Fox Alexander

TEXT AND IMAGE: ALEXANDER THE GREAT, COINS AND ELEPHANTS *
R. J. LANE FOX
Primary evidence for Alexander the Great is rare enough for any aaditions to deserve historians’ attention, even if they reopen questions which are old rather than helping us to answer questions which are new. Early in 1973, a coin hoard of exceptional interest was brought to light in Iraq, reportedly from Babylon itself and thanks to the efforts of N. D u n , Nancy M. Waggoner, H. Nicolet-Pierre, 0. Morkholm and M. J. Price, the greater part of it has now been published, together with one or two additions to the main bulk which had become separated before passing through the trade.’ Discussion of the hoard’s contents owes a particular debt to the developing views of M. J. Price, beginning in 1982,2 and a notable contribution by P. Bernard in 1985 which suggested Indian analogies and a new date and context for the hoard’s most remarkable finds.3 Both of them (and W. Hollstein in their wake)4 have added literary evidence to the debate and tried to interpret the new finds historically. As yet, Alexander historians have taken little notice in print of this new evidence: their suggestions have fallen behind the increased range of the hoard and the ground gained by numismatists’ continuing researches. I owe knowledge of the hoard to U. Wartenberg at the British Museum and here I wish to bring its importance to wider notice among historians; to return to the theories and indications of date and to consider whether literary evidence can help us to give the coins a context and origin. There are questions of method here, which these new coins pose very clearly. Various texts have been cited, on the assumption that what survives from what was written can help us to interpret what survives from what was struck. I wish to explore this assumption and to reconsider the texts in question before emphasizing the interest of the one text, not cited, which fits facts about the coins themselves.
*I am grateful to C. J. Howgego and U. Wartenberg for their help. I dedicate this paper to the memory of M. J. Price whose work is its starting-point and whose discussions and criticisms have improved it at various points. N. Durr, ‘Neues aus Babylon’ SM 94 (1974) 33-36; H. Nicolet-Pierre, ‘Monnaies ‘‘A I’Elephant”’, BSFN 33 (1978) 401-03; 0. Mgrkholm, ‘A Coin of Artaxerxes 111’, NC XIV (1974) 1. Coin Hoards I (1975), no. 38 = VIII (1994) no. 188 (as cited in Price p. 51). * M. J. Price, ‘The “Porus” Coinage of Alexander the Great: A Symbol of Concord and Community’, in S . Scheers, ed. Studia Paul0 Naster Oblata I, Orientalia Louvaniensia 12 (Leuven 1982) 75-88; M. J. Price, ‘Circulation at Babylon in 323 B.C.’, in W. E. Metcalf ed., Mnemata: f Papers in Memory of Nancy M. Waggoner (1991) 63-72; M. J. Price, The Coinage in the Name o Alexander the Great and Philip Arrhidaeus 1-11 (Zurich, London 1991) 51, 452, 456-57 (henceforward Price, Coinage ....). 3 P. Bernard, ‘Le Monnayage d’Eudamos, Satrape Grec du Punjab et “Maitre des Elephants”, in G. Gnoli and L. Lanciotti eds., Orientalia Joseph Tucci Memoriae Dicata I (Rome, 1985) 65-94. 4 W. Hollstein, ‘Taxiles’ Pragung fur Alexander den Grossen’, Schweiz. Numism. Rundschau 68 (1989) 5-18.
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The hoard’s contents were scattered after discovery and their regrouping has required time, international observation and careful research. Much of it has been the work of M. J. Price who has published a list of contents, the culmination of more than a decade of inquiry. All of the coins are silver and briefly, his list identifies the following types? 1. Eight Alexander decadrachms, of the usual types: Heracles in the lion-skin helmet on the obverse; the seated Zeus with eagle and sceptre on the reverse. These fine coins have always been rare and the new finds include several with a mint-mark unknown previously. 2. Price reports a large number of Alexander tetradrachms, as yet unpublished. The types, as usual, are similar to those on the decadrachms. 3. Seven examples of the silver ‘decadrachms’ which historians have named the ‘Porus Medallion’. The types will need further explanation, but they match those known since the discovery of the first example in 1887.6 On the obverse, the same figure, armed with a spear, attacks an elephant from the rear, on which two Indian figures are mounted. On the reverse a figure in a plumed helmet holds a thunderbolt in his right hand and a spear in his left, while a winged victory flies to crown him overhead. These coins were not perfectly cut and struck and the distribution of the image varies from piece to piece; the newly found examples make several details clearer. Price has argued that a more apt description of their weight is ‘five shekel pieces’, not decadrachms, and I will follow his argument on the point, although it has been ~ o n t e s t e d . ~ Like the previously known examples, none of these coins carries an inscription or a caption for its images. However, both the old and new examples have the same marks: Z on the side with the elephant and the letters AB in monogram on the other side, the reverse. The lettering is not new, but there is an exciting new fact about it: it reappears on the next items which I cite. 4.The coins in question are 1 1 silver ‘tetradrachms’ or two-shekel pieces, as Price more aptly describes them. The obverse shows a bowman who is bearded and whose hair is gathered in a top-knot: his long bow rests on the ground. These features match descriptions of the characteristics of Indian warriors which occur in the primary historians of Alexander, as Price and Bernard have also recognized.* On the reverse stands another Indian characteristic: an elephant, similar to the elephant on the ‘Porus Medallions’. Coins of this type were not known to us before. They carry no inscription, but they are linked to the ‘Porus Medallions’ by more than a similarity between elephants. They share the same marks but on different sides: Z on the side with the elephant (here, the reverse) and the monogram AB on the other, the obverse. For the first time, therefore, the ‘Porus Medallions’ can be related with certainty to something else: to silver coins, manifestly of Greek design, which show the two most distinctive Indian weapons of war. 5. The next item extends the imagery of Indian warfare. In 1978, Mme. Nicolet-Pierre published a perceptive note on a type of silver ‘tetradrachm’, or two-shekel piece, which had reached the Cabinet des Medailles in Paris and was evidently part of the 1973 hoard.9 Three examples are now known but their types, too, were unknown previously. The Price, ‘Circulation at Babylon ...’, (n. 2) (1991) 69-72. P. Gardner, ‘New Greek Coins of Bactria and India’, NC VII (1887) 177. 7 Price, ‘The “Porus” Coinage .. ..’, (n. 2) (1982) 76 and n. 4. Arr. Ind. 16.4-6; Price, ‘The “Porus” Coinage ...’, (n. 2) (1982) 81-82: Bernard, ‘Le Monnayage d’Eudamos .. . ‘ (n. 3) 72-79. Nicolet-Pierre (n. 1) 402-03.
5
6

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obverse, in Price’s words, shows an ‘elephant r.; on which two figures, one turning around and carrying a long standard, the other, in front, holding a goad’.I0 The reverse shows ‘bowman and charioteer in quadriga r.’. This type recalls the scenes of royal warcharioteering in Pharaonic Egypt and especially those of the Assyrian kings. However, P. Bernard has connected it to the style of Indian warfare in the Vedic period, as recovered by modern scholarship.” The bowman, the charioteer, the two-wheeled chariot and the team of four horses relate neatly to descriptions in Indian epics of a hero’s manner of fighting. Chariots are also well-attested as an Indian weapon against Alexander. The Indian context is clearly the right one, given the Indian nature of the scene on the obverse. These coins, too, carry no inscription and lack any lettering: their style and design are rather more crude. Their elephant and its gait are manifestly different from the elephants on the other types in the hoard. We cannot, therefore, assume that they were struck from the same source as the E / AB coins. The two issues with Indian types and the seven further examples of the ‘Porus Medallion’ have attracted most interest in published work to date, but the hoard contains a wide range of other coins too. 6. A range of lion-staters whose type is well known: eighteen bear the name of Mazaeus, the veteran satrap under the last Achaemenids who was reinstated as Satrap of Babylonia by Alexander and died during Alexander’s reign. 7. An imitation Athenian owl whose legend has been admirably deciphered by A. F. Shore as ‘Artaxerxes Pharaoh’ in Demotic script and assigned to Memphis in the later years of Artaxerxes HI, reconqueror of Egypt.’* 8. Another imitation Athenian owl, attributable to Sabakes, the Persians’ satrap in Egypt before the defeat at Issus in autumn 333 BC. 9. A further range of imitation Athenian owls, some of which bear an Aramaic legend read as MZDK: numismatists identify its subject as the Mazaces of our Greek texts, the satrap of Egypt who surrendered the country to Alexander in 332. Price associates these coins with two separate mints in Babylonia during Alexander’s reign, developing a theory advanced by E. T. Newell in 1938.13 Historians of Alexander have nonetheless resisted this notion and the point needs further discussion. 10. A silver shekel, attributed by Price to Hierapolis in Syria. 11. Some imitation Athenian owls from Phoenicia, of which one is certainly from Gaza and earlier, therefore, than Alexander’s destruction of the city in 332 BC. 12. A Persian siglos from Sardis. 13. A silver tetradrachm of Philip I1 whose reverse shows the jockey type, with a ‘garlanded altar’. 14. A silver coin from Cos whose presence at Babylon Price briefly describes as exceptional and whose interest I wish to emphasize later. Price has emphasized that nothing ascribed to this hoard belongs demonstrably to the years after Alexander’s death. Nonetheless P. Bernard has advanced a theory which would place the ‘Porus Medallions’ and the Indian types as late as 317/6. Whichever
l o Price, ‘Circulation at Babylon ...’, (n. 2) 70; however, Price, Coinage I(1991) 452 n. 9 argues that the standard-bearer on the elephant is also carrying a spear; Hollstein (n. 4) 12 n. 54 rejects this ‘spear’,apparently correctly; Bernard (n. 3) 79 cites Indian parallels for the standard bearer. ‘ I Bernard (n.3) 74-79 with S. D. Singh, Ancient Wagare with Special Reference to the Vedic Period (Leiden 1965). A. F. Shore, ‘The Demotic Inscription on a Coin of Artaxerxes’, NC 14 (1974) 5-8. E. T. Newell, ‘Miscellanea Numismatica, Cyrene to India:, ANSNNM 82 (1938) 62-75 and 82-88.

