California Studies in Classical Antiquity, Volume 6

By Philip Levine

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520340039

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California Studies in Classical Antiquity

Volume 6

CALIFORNIA STUDIES

IN

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Volume 6

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY • LOS ANGELES. LONDON

/

CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Senior Editors: Ronald Stroud, Norman Austin

Advisory Board: Erich S. Gruen, Philip Levine, Phillip Damon

VOLUME 6

The poppy motif used throughout California Studies in Classical Antiquity reproduces an intaglio design on a bronze fìnger ring of the fourth century B.C., from Olynthus; D. M. Robinson, Excavations at Olynthus 10 (Baltimore 1941) 136, pl. 26, no. 448.

ISBN: 0—520—09498-0

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-26906

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles

California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 1974 by The Regents of the University of California Printed in Great Britain

Contents 1

Contents 1

Aristotle on Solon’s Reform of Coinage and Weights

Three Odyssean Problems

The Silver Coinage of the Aetolian League

Unused Words as an Index of Style

Ephesian Ware

The Supposed Alliance between Rome and Philip V of Macedon

The Purpose of Isokrates’ Archidamos and On The Peace

The Emotions of Patriotism: Propertius 4.6

Roman Influences on the Victory Reliefs of Shapur I of Persia HYPERLINK \l noteFT_1_Pag293 1

The Legacy of Arthur Evans

The Provenance Of Greek io

Design and Execution in Aristotle, Poetics ch. xxv

The Origins of Demokratia

A Fragment of the Records of the Delian Amphiktyons IG II2 1641a

Aristotle on Solon’s Reform of Coinage and

Weights

Aristotle discusses, in chapter 10 of his Athenaion Politeia (AP), the alleged Solonian reform of Attic measures, weights, and coinage. This problem, perhaps the most controversial in Greek numismatic history, has received excellent investigations from Dr. C. M. Kraay and from the late Professor Konrad Kraft.1 I believe that more progress is possible. In particular, we must pay more attention to the surviving physical evidence for early Attic coinage and metrology.

THE STRUCTURE OF AP 10

Both Kraft and Kraay have devoted great care to the exact philological interpretation of Aristotle’s words and the structure of chapter 10. In the first sentence of the chapter, Aristotle sets the reforms in a chronological framework that includes other acts of Solon. "Now in his laws, it is agreed that he effected the reforms on behalf of the people that I have enumerated (rœîra 8ok€Î Beîva ômuotk), having already passed,2 before his legislation, his cancellation of the debts and, after that,3 his augmentation of the measures and weights and that of the currency." Since Aristotle refers to preceding ômuotkó with a demonstrative taîr&, it appears that he considered the reforms of chapter 10 as additional 8r¡pLOTiKa which he did not mention in previous chapters (5-9).4 Evidently he wanted to deal with the political measures thoroughly, as being the most important for his purpose (a history of the constitution). Thus chapter 10 is an appendix, a flashback; and after it he returns to the main theme, Solon’s political work: ôaráas

Tìv TToXiTclav ktX. As for uerà taîr&, some think it means after the legislation and the cancellation of debts, 5 while others interpret it as after the cancellation of debts (but before or concurrently with the legislation).6 I favor the latter interpretation: as Molly Miller points out, it is nonsense to suppose that Solon passed his laws, which are said to have included the division of the people into property-classes, and then revised the measures that established the classes.7 The order of events (as seen by Aristotle) was: cancellation of debts—metrological reforms—legislation.

Both Kraft and Kraay suggest, most plausibly, that Aristotle handles the reforms in a definite order. The first sentence of AP 10 mentions the increase of measures, weights, and currency. It is logical to assume that the order in the next sentence is the same as that in the first; but Kraft and Kraay differ over which words describe the increase in the currency. For Kraft, the coinage-reform comes in the final sentence of 10, viz. ¿iroirjae ôè Kal orœOuò mpòs to vómouœ RTÀ., while for Kraay it is in the brief clause 7v 8* o ¿platos xapakThp 8l8paxp>ov. Here I agree with Kraay as against Kraft; the particles 8 Kal seem to mark off the last sentence of 10 as an additional idea, and to say that Solon made weights in relation to the currency suggests that the currency has already been dealt with.8 I therefore translate the remainder of 10 as follows:

For it was under him that the MEASURES became larger than the Pheidonian ones,

and the mina, formerly having a WEIGHT of 70 drachmae, was filled up with the hundred.

