Greek Coin Arrangements

You know, I have been a dealer and collector all my life (30+ years), but I have never understood the arrangement of Greek coins. I do know that it is 'sort of' arranged like a clock, sweeping from left to right, top to bottom (but with many strange exceptions). Where does this come from? I have many references and I have read them all, but I dont have one which explains it (at least not that I had noticed). I have known some of the best minds in the field and I have asked them, but never do they fully know, nor can they attribute the concept to any specific reference. I know, I can look at most references and see that some start with Etruscan, some Southern Italy, some Gaul, Spain, etc. But where does the idea come from and why? Clearly it does not start with the inception of coinage. Why this weird and convoluted geographic arrangement upon which is 'somewhat' standardized now but certainly not so? Me, back in the days when I published coin sales catalogs (paper, and through the mail for you young 'uns) I arranged them alphabetically (and I am sure many shook their heads with disdain). So, anyone have any ideas?

 

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If I recall correctly, it is based off the arrangement of in Barclay Head's Historia Numorum. It does a reasonably good job of putting related coinages near each other, with a few exceptions.

B.V. Head. Historia Numorum. A Manual of Greek Numismatics. London 1911.

 

I thought it started with Eckhel's Doctrina Numorum Veterum, 18th century. As for his order of presentation, I don't know if he gave a reason and I haven't read his books.

 

Yes, one of my favorite references. I have a copy and refer to it all the time. But to my recollection (I will have to re-read all the initial chapters) he doesn't explain the arrangement. He does of course talk about the 'colonisation' and 'transmission' of weight standards to Italy from the 'mother countries', but there is no explanation as to why he begins with Hispania. Perhaps it is just a simple matter of looking at the map and saying 'that is the furthest east'. After all, westerners tend to write and read from left to right, top to bottom. But that of course doesn't explain the many differences in the books.

 

A little too early for my library. What does it say and is there an explanation?

 

Sorry, I added more after you copied my message for a quote. I have not read the books although they are available in .pdf format online.

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=eckhel

 

Thanks Tiff! I was not aware those were online, though it is not a surprise for such an old reference. Unfortunately I am a product of my age, economic and educational background. I hate to sound ethnocentric but unfortunately English is my only language (I only dream my kids will learn more, but unfortunately public schools only offer other languages in High School, long after they have the wonderful ability to easily absorb like a sponge!). Even my dad, born and raised in Ireland, understood a smattering if Irish.

 

Sadly, English is my only language as well and there is no earthly possibility of me even trying to slog through the Eckhel books unless there is an English translation

 

I slogged through the section on tesserae in college. It did not go well. I too wish an English translation be made. This is pretty much the foundational text of modern numismatics - our Origin of Species.

 

Many of the links on that page go to Head and Stevenson which are English and much more useful IMHO.

I once questioned the Greek arrangement at a club meeting and was asked what I might propose in the stead of the ridiculous current system. I consider this a good question.

We could do alphabetical by town which would place Agragas in one volume and Zankle down the road in several books later. It might help by plaing all those towns with the same name next to each other so you could play name that Antioch.

Better might be Alphabetical by region so all the coins of Sicily would be together but is Bruttium a region or is all of Italy a region for this purpose? These are not the hard questions. Alphabetical by region requires you know that Athens is in Attica (or is it Central Greece???) and a thousand more. At some point we drop back to alphabetical whichever system we use bringing up the Roman question of whether RIC order is better than Cohen order but that is another can of worms.

The point is Eckhel or someone before him started doing it geographically and no one since has come up with another answer that does not make as many problems as it solves. I do not have an answer.

I'd like to single out what I consider to be the worst idea I ever saw but I do not know for sure who started it. I first met it in Sear where Archaic coins of a whole region are all presented before Classical coins so not all coins of a city are even close together and are separated by many other cities' issues. This gets worse when a city changed names along the way or was wiped of the face of he map for a while. Then we have the matter of whether coins that look like Alexander the Great issues are listed in the Hellenistic section or in the geographic order.