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view we prefer, the first remarkable fact is that Alexander’s flood of new silver coins did not drive older silver types out of circulation quite as rapidly or exclusively as historians have sometimes implied: imitation Athenian owls may even have continued to be struck in Babylonia during his reign. The second remarkable fact is that the ‘Porus Medallion’ was not a medallion at all. Seven examples, showing signs of use, existed in this one hoard among other silver currency: evidently they, too, were coins struck for use. Even more remarkable is the fact that the ‘Porus’ type is now linked by lettering to the bowman-and-elephant two-shekel pieces. Any theory of the context of the ‘Porus’ coins must now account for this issue, previously unknown, with its imagery of Indian wararms. The most heartening fact is that coins of a previously unknown type can still appear in the context of a datable hoard and can connect to events in the lifetime of Alexander. What has happened here can happen again. Another cache of new coin-evidence might change our interpretations to a degree which is now unlikely for interpretations which are based only on literary texts. Beyond these facts, questions of interpretation extend across a wide field: what were the origins of the two newly-found types with their images of Indian warriors? How do we best explain the connection of one of these types to the big ‘Porus’ pieces which share its letter marks? In the light of this connection what is the likeliest origin of the ‘Porus’ types and what do they portray? On the reverse of the ‘Porus’ coins, most historians have seen Alexander himself holding a thunderbolt in his righi hand: if they are correct, was this type struck in Alexander’s lifetime and what does this symbol of Zeus mean? The longest recent study of Alexander’s divinity, by E. Badian, discusses the relevance of coin-evidence from both local and imperial mints, but does not even mention the relevance of the ‘Porus’ pieces.14 As for their connection with one of the ‘Indian’ types, M. J. Price has advanced a theory which links them to the major themes of community and concord in Alexander’s dealings with barbarians. ‘As a commentary on contemporary political events,’ he concluded in 1982, ‘the Porus coinage is one of the most powerful statements in the history of numi~rnatics.”~ Divinity and ‘concord’ are certainly powerful themes in modern studies of Alexander. The dating, imagery and interpretation of this new evidence deserve historians’ further attention. I1 The dating of the hoard requires knowledge of the latest coins contained within it and an argument that the absence of any later coins is significant. Arguments from the physical state of the coins and their degree of wear are much more hazardous. It may be tempting to argue that the freshest coins ought to be the latest in date, while the worn ones must be earlier, but hoarders can store, retain or acquire pieces for such a variety of indefinable reasons that arguments from the coins’ condition to a closely-defined date are extremely precarious. We should also remember that this particular hoard has had to be reconstituted after parts of it had passed into the trade. It was not found and classified in

l4 E. Badian, ‘The Deification of Alexander the Great’ in H. J. Dell, ed., Ancient Mucedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson (Thessaloniki 1981) 27-71; G. L. Cawkwell, ‘The Deification of Alexander the Great’ in I. Worthington eds., Ventures into Greek History (Oxford 1994) 293-307 also omits all reference to the coin. l5 Price, ‘The “Porus” Coinage ....’ (n. 2) 85; compare Price, Coinage .. . I 453: ‘a visible record of Alexander’s policy of concord and community with the conquered peoples of the East.’

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full by an archaeologist or numismatist when first brought to light. Bits may have been lost, concealed or missed, despite careful researches since. In 1982, Price emphasized two arguments for dating the hoard as then known. Those coins which could be dated independently of the hoard were all coins originating not later than 32312 BC. This argument applied especially to the lion staters, the Alexander decadrachms and the large number of Alexander tetradrachms. The tetradrachms included coins stamped with the letters MkAY: the accepted arrangement of these issues dates coins with this mark as the latest from Alexander’s major mint in the East.I6 The letters continue on the first issues in the name of Philip 111, but none of these Philip I11 tetradrachms is reported to have been present in the hoard, according to sources whom Price describes as reliable. Their presence in other hoards, datable after 32312, is so widespread that their absence in this case is significant. Price concludes: ‘on the evidence of the Alexander coinage this hoard found at Babylon was buried almost certainly in 32312 BC before the coinage in the name of Philip had gained currency.’17 We should not be too precise about the date of burial, but a date in or before 323 BC does fit the contents which we can best classify. In 1985, P. Bernard argued nonetheless that this date did not fit the big ‘Porus coinage’ and its connected issue in the hoard. There is a constant risk of crediting innovations to Alexander and forgetting to consider his immediate successors: Bernard, who has warned against the risk elsewhere, proposed Eudamus, satrap of the Punjab, as originator of the ‘Porus’ coins during his visit westwards to Susa in 31716. In 1982, Price had advanced an argument which would at once exclude such a dating: he had emphasized the worn condition of the big ‘Porus’ pieces, a feature which led him to date them even earlier in Alexander’s reign than anyone had previously considered. However, the degree to which the big ‘Porus’ coins are worn, rather than indistinctly struck, is a matter for argument, as Bernard rightly observed.’* Even if their wear was serious, it would not refute Bernard’s dating. Across a span of ten years or so, evidence of wear is an uncertain basis for a precise dating. In this particular hoard, some of the pieces which we know to be dated to 328/7 or earlier are in a particularly fresh condition. From wear alone, we would seriously misdate them. In discussions published in 1991, Price has not developed the argument from wear but has rested his case on the dating of the hoard itself. Its other datable contents, he remarks, ‘discredit’ P. Bernard’s suggestion.19Numismatically, Bernard’s position is not refuted but it is extremely unlikely: he would have to argue that the ‘Porus coinage’ was struck six or seven years later than anything else in the hoard, that hoarders do odd things and that this hoarder simply ignored all other silver coins struck between 323 and 317 and for reasons which we cannot fathom, retained only the ‘Porus’ issues out of all possibilities. Numismatically, this position is forced, but it should not be rejected on coin-evidence alone. Bernard argued for Eudamus on the strength of textual evidence and here his theory runs into insuperable difficulties. In 3 1716, Eudamus brought elephants and several hundred footsoldiers from India to Susa where he joined a coalition among several of Alexander’s successors.2oEumenes is said to have given him 200 talents from Susa’s treasury as a special favour, but these coins are nowhere said to have been struck
I6

I9

Price (n. 2) 79; Price, Coinage ... I 454. Price (n. 2) 65. Bernard (n. 3) 90 11.94. Price (n. 2) 65 n.5; Price, Coinage .... 1.452 n.9.
D.S. 19.15.5.

*O

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specially by or for Eudamus himself. The silence is not decisive because our texts mention coinage haphazardly but more importantly, the types of the ‘Porus’ coins and their connected issue in the newly-found hoard do not suit Eudamus’s known career. He is nowhere said to have brought Indian bowmen with him, yet their image is clear on the bowman-and-elephant coinage. As W. Hollstein has also observed, the striking of big silver pieces showing Alexander, a thunderbolt and a Victory would have been an extremely assertive act by a man who was only one member of a grand coalition.21 Its imagery was also ill-suited to this time and author. In 317/6, when Eudamus arrived, Eumenes was fostering cult before Alexander’s empty throne during which the successors ‘paid him proskynesis as a god’.22 However, the five-shekel coin showed Alexander in military dress, not divine apparel, and as we shall see, the thunderbolt in his hand did not raise him unambiguously to divine status. In 317/6, an issue for Eudamus’s contemporaries would probably have been more explicit. As for its Indian warriors on elephants, one of them (we shall also see) must be Porus, fighting valiantly. Eudamus, however, had earlier ‘killed Porus by treachery’ and would hardly have chosen or welcomed a coin-type which showed Porus’s ‘finest hour’ of idealized combat with Alexander.23 Bernard anticipates some of these problems, but his theory about Eudamus is too fanciful to stand against alternative theories where much less has to be forced. One alternative would be to date the Porus coinage within a year or so of Alexander’s death. Numismatically, the rest of the hoard cannot absolutely exclude such a date and historically we can imagine (but not document) how these coin types might have been struck to evoke Alexander’s great victory in India at a time when the retention of the Indian conquests seemed desirable but precarious. Our sources’ various lists of the provinces distributed to governors at Babylon and in 321 are unfortunately incomplete and uncertain, but they do reveal the continuing importance of the two Indians, Porus and Taxiles, in the lands of Alexander’s Indian conquests.24 Even if we do not follow Bosworth’s recent attempt to assign all southern India to Porus already in Alexander’s lifetime,25 it is clear that Porus and Taxiles were increasingly powerful. Immediately after Alexander’s death, when Porus’s power was growing, might there perhaps be occasion for a coin-type which emphasized his defeat by Alexander? The related coins showing Indian archers and elephants might evoke the same victories or be struck in order to hire Indian troops. For the sake of an alternative hypothesis, two persons are worth considering in 323/2, a time of uncertainty about the Indian territories. The first is Peithon son of Krateuas who was sent against the rebellious Greeks in the upper satrapies soon after Alexander’s death.26 His march was reinforced by troops sent ‘from the satraps’27 and as Porus and Taxiles were still recognized rulers of Indian areas and a third satrapy with Indians was Hollstein (n. 4) 15-16. D.S. 18.61.6. 23 D.S. 19.14.6. z4 Sources listed by A. B. Bosworth, ‘The Indian Satrapies Under Alexander the Great’, Antichthon 17 ( 1 983) 37-46 and L. Schober, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Babyloniens und der Oberen Sutrupien von 323-303 B.C. (Frankfurt 1981) 11-26 whose discussion is rightly more
21

22

cautious. 25 Bosworth (n. 24) 39, forcing Photius 71B 40ff. which need only mean that Alexander had given Porus and Taxiles ‘areas of rule’, not the particular area which they held, or received, in 321. Schober (n. 24) 23-26 gives a more balanced view of the possibilities. 2h W. Heckel, The Marshals ofAlexunder’s Empire (London 1992) 276-79 lists all sources. 27 D.S. 18.7.3.

