’s (1991) seminal paper, “Why did ancient states strikes coins?”. 30 Note that here and in what follows, I use “polity” as a general term to cover both Greek poleis and non-Greek cities and their governments in Asia Minor, e.g., Lydian Sardis.


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history generally, and in the context of the relationship between ancient polities and the

economic activities of trade and production specifically.31 For our purposes we may recall

that, for modern readers, “the state” is a heavily loaded term bearing the full weight of the

philosophical and political discourses of the last few centuries that have attempted to

define the (post-absolutist) state’s abstract nature and concrete functions.32 At the same

time, “the state” is a term that derives meaning from our shared experiences of modern

governments and their functions and practices, which include highly intrusive levels of

taxation, regulation and policing, as well as the extensive provisioning of public goods

and currencies. Use of “the state” then unavoidably brings these discourses and functions

to the forefront of our minds and can weigh heavily on how we approach ancient polities,

as a number of scholars have observed.33

The use of “the state” in many discussions of early electrum coinage betrays

signs of such influence, analogous to the use of “the state” in the writings of historians at

the center of the modernist/primitivist debate in ancient economies.34 In both cases we

note that: 1) “the state” is rarely, if ever defined, which suggests, 2) that “the state” has a

certain ahistorical and transcendent quality to it, which further suggests that 3) “the state”

is an unchanging and fixed entity. And indeed the timeless, fixed quality of “the state” is

often underscored by the article “the” and a capital “S”. The State (l’État) that emerges

from these studies is a fully formed Other, a cold, bureaucratic black box fully in

possession of its sovereignty, legitimacy, and coercive powers and so effortlessly able to

31 The bibliography on these epistemological and historiographical problems is lengthy; I note here only a few key texts. For these problems in ancient history generally see Hansen 1998; in economic activity see Finley 1973, and the papers found in Andreau, Briant, and Descat 1994; Ktema 23 (1998); and Lo Casio and Rathbone 2000. 32 Pierson (2004) provides a handy overview of the contemporary problem of the state; see also Hansen 1998. 33 See, for example, Bresson 1998: 246; Descat 1994; Hansen 1998: 114. Here we can note as well that Bolin (1958: 11-12) accuses the famed ancient historian T. Mommsen of imposing modern notions of coinage and monetary systems on the Romans. 34 Descat (1994) reviews the significance of J. Hasebroek’s unexamined use of “the state” in the Dutch scholar’s Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece (1933), noting how Hasebroek imposed contemporary notions of state function onto ancient polities, something for which Finley (1973) also took him to task for. Despite the large role that “the state” plays in Hasebroek’s work, nowhere does he define or discuss the concept. We find the same omission in, for example, Bolin (1958), where “state” figures prominently in the title, as well as in the work of many other scholars working on the problem of early electrum, e.g., Wallace 1987; Le Rider 2001.


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implement its fiscal and trade policies across the entirety of its territorial domain.35 As

does the modern State, so does the ancient, including controlling a monopolized,

territorialized currency.36

This State is a polished ideal type, however, devoid of the sloppiness and

politicking that make up real states. For most modern states, sovereignty, legitimacy, and

coercive powers are forever evolving or devolving, as are their functions and capabilities,

in a constant, historically contingent, political dynamic.37 We know similar dynamics

were at play in the Greek communities that we observe wrestling in intimately personal

and violent ways with institutional development and socio-political uncertainty all

throughout the archaic period. And at the same time, there was an equally vigorous

merging of forces that brought the Lydian Empire to its ultimate heights. We shall

explore these historical dynamics further below.

For the moment, however, let us note that a lack of conceptual delineation of “the

state” opens the door to modern impressions of state-ness and functions, as well as a

certain ahistorical viewpoint, all of which is found distilled in the idea of the State. I seek

to get away from this. My concern, however, is not to delve deeply into the conceptual

problems of defining the state per se or expounding on the state as an analytical category,

but rather to set up the parameters of the state for the discussion that follows. There are,

of course, innumerable definitions of the state and its functions and many different shades

