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The Aegean coastlands under threat: Some coins and coin hoards from the reign of Heraclius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2013

D. M. Metcalf
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Extract

The new Rome inherited from the old a strategic situation in the Mediterranean world that was essentially similar at the beginning of the seventh century to what it had been in the first. Persia, vetus hostis, was still a threat in the east, while in the north there was the less organized but no less persistent threat of migratory peoples pressing across the Danube. By the middle of the seventh century the Byzantine supremacy in the east Mediterranean had been destroyed, and a profound reshaping of the state had been set in train. In discussing some coins and coin hoards from the reign of Heraclius (610–41), I wish to draw attention to the place of the Aegean coastlands in the regional economy of the Byzantine Empire as it was before the Arab expansion. The revival of commerce in the provinces in the ninth century seems to have begun in the coastal cities of the Aegean: this prompts an inquiry into their importance in the sixth and seventh centuries.

The second and third decades of the seventh century were a time of disaster for the Empire, when it was attacked from both the east and the north. The Persian armies conquered Syria in 611 and thereafter were able to make incursions into western Asia Minor, on occasion reaching as far as the shores of the Bosporus. Thomas Presbyter records that they carried captives away from Rhodes, while in the same year the Slavs invaded Crete. The Miracula S. Demetrii gives a graphic account of a naval blockade of Salonica by the Slavs and mentions sea raids on the whole of Thessaly and near-by places and the Greek islands which depopulated many cities and regions. The Avars, in alliance with Slavs, Bulgars, and Gepids, besieged Constantinople itself by land and sea, while the Persians occupied Chalcedon. The records of events in the first part of the reign of Heraclius are fragmentary in the extreme, and the chronology in particular has been the subject of much debate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 57 , November 1962 , pp. 14 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1962

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References

1 Ostrogorsky, G., ‘The Byzantine Empire in the World of the Seventh Century’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers xiii (1959) 1 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Metcalf, D. M., ‘The New Bronze Coinage of Theophilus and the Growth of the Balkan Themes’, American Numismatic Society Museum Notes x (1961) 95.Google Scholar

3 Ostrogorsky, G., tr. by Hussey, J., History of the Byzantine State (Oxford, 1956) 77 ff. and 83 ff.Google Scholar

4 I am indebted to Mr. R. Stroud for information about the Solomos hoard, which he hopes to be able to publish. The Thasos hoard of 1923 was discovered in the excavation of the Dionysion by the French School; see BCH xlvii (1923) 504. Mrs. Varoukha-Khristodhoulopoulou kindly made the Nea Ankhialos and Khalkis hoards available to me for study; they are published in the Appendix, where there is a note on the Athens hoard, which is also in the Greek National Numismatic Collection. For the Lesbos treasure, see BCH lxxix (1955) 284 ff., and for the two Aydin hoards, see Grierson, P., ‘Solidi of Phocas and Heraclius: the Chronological Framework’, Numismatic Chronicle 6 xix (1959) 131 ff.Google Scholar The Rhodes hoard of 1932 is listed in Mosser, S. McA., A Bibliography of Byzantine Coin Hoards (New York, 1935)Google Scholar. The date of deposit of a hoard can be determined, on the evidence of the coins themselves, only within a range of years. The terminus a quo must, without doubt or exception, be somewhat later than the date of issue of the latest coin that was in the deposit, and is subject only to any uncertainties in the dating of that coin; the terminus ad quem has to be estimated from the character of the deposit, in comparison with other similar ones and with regard to mint-history and monetary circulation, and cannot be other than a subjective approximation. The two termini provide a date-bracket which can be written down as, for example, January 613–c. 616. A hoard must ordinarily have a tight age-structure for its deposit to be placed with any confidence in a narrow bracket of dates. It is almost always difficult to assess the age-structure of a hoard of gold coins, which are not dated. The probability with which any deposit can be associated with a particular historical event depends partly on its character and circumstances of concealment but above all on how narrowly its date-bracket can be determined on the evidence of the coins themselves.

5 Isidorus Hispalensis, Chronica Majora, ed. Mommsen, Mon. Germ. Hist. Auctorum Antiquiss. xi 479.

6 Coins of Year 5 signed TЄS are rare. There is one illustrated in Tolstoi, J., Monnaies Byzantines (St. Petersburg, 1913–1914)Google Scholar.

7 The account given by Sebeos is neither detailed nor circumstantial. See Macler, F., Histoire d'Héraclius par l'evêque Sebêos traduite de l'Arménien et annotée (Paris, 1904) 77.Google Scholar

8 Bell, H. W., Sardis, Publication of the American Society for the Excavation of Sardis, xi, Coins, Part I, 1910–14 (Leyden, 1916)Google Scholar.