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adjacent to Taxiles’s rule, these troops might have included Indians. Was the bowmanand-elephant type struck for them, while the big Porus coins were an issue for Alexander’s main army, struck at Babylon and re-emphasizing victory in India soon after his death? No text, however, specifies Indians among Peithon’s helpers, although the texts of his march are not detailed. Alternatively, we might think of the other Peithon, son of Agenor, who was an emergent figure among Alexander’s generals and satraps in India. He had governed the southern Indian conquests on the Indus and received a satrapy next to Taxiles’s realm after Alexander’s death: finally he moved west to Babylon in 317/6. Might he have struck the big Porus coins in India to exalt Alexander’s victory over his royal neighbour Porus, a rival with whom, perhaps, Peithon’s enmity ran high? Before 321, might he also have needed coins which would appeal to Indian troops and mercenaries and might he have struck the Indian bowman-and-elephant type in 323/2? These alternatives are pure speculations because no text supports them: I will argue that the letter marks on the coins make better sense at an earlier date and place. Here, I cite them only to air possibilities but if we look much further ahead in time or try to connect the coin-types with events further west, two limiting points in the texts must be borne in mind. Indians on elephants did feature in the early war between Ptolemy and Perdiccas, but in all the events in Asia and further west, Indian bowmen are never mentioned after Alexander’s death. In 32211, when the designs were laid for Alexander’s funeral chariot, quite a different image of Indian warfare to the one on the big Porus coins was approved in Alexander’s honour. Elephants were shown, but an Indian was shown riding in front and a Macedonian behind ‘in customary armour’ on the same beast.** The milieu from which this memorial to Alexander emerged is not one in which coins with a scene of ‘Indians only’ on an elephant and Alexander attacking them on horseback seems entirely at home. If we credit one or other Peithon with striking the ‘Porus coinage’, we also have to accept that specimens of the bowman-and-elephant type could have travelled back from India to Babylon and joined our hoard, yet this return journey happened so quickly that the hoarder, meanwhile, had no other silver coins struck later than 32312 which he wished to include. Alternatively, the coin-types would have had to be struck at a central mint in Asia, at Babylon or Susa perhaps, and sent out to Peithon on the Indian frontiers, while some remained behind for our hoarder. Hypotheses have to be multiplied, whereas there is a much simpler alternative: the ‘Porus coins’ were struck at a date between spring 327, when Alexander invaded India, and early summer 323, when he died. Already by 1926, there was thought to be a consensus that the ‘Porus medallions’ originated in Alexander’s lifetime. P. Bernard, conversely, believes that an origin under Alexander is itself impossible to credit.29 Alexander (he argues) would surely have put his own name on a coin showing him ‘sous I’aspect 2 demi divinisC d’un fils de Zeus’; the coins are poorly struck and designed by ‘un artiste d’un niveau bien infkrieur’; despite the royal corps of elephants outside Alexander’s tent, elephants (Bernard thinks) were not particularly important for him; why, too, would he show Indian warriors on coins of his own? These objections are not cogent. Alexander’s issues of double darics and lion staters are near contemporaries of the Porus issue, but neither carries his own name.30 The Porus coins might have been struck by a subordinate with royal approval, minting at a place where the workmanship was not first class. Captions were not added because the
2x

29

3o

D.S. 18.27.1. Bernard (n. 3) 80-8 1. A. R. Bellinger, Essays on the Coinage of Alexander the Great (New York 1963) 66.

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imagery might have been so obvious to contemporaries that none was needed. As for the elephants and Indian warriors, they could indeed represent foes or forces to whose imagery, or reality, Alexander wished to appeal. He did, after all, conquer them both and then employ them for the first time in Greek warfare. Numismatically, a date in or just after Alexander’s lifetime now seems virtually certain. Textually, nothing in our evidence matches up with such a coinage in (say) 322/1, whereas the years 327-324 are full of textual possibilities. I will also argue that such a date suits the coins’ lettering. Historically, therefore, the consensus is well founded and although it is not proven, the alternatives in 323/1 require too many hypotheses to be worth pursuing instead. Among the hoard’s other bits and pieces, there are still some points to be emphasized which support a dating before Alexander’s death. Those coins which can be dated independently are all coins from Alexander’s years of rule in Asia or a period shortly before it. Published discussions concern a coin of Artaxerxes from Egypt which Morkholm and Shore correctly ascribed to Artaxerxes 111 in the late 340dearly 3 3 0 ~ A ~’ coin of ‘Sabakes’ and coins of ‘Mazakes’ have been connected convincingly with the last two Persian satraps in Egypt who governed the country before and after ISSUS.~* The coins of Gaza and Philip I1 also point backwards before Alexander’s conquests. In 1989, a silver coin from Cos emerged and in 1991 was accepted by M. J. Price as a member of the hoard. He describes its appearance at Babylon as ‘exceptional’ but does not comment further on its type.33To judge from his photograph, there is more to be made of it. On the obverse, a head in the lion-skin helmet of Heracles faces left; on the reverse, a rectangular dotted border contains a crab with the word KRIRN above and a club immediately beneath. Under the club is the name AIRN. Between the crab’s claws, the photograph shows a twisted object: to judge from other Coan coins with the crab symbol, it ought to be a knucklebone or a snail-shell. The names on Cos’s coinage have been understood as names of the state’s eponymous magistrate, or ‘ m o n a r ~ h o s ’ the ; ~ ~suggestion has been widely endorsed and it is nicely supported for the period from c. 300-145 BC when about half of the names on Coan coins are matched by the names of monarchoi attested in surviving inscription^.^^ In 1978, S. M. Sherwin-White’s lengthy study of the island’s history accepted Hill’s theory and its extension back into the fourth century BC as ‘probable’ although no inscriptional evidence could support it for the earlier period. She also inclined to a widely-held view, that the institution of the monarchos had begun on Cos in the synoecism of 366/5, that its tenure was annual (as attested for the Hellenistic period) and that from the 360s to 300, these annual monarchoi issued coins stamped with their own names.36 After 300 BC, we have evidence: can we read back its pattern to coins of the earlier period? Historians of Cos assume that we can, although we should perhaps be wary of assuming that the monarchoi changed yearly when first instituted. If the Coan historians are right, Dion becomes the senior magistrate on Cos; even if they are wrong, he is presumably a person of influence. The name is no rarity, although Sherwin-White’s Coan

D1
3*
33
34 35

36

Morkholm (n. 1) 1-4; Shore (n. 12) 5-8. Price (n. 2) (1991) 67-68. Price (n. 2) (1991) 69. W. R. Paton, E. L. Hicks, Inscriptions ofCos (Oxford 1891) 348ff. S. M. Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos (Gottingen 1978) 188ff. Sherwin-White (n. 36) 187ff.; 70-71.