35 The analytical tendency to depersonalize the decision making processes within state institutions and focus only on institutional inputs and outputs has frequently been commented on by political scientists; Levi (1981: 436), for example, notes: “…as in Marxism, the state remains a ‘black box.’ The individuals who compose the state are not themselves subject to analysis…in recent years public choice theorists have tried to correct this weakness in microeconomic accounts of the state.” The degree to which the state is something other than society has long been contested; see Pierson 2004; chp. 3. For the ancient Greek world, the tendency has been to see the state fully subsumed within civil society, to the extent that it has been argued that the Greek polis was in fact “stateless”; see Hansen 1998; Anderson 2009. This is not the place to engage in these arguments. I only note that in my reading, the undefined State (l’État) that appears in scholarship on early electrum veers towards depersonalized detachment and modern levels of state capability. 36 On territorial currencies see Gilbert and Heillener 1999, and Heillener 2003. Here it is also worth quoting Helleiner (2003: 7): “Many of the activities associated with the construction of territorial currencies relied on the nation-states unprecedented capability to influence and directly regulate the money in use within the territory it governed. This capability stemmed from such features as its policing powers, its more pervasive role in the domestic economy, its centralized authority, and its stronger ability to cultivate the ‘trust’ of the domestic population.” 37 Pierson (2004) offers convenient and accessible discussions of modern state dynamics.


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of state-ness. But, as a conceptual starting point, Charles Tilly offers a definition that is

suitably broad for my purposes:

Let us define states as coercion-wielding organizations that are distinct from households and kinship groups and exercise a clear priority in some respects over all other organizations within substantial territories. The term therefore includes city-states, empires, theocracies, and many other forms of government, but excludes tribes, lineages, firms and churches as such.38

2.2.2 The Historical State We are able to identify a sizeable number of such coercion-wielding organizations

in archaic Asia Minor, including Greek poleis and the Lydian kingdom. But for most of

the archaic period we have very limited information about their internal composition and

rule; we know next to nothing about the range and type of institutions in each, or the

social, political or economic concerns that would have generated any such institutions.

We do know that within the roughly 75-year period that concerns us here, the regime type

for most of them appears to have been some form of hereditary monarchy, styled as either

kingship or tyranny.39 This matters for my arguments for several reasons: 1) sole rule

generally emerges from a hotbed of intense elite competition. The monarch’s ability to

maintain rule depends on his subsequent skill at legitimizing his rule among the general

population and co-opting or eliminating elite competitors; 2) the inherent instability of

monarchy indicates that over time we should expect to see dynamic processes at work to

consolidate and extend power on the part of the monarch, and to unseat the monarch on

the part of competitors; 3) as these monarchs strove for absolute power, in other words, a

38 Tilly 1992: 1-2. In adapting Tilly’s definition to 8th century BCE Greece, Morris (2009: 71) goes on to say: “It makes little sense to try to set a threshold, saying that coercion wielding organizations of a certain size and power count as states and those that are smaller and weaker do not; rather we should imagine a continuum of organizations and the 8th c. as a time when, in most parts of Greece political organizations got more powerful. As populations grew, the tempo of state formation accelerated, but Greek states remained weak by east Mediterranean standards.” For a review of numerous definitions of the state, including Tilly’s, and their applicability to ancient world see Scheidel 2013. See also Hall 2013. 39 While the first Mermnad ruler, Gyges, is also the first in history to be linked to tyranny as a form of rule (Archilochus fr. 19 W), later Mermad rulers are generally characterized as kings (e.g., Hdt. 1.53.2), implying their rule had by that point an air legitimacy about it. Although Aristotle (Pol. 1295a) and Xenophon (Mem. IV 6.12), for example, drew a clear distinction between illegitimate tyrannies and lawful kingships, in practice, particularly in the archaic period, such distinctions are not always easy to make (cf. Sancisi-Weerdenburg 2000 on the tyranny of Peisistratos, for example). Since English lacks a suitable, neutral term that encompasses both tyrants and kings as sole, autocratic rulers regardless of their legitimacy, in what follows I use “monarch” and “monarchy” to convey this idea despite the semantic links both words have to kingship.


13

form of Hobbesian sovereignty, “the state” became in many ways equated with the

individual ruler.40 A monarch’s individual desires and policies might thus become the

coercion-wielding organization’s desires and policies, at least as far as the monarch was

able to control his agents implementing them.

The dynamics of monarchy underscore the fact that the state is a continual process

rather than a one-time transition. While we can recognize, for example, that the Greek

polities in western Asia Minor in the late 7th and early 6th century obtained certain levels

of institutional and structural sophistication that distinguished them from earlier,

Homeric-like organizations, we are also aware that these monarchical organizations

differed considerably from the still more institutionally intense and structurally expanded

state forms within the same territories of a century or so later. The constant churn of state

formation and the seismic nature of the political, economic and social changes that took

place in archaic polities has been well reviewed41; my concern here is simply to

underscore the vigor and robustness of change, as well as the escalation of state powers

and functions. Ian Morris has nicely described (archaic Greek) state formation as:

[T]he centralization of political power in officerholders’ hands and officeholders’ attempts to extend that power, both deeper into civil society and outward by enlarging the units they governed. State formation generated conflict and competition among officeholders, between officeholders and those they administered, and between competing states. These dynamics were among the most important forces in generating not only violence and exploitation but also the organizational advances that made possible small but lasting improvements in ordinary people’s standards of living.42

Within the larger context of archaic state formation and the more specific dynamic of

Asia Minor monarchies, we should not then expect to find a single established set of

relationships between the individual polities and coinage ab initio, but rather a process

working out what that set of relationships might become.43 Coinage, with its potential to

enhance social, political and economic might, was no doubt one of many sites where the

40 On these characterizations of sole rule in general see Acemoglu and Robinson 2005: chp. 5; Levi 1981, 1988; for a particularly bleak view of the archaic situation see van Wees 2000. 41 See, in general, Hall 2007, 2013; Osborne 2009, and the papers collected in Raaflaub and van Wees 2009. 42 Morris 2009: 99 43 Some of the processual aspects of money and its relationship to Greek societies and states have been explored in Seaford 2004.


14

extension and centralization of power was being negotiated between monarchs and their

competitors, and monarchs and the ruled. Some aspects of the socio-political, intellectual

and ideological tensions that spun out these negotiations within developing Greek poleis

specifically have been explored by L. Kurke (1999), S. von Reden (1994), and R. Seaford

(2004). Less attention has been paid to what we might call the Realpolitik of archaic

coinage within developing (monarchical) states, that is the political bargaining over the

practical and material considerations of coinage, especially coin production, and what the

relationship between the state and coinage was to become. Less attention too has been

paid to how the Lydians fit into what are often rather Helleno-centric narratives of the

invention and early use of coinage.44

While the processes of state formation and the negotiations about electrum

coinage within a single Greek polis like Miletus, for example, are somewhat containable

analytically, the case is more complicated with the Lydian Empire. On the one hand, we

can approach the Lydian Empire in its own right as a coercive-wielding organizing

undergoing its own process of state formation, beginning with Gyges and the early days

of the Mermnad dynasty. Here we might focus on the internal dynamics of Lydian civil

society and the relationship between Lydian elites and their king and the way in which

coinage figured in the negotiations between them. On the other hand, the extension of

Lydian power across Asia Minor and into the hearts of neighboring Greek and Phrygian

polities necessitates that we consider the extent to which the Lydian state incorporated

these other polities and thus the extent to which internal Lydian negotiations about

coinage became part of the internal negotiations about coinage in these polities and vice

versa.

Part of the problem with the Lydian Empire, unlike the contemporaneous

Assyrian and later Persian Empires, is that we have very little evidence for how the

Lydians dealt with the peoples and territories they conquered either ideologically or

administratively. For both the Assyrians and Persians, for example, there is ample

evidence for different levels of administrative control over conquered states. Some were

44 Seaford (2004: 127), to take just one example, seriously downplays the Lydian contribution to the invention of coinage and its subsequent use: “…it may not be too far from the truth to suggest that in the invention of coinage the Lydians contributed the material (electrum), whereas the dominant culture was Greek.”


15

provincialized by installing imperial overseers, often kin to the king; in addition to their

administrative integration, many of these provinces experienced ideological and cultural

integration as local elites, for example, were married to imperial elites and vice versa.

Other states were left essentially alone, as client states, with the proviso that they supply

annual tribute or other gifts.45 For the Lydian Empire, the evidence we have concerns the

Greek cities of Asia Minor, most of which were paying tribute to the Lydians by the time

Croesus lost his throne.46 While there are stories of Alyattes marrying a daughter to Melas

tyrant of Ephesus, the later tumultuous history of the Ephesian-Lydian relationship makes

it clear that if this was an attempt at provincialization, it did not work out particularly

well for either party.47 Similarly, the terms of the treaty between Croesus and the

Milesians indicate that those Greeks were left to manage their own affairs once the dust

had settled.48 Ideologically, the Lydians, unlike the Assyrians for example, also did not

appear to have had much of an agenda in Lydianizing their conquered territories. The

notices we have of Greeks emulating Lydian practices seem due more to awe and

jealousy of Lydian wealth and prestige than a conscious attempt on the parts of the

Lydians to impose their cultural practices or religious beliefs.49 In general, then, the