The previous standard COIN9 was the didrachm.

Furthermore, he established weights in relation to the currency, with 63 minae weighing as much as a talent [lit. weighing the talent], and the three minae [i.e., the three over the usual number, 60] were distributed to the stater and to the other weights.

PHEIDONIAN MEASURES

Aristotle and his fourth-century sources knew that in 403 the Athenians had voted to use the measures and weights of Solon, as prescribed in the decree of Tisamenus (Andocides 1.83-84). The decree must in some way have defined them, perhaps in an appendix that Andocides did not quote. If Solon set up new measures, he must have replaced old ones. Herodotus (6.127.3) says that Pheidon established the measures used in the Peloponnese, and other Greeks accepted the idea that certain measures could be called Pheidonian. Aristotle and/or his sources could easily have inferred that pre-Solonian measures were Pheidonian, and this may be true, even though Herodotus attests Pheidonian measures only for the Peloponnese.10

The references that we have to Pheidonian measures indicate that they were smaller than those commonly used during the fourth century. A Delphic inscription from 363 records that the people of Apollonia (probably the Corinthian colony in Illyria) contributed to Delphi some 3,000 Pheidonian measures of grain: but the inscription explains that these equaled only 1875 Delphic measures.11 Again, Theophrastus (Characters 30.11) portrays his miserly man as distributing food to his servants in Pheidonian measures: evidently they were thought to be smaller than customary Attic measures.12

Finally, Androtion is cited by Plutarch as saying that Solon decreed a μέτρων ¿παύ^σΐί.13 He does not, as Plutarch quotes him, state that pre-Solonian measures were Pheidonian, but he could easily have drawn this conclusion and may have expressed it.

THE INCREASE IN THE WEIGHT OF THE MINA

The next clause concerns weights, in accordance with the order in which Aristotle has listed the reforms. The terms used in Greek metrology can be confusing, because the same words sometimes refer to units of weight and also to units of trade, just as in English a pound can mean either a monetary unit of 100 pence or a weight of 16 ounces avoirdupois. Before going farther, we shall clarify these terms.

Weights were lumps of bronze, lead, or stone. The basic denominations, of which fractions were also used, were as follows:

drachma: a small weight, equal to about 4.5 grams at Athens in the classical period.

mina: at Athens, a weight of 100 drachmae.

stater: a lump equal to two minae, i.e. about 900 grams.

talent: a notional weight, equal to 60 minae.

When Greeks began to issue coins, they adopted these names for their units of currency. In classical Athens the scheme was as follows:

drachma: the unit of currency; the earliest Athenian coins were mainly coined in the form of a didrachm, which weighed about 8.6 grams.

stater: any standard denomination; at Athens the name may have been used for a coin worth four drachmae.

mina: a notional sum of 100 drachmae, never a coin.

talent: 6000 drachmae or 60 minae, also a notional sum.

In order to keep the terms clear, I shall call the drachma used as a weight a weight-drachma and the drachma used in currency a coindrachma; I shall treat the other terms likewise.

Speaking now of the araBp,¿9 Aristotle reports that Solon raised the weight-mina from 70 weight-drachmae to 100. Kraft and Kraay take differing views of this statement. According to Kraft, Aristotle thought that the pre-Solonian weight-mina weighed only as much as 70 fourth-century weight-drachmae, even though it was divided into 100 (lighter) weight-drachmae. The putative change, therefore, was to raise the weight of the weight-drachma to the fourthcentury standard. A mina composed of 100 post-Solonian weightdrachmae weighed more than the pre-Solonian mina (as 10 is to 7); thus was the weight-mina filled up with the hundred.

