John H.

Kroll*
Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered
in the Athenian Agora
(PI. Ill)
Summary. Preliminary report on a ca. 400-piece hoard of 4th-century pi-style
tetradrachms excavated in 2005 from beneath the floor of a public office in the Athenian Agora,
together with publication of two other notable Athenian tetradrachms from the recent
excavations. One of these tetradrachms belongs to the earliest 4th-century coinage to depict
Athena with a profile eye. It is proposed that this early profile-eye coinage began probably in the
380s or 370s and was replaced by the mechanical and hastily struck pi-style silver in the later
350s.
Rsum. Un trsor d'environ 400 ttradrachmes attiques du IVe s. (style pi) trouv en
2005 lors de la fouille d'un btiment public de l'Agora athnienne et deux remarquables
ttradrachmes exhums aussi lors de fouilles rcentes l'Agora font l'objet du prsent article.
Un de ces ttradrachmes se rattache au monnayage du dbut du IVe s., avec une Athna dont l'il
est figur de profil. Le premier monnayage avec l'il de profil date probablement des annes
380-370 et a t remplac par l'argent de style pi frapp de manire nglige et mcanique dans
les annes 350.

'

Since the publication of The Athenian Agora, XXVI: The Greek Coins, a
little more than a decade ago, by far the most significant numismatic finds in
the continuing Agora excavations have been three involving Old Style Athenian
tetradrachms. What better occasion for announcing them than in this volume
honoring Hlne Nicolet-Pierre, who has devoted so much of her scholarship
to the study of Athenian silver coinage and has enriched its understanding
immeasurably.
The most spectacular of these Agora discoveries is the most recent: a major
hoard of tetradrachms of the second half of the 4th century B.C. that was
recovered in July, 2005, from beneath the dirt floor of a building just south of
the Tholos in the SE corner of the Agora square. Located in the area of the
Athenian offices known as the Archeia, the structure is the one tentatively
identified on plans of the Agora as the Strategeion, the headquarters of Athens'
ten generals. Apart from 46 coins lying loose at the top of the hoard, the main
* 104A Woodstock Rd., Oxford, OX2 7NE, UK
1 On the Strategeion, Wycherlhy 1957, pp. 127 and 174; Thompson / Wycherley 1972,
pp. 73-74.
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John H. Kroll

body of the deposit was recovered in a great concreted mass, having been
buried, probably in a sack, in a concave pit below the floor. As the Agora
conservators at the time of this writing had only begun the glacial task of
separating the coins from the corroded mass, I am here able to give only a few
preliminary observations.
To judge from its total weight (6.280 g), the hoard contains about 400-420
tetradrachms. So far as can be seen from the loose coins and the coins exposed
on the outer surface of the mass, the tetradrachms are exclusively of the
common pi-style variety, a coinage that is characterized by the -shaped tendril
ornament on Athena's helmet, and by owls with heavily fringed and freneticlooking heads. Two partially cleaned specimens from the hoard are illustrated
in PI. Ill, 1-2.
One of the most massively minted coinages in Athenian numismatic history,
the hastily struck pi-style silver is well represented in other sizable hoards, such
as Delos 1910 (IGCH 110: 50 tetradrachms), Piraeus 1938 (CH 3, 27: 100
tetradrachms), and Thorikos 1969 (IGCH 134: 282 tetradrachms, with a pistyle gold stater of the early 3rd century and 4 regal Macedonian coins). From
the Thorikos hoard and supporting numismatic and historical considerations,
the coinage is known to have come to an end in 294. 2 Copied in pseudoAthenian tetradrachms minted in Egypt beginning in the late 340s, 3 there are
good reasons to think that the coinage commenced near the middle of the 4th
century. 4 Its huge scale, monotonous, mechanical die-engraving, and careless,
slapdash minting reflect the tremendous success of the program associated
with the statesman Euboulos to restore the Laurion silver mining industry to
5th-century levels of productivity. Writing in 355, Xenophon complained
(Poroi 4.28) that at that time the industry had been operating far below its
potential. A decade later, however, the situation had been totally reversed:
inscriptions pertaining to the leasing of mines indicate that by the mid 340s
silver exploration and extraction had risen to peak levels. 5 Full study of the new
Agora hoard should clarify its chronological position in the long, half-century
mintage of this vast, internationally circulating coinage. Irini Marathanki, the
current numismatist at the Agora, is undertaking the die-study and publication.
The two other tetradrachm discoveries since the early 1990s are of single
coins, both found, outside of significant archaeological contexts, in the on-