Lydian Empire, at least in its western parts, appears to have been rather weakly integrated

and was comprised primarily of client states.50

45 For a discussion of these issues in the Assyrian and Persian Empires see Bedford 2009 and Wiesehofer 2009 respectively. 46 Hdt. 1.6.2-3; 1.26-27. 47 Pindaros, son of Melas and grandson of Alyattes, refused Croesus’ claim that Ephesus was his instigating Croesus’ sack of the city: Hdt. 1.26; Polyaenus 6.50; Aelian, Var. Hist. 3.26. 48 Hdt. 1.22.4: the Milesians were made “friends and allies” (ἐγένετο ἐπ᾽ ᾧ τε ξείνους ἀλλήλοισι εἶναι καὶ συμμάχους); Polyaenus 6.50 claims Croesus gave the Ephesians their freedom after his capture of the city, but this would seem to contradict Herodotus (1.26) who implies they were made tributary. 49 See, for example, Archilochus fr. 19 W, who claims not to be jealous of Gyges’ riches, though perhaps he is; Hipponax fr. 92, whose use, as Kurke (1999: 27) notes, of the participle ludizousa, ‘playing the Lydian,’ for the woman who is beating the speaker’s genitals in an outhouse “alludes to and debunks the entire elitist tradition of Eastern habrosune, which Anakreon was to characterize with the single word ludopathes ‘living like Lydians’ (fr. 136/481 PMG)”; Xenophanes fr. 3 on 1000 Colophonian elites, who having learned useless luxury from the Lydians, parade around the agora in purples robes and perfume. 50 Radet (1893: 171, 212-213) traces a shift in policy in Lydian international relations from Gyges’ attempts to form alliances, as with Ephesus, to Croesus’ bid for all out hegemonic governance and provincialization of conquered (Greek) polities. As we’ve seen the evidence for provincialization in Ionia is megre (Ephesus). Nicolas of Damascus (fr. 45) recounts how Croesus was archon in Adramytteion, which Talamo (1979: 96, 145) takes as a sign of Lydian imperial consolidation and centralization. Talamo also argues, however, that Mermnad interest in this area of northwestern Asia Minor was due to its mineral resources, which could mean that this region received special, royal treatment, as it were.


16

What this means is that we cannot expect the Lydians to have had anything like a

single empire-wide policy on coinage, or a veto in the negotiations over coinage taking

place within a polis like Miletus. This is not to say that the Lydians would not have had

some indirect influence--Lydian pressures were significant and worrisome and no doubt

influenced a host of important decisions—but that direct efforts in orchestrating an Ionian

monetary union such as the one proposed by Georges Le Rider, for example, or

interfering in it, seems improbable given their apparent hands-off administrative

approach to their conquests.51 There was distance then between the centers of negotiation

administratively and geographically, with the Lydians doing their own thing monetarily,

and the rest doing theirs as well.

2.3 The Framework

My key assumptions so far are: 1) individuals, especially elites possessed access

to precious metals, including mines, and the rights to dispense of these metals as they saw

fit, including minting coins; 2) archaic polities in western Asia Minor were not fixed

entities but rather were in a process of expanding and centralizing power, which at the

stage that concerns us (c. 625-550 BCE) was primarily in the hands of monarchs.

I assume as well that both parties, rulers and elites, had a vested interest in the

control over the access to precious metals and the production of coinage. Elites sought to

maintain their rights, while rulers sought to expand their control over these rights for their

own purposes. There would be conflict, with the outcome, it would seem, favoring the

monarch. However, political observers from antiquity on have noted the particular

precariousness of monarchy as opposed to more collective forms of rule like oligarchies

and democracies.52 Few monarchs, whether good kings or bad tyrants, can survive for

long without making selective strategies to survive by repressing some groups and

fostering the loyalty of others.53 Elites either as a group or individually present a

distinctive threat to rule and so make a special target for repression, coercion or

51 Le Rider 2001: 51, 81-82. 52 On the precariousness of ancient tyrannies see Aristotle Pol. 5.1312b9-32. For more modern cases see Acemoglu and Robinson 2005. 53 As Nicolas of Damascus notes (fr. 47.8), Gyges is a case in point: in the initial uproar after he took rule he killed off some of his enemies and won over others with gifts.