But Kraay believes that Aristotle saw Solon as raising the weight-mina from 70 weight-drachmae to 100, without changing the weight of the drachma: he simply added 30 weight-drachmae to the previous 70. That implies, indeed presupposes, that Aristotle believed that the weight-mina once had 70 drachmae. Kraay finds a perfectly clear instance of a mina of 70 drachmae … at Delphi in the latter part of the fourth century.14 Kraft denies this and holds that we have no good evidence for the existence of any weight-mina containing other than 100 weight-drachmae: any other relationship is only the result of combination among different systems.15

I feel little competence in the matter, and the text of AP 10 is hardly unambiguous: when Aristotle says that the pre-Solonian weight-mina weighed 70 drachmae and was filled up with the hundred he does not specify whether the increase in weight was brought about by increasing the weight of the weight-drachma (Kraft) or by adding 30 weight-drachmae of the same weight (Kraay). Still, Aristotle does not say that the weight of the drachma was raised—he says that the weight of the mina was raised from 70 to 100 weight-drachmae. He may well have believed that the pre-Solonian mina comprised 70 weight-drachmae, and in our state of knowledge about ancient Greek weight-systems we can hardly rule out the possibility that he did believe it. So, with some hesitation, I follow Kraay’s interpretation.

By way of analogy, one might imagine that a reformer decided to change the present Troy system of weights, in which 12 ounces make a pound: henceforth it will take 16 ounces of precious metal to make a pound, the ounce remaining the same.¹⁶ We could describe such a putative reform by saying that the pound was now filled up with the sixteen. Androtion, it is true, took a totally different view, namely that the mina in question was the coin-mina and that it was divided into smaller parts. I shall deal with his opinion infra (pp. 8-9).

THE INCREASE IN THE SIZE OF THE COIN

Next, Aristotle says that the old [i.e., previous] standard coin was the didrachm. This statement is a little elliptical but was probably clear enough to Aristotle’s fourth-century readers, who knew that the standard coin was the tetradrachm.¹⁷ Nor was it necessary

16. In fact, the Troy and avoirdupois ounces are a little different, but the analogy is (I hope) acceptable.

17. After the introduction of owls, didrachms were used sparingly: Kraay, 5. One type of sixth-century Athenian Wappenmünz was a didrachm with a bull on one side: C. Seltman, Athensf its History and Coinage before the Persian Invasion (Cambridge 1924) 27-29. There was a belief that Theseus had struck bull-didrachms: Philochorus 328 F 200; Plutarch, Theseus 25; Pollux 9.60. Fourth-century antiquarians probably wanted to find a place for Theseus in the history of Attic coinage. This not only honored him but enabled them to view Solon as the great reformer. Aristotle does not expressly support this theory, but we may assume that he implicitly followed it, since he says that Solon altered coinage, not that he made the first Attic coins. In the Politics, 1257 a 3 iff, Aristotle says that all societies discover the need for money, so perhaps he believed that Theseus, as the founder of the Athenian polis (AP 41.2), used some kind of money.

to say in so many words that Solon made the change from the didrachm to the tetradrachm, for the context makes it clear that a change in the basic coin took place and that Solon devised the change. This is of course another increase: in this case, an increase in the physical size and value of the standard coin. In these words Aristotle explains the augmentation of the currency, listed in the first sentence of chapter 10 and thus rounds off the three reforms of measures, weights, and coins.

THE INCREASE IN OTHER WEIGHTS

Down to this point I agree largely with Kraay. His analysis of the last sentence of AP 10 is less convincing, and I venture to offer an alternative that seems more harmonious with Aristotle’s general theme of auxesis under Solon. To repeat the translation:

Furthermore, he established weights in relation to16 the currency, with 63 minae weighing as much as a talent (weighing the talent), and the three minae [over the usual number, 60] were distributed to the stater and to the other weights.