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prosopography lists very few known examples.37It has appeared, however, in two very suggestive settings. In the Pityos hoard, found on Chios, Coan silver coins with Dion’s name occur in a hoard which includes coins of Pixodarus, the last Hecatomnid who ruled as satrap in Caria before his deposition in 336 BC.38The terminal date for this hoard is accepted as the mid to late 330s: the upper date for individual pieces in it extends as far as the 350s because coins of Mausolus were also present. Dion’s coinage on Cos must then belong between these two dates. A full study of Cos’s coins in the fourth century is now in progress: die-links and the evidence of further hoards may allow even greater precision. Epigraphically, however, we already have an important Dion from Cos, attested since 1972 through the publication of an early third-century BC inscription from L a b r a ~ n d a . ~ ~ Its central section recites an earlier decree with honours for ‘Dion son of Diodorus, the Coan’ which were granted by the Plataseis, a Carian community: they include tax exemptions, the right to own property and much else besides for Dion and his descendants because Dion had been ‘helpful, a benefactor and proxenos’. These honours were granted ‘while Pixodarus rules as satrap in Caria’, between 341 and 336, therefore, fitting beautifully with the context for Dion’s coins which is given by the Pityos hoard on Chios. It is ‘probable’ that a Dion was Cos’s monarchos; certainly, a Dion of Cos was active for Carian interests and received a tax-free estate on Carian soil under the last of the Hecatomnids. Dion, the honoured benefactor in Pixodarus’s Caria, was a Coan who had the power to work significant favours between 341 and 336. Dion, named on the silver coinage, was a Coan of importance, ‘probably’ monarchos on the island. His name’s appearance on the coinage coincided, surely, with his time of influence during Pixodarus’s reign: the silver coin, found in Babylon, should have been struck between 341 and 336, fitting neatly with the dating of other stray coins in the hoard. If G. F. Hill was right in proposing a further connection, more favours from Dion may yet be ~isible.~O In 1900, Hill argued ingeniously that several portrait heads of Heracles in a lion skin cap on Coan coins from the mid fourth century strongly resemble the features of Mausolus himself, as portrayed in the famous Mausolus-statue from the Mausoleum. The main similarities lie in the line of the nose and the downward sweep of the moustache, although Hill went further: ‘the silky Oriental moustache, the treatment of the eye, the slight tinge of melancholy all combine to recall the likeness of the satrap.’ The theory was accepted without reservation by Sherwin-White in 1978 and repeatedly cited as ‘probable’ or fact in S. Hornblower’s Muusolus in 1982;41it has become one of the building-blocks in attempts to write a history of Hecatomnid rule abroad. Numismatists would nowadays be much more wary.42 The question of human portraiture and its influence on the features of a god or hero on coins is highly speculative and the
37
38
39

Sherwin-White (n. 36) 434. A. Lobbecke, ‘Munzfund auf der Insel Chios’, Zts. fur Num. XIV (1887) 149-57. J. Crampa, ed. Labraunda: The Greek Inscriptions iii.2 (Stockholm 1972) no. 42 lines 8-18; S.

Hornblower, Mausolus (Oxford 1982) 178. 40 G. F. Hill, ‘Some Coins of Southern Asia Minor’ in W. H. Buckler, W. M. Calder (eds.), Anatolian Studies Presented to W.M. Ramsay (Manchester 1923) 207-09, pll. ix-x. 41 Sherwin-White (n. 36) 70-71; Hornblower (n. 40) 134,272 n. 404; plate 36C (‘probably’). 42 R. A. Moysey, ‘Observations on the Numismatic Evidence Relating to the Great Satrapal Revolt of 362/1 BC’, REA 91 (1989) 107-39, at 127-30 and 134-36; on ‘portraits’ of Tissaphemes, M. J. Price, REA 91 (1989) 106; on Heracles-‘Alexander’, 0. Palagia, ‘Imitation of Herakles in Ruler Portraiture. A Survey’, Boreas 9 (1986) 137-51; on Zeus-Antiochus IV: R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Royal Portraits (Oxford 1988) 39-66.

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‘Mausolan’ label has certainly been applied too hastily to too many different heads of Heracles since Hill wrote. The likeness which impressed Hill needs to be tested against a full study of Cos’s coinage and a comparison with other heads of Heracles on other cities’ coins. Perhaps the heads which Hill picked out will survive such study and still stand out as special: here, I wish only to emphasize that the same studies should extend to Dion’s coinage too. From photographs published in the main sources, it is already evident that several coin-types were struck on Cos in Dion’s name. Some have the crab alone, some have the crab with the shell or knucklebone; some have a Heracles head which faces right; on others, it faces left.43 The features vary, but to judge from Price’s photograph, the head on the new Babylon coin is not like those on other Dion issues. If Hill’s eye for Mausolus as Heracles turns out to have any foundation, perhaps we should think in Dion’s case of the influence of a later Hecatomnid, Pixodarus, perhaps, as Heracles on this distinctive issue. With or (probably) without a complimentary portrait, Dion’s coin fits neatly with the Babylon hoard’s chronology. The hoard also contained a significant number of coins with an Aramaic legend which numismatists identify with the Mazaces of Greek sources, the satrap of Egypt who surrendered to Alexander. Here, there are no problems of chronology, because these coins of the 330s fit neatly with the pattern of the hoard’s other contents. Instead there are historical problems, worth revisiting because numismatists and historians have been proceeding independently on the point and this new evidence excludes the latest historical theory. Since 1938, numismatists have usually followed E. T. Newell in dividing coins with the Aramaic legend MZDK between Egypt and Babylonia and attributing both to the Mazaces of our Alexander historians.4 The Egyptian issue coincided with Mazaces’s brief satrapal rule in Egypt during 333/2 which is deducible from our texts; on this theory, the Babylonian issue is placed outside Babylon after Alexander’s conquest in 331 BC. The new hoard has reinforced the theory of two separate regions for these coins and M. J. Price has even identified two distinct Mazaces ‘mints’ in Babylonia itself.45 For historians, these theories are difficult because none of our texts gives Mazaces any role in Babylonia under Alexander. In 1965, E. Badian declared the notion part of a ‘numismatist’s myth’ (which it is not) and in 1976, A. B. Bosworth proposed an alternative which has passed into his standard commentary on Arrian.46 Bosworth suggested ingeniously that the ‘Mazaros’ whom Arrian is alone in mentioning as a commander of the garrison in Susa was in fact the commander under Darius, that Mazaces struck coins only in Egypt and only as satrap under Darius and that the ‘Mazaces-issues’ in Alexander’s Babylonia are in fact issues of Arrian’s Mazaros, the governor of Susa under Darius: on this view they have appeared similar to Mazaces’s only because of the similarity of name. On the Babylonian issues, he argues, the Aramaic legends are too indistinct for MZDK to be read with confidence.

43 E. Babelon, Traite‘ des Monnaies Grecques et Romaines 11 (Paris 1910) 1038-39, esp. no. 1748 (Dion coin? Head facing right); B. M. C. Cos, 195 nos. 13 + 14; Lobbecke (n. 39) 155 + plate VI no. 9 (Dion: head facing left; no ‘knucklebone’ device). H. Ingvaldsen of Oslo University is preparing a full catalogue of the coinage of Cos, including the 4th c. 44 Newell (n. 13) 62-75. 45 Price (n. 2) (1991) 68. 46 E. Badian, ‘The Administration of the Empire’, G&R 12 (1965) 173 n. 4; A. B. Bosworth, ‘Errors in Arrian’, CQ 26 (1976) 1 17-39.

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The new hoard proves that this ingenuity is wrong. MZDK is clearly legible on coins of Babylonian origin; their dies are linked with imitation Athenian owls which were certainly struck in Babylonia. Furthermore, these coins are manifestly of a different fabric from the Egyptian issue’s, struck under the same name.47 Historians may still feel uneasy about accepting an unattested job for Mazaces of sufficient prestige to permit him to coin in Alexander’s Babylonia. The point is not, as Badian implied, that a satrapal coinage under Alexander is historically implausible under a satrap’s own name: the issues of Balakros in Cilicia refute that claim.48 The problem is that our texts do not give Mazaces any job in Babylonia, although they name quite a cluster of Alexander’s major appointees at this point. I suspect there is simply a gap in their information, but other alternatives are possible. Mazaces may perhaps have coined in Babylonia under Darius in late 333 BC and then moved west to coin again in Egypt after Issus in 33312: further hoard-evidence may bear on the likelihood of this sequence.49 Or, as Mme Nicolet-Pierre proposed in 1979, the ‘Mazaces’ coinage in Babylonia was simply a local imitation of the one which he issued in Egypt: if people in Babylonia could imitate Athenian owls, could they not imitate Mazaces-pieces from Egypt too?s0 However, his Egyptian issue was brief and the proposed ‘imitations’ in Babylon in the new hoard outnumber the Egyptian originals. Bosworth’s further. solution, a change in the text, is the least appealing:s1 he suggests emending Arrian’s ‘Mazaros’ to Mazaces, the ex-satrap of Egypt, and credits him with a job at Susa under Darius I11 when he had silver owls coined in Babylonia. The job is unattested, the emendation arbitrary, and why did an official at Susa coin in Babylonia? The coins of Dion and Mazaces thus bear on wider horizons in the period from 341-331 BC. Further hoards and die-studies may refine the possibilities, but the main point still stands: like the hoard’s coins of Artaxerxes 111, Sabaces, Gaza, Philip I1 and Mazaeus, these coins of Dion and Mazaces belong in or before Alexander’s years of conquest. Their presence in the hoard reinforces the view that its contents all originate in Alexander’s lifetime.
I11