17

cultivation. How monarchs chose to deal with elites would thus play a role, not only in

the ruler’s ultimate survival, but also in how the rights over precious metal and coinage

would be handled. Certainly there were some elites that a monarch could not hope to

repress or coerce without endangering themselves. Able to evade the monarch’s wishes

by means of their own financial or military resources, and so possessing strong

bargaining power, these were the elites the monarch would have to cultivate. Part of

doing so would be demonstrating a credible commitment to respecting their property

rights, which might entail these elites retaining their right to coin, for example, or being

offered other lucrative concessions for these rights. As I conceive it, the attempt to

monopolize coinage by the state qua monarch was mired in a bargaining problem

between the monarch and powerful elites. We can expect that at any given moment the

bargaining outcomes varied, perhaps significantly, based on the personalities involved

and their number, the economic and political climate, and the time horizon and iterations

of bargaining episodes: some elites were co-opted by the regime, some held out; some

gave up their rights, other didn’t. As a component part of state formation, we can frame

this bargaining problem over rights as a multi-tiered, multi-player on-going game, rather

than a singular, one-time event. And, if each polity was the site of one game, and we

consider the number of polities across Asia Minor, then at any given moment the

variations and complexities in bargaining outcomes throughout the region grew

appreciably. The varieties of outcomes, I suggest, is reflected in the variety of early

electrum coinage.

At the same time, monarchs would be engaged in negotiations of a different sort

with the users of the coins that they themselves produced. Given the potential to

overvalue electrum coinage to a significant degree, monarchs might certainly have

viewed coins as a tool well suited to enhance their revenues. This was a potential cause of

conflict with the users of the coins, who were not necessarily elites, and who, if they felt

the “tax” was unnecessarily high or unfair, might withdraw from using the coins, at least

at their notional values, and even from supporting the regime.

Margaret Levi’s predatory theory of rule provides a simple and useful framework

that provides further insight into how our monarchs might have behaved.54 Levi assumes

54 Levi 1981; 1988.


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that all individuals are rational and self-interested, and that most rulers will maximize

wealth and power. When trying to maximize their revenues, rulers face constraints

imposed by their bargaining power with those whom they seek to tax, by the transaction

costs of measuring and monitoring what they seek to tax, and by discount rates, which

refers to the time horizon of a decision making ruler. When future payout is uncertain, a

rational ruler prefers present income to future income. “In other words,” as Andrew

Monson has nicely summarized it, “the present value of future income equals its expected

value minus a discount rate, which varies by circumstances. While a different taxation

policy might stimulate productivity and create higher future revenue, a high discount rate

would favor one that maximized short-term revenue.”55 Levi hypothesizes as well that

there is a correlation between taxation and political stability: more stable regimes have

lower discount rates, less stable regimes higher rates.

With this framework at hand, we shall now consider the historical situation more

closely.

3.1 Lydia We know very little for certain about the beginnings of the Mermnad dynasty.

Herodotus and Plato paint an implausible picture of sexual misconduct, deception and

intrigue, mostly taking place behind closed bedroom doors.56 Whatever the actual details,

Gyges in some fashion won out in a competition between competing elites or elite-led

factions and seized power. The sources give some hints about considerable turmoil

afterwards, with Gyges moving to consolidate his rule through both violence and

beneficence, with him facing an assembly of some sort, and ultimately with him seeking

approval from the oracle at Delphi.57 Whatever reservations there might have been about

the legitimacy of his rule, some degree of early political success may be due to

Cimmerian pressures during his reign and that of his son Ardys encouraging the Lydians

to rally around their chief in the face of outside threats. And these threats were serious

indeed, leading Gyges to appeal desperately to the Assyrians for help and make himself

55 Monson 2007. 56 Hdt. 1.8-13; Plato, Rep. 2.359c-e; cf. Nicolas of Damascus fr. 47. 57 Hdt. 1.13; Nicolas of Damascus fr. 47.


19

their tribute-paying vassal; when he later threw off the Assyrian yoke Sardis was sacked

by the Cimmerians and Gyges suffered a cruel death.58

The Mermnads then got off to something of a rocky start, and though fated to fail

completely as Herodotus (1.13) reminds us, they nonetheless had tremendous staying

power. Gyges was the first to be called a tyrant, a form of rule later known for its

instability, but even so he instigated a dynasty that proved to be far more resilient and

longer lasting than most any comparable Greek tyranny.59 In their final acts, under

Alyattes and Croesus, the Mermnads consolidated an extensive empire, finally bringing

the Greeks cities to heel, built a monumental imperial capital at Sardis, established a

brotherhood with other Near Easter empires, and made outlandish dedications and gifts to

foreign sanctuaries, peoples and dignitaries.60 From Gyges to Croesus, the path of

Mermnad state formation shows a continually increasing and ever deepening state

capacity to administer the building of wealth and manage high stakes foreign relations.61

In the process they also seem to have swayed many Lydian elites to join in the “imagined

community” of the Empire they were crafting.62 This latter achievement is all the more

remarkable if we consider the sizeable internal opposition to their rule the Mermnads

likely faced at nearly every turn on their path to greatness.