Kraay understands this to mean that the weight-mina was made 5 percent lighter, so that 63 of them would be required to make up the weight that was formerly made up by 60. As he says, This section tells us that the mint was permitted by law to strike coins at a weight 5 per cent lower than their face value; in other words, for every talent of silver brought to the mint for coining, the mint retained three minae to cover its expenses.17 The operation would have been as follows. If a weight-talent of silver was brought to the mint to be converted into coins, the mint would turn it into 6300 coin-drachmae. On a beam scale, these coin-drachmae would balance a weight-talent. But the mint would retain 300 of these coin-drachmae as its fee. The other 6000 would be distributed as coins, but each coin-drachma would be 5 percent lighter than a weight-drachma.

But this interpretation is threatened, one might even say formally contradicted, by Kraay’s earlier demonstration that the weight-mina was according to Aristotle made heavier when Solon raised it from a weight of 70 weight-drachmae to 100. How then can Aristotle be made to say that the weight-mina was (at the same time?) made lighter? Naturally Kraay is aware of this difficulty. His solution is to suggest that the minae here must be different from those described earlier in AP 10.

Such a suggestion is hard to accept. Aristotle gives no hint that he is now talking about different weight-minae. Even more, the general theme of —replacing smaller units with larger ones—

scarcely harmonizes with Kraay’s theory. Finally, Aristotle says that the extra three minae èmôoveuemcœv to the stater and to the other weights. To distribute something is not to take something away. If three minae were distributed to the other weights, then the latter must have become heavier, not lighter. The only view consistent with Aristotle’s scheme is to understand that the talent now became heavier. It weighed 63 weight-minae instead of 60.

But, as everyone in classical Athens knew, a weight-talent had 60 minae, not 63. The three extra weight-minae, distributed among the weights, made all the weights a little heavier, i.e. by 5 percent. Thus did they absorb these three weight-minae that Solon distributed to them.

Such, then, is my interpretation, which has required a large expansion, of what Aristotle meant in chapter 10. Everything— weights, measures, standard coin—was increased in size by the Solonian reforms.

EvIENCE OUTSIDE ARISTOTLE: ANDROTION

I shall now try to test the above conclusions against the other surviving evidence. First, there is Androtion, whom Aristotle used in other parts of the AP. Plutarch (Solon 15) says that the Athenians often made harsh matters seem mild by giving them gentle names, as when Solon called his canceling of debts a seisachtheia or disburdenment. Then he mentions the sharply different conception of Androtion.

And yet some have written, including Androtion, that Solon pacified and comforted the poor not by a cancellation of debts but by moderating the rate of interest; and that he gave the name seisachtheia to this piece of kindness and to the accompanying increase of the measures and the valuation [?] 18 of the coinage. For he made the mina, which previously consisted of 7019 drachmae, consist of 100, so that the people paid back the same number of coins but paid less in weight; thus the payers were greatly benefited, while the recipients suffered no loss.

Evidently Androtion knew the usual interpretation of the so-called seisachtheia, namely an outright cancellation of debts, and wanted to correct it by showing that Solon did not do anything so radical. This view of Androtion’s approach is well discussed by Jacoby; Kraay has also demonstrated that Androtion’s version of the reform is a product of fourth-century rationalizing. Both Androtion and Aristotle had reason to believe that Solon had raised something from 70 to 100. For Aristotle, this was the number of weight-drachmae in the weight-mina; but for Androtion, it was the number of coin-drachmae in the coin-mina. In other words, as Kraay observes, Aristotle treats the drachma as a weight, whereas Androtion treats it as a coin. Kraay goes on to observe that Androtion treated early sixth-century Attica as though it were the economically developed state of the mid-fourth century; debts were contracted in silver coins, and the problem could be alleviated by reducing the amount of interest due.20 I therefore reject the version of Androtion.

THE CHRONOLOGY OF ATTIC COINAGE

Another kind of evidence outside Aristotle is the history of Attic coinage. Solon was archon, according to credible ancient tradition, in 594/3.²³ But the earliest Attic coins, the Wappenmünzen (WM) or heraldic coins, are now thought to have begun around 560. If we follow the ancient date for Solon’s reforms, i.e. about 594, we have separated Solon from any possible reform of Attic coins.