We can now turn to the bigger questions of origin and meaning: if the ‘Porus coinage’ originated during Alexander’s lifetime, what did its images signify and where were they struck? There are questions of method here too: how can we fix the meaning of a unique image without a caption? How reliably can we relate literary texts to a coin’s occasion and context? In all probability, the first known example of a big Porus coin derived from the Oxus treasure, found (we now know) at Takht-i-Qobad, near the meeting of the Wakhsh and Oxus rivers.52 In 1887, when publishing it, P. Gardiner drew attention to the ‘coarse and Price (n. 2) (1991) 68. H. von Aulock, ‘Die Pragung des Balakros in Kilikien’, JNG 14 (1964) 79-82 and Price, Catalogue ... 1.370. 49 M. J. Price has remarked to me that unpublished evidence of a hoard from Syria makes this notion unlikely; M. J. Price, ‘New Owls for the Pharaoh’, Minerva 1 (1990) 39-40, for advance notice. H. Nicolet-Pierre, ‘Monnaies des deux Derniers Satrapes d’Egypte avant Alexandre ...’, in 0. Morkholm, N. M. Waggoner (eds.), Greek Numismatics and Archaeology (Wetteren 1979) 229-30. 5 1 Bosworth (n. 46) 123 n. 37. 52 Bernard (n. 3) 92 n. 99, citing the 1979 establishment of this point by E. V. Zejmal.
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brutal types of features’ of the two figures on the elephant and decided that they must therefore be Scyths, not Indians. His decision caused him to misdate the new find but he did confess that ‘looking for the first time at this extraordinary coin or rather medal - for it is clearly a historical monument - everyone will be tempted to exclaim, ‘Alexander and P o ~ u s ’ . Historians ’~~ are used to misnomers. Like the ‘Edict of Milan’, which was neither an edict nor issued at Milan, the Porus medallion is now known not to be a medallion: does it relate to Porus or not? Its interpretation rests on a sequence of inferences, beginning from the images themselves, whose details have been clarified by the newly found examples. The key to them is the figure on the reverse who is holding a thunderbolt. He was both clothed and booted: the newly-found Babylon coins tell against the previous possibility that he was shown bare-footed, as if he was a hero or a figure of divine status. He is human, therefore, and in Alexander’s lifetime he must be Alexander himself, the only human to deserve such an attribute. We also know from texts that Alexander was shown holding a thunderbolt by his court artist Apelles in a painting displayed at Ephesus (probably, but not certainly, in his lifetime).54 This specific textual reference fits the interpretation and supports it, but even without it, the thunderbolt would be the decisive element because at this date it is exceptional. Clearchus, tyrant of Heraclea, is alleged to have called himself a ‘son of Zeus’ and named a son Keraunos; he is also said to have been escorted by a golden image of an eagle.55 These allegations may be false, but none concerning a thunderbolt is known even to posterity. Two further connections between the coin’s human figure and other images have been proposed, each of which would prove its identity: one, however, is uncertain and the other should now be rejected. In 1981, M. J. Price drew attention to a small bronze coin from Egypt, struck probably at Memphis soon after 332 BC: he championed the helmeted head on its obverse as a portrait of Alexander, the successor to the portraits on previous bronze issues of this type.56If so, it is the first lifetime portrait of Alexander which survives from antiquity. His arguments have yet to attract fellow numismatists’ comments, and the matter can hardly be decided from reproduced photographs: Price also suggests that this helmeted head resembles the head of the figure with the thunderbolt on our big ‘Porus’ coin. The indistinctness of its features makes it too hard to be sure: as yet, Price’s important theory is uncertain at either end. In 1962, W. B. Kaiser had already advanced a reasoned case for connecting the thunderbolted figure on our coin with a figure which is also thunderbolted and stands on the Neisos gem, now in St Petersburg. Both figures, he believed, were Alexanders, derived from Apelles’s lost painting.57 His study is regularly cited and widely accepted, but its arguments are very forced and closer study of the new Porus coins undermines P. Gardiner, ‘New Greek Coins of Bactria and India’,NC vii (1887) 177-78. Pliny, NH 35.192; the eccentric study by E. Schwarzenberg, ‘The Portraiture of Alexander’, in E. Badian (ed.), Alexandre le Grand (Geneva 1976) 223 argues that the portrait was really of Zeus, ‘mistaken’ for Alexander later, and that it showed a figure on horseback (he cites Ael. VH 2.3: however, Pliny, NH 35.95 tells this story without connecting it to Alexander). His arguments are unconvincing. The ‘Schwarzenberg Head’ which he promotes does not impress R. R. R. Smith (n. 43) 62 and despite A. Stewart, Faces of Power (Berkeley 1993) 165-71 and 429 has been diagnosed as a fake by W. Fuchs, ‘Eine Unbekannte Gemme mit Darstellung Alexanders des Grossen’, Ancient Macedonia V. 1 (Thessaloniki) 455-57. 55 Justin, Hist. Phil. 16.5.7-10; Memmon, FGH 434 F1.18ff. 56 M. J. Price, ‘A Portrait of Alexander the Great from Egypt’, Meddelelser fra Norsk Numismatik Forening 1 (1981) 30-37. 57 W. B. Kaiser, ‘Ein Meister der Glyptik aus dem Umkreis Alexanders’, JDAI 77 (1962) 227-39.
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them further. Kaiser emphasized the two figures’ pose, the thunderbolt in the right hand, the turn of the head and (he believed) the wearing of a diadem. The newly found coins make it clear that their Alexander is not wearing a diadem at all and they further weaken Kaiser’s arguments from the scale and spacing of the figures. Kaiser has shown no more than that the Neisos gem may reflect the Apelles portrait. The Porus coin’s figure exhibits more differences than similarities. On the Neisos gem, the diademed Alexander is naked; on the Porus coin, he is not diademed and is clothed in a breastplate, boots (probably) and a crested helmet with a feather. This helmet is not a Persian cap as suggested in previous studies. Price and others have emphasized that it is a crested helmet, of a type attested in northern Greece and Thrace.58 The next move is to connect the coin’s helmeted Alexander with the figure on horseback who is shown on its obverse. They are certainly the same person: but whom is the Alexander of the obverse attacking on the elephant? The two figures on the animal are bearded Indians, with the characteristic Indian hair style: nothing identifies either of them as a royal person, but the scene ought to symbolize a victory, because a Victory crowns Alexander on the coin’s reverse. We know from our textual framework that Alexander’s great victory over elephants occurred against Porus on the Hydaspes river in 326 BC. In the texts, the legend of his personal combat with Porus grew: a famous story in Lucian shows this legend of a ‘duel with Porus’ being used (rightly or wrongly) against the reputation of Aristobulus, an eye-witness source.59 The ‘victory’ coin could perfectly well depict an encounter which never happened, like the close encounter shown between Darius and Alexander in the Alexander Mosaic. In the literary sources, however, Porus is said to have defended himself valiantly against anyone sent to defeat him: how can this textual tradition fit a scene in which the elephant’s driver, not his back-seat companion, is the one who is armed and combatting Alexander? Here, P. Bernard has made admirable progress by adducing evidence from Indian art and literature, later in date, admittedly, than this coin but indicative (he would argue) of Indian custom and tradition.60 In his examples, a king drives his own elephant and sits in the front position.61 Contrary to modern interpretations, therefore, the ‘driver’ on the coin is Porus; he is also the taller of the two figures, matching the sources’ eye-witness tradition that the king was of great height. Behind him sits a squire, warding off Alexander’s spear with his bare hands. Bernard rightly rejects the opinion of B. V. Head that the coin’s artist misrepresented an elephant’s legs and gait: like the Aristotelian author of Historia Animalium 498A, he has aptly rendered the curve in the animal’s lower limb.62Plainly, the artist had seen an elephant and had good sources for what he depicted. So much for the coin-type’s reference: Alexander’s presence is certain and Porus’s is overwhelmingly likely, although neither is captioned. As for the coin’s wider meaning, it hails a great victory for Alexander over a great Indian enemy; Porus is not belittled, although his elephant is turned away from its attacker, because he himself (as Bernard
58 M. C. J. Miller, ‘The Porus Decadrachm and the founding of Bucephala’,Anc. World 25 (1994) 109-20, at 110-1 1. 59 Lucian, How to Write History 12. 6o Bernard (n. 3) 76-79. 61 Price; Catalogue ... 1.452 n. 9 argued that on the Indian archer-and-chariotcoins, published by Nicolet-Pierre, ‘it is the rear figure who holds a spear at the ready’, contradicting Bernard’s new view. But Hollstein (n. 4) 12 n. 54 denies that a spear is shown and Price (n. 2 ) (1991) 70 no longer refers to this ‘spear’, either. 62 Bernard (n. 3) 89 n. 85, with his brilliant pages 93-94 on the Eastern root of the further word p&pplSused by Aristotle; Miller (n. 58) wrongly cites Head’s objections.

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explains) is shown fighting valiantly. On the reverse, however, victorious Alexander holds a thunderbolt: like the combat of the two kings, this image is certainly not drawn from life. What does it mean? On a coin struck in Alexander’s lifetime, the thunderbolt is highly relevant to discussions of his divine honours. According to the unknown Hellenistic author Derkyllos, Porus’s elephant counselled Porus to submit to Alexander because Alexander was the son of Zeus.63 Both M. J. Price and P. Bernard have understood the thunderbolt in a similar way: it portrays Alexander as the son of Zeus ‘sous I’aspect demi-divinisC’.@ For P. Goukowsky, the scene goes further: it evokes apotheosis, connected with the personal conquest of India and thus with the exploits of Heracles and the theme of a ‘theos a n i k e t ~ s ’ . If ~~ these scholars are right, this solid primary evidence is most important for Alexander’s developing status beside the gods. We must, however, remember that the coin has no captions. Without them, I suggest, its meaning for contemporaries can only have been open, especially as the image had no precedent. Some of those who had heard of Alexander’s publicity since Siwah might agree with Price and Bernard’s reading of the scene as an image of the ‘son of Zeus’; those who wished to see more might even choose to see Alexander as equated with Zeus himself. As Alexander returned from India, such an equation was implied in the flattery of one such extravagant correspondent, Theopompus no less, who wrote as if the honours fit for Alexander were already honours which would assimilate him to a god.66 It is also significant that on present knowledge, Alexander’s successors avoided this image altogether: none of them is shown in art or on the coinage with a thunderbolt in one hand although they were not averse to other allusive, divine attributes6’ Unless such images have failed to survive, it seems that in their milieu, the image was felt excessive. However, the artist’s own design may have been more subtle and originally, the coin’s imagery may have been intended to say rather less. For awareness of the possibilities, we need to look ahead, to the image’s later recurrence. Rulers and thunderbolts surface again on coinage at Rome in the 30s BC where silver denarii of Octavian show Octavian’s head on one side and a herm of Jupiter on the other with a thunderbolt below it: the herm has Octavian’s own features.68 In a Roman context, this image can hardly be an unambiguous claim to divine status and honours but it certainly implies a special relationship with Zeus. As princeps, however, Augustus’s coinage was more restrained, a pattern observed until Domitian. Then, thunderbolts appear on Imperial coins in the mid-80s. An issue for Trajan repeats the theme, as does the Arch at B e n e ~ e n t u mNone . ~ ~ of these coins was modelled directly on our Alexander coinage, but how explicit is their divine imagery? It is tempting to read them in the extravagant terms of contemporary poetry. Poets in the Greek world naturally wrote of Augustus as equal to the gods, and in a Roman context, too, Ovid writes without qualification of Augustus as bearer of Jupiter’s