I would LOVE to find a system that would allow me to place my ~thousand Greek or Greekish or not so Roman or hard to classify or whatever coins in an order that made any sense whatsoever but I have not been able to come up with even a start of an idea that addresses even the simple questions without getting into what to do with colonials that look like each other or not so Athenian owls made in Egypt or somewhere a few thousand miles closer to there than to Athens. After being so sure the system was ridiculous (and it most certainly is) I came back to the belief that it might just be the most sensible option when you consider the Big Picture. I will, however, never warm up to putting the Archaics of 480 BC in one section and the Classicals of 450 BC in another.

 

One of the reasons I don't collect Greek. I find the organization and complexity of it daunting whereas Roman Republicans are nice and tidy (except for a few eras) and well catalogued in single works such as Crawford or Sydenham.

 

Well said, as usual When debating how to arrange my coins in my private database (not really important since it can be sorted and re-sorted) and my website, I ran into the same problems when initially considering an alphabetic arrangement. In the end I used Eckhel's order of listing, more or less.

What I really hate is auction catalogs that skip around, sometimes having the "usual" listings order of Greek/Provincial/Republican/Imperatorial/Imperial and then starting over or adding random coins. Occasionally I've missed seeing coins I might have bid on because of this since I often stop browsing before late Romans Imperials.

Then it's a good thing I simply collect whatever appeals to me without worrying much about where it "catalogs"

 

Imagine how I feel - where do you put tesserae? Under Imperial? If so, then under Augustus, Tiberius, Domitian, or Anonymous and at the end? Maybe its an antiquity? Maybe there's that rare Miscellaneous category? Or maybe it goes Greek? Or provincial?

 

Even Republican types get complicated if you also collect the provincials. Even if you ignore the more autonomous issues, the ones with magistrates' names and initials alone become complex when you account for issues from Sicily, Spain, Asia Minor, Greece, etc and there is no "Crawford" for these yet. My system is to just call them all "Republican Provincials" and group similar to Greek coins in my collection but even this doesn't tell the whole story in cases like the various types minted under the Second Triumvirate for instance.

 

I am completely turned off by RR cataloging. First we have that old system where you are expected to know the family name of a moneyer even when he did not feel the need to put it on his coins. Then we have coins of grandchildren adjacent to grandfathers with similar names and piles of bronzes that may or may not be obviously related to silver of similar design. Next we have an attempt by Sydenham which turned out to be found imperfect by Crawford whose errors seem to be being ignored since changing his order would be more confusing than it is worth.

I'd say I like Imperial cataloging better but every author of an RIC volume decided it was necessary to change to his own personal way of handling orders or mints. Take RIC VI and reorganize it like IV or IX starting over with new groups every time a ruler was added or subtracted or making coin 123A and 123B different rulers. The older I get the more I like Cohen. He didn't even pretend to separate dupondii from asses just calling them all MB.

I love my coins. I tolerate my books the best I can. I do rather like the Tye book Jitals which has a section of explanatory text with marginal notes giving the catalog number of the coins covered in that paragraph. I may not understand why he talks about some coins and not others beyond the desire to keep the book size down but at least I can find the things when they are there. Perhaps it would be unwieldy if the book were ten volumes weighing a ton. I have not seen some of the newer books on Greek due to my unwillingness to order them sight unseen. That has not gone so well on some of my book purchases. Has anyone posted a full critical review/discussion of Hoover? Does he contribute anything to the question of order? I'm not talking about advertising or 'I like it' notes. After I wrote a less than stellar review of ERIC I, I was surprised when RAS sent me a galley proof of ERIC II. He explained that I seemed to be the only person reviewing books. Say it isn't so!

 

Well, since none of us collect your wretched little lead pseudo coins, its not really important to us.

Lol, just kidding my friend.

 

Not that I am aware. I dont think anyone critiques references anymore. Do I like that series? No. Confusing and difficult to use. I no longer look at them really, though CNG as the publisher uses it as a standard reference (not surprising) but I am not aware of many who quote it (I do for many, if relevant. Who knows if a reference may be the new standard?).

I never understood that work either. Cumbersome, strange, not logical (at least to me). But as I understand it the photos are worth the price. I dont know anyone who refers to it as a reference.

 

Tesserae should be categorized under Concert Ticket Stubs and Entertainment Events. You put them in a cigar box under "good times, Dude!"

However, I have a really hard time understanding Carthage as Greek... Break off some of the Civilizations that are NOT Greek into their own classifications. That would start some understanding...