The Functions of the Emergency Coinages of the Peloponnesian War

Abstract

Near the end of the Peloponnesian War Athens began to mint both gold and bronze coins. It is generally recognized that these new coinages were issued because the city's reserves of silver had been almost completely exhausted *?). Few scholars, however, have undertaken to explain why two new issues were needed. Recently, Victor Ehrenberg has proposed the view that the gold coinage ' 'proved of little effect, mainly, we may assume, because Athens was accustomed only to silver coinage, and gold coins could not replace the smaller pieces. Therefore a year later a real emergency money was minted, thinly plated bronze coins, which took the place of the silver coins of the same size and value 2). I shall try to show, however, that gold continued to be minted and employed by the magistrates of Athens even after the introduction of bronze and that the two issues had distinct functions: the gold served as foreign exchange, the bronze as a token coinage for domestic use.