Derkyll. ap. Plut. De Fluviis 1.6. Price, Coinage ... 1.34; Bernard, (n. 3) 80. 65 P. Goukowsky, Essai sur les Origines du Mythe d’Alexandre I (Nancy 1978) 6G63. 66 Theopomp. FGH 115 F 253 with R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London 1973) 412-13; neither Badian nor Cawkwell (n. 14) even discuss the passage. 67 R. R. R. Smith (n. 43) 40-45. 68 L. Cerfaux, J. Tondriau, LR Culte des Souverains (Louvain 1957) 334. 69 J. R. Fears, Princeps A Diis Electus ... (Rome 1977) 222-23 (Domitian); 228 (Trajan’s coin); 228-33 (the Arch).
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thunderbolt. Statius and Martial were every bit as explicit about D ~ m i t i a n However, .~~ what was written in poetry was not necessarily the message of uncaptioned, offical cointypes. Images were not so explicit and hence they still provoke discussion. Domitian’s coinage is particularly relevant because it shows him in military dress, like Alexander, being crowned by a Victory. The fullest recent discussion by J. R. Fears, emphasizes a supposed reference to ‘divine election’ or investiture of a vice-regent, terms which are more formal and more suggestive of a coronation than the evidence requires: Fears also cites the Porus coinage and interprets it as a sign of Alexander’s sonship of Zeus and his use of the ‘concept of divine election as a means for legitimizing his kingship over his vast newly-conquered Empire’.71These interpretations are excessive, but Fears is right to emphasize that neither Domitian nor Trajan is portrayed as a god and that in art the ‘thunderbolt is not to be seen as a statement of the Emperor’s assimilation to Jupiter’.72 The coin which shows Trajan holding a thunderbolt is captioned ‘Optimo Principi SPQR’, no less. The Arch of Beneventum has been much discussed, but the recent comments by G. E. M. de Sainte Croix are pertinent.73He notes how Trajan, a ‘good’ Roman Emperor is shown receiving a thunderbolt (almost certainly, although some have seen the object as a globe): it is bestowed by the hand of Zeus himself. Although de Sainte Croix does not mention the Alexander precedent, or the coinages of Domitian and Trajan, he cites a cautious reading of the scene by I. A. Richmond.74 The ‘awesome conception’ of this thunderbolt ‘is not advanced at all in the form of a claim to identity with Jupiter. In the other half of the scene Trajan is shown as solemnly accompanied in his round of duties by the protector deities of the Roman state ... A claim to divine right is thus transformed into a proclamation of divine recognition’. As de Sainte, Croix rightly reminds us, we must still ask ‘recognition for what’? ‘Is the scene an adventus, in which case the handing-over of the thunderbolt (if that is what it is) must be a general concession of power, or is it a profectio, in which event the thunderbolt might perhaps symbolize no more than military power over ‘external barbarians’?’ The latter certainly seems more relevant to Domitian’s thunderbolted coin type which was struck in connection with barbarian wars. These questions are highly pertinent to the Porus coin. It does not show an ‘adventus’, nor (surely) a ‘profectio’: rather, Victory crowns Alexander in honour of an achievement. Even so, Alexander is wearing his military clothing and on the obverse, he is shown without any divine imagery, attacking a brave enemy as one human warrior against another. This clear context of human victory limits the scope of the thunderbolt: it need only signify that Alexander conquered barbarian India with the special aid of Zeus. Other observers, then or later, might choose to over-interpret the image as Alexander wielding the power of a god, but the coin by itself does not impose this strong interpretation. Once, when Alexander was wounded in India, the Athenian athlete, Dioxippus, is said by Aristobulus to have greeted the sight of his blood by quoting Homer’s line about the gods’ i ~ h o r This . ~ ~ wound is usually identified with his chest wound among the

F. Sauter, Der Romische Kaiserkult bei Martial und Statius (Stuttgart 1934) 54-78. Fears (n. 69) 222-27 and 60-61 (Alexander). 72 Fears (n. 70) 226 and 235; Trajan’s coin, 228. 73 G. E. M. de Sainte Croix, Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London 1981) 397. 74 I. Richmond, Archaeology and the’ After Life in Pagan and Christian Imagery (Oxford 1950) 16-17. 75 Aristob. FGH 139 F 47.
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Assacenians, when Alexander is said to have remarked, ‘it is not ichor: it is bl0od’.~6As it survives, this remark does not happen to be addressed to Dioxippus, but it fits his flattery neatly and makes up a story whose form and content have other parallels. No doubt the two comments were given as a pair by Ari~tobulus.~7 The anecdote, like others, catches very well the two ways of reading the Porus coin’s image: one is overinterpretation, the other is minimalist and (according to the favourable contemporary, Aristobulus) Alexander only endorsed the latter. V So much for the reference of the big Porus coins’ imagery: can we now fix their origin and account for the related Indian issues and the unrelated type with the chariot and elephant? Are any literary texts relevant to this problem? In 1982, M. J. Price worked from the imagery of the coins alone and proposed a novel dating.78The big pieces are linked by their lettering to the smaller coins with the Indian bowmen and elephants. Images of the main weapons of a conquered enemy would be unprecedented, he suggests, on ancient coinage: these types must therefore symbolize Indian power at a time when it was still highly estimated or even used by Alexander. He therefore dates the smaller coins to 327, before the defeat of the Indians at the Hydaspes where (he adds) the texts show us that the long Indian bows proved useless, as did the Indian chariots which stuck in the mud. The dating to 327 suits his view (in 1982) of the big Porus coins, which are linked to them. By emphasizing the coins’ apparent wear, he inferred that they must have originated several years before the Babylon hoard closed (in 323/2): a date of 327 suits this feature too. This dating of the big coins is paradoxical because they show Victory crowning Alexander and a clear encounter with a warrior who must be Porus. In 327, there had been no victory and no Porus. As the argument from wear has been dropped, nothing now requires this date to be considered. The meaning of the smaller, related coins is also open to argument. As their types are unique, they might, therefore, depart from the pattern of coinages which we know elsewhere: why could not the bowman and elephant evoke hazards, or wonders, confronted in India (as already at Gaugamela) and be issued for Macedonians in Alexander’s own army during or after the campaign? They do not have to be issued before the Hydaspes battle showed up the weaknesses of bowmen, chariots and .elephants. Price and others have not remarked that Indian archers, chariots and elephants continued to trouble (and accompany) Alexander on his way down the Indus. An Indian archer nearly killed him at the town of Malloi; Musicanus and Sambus had elephants and Oxicanus maintained elephants but lost them to Alexander; the Oxydracae even gave him 500 Indian war-chariots which he took with him in 326.79 Indian warriors on the coinage were not necessarily a symbol of concord or a mark of respect for the army’s Indian recruits. They evoked the Macedonians’ most exotic victories. In 324/3, on
76 Plut., Alex. 28.3; Mor. 180E (a leg wound) 341B (an ankle wound among the Assacenians). Arr. 4.23.3 specifies a chest-wound there, showing that Mor. 180E and 341B reflect a small slip (of memory?) by Plut. 77 Phylarchus, ap. Ath. 6.251C and Satyrus, ap. Ath. 6.251A; Badian, (n. 14) 64 tries nonetheless to separate Alex’s remark from Dioxippus’s, claiming that it was altered ‘precisely to ‘acquit’ Alexander of the charge that he believed in his own divinity’! 7R Price (n. 2) (1982) 79-82. 79 Arr. 6.10.1 (archers); 6.15.4-6, 16.4, 17.3 (elephants in 325 BC): 5.24.5 and 6.14.3 (chariots, 3261.5).