Lydian social and political structure has frequently been described as “feudal”.63

The Lydian heartland was divided into vast privately owned estates,64 and it was the great

wealth derived from these estates, and probably mines as well, that gave landowning

elites the means to display their wealth through the 600 or so monumental tumuli that dot

the landscape and the rich grave offerings that they placed inside.65 There were as well

less benign uses for their wealth: it allowed them to make sizeable contributions to

58 Strabo 1.3.21, 13.4.8, 14.1.40; Assurbanipal Prisma A II, 16; Prisma E; like his father, Ardys also became an Assyrian ‘servant’: Rasam Cylinder col. II, Z.111-125. 59 Archilochus fr. 19; on the instability of tyranny: Aristotle Pol. 5.1312b9-32. 60 Imperial Sardis: Roosevelt 2009: 64-65; relations with Egypt and Babylon: Hdt. 1.77; dedications and gifts: Hdt. I.14, 25, 50, 52, 54, 69, 92. 61 Talamo 1979: chp. 7. 62 Benedict Anderson’s (1991) famous notion of “imagined communities,” that is the idea of a nation as a community socially constructed by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group, does not seem far out of place here. 63 Talamo 1979: chp. 7; Roosevelt 2009: 85, 120, 192. 64 Roosevelt 2009: 85, 112, 192; the inscription of Mnesimachos from Sardis, dated c. 200 BCE, gives us insight into the territorial extent and revenues that could be derived from elite estates (Sardis VII 1, 1). 65 Roosevelt 2009: chp. 6.


20

favored parties in regional conflicts, and to assemble contingents of fighting men,

nominally for the monarch’s use when called, but presumably for their own use if

needed.66 Powerful in gold and arms, these elites could be dangerous political

competitors, as the episode of Pantaleon reminds us: with the support of a wealthy elite,

Sadyattes, Pantaleon, Croesus’ half brother, challenged his rule, but was put down, with

Sadyattes brutally executed.67

But, if we read this episode against the backdrop of Bin Tepe, the vast plain of

elite tumuli stretching before Sardis, we can see indications that Croesus’ relative

bargaining power among the elites was quite strong, far stronger than it had been with

Gyges at the beginning of his rein. Sometime after Alyattes’ massive tumulus appeared

on the plain, others of various sizes did as well, many of which were likely the burials of

elites not directly related to the royal family. Roosevelt has underscored the ideological

component of these tumuli, noting how they represent elite emulation of and alignment

with the Mermnads.68 If this practice was in full swing before the fall of the Mermnads,

we might think of the tumuli as a symbol of extensive elite unity, which no doubt was the

result of years of successful bargaining on the part of the Mermnads, but also perhaps due

to the Lydian elites’ eventual approval of and willingness to participate in the creation of

the greatest, richest, and most powerful state west of the Halys. On some level we might

see Mermnad state formation as also national building, an attempt to create and describe

a singular Lydian-ness for themselves and their neighbors, which symbolic ends

monumental tumuli, stupendous dedications, and even coinage might have served.

Croesus’ brutal suppression of Sadyattes, if there is any historicity to it, could be a sign

that Croesus had enough support among the (tumuli-building?) elites generally that no

outcry or blowback for these actions was expected. At this stage, with strong state

66 Alcaeus (fr. 116) recounts how “the Lydians”, possibly individual elites, gave 2000 staters to a faction involved in political disputes at Mytliene. Nicolas of Damascus (fr. 65) relates how Croesus, then archon at Adramytteion, along with other elites were summoned by Alyattes to bring forces for a campaign against the Carians. Croesus, however, had wasted the money needed to raise his contingent and so sought a loan from Sadyattes, a wealthy elite. 67 Hdt. 1.92; Nicolas of Damascus fr. 65; Plut. De Herod. Malig. 18 (858 E); from this evidence Radet (1893: 206) constructed the unlikely scenario of warring factions, a “national” party around Croesus, and a “revolutionary” party around Pantaleon. 68 Roosevelt 2009: 148, 183. While Roosevelt notes that the majority of the tumuli appear to date from the Persian period, he does leave open the possibility that some number of the tumuli had been constructed before the fall of the Mermnads.


21

capacity underneath them and a mostly mollified elite around them, the Mermnads were,

after nearly 150 years of practice, on top of their game.

Let us now turn to my framework and coinage. The basic trajectory of Lydian

political history suggests that overtime, from Gyges to Croesus, as state capacity

increased, so too did political stability along with general elite consent to Mermnad rule.