2 Nicolet-Pierre / Kroll 1990, pp. 2-3. Kroll 1993, p. 10.

3 Nicolet-Pierre 1979. van Alfen 2002A, pp. 24-31, pi. 120-121, 125-131.
4 Kroll 1993, p. 8. Publication of the incomplete and only partially legible nomothetic law
of 354/3 (1975 Agora inscription I 7495) by M. Richardson and J. Camp will do much to advance
knowledge of the reforms pertaining to the Athenian silver industry at this time. The preliminary
text that Richardson presented at the 1997 meeting of the American Philological Association in
Chicago refers inter alia to the exchanging of silver coins in the Agora, the receiving back of
(recoined?) silver from the mint, unminted silver, furnaces, and the refining of silver.
5 Aperghis 1997-98, pp. 17-19.
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Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora

59

going excavations to the north of the Agora square proper. 6

One is a tetradrachm from Athens' earliest owl coinage (PI. Ill, 3). 7
Although heavily worn and damaged by surface corrosion, the reverse shows
an owl with a plump, compact body that extends out diagonally from the head
in a stance that in the archaic period occurs only in the owls of Seltman 's Group
H. 8 Apart from belonging to this most historic and relatively rare early
Athenian mintage, the coin has the further distinction of being only the second
pre-480 tetradrachm to have shown up in the excavations. 9
Far more noteworthy is the other new tetradrachm (PI. Ill, 4), l(l since it is the
first tetradrachm of its type known to have been found in Attica. Prior to its
discovery, all tetradrachms of this type with known proveniences came from
hoards in Egypt or in Sicily. We must thank Hlne Nicolet herself for
publishing the two largest lots of these tetradrachms: a lot of 14 specimens in
her invaluable paper on the Tell El-Athrib hoard from Egypt ' ' and the still more
important lot of 1 9 fresh tetradrachms from the Lentini, Sicily, hoard that she
published in collaboration with Carmen Arnold-Biucchi. 12 This second lot is so
representative of the many and varied obverse dies of the coinage that it will be
convenient to refer to the coinage collectively as the Lentini-group coinage.
I illustrate eight specimens from the Lentini hoard in PI. Ill, 5-12.
In these hoard publications, Mme Nicolet argued that the tetradrachms in
question were pseudo-Athenian imitations that while copying pi-style
tetradrachms happened to get some details wrong. Obverse eyes are often too
large and are heavily lined. On reverses the alpha of the legend, instead of
beginning at the neck of the owl, opposite the beak, as on pi-style coins,
touches the side of the head. And the flans are wider and less thick than the
chunky flans of the pi-style coins. She proposed that the pieces were probably