9 Leuthold, E., ‘Monete bizantine rinvenute in Siria’, Rivista Italiana di Numismatica 5 i (1952–1953) 31–49.Google Scholar

10 Metcalf, D. M., ‘Organization of the Constantinople Mint for the Follis of the Anastasian Reforms’, Numismatic Chronicle 6 xxi (1961) 131–43.Google Scholar

11 Ibid.

12 The figures are taken from Antioch-on-the-Orontes, iv, Part 2, Waage, D. M., Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Crusaders' Coins (1952)Google Scholar; Cox, D. H., Coins from the Excavations at Curium (New York, 1959)Google Scholar; The Athenian Agora, ii, Thompson, M., Coins from the Roman through the Venetian Period (1954).Google Scholar

13 Metcalf, D. M., ‘Statistische Analyse bei der Auswertung von Münzfundmaterialen’, Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte ix (1958) 187–96.Google Scholar

14 See Numismatic Chronicle 6 xxi (1961) 131–43.

15 See Catalogue of Deposits.

16 Metcalf, D. M., ‘The Slavonic Threat to Greece circa 580: some Evidence from Athens’, Hesperia (1962) 134 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Bell, nos. 731 and 782.

18 Work at Sardis was begun again in 1958, and further coins, the latest being of Heraclius, have been found. See AJA (1960) 67.

19 A small but interesting hoard of gold coins found at Beth-Shan was dated by a piece struck after January 613. See Fitzgerald, G. M., A Sixth-Century Monastery at Beth-Shan (Scythopolis) (1939).Google Scholar

20 The hoards were published by Lambert, C., in ‘A Hoard of Byzantine Coins’, Quarterly of the Dept. of Antiquities of Palestine i (1931) 55 ff.Google Scholar, and Baramki, J., ‘A Hoard of Byzantine Coins’, Quarterly of the Dept. of Antiquities of Palestine, viii (1938–9) 81 ff.Google Scholar

21 Five coins of Justinian were found adhering together with one of Tiberius, described as of Year ΙΙ. The date of this piece should probably have been interpreted as Year 8, 581–2; cf. BMC 35 ff. See ‘The Coins’, by Fitzgerald, G. M., in Crowfoot, J. W., Excavations in the Tyropoeon Valley, Jerusalem, 1927 (Palestine Exploration Fund Annual, 1927) (1929) 203 ff., nos. 197 and 205.Google Scholar

22 See Studii şi Cercetări de Numismatică i (1957) 189 ff.; ibid. ii (1958) 413 ff.; Monatsblatt der Numismatischen Gesellschaft in Wien x (1917) 235 f.; Journal International d'Archéologie Numismatique xii (1909–10) 6 ff.; Hesperia xxiv (1955) 117 and 136; ibid. xxx (1962), in press.

23 Leuthold, op. cit., speaks of rapid inflation at this time.

24 There were two Salonican coins out of eleven of Heraclius found in the period 1896–1929.

25 A proportion of the Athens finds of Heraclian coins may have been lost in 662–3, when Constans stayed in the city with an army. Cf. Charanis, P., ‘The Significance of Coins as Evidence for the History of Athens and Corinth in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries’, Historia iv (1955) 163 ff.Google Scholar

26 Metcalf, D. M., ‘The Byzantine Bronze Coinage in the East Mediterranean World’, Congresso Internazionale di Numismatica, Roma 11–16 Settembre 1961, vol. II, Rapporti (Rome 1962) 134 ff.Google Scholar

27 Note the follis described as of Year ΙΙ, in Ratto, R., Monnaies Byzantines (sale catalogue of 9 Dec. 1930) (Lugano) no. 1428.Google Scholar The piece is restruck, and the restriking is not very thorough on the part of the flan where the date appears. It is probably Year 5; cf. no. 1429.

28 Duplessy, J. and Metcalf, D. M., ‘Le trésor de Samos et la circulation monétaire en Orient latin aux XIIe–XIIIe siècles’, Revue Belge de Numismatique cviii (1962)Google Scholar in press.

29 There were two such coins in the Topalu hoard (deposited after 561), one in the Costineşti hoard (deposited after 574, if indeed the coins were associated), 6 in the Voineşti hoard (deposited after 662?), and 2 in the Constanţa hoard 1938 (deposit after c. 670). See Studii şi Cercetări de Numismatică i (1957) 189 ff. Dimian's attribution of pentanummia to Alexandria (ibid. 192) is unsupported and contrary to the views held by other scholars.

30 If the Sardis finds had been published in the summary fashion that has become increasingly usual since Bell's monograph appeared, the distinction between normal and ‘eastern’ issues might have escaped record, and the points of interest noted above could not have been made. When Byzantine bronze coins are to be published, anything less than a careful description, piece by piece, is likely to be so inadequate as to make very little contribution to the progress of research. Bell's catalogue gives a separate description of each coin, and records its exact provenance by referring to the square of the excavation grid, the level, and the date of discovery. Nothing less is satisfactory. Note how the details may be of interest: ‘the ‘eastern’ coin of Year 5 was found in square 835; from square 838 came a Cyzicene coin with the unusual officina-mark Γ. Two coins both found in square I. 920, of Years 3 and 3–5, may reflect another loss on the same occasions as that with which the larger deposits are to be associated.

31 Grierson, P., ‘Solidi of Phocas and Heraclius: the Chronological Framework’, Num. Chron. (1959) 131 ff.Google Scholar; ibid., ‘The Isaurian Mints of Heraclius, an Episode in the Persian War’, Atti dello VIII Congresso Internazionale di Studi Bizantini, Palermo 1951 (Rome 1953) I 375 f.