The clearest indicator of stability and consent is the fact that Mermnad rule lasted nearly

a century and a half, and was brought down not by internal dissent but by an

overwhelming foreign army, the Persian forces under Cyrus. By the time of Croesus, the

Mermnads might well have achieved monopolization over coin production, not so much

by decree, but by default. As Mermnad capacity increased, the individual rights to coin

probably lost monetary and political value over time. As their capacity increased, so did

the Mermnads’ ability to guarantee their own coins as a basic monetary function, but

more importantly to encourage their use in a larger number of transactions and across a

larger portion of its territory. At some point this capacity will have greatly surpassed that

of any individual elite or even coalition of elites to do the same with the result that using

Mermnad coinage will have become more attractive to rational elites than producing their

own coins; the greater the number of those who joined in using Mermnad coinage, the

greater the effect. In this competition of currencies, and competition of elites, the

Mermnads won out.69

One other effect of increasing capacity and stability may have been the eventual

abandonment of electrum coinage by the Mermnads and the introduction, traditionally

under Croesus, of separate gold and silver coinages.70 If electrum coinage had been used

to generate revenue through overvaluation, the long-term effects of this tax may

eventually have been politically detrimental. Increased political stability would, in Levi’s

model, see a correlating lowering of discount rates, and a subsequent change in internal

taxation policies.71 Initial steps to reduce adverse reactions to overvaluation may have

been the standardization of the gold-silver alloy found in Mermnad electrum coins as an

69 See Cohen (1998, 1999) for ways in which competition between modern currencies both shapes and is shaped by internal and external state politics. 70 Hdt. 1.94; Le Rider 2001: 110; Cahill and Kroll 2005. 71 A change in internal Lydian taxation would be greatly facilitated by their ability, by the time of Croesus, to shift the burden externally, to their tributary subjects, with the result of further appeasing any internal Lydian resistance.


22

attempt to offer greater transparency and regularization of value from coin to coin.72 Even

this, it would seem was not enough. With the introduction of the croesids the Mermnads

abandoned any intention of using coinage per se as a significant source of revenue, if they

ever had, and instead focused on coinage as a means of lubricating their transactions.

This action on their part would have had the secondary effect of quickly deflating any

continuing attempts by Lydian elites to produce their own electrum coins, and would

have influenced other polities to follow suit.

3.2 The Greek Poleis Five Greek poleis in (or near) Asia Minor, Cyzicus, Ephesus, Miletus, Phocaea,

and Samos, have been identified as producing electrum coinages before the middle of the

6th century BCE.73 Of these, we know nothing of the political histories of Cyzicus or

Phocaea during this period. The Samians, protected from Lydian incursion by the water

surrounded their island and their ships, apparently took as much pleasure in taunting the

Lydians as they did in despoiling their neighbors.74 Safe from the added pressure of

Lydian raids, the Samians could concentrate on their own serious internal political

conflicts and succession of tyrannies all throughout the 7th-6th centuries.75 The Milesians

had no such luxury. In addition to their enduring enmity with the Samians, they also were

the object of a multi-generational attempt by the Lydians to conquer them, which finally

72 Metallurgical analysis of Mermnad coins has shown a remarkably consistent alloy containing c. 54% gold (Cowell and Hyne 1998), which stands in stark contrast to the highly variable alloys noted in other electrum coinages (Konuk 2005). Furtwängler (2011: 17) has suggested that this low gold content, and the Mermnads’ ability to enforce its acceptance, incentivized private producers to yield readily to Mermnad production since the profits to be had with the royal coinage were much higher than they otherwise would have been with private production. 73 Cf. SNG Kayhan. 74 Hdt. 1.70: Samians seize at sea a bowl sent to Croesus by the Spartans; 3.48: Samians seize boys sent to Alyattes by the Corinthians; 3.39.4: Polykrates indiscriminatingly raiding neighbors. See also Syll.3 10, a dedication of Aiakes of Samos c. 500, about which Kurke (1999: 128, n.61, quoting Barron 1964: 214, n.4) notes: “’We may recall here the Samian practice of issuing Letters of Marque (sylai), apparently in the name of Hera, to judge by the dedicatory inscription of Aiakes (SIG 10)…Aiakes was evidently a relative of the tyrants who dedicated a tithe of the proceeds of his duties as epistates sylon. The office may have been hereditary in the family, hence the recurrent name Syloson.’ If Polykrates’ family did indeed enjoy hereditary rights of syle, we might again see to koinon peeking out behind the aristocratic representation of Polykrates as pirate and looter of philoi.” 75 Plutarch (Mor. 303e-304c) indicates that Samos in the 7th century BCE was ruled by an oligarchy of wealthy landowners (the geomoroi) following the murder of the monarch Demoteles; see Shipley 1987: 39-41. A succession of tyrants began in the 590s with Syloson I and continued unbroken until the demise of Polycrates in 522; see Shipley 1987: 70-72.