6 In excavation section BE, for the location of which see Kroll 1993, pi. 35. Although the
mineralized, dark grey surfaces of both tetradrachms have the appearance of lead, the coins'
weights and the results of several elemental tests confirm that their metal is silver.
7 Inv. 12199 (BE- 1555). 17.24 g, diameter: 24 mm, die axis: 3:00. Recovered 22 June 2000
while cleaning, i.e., outside of a proper archaeological context.
8 Seltman 1924, pp. 189-192, pi. 13-14. Kraay 1976, pp. 60-61, pi. 10, nos. 175-178.
9 The other is Kroll 1993, no. 7 (Seltman Group L).
10 Inv. 12175 (BE- 1531). 17.82 g, diameter: 25 mm, die axis: 9:00. Recovered 28 July
1997, while dismantling a wall.
1 1 Nicolet-Pierre 2001, pp. 185-6 and pi. 5. Other Egyptian hoards with tetradrachms of
this type: Tell el-Maskhouta (ICGH 1649), see Naster 1948, pi. 1.12; and Nahman's hoard ,
van Alfen 2002B, pp. 62-63, pi. 13, nos. 6 and 8 (the latter not being pi-style owing to the
position of the reverse alpha), and possibly 2 and 5, which may be imitations (note the crude,
linear lips of the Athenas). Nicolet-Pierre 1998-1999, pi. 3.7 (SNG Paris-Delepierre, no. 1472)
also comes from Egypt.
12 Nicolet-Pierre / Arnold-Biucchi 2000, pp. 167-171, pis. 18-19. Other Sicilian hoards
with such coins are Contessa {IGCH 2119), see Nicolet-Pierre 1998-99, pi. 3.6; and Manfria
(/GC// 2121). Cf. Nicolet-Pierre 1998-99, pi. 3.6 (Collection Prudente, Catania).
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John H. Kroll

minted in Egypt; those that made their way to Sicily may have been brought
there by itinerant mercenary soldiers. l3
Needless to say, the new Agora tetradrachm complicates this interpretation,
as do some fractional coins of this style that were also recovered from soil of
Attica. In 1 963 Mando Oikonomidou published a small lamp hoard from the
Athenian suburb of Agios Ioannis Rentis that contained 12 triobols and
diobols, at least some of which have Athena heads that appear to have been
produced by the same die-cutters as were responsible for some of the Lentinigroup tetradrachms. '4 The eyes of most of the fractions are relatively large. All
are heavily lined. And the eye of one of the triobols (PI. Ill, 13) is singularly
big and bulbous, precisely like the eye on the Lentini tetradrachm, PI. Ill, 6.
The lamp hoard triobol and diobol, pi. Ill, 13 and 14, both have a distinctive
facial profile that slants down through the tip of the long nose and then cuts
back sharply in a line allowed by a deeply receding chin, just as on the Lentini
tetradrachm PI. Ill, 5. Since this kind of profile is otherwise exceedingly rare,
and since bulging profile eyes are unparalleled anywhere else in Athenian
coinage, the lamp hoard coins should, I believe, be identified as Lentini-group
fractions.
The Attic proveniences of the fractions and the Agora tetradrachm support
the deductions of Colin Kraay, who was the first scholar to draw attention to
tetradrachms of the Lentini type, believing them to be genuinely Athenian. 15 He
assumed that they were the first coins Athens struck after a hiatus in minting
following the Peloponnesian War and noted that they seem to provide a stylistic
bridge between the traditional owl silver of the 5th century and the pi-style
silver of the second half of the 4th century. Salient features are inherited from
the 5th-century owls: flans have the same the same widths and thicknesses;
facial features are large and bold; eyes are outlined; and, on reverses, the
ethnics begin at the side of the owls' heads. On the other hand, the innovations
introduced on the Lentini-type tetradrachms establish precedents that
continued on in the pi coinage. Apart from the conspicuous fully profile eye
given to Athena, we should note the more naturally modeled lips and mouth
that are largely responsible for lending a softer, maidenly aspect to Athena's
face. The helmet ornaments on the Lentini-group obverses approach and
sometimes actually assume the schematic pi-formation of the later coins.
Reverses introduce a newly proportioned owl that is stubbier, more compact,
and designed with a head that is larger and more fringed than the heads of owls
on Athenian silver of the 5th century.
Kraay thought that the coinage began in the late 390s or the 380s, when the
13 Further, Nicolet-Pierre 1998-99, pp. 102-106.
14 Oikonomidou 1963. A thirteenth coin in the hoard is a worn drachm of late 5th-century
type. The hoard is currently on permanent display in the Numismatic Museum, Athens.
15 Kraay 1968, p. 8, pi. IV.5. Kraay 1976, pp. 74-75, 356, pi. 1 1, no. 200. Whence Kroll
1993, p. 8.
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61