But there is a possible low chronology for Solon’s reforms. C. Hignett argued that they took place about 570, and Molly Miller has even dated Solon’s archonship to 573/2.²⁴ Since 570 is close to 560, one might imagine that the Athenians were coining during Solon’s political career. But the early WM were mainly didrachms. Only toward the end of the series—about 525-510, depending on which numismatist one follows—did Athenians issue WM tetradrachms.²⁵ About the same time they introduced the tetradrachms with an owl on one side and a head of Athena on the other. The owl tetradrachm became the standard coin; and, as we have seen, Aristotle attributes the increase in the size of the coin to Solon. Therefore even on the low chronology we cannot follow Aristotle; as Kraay says, the measures concerning the coinage cannot be Solonian. ²⁶

THE RISE IN WEIGHTS

In the last sentence of chapter 10, Aristotle says that Solon made weights in relation to the currency; and that he made weights

23. Cadoux, JHS 68 (1948) 93-99.

24. C. Hignett, A History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford 1952) 316-321; Miller, The Accepted Date for Solon: Precise, but Wrong?, Arethusa 2 (1969) 62-86.

25. For this date, see Raven (supra n. 3); it is close to those suggested by Kraay and Wallace.

26. Kraay (supra n. 1) 7.

heavier by 5 percent. The study of Attic weights, including the relation between commercial weights and Attic coins, has been much facilitated by the work of Professor Mabel Lang. I differ with some of her historical views but have nothing but praise for her frequency table listing the known examples of various weights.21 In the subsequent discussion we shall be concerned mainly with the commercial or weight-staters and their relation to the weight of coins.

The weight-stater stood in a certain mathematical relationship to the physical weight of Greek coins. In some Greek numismatic systems—perhaps this was the normal arrangement, but it was probably not universal—a weight-stater (a lump often marked ETATEP) weighed about 200 times as much as a one-drachma coin, or 100 times as much as a didrachm. This relationship is easily seen in the coinage of Samos.22 But, so far as our evidence shows, Athenian weight-staters and coins did not at first conform to this usual proportion.

The early WM weighed most often 8.4 or 8.5 grams to a didrachm, and even 8.6 is fairly common.²⁹ If the normal proportion obtained between the weight-stater and the coin, we should expect early Attic staters to weigh 840-860 grams.

The oldest known Attic weight-stater is a bronze weight found at the bottom of a well. It is marked ETATEP and also bears the words â EMO EION AGENAION\ evidently an official weight. Professor Lang dates this stater to about 500, but the letter-forms are compatible with a date even as early as 520.³⁰ It weighs 795 grams.³¹ Along with it were found two other weights, a one-sixth stater and a quarter stater. The former weighs 126 grams, the latter 190; thus they suggest staters of 756 and 760 grams. We may infer that Athenians were using a weight-stater of rather less than 800 grams in the period 520-500. This stater did not equal 100 didrachms in weight. Evidently the normal 100 to 1 ratio had not been established.

29. Hopper (supra n. 1) 37.

30. Published by T. L. Shear, Hesperia 7 (1938) 362. For the date I suggest, I rely on the historical analysis of letter-forms in L. H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (Oxford 1961) 66ff, but I recognize that dating such objects by letter-forms cannot pretend to be exact.

31. Shear said that the stater weighed 810 grams, but Rodney Young and Mabel Lang weighed the piece independently, several years apart, and obtained 795 grams, which I accept. Perhaps Shear weighed the stater before it was thoroughly cleaned. I also accept Lang’s weights for the two smaller pieces found with the stater.

