AEGINA (ATTICA, AEGEAN)

Description

Aegina minted what are probably the oldest silver coins in Greece. In doing so, it created a world currency, the stater, which spread throughout the Mediterranean world. This coin dates from the early 5th century B.C., when the island was at the height of its power.

Aegina, a small island in the Saronic Gulf off the coast of Attica, began minting coins as early as the 6th century B.C. Aeginetic staters are coins with a standard weight averaging 12.3 g and a value of two Aeginetic drachmae. The Athenian drachma, by contrast, had a standard weight of 4.3 g and its standard denomination was the tetradrachm piece bearing Athena and an owl. The Aeginetic coin standard took hold throughout the Peloponnese, Central Greece and the Aegean islands, even as far as the Caria of Asia Minor. This attests to Aegina’s success in overseas trade, one of the main reasons for which was its inhabitants’ control of much of the grain trade from Egypt and the Black Sea. Not by chance did Pericles call the island the “eyesore of the Piraeus” – at least until Athens rose to become the hegemonic power in the region in 456 B.C., when it conquered Aegina and forced it to join the Attic-Delian League.

Until 456 B.C., the obverse of Aegina’s coins bore a sea turtle and the reverse a small square punch mark or incuse square containing a raised pattern. Aegina barely changed the appearance of its coins over the years. While those produced after 404 B.C. featured a tortoise instead of a turtle, the irregular incuse squares on coins minted as late as the 4th century B.C. still harked back to the oldest staters dating from two hundred years earlier.