Lentini and other Sicilian hoards with the coinage were believed to date. But
more recently Carmen Arnold-Biucchi has explained that the latest Syracusan
coins in these hoards also allow a dating in the 370s or even into the early
360s.16
The lamp with the fractional silver is not much more helpful since it belongs
to a class that dates to the first half but mainly to the second quarter of the 4th
century. n Given the wide range of dating possibilities afforded by this
evidence, it is impossible to feel confident about when coins of Lentini group
began. While a date within a decade after the Peloponnesian War cannot be
absolutely ruled out, a starting date in the second or third decade of the 4th
century seems more probable. 18
But if the coinage did not commence until two or more decades after the
Peloponnesian War, further questions arise. Did Athens not mint any
tetradrachms at all during this protracted period? Or, did the Athenians resume
minting relatively soon after the war but continue to employ the traditional
designs of the late 5th century owls? In that case, the shift to the profile-eye
obverses should probably be understood not as a gesture to merely modernize
the coinage 19 but rather as alteration to give the coinage an easily recognizable
new look so that good new Athenian silver could be readily distinguished from
the many existing forgeries in circulation. 20 To judge from finds in the Agora21
and from the 375/4 Law of Nikophon, 22 forgeries were a problem, and one way
of safeguarding against them would have been by modifying, as governments
do today with paper money, some detail of the existing design.
The next intentional modification of the 4th-century owls occurred with the
slight drop in the position of the alpha in the coins' ethnic. The adjustment
marks the beginning of the pi-style silver proper and is hard to explain except
as a means for distinguishing the new pi silver from the preceding Lentinigroup coinage and any existing counterfeits that might have been based on it.
If so, one has to wonder whether the introduction of the pi-style silver might
not have been accompanied by a massive recoining of all Athenian silver in
local circulation (see note 4 above).
I don't know if any of this will convince Hlne Nicolet. But lest readers be
concerned about the propriety of presenting a discussion that contests an

16 In Nicolf.t-Pierre /Arnold-Biucchi 2000, pp. 165-166.

17 Howland 1958, pp. 60-61, nos. 234-235.
1 8 The coinage must have been of some duration, for it encompassed at least two phases of
Athena heads: one of dies with bold facial features of the goddess (PI. Ill, 4-9) and a second,
presumably later phase of Athena heads with smaller noses and eyes (PI. Ill, 1 1-12). The later
heads are virtually identical to the finely featured Athenas of the pi-style coinage.
19 So Kraay 1968, p. 8, and 1976, pp. 74-75.
20 So van Alfln 2006 note 44.
21 Kroll 1993, pp. 4, 6, 7, 17.
22 Stroud 1974, pp. 169-171.
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John H. Kroll

