Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Pavlos, post: 7720547, member: 96635&quot;]I think [USER=118780]@kirispupis[/USER] explained it pretty good in general and answered your questions.</p><p><br /></p><p>You are making too many comparisons. You ask about Sparta but you bring up examples of Alexander the Great, Athenian owls and the 20-stater AV piece (which was by the way not really a coin and never circulated, it was more of a gift and an exception). </p><p>During the &#039;heyday&#039; of Sparta, the Spartans never minted coins at all, they were not even allowed to own any coins and they abstained from accumulating wealth so they could focus their energies on preparation for war, not money making.</p><p>Later on Spartan Mercenaries were being paid by foreign money, such as the tetrobols from Phokis during the Third Sacred War that I mentioned. Only much later when there were no Heliots in the Spartan society anymore and they started to become regular Greeks as they had to focus themselves on agriculture etc, they started to mint coins during the Achaian League and after. As mentioned the Kleomenes tetradrachm is an exception and used to pay mercenaries.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sparta most certainly did not mint gold coins, where could they have gotten that from? They are in fact a quite poor city-state. Both before and after Alexander the Great it was quite unusual to mint gold coins and was only reserved for powerful empires, special occasions and during emergency issues (when they start to take gold from statues such as nike in Athens and Antioch). The fact coins were discouraged in Sparta and only much later when Sparta was just a regular Greek city state and started to mint coins, they had no resources nor intentions to struck gold coins. As [USER=118780]@kirispupis[/USER] mentioned, there are reasons coins are struck.</p><p><br /></p><p>Most Athenian owls we can buy today were either hoarded or exported, the owls that circulated in Athens were folded and restruck after the Peleponessian war, so yes coins do disappear.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in