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the tomb proposed for Hephaestion, Macedonian arms were to be shown separately from Persian arms, but only so as to emphasize the Macedonians’ superiority.80If there is a hint of Alexander’s ‘concord’ in the coinage, it is better sought in the long-known ‘double darics’, struck to the old Persian royal type but enlarged to a new weight.81 Inferences from the coins alone are not exact, and so Price and others have turned to surviving texts, trying to be more specific. Of course a coincidence of text and coin is gratifying, but it has to be specific in order to carry weight. The odds, however, are heavily against its presence. The texts which survive are incomplete witnesses and their overlap with any surviving issue of coin would be a considerable matter of chance. Price has proposed, nonetheless, one highly attractive connection. In early 324, according to Plutarch, Alexander gave ‘the coin’ to the women of Persis which the previous kings had made customary: whenever they came to Persis, they gave each woman a gold piece. Late in Alexanders reign, an eastern mint began to strike gold darics, the traditional coinage of Persian kings. Are they not the traditional ‘coin’ which Alexander would have distributed to the Persian women?82The connection is attractive but not certain, and even so, it need not account for the entire purpose of the ‘Alexander darics’. Can a similar text throw light on the origin of the Porus coinage? Several have been proposed, and the most specific case has been developed by W. Hollstein, following a note to M. J. Price’s article of 1982.83When Alexander approached Taxila in 327, its Indian ruler Omphi (later to be known as Taxiles) greeted him with a wide array of presents. In Curtius (but not Arrian) they included 80 talents of ‘argentum signatum’. The phrase certainly means coinage, not ingots or bullion, as a passage in Pliny’s Natural History proves.84 Hollstein suggests that Omphi was bringing both the big ‘Porus’ coins and the smaller bowman-and-elephant coins which he had struck for Alexander’s sake. This suggestion is not compelling. The big Porus coins show an idealized encounter between Alexander and Porus on an elephant and also celebrate victory: when Alexander met Omphi, this encounter was still in the future. The Porus coins and the bowman-andelephant coins are linked by Greek lettering, yet Omphi was an Indian who is most unlikely to have had a Greek designer. Price suggests that we should think of the ‘argentum signatum’ as punchmarked coins, attested in India before Alexander.8s Alternatively, we might think of the Indian chariot-and-elephant coins, revealed by the new Babylon hoard. Their types are not obviously of Greek design and have no Greek lettering, but once we drop Price’s notion that these coins, too, must have originated before the Hydaspes battle had exposed these weapons’ weaknesses, we have no reason to fix them to this particular mention of coinage at Taxila. The other side of the exchange with Omphi has also attracted comment. Accoi-ding to Curtius, Alexander gave him ‘1000 talents from the booty he was carrying’: these talents could have been bullion,darics or anything, but Plutarch refers to this huge gift as v&zo,a.86The gift of 1000 talents to an Indian was certainly notorious, because the texts describe how Macedonians protested at it. However, Plutarch was writing centuries after the event and its original source, and his use of the word ‘coin’ is probably loose;

D.S. 17.115.4. A. R. Bellinger (n. 30) 66-68; 72. x2 Price, Coinage ... 1.452 n. 7, with Plut. Alex. 69.1-2 and Ctesias, ap. Plut. Mor. 240 A-B for Cyrus’s institution. 83 Hollstein (n. 4) 8-1 1; Price (n. 2) (1982) 84. 84 Q.C. 8.12.15-16; Pliny, N.H. 33.42-46. x5 Price, Coinage .... 1.452 n. 9. R6 Q.C. 8.12.16;Plut.Alex.59.5.
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Curtius’s mention of the ‘booty which he was carrying’ is more specific and possibly nearer to his source: perhaps that source also knew what really happened. In this case, one word in Plutarch does not help to fix a coinage’s origin. The Greek lettering A B and Z on this issue is also inexplicable in India and even more problematic because it recurs on thc big Porus coins at least a year later. Abandoning the texts about Omphi, we should return to the Porus coins themselves. We need a historical context for two issues, linked by Greek lettering, one of which is fixed by its victory-type to a date in or after 326. Numismatists now accept that the big coins are poorly struck, in comparison with the fine Alexander ‘decadrachms’ which were issued at a major mint in the East during the final years of his life. They were probably not part of a small issue. The seven examples now known have revealed the use of five separate dies for the reverses, suggesting that they belong to a very considerable Five-shekel pieces are coins struck to a high value. Between late 326 and 323, therefore, we also need an occasion when an issue of high value was required. On grounds of quality the issue ought to be a separate one from the big issues struck in Alexander’s own name at a major eastern mint which was probably Babylon. Nonetheless, the coin-types were designed by a Greek artist who was well informed about Indians and elephants and no doubt the types were meant to be to Alexander’s liking. In a recent study, M. C. J. Miller has reasoned from the horse on one side of the coin and connected the issue with a newly-founded city.88 The image, he observes, shows Alexander on Bucephalas, the famous horse who died at the Hydaspes: might not the coin-issue commemorate him? A city, Bucephala, was founded in his honour and Miller suggests a settlement of veterans and mercenaries, needing to be paid off ‘the decadrachm, therefore, depicts the last charge of Alexander’s steed and was minted to commemorate the death of his beloved friend and the foundation of the city.’s9 There is also a text (which he does not cite) which might bear more interestingly on this suggestion. Curtius tells us that after founding Bucephala and Nicaea on either bank of the Hydaspes river, Alexander ‘gave,the leaders of his forces crowns and 1000 gold pieces each: honour was paid to the others, too, according to the degree or rank which they held in his friendship, or for work which they had accornpli~hed.’~~ If there was ever a pay-out to mark Bucephala, it was this one, not an unattested gift to veterans and mercenaries: might our coins be part of this ‘honour’, offered to ‘the others’ in silver, not gold, to reflect their lower status? The idea is not unattractive, but Curtius does not actually specify silver coins: lesser friends may merely have received fewer ‘gold pieces’ (darics or Indian booty?). Curtius’s text is thus not explicit, but it is a better context than Miller’s suggestion. Bucephalas surely did not inspire the issue: the horse is only one figure among several on one side of the coinage; some authors said that Bucephalas died earlier in the battle, before the duel with Porus91 (though the artist could be inventing here, too): Bucephala is not known to have included warriors who were paid off Alexander founded many cities, in some of which mercenaries were settled, but none of them can be linked to any issue of coin. The Curtius passage is tempting, but it does not say that anything new was struck for the ‘donation’. Otherwise, the Bucephala theory is unconvincing.
87

x8 x9
‘H)

Stewart (n. 55) 201 n. 35, with bibliography. Miller (n. 58) 109-20. Q.C. 9.1.6. Arr. 5.14.4: contrast 5.19.5 and Plut. Alex. 61.1
Price (n. 2) (1982) 84. Arr. 5.14.4.

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Nonetheless an origin in India in or after 326 might seem the natural supposition. It has, however, been rejected on technical grounds of the bigger coins’ fabric; it is unsupported by any text about new coinage (instead of gifts) and it confronts the notorious problem that we have no evidence that any new coins were struck for Alexander at any mint in India itself. Leaving India, therefore, previous numismatists had already looked back to Susa in 324 as a likely context. Alexander returned to the former Persian palace, paid off his soldiers’ debts (at a cost, it was said of 20,000 talents) and celebrated the weddings of Macedonians and Iranians with further gifts (up to 10,000 talents) and a tent whose splendours are preserved for us in the words of Chares, his Master of Ceremonies. These payments were part of a pattern of extravagance which lasted until 323 and whose variously reported figures have caused F. de Callatay to compare their cost with the entire sum of silver bullion brought from the New World into Spain throughout the sixteenth century.92 The Porus coins have often been seen as medallions, struck to commemorate a royal occasion, perhaps the wedding at Susa. Now that we know they are coins, they need only belong in the greatest distribution of coin known in all Greek history. It was well able to account for any number of five and, two shekel pieces which, in turn, must have coloured contemporary impressions of this year of royal bonanzas. It needs emphasizing that the types of Indian warriors and victory fit into this phase as neatly as in India itself. Shortly before reaching Susa, so the eye witness Aristobulus tells us, Alexander stopped in Carmania and paid ‘thank offerings for victory in India and on behalf of his army saved from G e d r ~ s i a . ’ Each ~ ~ of these thanks left a large failure unsaid: from Carmania, Alexander then marched straight on to Susa, the journey which romancers soon connected with the theme of a Dionysian triumph in honour of the Indian campaign.94The romancers exaggerated, but Indian coin-types were certainly appropriate to his general publicity at this stage of his career. Perhaps historians should not be more specific, but a detail on the coins invites a closer look. The two types are linked by the lettering A B and E which earlier scholarship connected with ‘Alexandros Basileus’ or with a place name (Babylon, perhaps, if the lettering is read i n reverse, or even Baktra, as Miller has now suggested, on weak e ~ i d e n c e ) Price . ~ ~ has justly criticized each of these interpretations and Bernard has further observed that ‘AB’ occurs at a wide range of eastern mints on Seleucid coinage of the third century.96He therefore declines to pursue its meaning any further. The presence, however, of Z on one side and AB on another is unique; practice in Alexander’s reign need not conform to mint-practice in the third century. In 1982, Price already proposed that the letters ought to refer to persons connected with the issue: in Alexander’s reign and its aftermath, can we cite examples? In Cilicia, we have coins with the name or symbol of the satrap Balakros, since the early 320s; in Price’s view, we have the enigmatic Mazaces in Aramaic in Mesopotamia; we have Aspeisas at Susa, c. 316; we also have Nicocles of Paphos, probably after Alexander’s death, whose name appears almost surreptitiously on the obverse, not reverse, of his coinage.97
92 F. de Callatay, ‘Les TrCsors Royaux AchCmenides et les A4onnayages d’Alexandre’, REA 91 (1989) 259-74, at 262; Arr. 7.4.8-7.5; Chares 125 F4; Price, Coinage .... 1.27. 93 Arr. 5.28.3. 94 Arr. 6.28.2 (only a story); Plut., Alex. 67. 95 Miller (n. 58) 115-17. 96 Price (n. 2) (1982) 83-84; Bernard (n. 3) 91; Miller (n. 58) 115-16. 97 Price, Coinage .... 1.34.