A little later, Athens did use a stater of the expected 860 grams. The evidence for the existence of this stater was published long ago by Erich Pernice.23 A bronze weight was inscribed EMIIZTA]- TEPON24 and bore the same words as the older one, AEMOEION A6ENAION. It weighs 426.63 grams, but Pernice pointed out (p. 31) that it had lost a little weight from the head of a dolphin carved on it and probably once weighed a little more. Since this is a half-stater, we may estimate the full stater at 860 grams. This estimate is supported by another weight in Pemice’s catalogue, a one-twelfth stater, weighing 71.42 grams and suggesting a stater of about 857 grams—very close to 860.25

This new, heavier stater did weigh as much as 100 didrachms; thus the normal ratio was obtained. We cannot date these staters precisely by means of letter-forms, but some suggestions are possible. Probably when the old stater of ca. 800 grams became obsolete it was thrown down the well from which Shear recovered it in 1938. Perhaps this was a little before 500—just when the WM were giving way to the owls that were to dominate Attic coinage. I suggest that the increase in the weight of the stater was contemporaneous with the introduction of owls: this was a convenient time to bring the weight of the stater and that of the coins into the classical ratio of 100 didrachms to one weight-stater (in effect, Athens stopped coining didrachms, so the stater may have been measured against 200 coin-drachmae or 50 tetradrachms).

But this was not the end of reforming the weight-stater. Lang’s table shows that it could range all the way up to nearly 1600 grams. Amid all the ups and downs, there is a concentration of existing specimens around 900 grams. Lang lists 69 staters between 900 and 920 grams, 51 in the 880-900 range, and 40 in the 920-940 range. These are the three largest groups and they indicate a stater of 900-920 grams as the one most commonly used.

Can this weight-stater of 900-920 grams be brought into any relation to a coin-drachma weighing about 4.3 grams? Professor Lang is undoubtedly right in concluding that this stater was intended to equal 105 didrachms in weight. It is immediately striking that a

weight of 105 didrachms is an increase of 5 percent over the normal weight of a stater (viz. the weight of 100 didrachms). Here, then, is an increase of 5 percent in weights in relation to the currency, the same increase that Aristotle ascribes to Solon. The didrachm weighed about 8.6 grams, and 105 of these weighed 903 grams, a weight clearly reconcilable with the most common weight-staters of 900-920 grams. The previously used stater weighed about 860 grams; an increase of 5 percent of course brings it to about 903.

Aristotle was therefore right in saying that, at some time, Attic commercial weights were raised by 5 percent. He chose to describe the increase by saying that the talent was raised in weight from 60 to 63 minae, but he might equally well have said that the weight-stater or the weight-mina was raised. All these weights are linked to one another, and they rise or decline together. Perhaps Aristotle expressed the rise in terms of the talent because that was the biggest weight.

Is there any parallel for a deliberate rise in commercial weights? At this point we must examine a Hellenistic inscription that has long played a part in the study of Attic coinage.³⁵ This document, from the second century B.C., orders that the weight-mina is to be increased. Formerly it was equal in weight to 138 one-drachma coins but now it is to weigh as much as 150 such coins.26 This is a rise of approximately one-twelfth in the weight of the weight-mina (a twelfth of 138 is 11.5; but instead of fixing the new weight at 149.5 coindrachmae the Athenians rounded it off to the convenient 150).27 The inscription also orders that the weight-talent be raised from 60 to 65 weight-minae: that is, the talent will go up by one-twelfth. Presumably the heavier talent was then once more thought of as comprising 60 minae. Aristotle might have described this rise in weights by using the language ofAP 10: They made weights in relation to the currency, with 65 minae weighing the talent, and the five [extra] minae were distributed to the stater and to the other weights.

The Hellenistic inscription shows that Athenians could revise their weights and could express the revision in terms of the

35. IG II2 1013, lines 29-37. See Lang (supra n. 3) 3.

weight of coins. How did Aristotle learn of the 5 percent rise in weights that he cites in AP 10? Probably not from Androtion: the whole direction of Androtion’s argument, as quoted by Plutarch, is that Solon did not raise weights but simply redivided the coin-mina into smaller parts. Still, we do not have Androtion’s work, and we must leave open the possibility that he discussed the rise in weights. Perhaps Cleidemus described these reforms, but even if we assume this we must still ask how fourth-century historians could have known what Solon did.

Leaving Androtion and Cleidemus aside, there remain two possible ways in which Aristotle could have informed himself:

1 . Aristotle or his pupils did research into Attic weights by using contemporary evidence.

2 . Some public document recorded that there was to be a rise in weights, making them 5 percent heavier than the previous 100-to-1 ratio against the weight of a didrachm.