23

ended with the treaty of symmachia and xenia c. 595 BCE between Alyattes and the

tyrant Thrasyboulos noted earlier (n.48). Not too long thereafter the Milesians suffered a

multi-generational internal stasis that was only resolved by Parian arbitration and the

establishment of an oligarchy.76 The Ephesians, by contrast, appear to have had a more

stable political history, but suffered under a rather vicious series of tyrannies in the later

7th and early 6th centuries.77

Compared to the Lydians, the Greek cities as a whole, and indeed not just the

handful noted here, followed a much more fitful and overall less successful path of state

formation in this period. The much higher rate of political turn-over in these cities than in

Lydia underscores how highly tenuous their tyrannies and oligarchies were, which meant

that the rulers would generally have had much weaker bargaining powers with their

political competitors than did Croesus with his, for example. Furthermore, greater

instability, again in Levi’s model, would correlate with higher discount rates and more

despotic means of generating revenue.

Aside from the great mass of unattributed electrum issues, additional numismatic

evidence for weak bargaining powers might be found in the famed issue of Phanes, a

Greek elite whose coinage, perhaps incorrectly, has been associated with Ephesus.

Whichever polis Phanes called home, he clearly had the means and will to do as he

pleased monetarily regardless of the political situation there.78 The case of Samos, on the

other hand, might provide evidence of high discount rates. Konuk (2005) has noted the

addition of copper to Samian electrum coins in an attempt, presumably furtive, to hide

debasement. There are as well a number of lead coins from Samos, most recently studied

by Furtwängler (2010), that have been long been associated with the plated coins

Polycrates used, so Herodotus (3.56) tells us, to buy off the besieging Spartans. 76 Like Samos, Miletus was likely ruled by an oligarchy in 7th century prior to the ascent of Thrasybuolos sometime before 600 BCE (Gorman 2001: 101–21). Plutarch (Mor. 298c–d) indicates that two further tyrants, Thoas and Damasenor, followed Thrasyboulos, and then the period of stasis between two factions called the aeinautai and the cheiromachai. Cf. Hdt. 5.28-30. 77 The Suda notes that the first Ephesian tyrant on record, Pythagoras (s.v.; c. 7th century?), raped, pillaged and killed the demos indiscriminately after overthrowing the Basilidae. Aelian (Var. Hist. 3.26) relates that “Pindarus, the son of Melas and grandson of Alyattes the Lydian, took over the tyranny in Ephesus and though he was harsh and unrelenting as far as punishment was concerned, in other respects he seemed wise and devoted to the city; tricked his uncle Croesus when he attacked the city.” It is unclear if Melas was related to Pythagoras. 78 Konuk 2012: 47; Rebuffat 2000.


24

Furtwängler suggests that at least two series of lead coins, Series I and II, predate

Polycrates by several decades; he suggests as well that these served as some type of state

Obligationsprägungen, a type of debt marker analogous to the iron coins issued by the

Clazomenaeans to pay off a public debt.79 Less generously we might also view these like

the tin coins issued by the tyrant Dionysios I of Syracuse and foisted on the demos with

no intention to back their notational value with any sort of guarantee, in other words, at

the highest discount rate possible.80

Conclusions Current approaches to “the state” in discussions of early electrum coinage have

several shortcomings, among which are a tendencies to view it as something fixed, fully

developed, capable, and detached from its immediate historical and social contexts. The

alternative view that I present here focuses on the state as a developmental process

situated squarely within the societies of archaic Asia Minor. In seeking to explain the

relationship between the developing state and coinage, I have adopted a framework that

considers the microfoundational aspects of monopolization, that is to say, the personal

and political relationships between the primary state actors, i.e., the monarchs, and their

elite competitors and subjects. Although individual monarchs may have desired to

monopolize coin production, their ability to do so was dependent on their bargaining

power with these competitors and subjects. The role of the state vis-à-vis early electrum

coinage that we see emerging from this framework is consequently highly particularized,

fluid and in some cases unresolved. While I view the state qua monarch as primarily

predatory, rapacity could be tempered by long-term political stability, as may have been

the case ultimately with the Croesus.

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