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Among the previous coinage of Philip 11, abbreviated references to individuals is also accepted.98What about AB and Z? In Alexander’s lifetime, we have on the reverse of coins which were probably struck at Abydos, but there is no accompanying AB.99 We have ABs from various mints in the third century, but in Alexander’s lifetime the only candidates are coins struck at Susa with AB in monogram on their reverse.loOWe also have Z at Susa, never with AB, but on other reverses, struck c. 320-316 BC.Iol Believing that these marks might refer to individuals in the years of Alexander’s reign, Price remarked brilliantly in 1982 on the claims of Abulites and Xenophilus, attested as the satrap and the garrison-commander at Susa under Alexander. Io2 He has not developed this neat conjecture and in 1985, Hollstein simply rejected it as ‘inadmissible’ because Abulites did not govern obediently in the Macedonians’ interests during Alexander’s absence and Xenophi1us;as a garrison-commander, is not known to have had authority over any treasure. Io3 Interestingly, each of these objections misses further evidence which refutes it and strengthens Price’s tentative suggestion. According to Curtius 5.2.16-17, Xenophilus held a ‘cura arcis’ at Susa already in late 331. Xenophilus certainly took over the job in Susa: he was firmly in post under the Successors and in Diodorus 19, we meet him repeatedly as ‘master of the monies in Susa’ or ‘guardian of the treasure’, to whom officers had to apply if they wanted sums to be released for payments at their discretion.lW Although the Alexander-historians might seem to imply that the Persian treasures in Susa had all been convoyed to Ecbatana after Alexander’s initial conquest, the implication is plainly wrong. In 317/6 at Susa, we are told of 15,000 talents of art-works and 5,000 talents of crowns, gifts and spoils under Xenophilus’s supervision. Io5 Plainly, the ‘cura arcis’ involved a ‘cura thesauri’ (Diodorus calls Xenophilus the ~ 9 r p m p o q 6 A c xCurtius ~;~~~ says that Xenophilus served in Susa under Alexander; Arrian’s silence on a named appointment is no obstacle; Xenophilus served in Alexander’s later years and survived into the next decade. As the ‘X’ on a coin from Susa, struck between 326 and 324/3, he would (despite Hollstein) be the ideal candidate. Further X’s occur on the reverse of Susa coins, struck c. 320-316, and here, too Xenophilus was still in post to account for them. Thereafter, they disappear. As for AB, Price’s masterly catalogue of 1991 shows it nowhere other than Susa during Alexander’s lifetime.Io7 We have to be careful because AB and Z were not the only letters on Susa coins during this period,I0*but nowhere else do we find them at one and the same mint. So far from being ‘disobedient’, we have evidence for Abulites in exactly the opposite style, ignored, however, by Hollstein. At Plutarch, Alex. 68.7, we find Abulites as satrap of Susa, confronting Alexander on his return in 324. The meeting, we infer from other sources, took place at the Kara Su river outside the old city: ‘Abulites had prepared none of the necessary supplies, but merely brought 3,000 talents of coin to
Price, Coinage .... 1.370 (Balakros): 452 (Mazaces): 455-56 (Aspeisas);388 (Nicocles). .... 1.226 nos. 1497-99; 1502. ‘O0 Price, Coinage .... 1.485 nos. 3836-40. lo1 Price, Coinage .... 1.486-7: P216-P220. Price (n. 2) (1982) 83-84: ‘one might toy with the idea ...’ Hollstein (n. 4) 8 n. 2D. D.S. 19.17.3; 18.1 with 19.15.5. ‘(I5 D.S. 19.48.6-7. D.S. 19.18.1. Price, Coinage .... 2.572. Price, Coinage .... 1.485-6: no known individual suits the AA for c. 320-316 BC.
y8

w Price, Coinage

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him. Alexander ordered the silver to be thrown to the horses. When they did not taste it, he said, ‘So what use to us is your preparation?’ And he arrested Abulites.’ This anecdote has been aptly cited by numismatists as evidence that satraps had access to coin under Alexander. In the context of possible mints in the east, Price has also cited it and has recently emphasized the quantity of coins required for the 3,000 talents and the likelihood, therefore, that Abulites struck some of them freshly for his purpose.109 Plutarch implies that the coins were silver (&p&ov), not gold: unlike his mention of ‘coin’ in 327, the mention of coins here must be precise. The story requires it, because Alexander would hardly throw bars of bullion to his horses. Price considered his proposal of Abulites and Xenophilus to be ‘highly speculative’. Bernard rejected it, without emphasizing that Z and AB do not occur together on any later coins and that the names of individuals do occur on issues under Alexander; Hollstein rejected it too, missing the texts which Price did not cite but which revealed Xenophilus as keeper of Susa’s treasures and Abulites as satrap with a huge issue of coins in 324. Can Plutarch’s story help us to fix the origin of the two types, the Porus coins and the related bowman-and-elephant pieces? The risks of explaining the coinages by this text are not the risks of explaining it by Curtius’s or Plutarch’s reference to the gifts exchanged at Taxila in 327. There, the texts were imprecise and their date did not fit the big coins’ imagery. Here, the text fits observed facts about the coins themselves: their lettering (attested nowhere else in combination in Alexander’s lifetime, but explicable by the two Susa officers’ names and attested separately on reverses at Susa during their years in power): imagery of Indian victory (apt after summer 326, and especially apt in 324, as Arrian shows); the likelihood that the coins were not struck at a major mint because their quality is lower than the main Alexander decadrachms; the expert consensus that their striking was poorly executed and that the big coins were struck from several dies, probably for an issue of some size (Price has independently calculated the large number of coins needed for Abulites’s 3,000 talents, but without considering the striking of big decadrachms as a possibility.) Independently, Andrew Stewart has now suggested the relevance of Plutarch’s anecdote, but not all his proposals would be mine.’1° If the ‘3,000 talents’ are an accurate total, they cannot all have been newly struck for this sudden meeting with Alexander: well over a million coins would have been needed in the five and two shekel sizes. In 330 BC, a huge cache of gold darics had been captured at Susa:I1I some of them could have made up the bulk of Abulites’s offering. The coin-types are most unlikely to have been Susa’s unprompted idea, a ‘desperate plea for survival’, as Stewart suggests. Their accurate rendering of Indian details, including elephants, and the pose of Alexander must have been cut to an approved design, the work of a Greek who had served in India and knew the tenor of Alexander’s publicity. Perhaps such a design had been sent back from India to Susa in or after 326, but Abulites had done nothing more to execute it; alternatively it could have been sent ahead from Carmania in 324, and Abulites could have brought the first striking as part of his peace-offcring. The smaller bowman-andelephant coins may have been part of this same offering, hastily struck with the issuers’ letter marks on different sides of the coin. Alternatively, these smaller coins may have Price, Coinage .... 1.26 and 456-7 with nn. 24-25. Stewart (n. 55) 203-06, suggesting, however, that the Susa officials pioneered the design, as if ‘the implication would have been clear: Alexander’s role as Zeus on earth could still leave room for lesser men, in Persia as in India’ and as ‘a desperate plea for survival it failed’. But this implication is not clear at all, and the design is hardly Abulites’s own, let alone a ‘plea’. D.S. 17.66.2; Plut.Alex. 36.

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been minted earlier, in 32615 perhaps, for despatch from Susa to India112 where Alexander was still to use and encounter Indian archers and war-chariots. They might have been part of a donative, perhaps a back-up to the very one in Curtius for 32615. This general context cannot be made exact, but Plutarch’s anecdote is attractive evidence for the coinage’s origin. It was a coinage struck at Susa commissioned by Alexander’s staff; it was not an issue devised as a ‘plea for survival’ by an unruly satrap. In Plutarch, we glimpse its existence, but not its initiation. I hope to have established that the Porus types were not struck in 327; they were not commemorative medallions; they were not unambiguous statements of Alexander’s divinity; I also hope to have refuted the ‘textual contexts’ for their issue, aired since 1982: 32716 (Price and Hollstein); 326 (Miller, to commemorate Bucephalas); 3 1716 (Bernard, for Eudamus). An overlap between a text and a coin-issue is a rare coincidence and except for the total lack of evidence for any new minting in India, we might wish to think of an issue for one or other donative to troops there, on the model of Curtius’s random reference at 9.1.6. The coins’ lettering, however, would still need to be explained. In 1982, Price mentioned Abulites and Xenophilus as a possible answer but did not cite the texts which do most to strengthen his guess. Rejections of his view have not considered them, either, or have merely referred to the lettering on much later coins. Texts, facts about the coins and their fabric and a neat explanation of their lettering converge on the satrap and his treasurer. They suggest that the Porus coins were struck at Susa, not to pay debts or dowries, and that they existed there early in 324. Perhaps future examples should also be tested for hoofprints.
New College, Oxford

112

D.S. 17.95.4 for goods (including many precious suits of armour) despatched to Alex. in India

from his Western conquests.