New coin but it is a bit of compromise...

So should I assume that nobody is aware of any particular meaning that a backwards Γ had as a letter or symbol in Ancient Greece? Or whether these coins are "staters" or "drachms" (see my question to @maridvnvm)?

 

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I see stater as a catchall term meaning 'coin of standard value' or 'unit' which could be defined locally as desired. How is this different from the various countries today that have a monetary unit called 'dollar' but $US, $AUS, $CA etc. are not an exact match? The first thing you learn in Greek history class is that there were a lot of cities, a lot of regions, a long period of time and many places that were not all that Greek but thought of themselves as Greek. Expecting them all to have thrown in their individuality and adopt the ancient 'Euro' is asking a lot.

 

@dougsmit, I understand. It's just that I had never seen such a relatively small coin -- ca. 20 mm. and something between 5 and 6 grams -- called a stater before (as it is in the Seaby catalogue) rather than a drachm, as I've seen these coins called elsewhere.

 

Nice looking coin. Will have to look into these further.

 

I understand. I thought they were lightish for a state, but then remembered there were tons of weight units in effect, some cities then went even lighter than that during certain periods, my head hurt, and I simply accepted the convention of what people were calling them without knowing the specifics of why.

 

@medoraman, David Sear's characterization of this coin as a "stater" has definitely not caught on since his Greek Coins catalogue was published in 1978. The CNG Archives list 266 silver coins from Istros with the two inverted heads obverse and the eagle/dolphin reverse. Except for a handful of small trihemioboles (around 11-12 mm.), every one is described as a drachm, and zero are described as a stater. On acsearch, out of about 180 coins, three are called staters and the rest drachms. I only have the free version of coinarchives, but it's the same story there -- every one that came up was described as a drachm, and none as a stater. So I will continue to call mine a drachm!

Separately, regarding my other question -- what the letter or symbol ligatured to the "A" beneath the dolphin on the reverse of my example of this coin might be -- a couple of possibilities occurred to me. Here's a closeup of that part of the reverse:



One possibility: it's not the top part of a backwards Γ (gamma) but a complete gamma turned sideways to the right.

Another possibility: as a result of the ligature, the right side of the A is also the left side of the second symbol, which would mean that that symbol could be an early form of a Greek Π (P), with a shorter right stem. See this excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Archaic Greek Alphabets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greek_alphabets): "Π also typically had a shorter right stem (). The top of Π could be curved rather than angular, approaching a Latin P (). The Greek Ρ, in turn, could have a downward tail on the right, approaching a Latin R."

That's probably the best I'm going to come up with!

 

Eh, this is the reason I go with math when describing my coins. I use AR, (AE, or AU) and size in mm. Too many standard floating around, I do not try to guess what they called them, just describe them.

 

I understand, but in many cases I'm not sure guessing is required. There seems to be an overwhelming consensus that these coins were drachms (although I have no idea if anyone knows what people in Istros actually called them, and haven't tried to research that question). That's the reason I asked in the first place why you called yours a stater. In general, though, it seems to me that the approach of classifying only by metal and diameter, while it does avoid the need for speculation about names of denominations, can have its drawbacks too. If you have two Istros silver coins of this type and one is 19 mm. and the other 21 mm., that doesn't make them different kinds of coins. There has to be a range of the diameters within which particular coin-types fall, which I suppose is the point of the AE 1, 2, 3, and 4 system for LRBs. But even with that kind of system, shouldn't weight also be taken into account? I'm sure there are cases of two coins made of the same metal where the one with the smaller diameter actually weighs substantially more, and was clearly a higher denomination.

 

No doubt, especially with PM coins. I always look at weight more than size, especially AR and AU. Flan size can simply be a matter of how hard the mallet hit the flan.

Btw, I just called the Istros staters since that is how I learned about the coins. I actually own more fractions than full units, but do not bother labeling them with a denimination.

 

I failed to pick up a really nice one of these back in the day, but I did get this little barbarous quarter drachm, much like Doug's, in a Triskeles auction a couple of years ago. it was just too cute to pass up. Photo courtesy Triskeles.

Moesia, Istros. 4th century BC. AR 1/4 Drachm (11mm, 1.30g). Contemporary imitation. Obv: Facing male heads, the left inverted. Rev: Legend debased, sea-eagle left, grasping dolphin with talons. Ref: Cf. Dima p. 22, pl. XXXIII, 8-10. Bizarre! Toned. Very fine.

 

Exactly, you won't be able to change the orientation of the coin as it will always be the same side upside down, however you can choose the better of the heads to be the one looking up for display purposes.