Making and Spending Money Along the Bosporus

Since the middle of the last century, numismatic scholarship has largely ignored the study of an abundant group of Hellenistic coins minted with the name of Lysimachus, king of Thrace, beginning shortly after 300 BC. Although in the last thirty years some preliminary studies have appeared, none of these coins have been subjected to a detailed analysis. This dissertation considers the most prolific of these coinages, the parallel series minted during the third and second centuries BC by the cities of Byzantium and Chalcedon. The dissertation proposes to explore these coinages in order to reveal the way they were made, their economic purpose, and the socio-cultural repercussions resulting from their dissemination.

The dissertation’s core is a die study of these Lysimachi, a project that properly classifies them, establishing minting order and chronology. The resulting arrangement demonstrates that minting began sometime in the 260’s, continuing at Byzantium virtually unabated until 110 BC, but ceasing at Chalcedon around 150 BC. An analysis of the historical background suggests that these coins were at first emitted as tribute money, but were equally useful in a carefully orchestrated economic policy intended to raise money in times of crisis.

Stylistic analysis reveals that a single engraver’s workshop (which I have called the “Bosporus Workshop”) produced the Lysimachi of both Byzantium and Chalcedon, and was also responsible for some of their local coinages and the Lysimachi of other cities. A welcome consequence of this phenomenon is that the Lysimachi of Byzantium and Chalcedon become a chronological yardstick by which stylistically related series may be approximately dated.

Successfully produced for over 150 years, the Lysimachi of Byzantium and Chalcedon played a dynamic role within the Propontic and Pontic zones, where they were increasingly spent among the non-Greek people of the region; here, the Lysimachi not only became a preferred currency, but were even regarded as emblems of royal status and occasionally imitated by local dynasts eager to emulate their Greek counterparts.