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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 22459, member: 57463&quot;]This little electrum one-sixth stater comes from Miletos, about 550 BC. It comes from the event horizon of the invention of coinage.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>We don&#039;t know why coins were invented: it was a singular event in the history of money. (For instance, Sumerians already had futures contracts for thousands of years. silver jewelry was traded by weight; etc.) Aristotle said that money was invented as a medium of trade.&nbsp; About 1860, Ernst Curtius suggested that coins were invented at temples, which amassed offerings and used coins as a reward.&nbsp; Forty years later, the earliest known coins were discovered at the temple of Artemis at Ephesos.&nbsp; About 1920, Philip N. Ure suggested that coins were invented as part of the upheavals that brought tyrants to power. (Tyrants being self-made, not hereditary, rulers. &quot;Tyrants&quot; as &quot;evil&quot; rulers is a later spin or slant.)&nbsp; A few years later, Seltman wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica article on &quot;Money&quot; and said that coins were invented specifically by merchants.&nbsp; About 1955, the tyrant theory was re-explored and refined by Robert Cook, Philip Grierson, Martin Price, and Colin Kraay.&nbsp; Today, we believe that coins were invented specifically as bonus payments to mercenaries.&nbsp; In the next generation, the Lydians created standardized coins, but that came later.</p><p><br /></p><p>We believe that coins were invented in Lydia. (Archaic Greek poets allude to coins from Lydia.&nbsp; Archilochus the poet-soldier said, &quot;I care not for the <u> kremata</u> of Gyges.&quot;)&nbsp; However, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos revealed 96 coins in three finds and these types are assigned to Ionian cities, or perhaps to wealthy individuals in those cities.&nbsp; Miletos has always been a strong alternative suggestion for the earliest coins.&nbsp; In any case, I bought this coin because I was building a collection based on the lives of philosophers and Miletos was the home of Thales.&nbsp; Two generations later, Aspasia of Miletos was the girlfried of Perikles of Athens, and hosted symposia where Socrates and others learned the Milesian way of philosophy.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is the coin.&nbsp; The other link is a larger Miletos coin from the ANS that shows the same type: a recumbant lion and incuse punches.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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