(This is based on an article that I wrote in 2004 for The Celator.) Collectors of ancient Greek coins know the silver-plated (“fouree” or “subaerate”) Athenian tetradrachms in classical style. Sometimes these owls are catalogued for sale as examples of the Emergency Coinage of 406 BC. As with many other specific topics in ancient numismatics, the full truth is somewhat more complicated. Irrefutable truths may not exist at all, leaving us only with likelihoods. The “owl” was and is perhaps the most common and famous ancient coin. Hoard evidence tells us that copies of these coins of good silver and good weight and even of good style came from many places outside of Athens. This was not “counterfeiting” as we know it, but merely turning bullion into a commonly accepted form. Even the Athenians could not tell which coins were made at home, and which were imported from Egypt. In 1974, Ronald S. Stroud published a marble stele uncovered at the Agora in 1970. (Stroud, Ronald S, “An Athenian Law on Silver Coinage,” Hesperia, Vol. 43. Issue 2, June 1974. Also Giovaninni, Adelberto, “Athenian Currency in the Late Fifth and Early Fourth Century B.C.”, Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies,Vol. 16, Nu. 2, Summer 1975. Also, Buttrey, T. V., “The Athenian Currency Law of 375/4 B.C.,” Greek Numismatics and Archaeology: Essays in Honor of Margaret Thompson, Morkholm and Waggoner, eds., Editions NR, Wetteren, Belgium:1979.) The restoration and the translation are generally accepted. Some points remain debatable. Most significant to this article is what the law does not say: no provision is made for silver-plated Athenian coins. The law requires that an official test any coins brought to him when the dispute is in excess of ten drachmas value. False coins are to be cut and dedicated to the temple. The merchant must accept good Athenian coins. Foreign coins of good silver are returned to the buyer. This law has no provision for genuine official Athenian fake owls.
Sorry I missed your article but I had given up on the Celator by 2004. I certainly agree with the statement on only having likelihoods. It has been fashionable lately to deny the Emergency coins altogether as opposed to the old school recognition that 99% of fourree owls came from counterfeiters working before and after 406 BC. Dealers in coins discovered that they could sell a piece of trash for several times its value if they attached it to the story of the Emergency. I have seen no more than a handful of coins that I believe had even a remote chance of being from 406 and the placement of those is entirely by style. Svoronos plate 15 shows 7 tets and 9 drachms coded as 'subaer' all of which have the same style appropriate for that date. I have not seen the neighsayers address these coins specifically. I would suspect that the number of coins of the Emergency was small and there was some effort to remove them in the 30 years before the currency law so I doubt that it would have struck the authorities as necessary to distinguish between the 'real' fakes and the fake fakes by that time. Of course this is just a guess based on my reading of the likelihoods. Showing 10,000 fake fourrees does absolutely nothing in the way of proving that there never were any real Emergency coins. The fact that some people use this argument tends to make me discount everything they say on the subject. A question I would like to see addressed but that will never be proven is whether the official testers might be responsible for the huge number of test cut coins where the cut is placed only on the face of the owl and whether these cuts are more or less likely to be found on coins of foreign manufacture than on those believed to be actual Athens mint products. Any such evidence will be far from certain fact if there is anything that is certain when it comes to ancient numismatics. Primary references on coins other than the coins themselves are nearly non-existent and hints like the mentions of coins here and there in comedies are never accepted at face value by all modern scholars. This is not a field for those who require 101% certainty on all details.