interpretation of hers in a volume in her honor, I would like to conclude on a

personal note. In the late 1980s, Mme Nicolet and I collaborated on a study of
the 3rd-century owl silver of Athens.23 It was a highly agreeable and mutually
profitable enterprise but reached an uncomfortable impasse when near the end
we found ourselves in disagreement, as now, about whether several
tetradrachms in our survey should be regarded as pseudo-Athenian imitations
or as genuinely Athenian. What to do? One day as our paper was in the final
stages, a letter arrived from Mme Nicolet suggesting that we should confess in
a note that we were unable to concur and ce sera plus amusant pour nos
lecteurs. I have always treasured that letter with its genial sense of humor in
recommending to a skeptical colleague that if we cannot agree, then we must
at least agree to disagree - which others will only find entertaining! And so I
hope I have not taken undue advantage of her good-natured generosity in
accepting once again her invitation to express a differing view. 24
Bibliography
lease
Aperghis
records, 1997-98
BICS 42,: G.
pp. C.1-20.
Aperghis, A reassessment of the Laurion mining
Howland 1958 : R. H. Howland, The Athenian Agora, IV: Greek Lamps and
their Survivals, Princeton, 1958.
Kraay 1968 : C. M. Kraay, Coins ofAncient Athens, Newcastle uponTyne,
1968 (Minerva Numismatic Handbooks, 2).
Kraay 1976 : C. M. Kraay, Archaic and Classical Greek Coins, Berkeley Los Angeles, 1976.
Kroll 1993 : J. H. Kroll, The Athenian Agora, XXVI: The Greek Coins,
Princeton, 1993
Nicolet-Pierre 1979 : H. Nicolet-Pierre, Les monnaies des deux derniers
satrapes d'Egypte avant la conqute d'Alexandre, in O. M0RKHOLM and N.
Waggoner (eds.), Greek Numismatics and Archaeology: Essays in Honor of
Margaret Thompson, Wetteren, 1979, pp. 221-230.
Nicolet-Pierre 1998-99 : H. Nicolet-Pierre, Ttradrachmes pseudo
athniens
en Sicile et en Italie, Klearchos 40-41, 1998-99, pp. 93-1 12, pis. 1-3.
Nicolet-Pierre 2001 : H. Nicolet-Pierre, Retour sur le trsor de Tel ElAthrib 1903 (IGCH 1663) conserv Athnes, ArchEph 2001 (2004), pp. 173187.
Nicolet-Pierre / Arnold-Biucchi 2000 : H. Nicolet-Pierre and C. ArnoldBiucchi, Le trsor de Lentini (Sicile) 1957 {IGCH 2117), in S. M. Hurter and
C. Arnold-Biucchi (eds.), Pour Denyse, Divertissements numismatiques , Bern,
2000, pp. 165-171, pis. 18-19.
23 Nicolet-Pierre / Kroll 1990. Cf. Kroll 1993, pp. 1 1-12.
24 I thank John Camp, Director of the Agora Excavations, together with Irini Marathaki,
Alice Paterakis, Beth Orr, and Peter van Alfen for their assistance in the preparation of these
notes.
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Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora

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Nicolet-Pierre / Kroll 1990 : H. Nicolet-Pierre and J. H. Kroll, Athenian

tetradrachm coinage of the third century B.C., AJN2, p. 1-35.
Oikonomidou 1963 : M. Karamessini-Oikonomidou, Chronika, Archaiologikon Deltion, 18, 1963, p. 50, pi. 56.
Seltman 1924 : C. T. Seltman, Athens, Its History and Coinage before the
Persian Invasion, Cambridge, 1924.
Stroud 1974 : R.S. Stroud, An Athenian law on silver coinage, Hesperia,
43, 1974, pp. 157-188.
Wycherley 1957 : R. E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora, III: Literary and
Epigraphical Testimonia, Princeton, 1957.
Thompson / Wycherley 1972 : H. A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The
Athenian Agora, XIV: The Agora of Athens, Princeton, 1972.
van Alfen 2002 A : P. van Alfen, Owls from the 1989 Syria Hoard, AJN2,
14, 2002, pp. 1-58.
van Alfen 2002B : P. van Alfen, Two unpublished hoards and other "owls"
from Egypt, AJN2, 14, 2002, pp. 59-71.
van Alfen 2006 : P. van Alfen, Problems in ancient imitative and
counterfeit coinage, in Z. Archibald, J. Davies, and V Gabrielsen (eds.),
Making, Moving, and Managing: the New World ofAncient Economies, 323-31
BC, London, 2006, pp. 322-354.
Plate III
1-2. Two tetradrachms from the 2005 Agora hoard.
3-4. Agora tetradrachms 12199 and 12175.
5-12. Eight tetradrachms from the 1957 Lentini hoard. Photos reproduced
from Nicolet-Pierre / Arnold-Biucchi 2000, pis. 18 and 19, nos. 18 (ANS),
19, 17, 15, 4, 10, 6 (ANS), 1 (ANS).
13-14. Triobol and diobol from the 1962 Ag. Ioannis Rentis lamp hoard.
Photos reproduced and enlarged (x2) from Oikonomiou 1963, pi. 56.5 and 6.

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Revue Numismatique

Kroll, Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora

PI. III