Possibility 1 seems at first reasonable. Aristotle could have seen examples of 860-gram staters and could have compared them with 900-920 gram staters. He could have observed for himself that staters had become heavier by some 5 percent over a period of time. But, since staters were not always precise in weight, it is not certain that he would have been able to infer that the increase was exactly 5 percent. He might not have come to this conclusion if he worked with, say, a stater of 855 grams and one of 918 grams. So it is better to seek, even if conjecturally, some document that recorded an officially decreed rise of 5 percent in weights.

We must therefore examine possibility 2. We know of one time in the classical period when Athenians made a public resolution about weights: this is of course the occasion in 403 when the decree of Tisamenus required them to use the weights and measures of Solon.³⁸ It is not clear from the language of this decree whether the proposer believed that the preceding government, that of the Thirty, had tampered with Solonian standards, which therefore would have to be restored, or whether Solonian standards had been in use for some time without serious interruption. In either case, the nomoi of Solon and thesmoi of Draco are recommended for use; they were traditional, time-honored, and suitable to a reestablished democracy. So too with the weights and measures: it is quite possible, even probable, that

38. See Andocides 1.83-84.

Tisamenus was not trying to propose anything new. The second sentence of the decree prescribes that nomothetai are to provide whatever additional legislation is needed.

But, even if Tisamenus was only restoring Solonian weights and measures unchanged, we may assume that the decree was accompanied by detailed instructions about what the weights and measures were. As a parallel, we may refer to Lysias, oration 30, in which it is recorded that Nicomachus was commissioned in 410 to publish the laws of Solon. A result of his work was the detailed Athenian sacrificial calendar, a great inscription that defined the religious practices that passed as Solonian. That does not mean that he was ordered to devise new practices; people simply wanted the correct procedures stated for public reference.

I suggest that some document, perhaps an inscription, was drawn up in 403 in order to inform Athenians about the weights that they were to use (or resume using). These weights were believed to be, and were called, the weights of Solon.28 This document will have specified that the weight-mina was to equal 105 coin-drachmae in weight. Such a relationship may have existed before 403 or may now have been stated for the first time. In either case, it was recorded for the public. Aristotle probably knew systems in which the weight-mina weighed as much as 100 coin-drachmae and a weight-stater weighed as much as 100 didrachms. Thus he had evidence for thinking that the Solonian weights were 5 percent heavier than those previously used. I also infer that the document of403 stated that 63 weight-minae should weigh as much as a weight-talent—-just as the later inscription, IG II² 1013, said that the weight-talent was to weigh 65 weight-minae. This new equivalent—63, not 60—duly found its way into chapter 10.

THE PROBABLE HISTORICAL FACTS

Now that we have worked out an interpretation of chapter 10 and suggested a possible source for Aristotle’s statements in the last sentence, it remains to estimate what, if anything, Solon actually did with respect to measures, weights, and coins.

It seems quite credible that he abolished the Pheidonian measures (or whatever ones Athenians had been using) in favor of new

ones; this would make a suitable accompaniment to his division of Athenians according to the measured produce of their land.

One may also accept that he revised the weight-mina upward so that it weighed 100 weight-drachmae; as Kraay says, such a mina was surely more convenient than one of 70 weight-drachmae. Androtion or his source misunderstood this reform and trivialized it into a redivision of the coin-mina into 100 smaller coin-drachmae. Androtion also found here the celebrated seisachtheia, but Aristotle rightly identified this with a cancellation of debts. In fact, Aristotle may be deliberately replying to Androtion when he says that the cancellation of debts was Solon’s first act and that the metrological reforms came later; such a view would separate the seisachtheia from the latter reforms, against Androtion’s attempt to identify them.29

Solon did not, despite Aristotle, augment the standard coin from a didrachm to a tetradrachm. By adopting a low chronology for his reforms, we could make him active during the early years of the Wappenmünzen coinage—but Aristotle goes, unacceptably, much farther.

Finally, Solon did not make new weights in relation to the currency. Attic coinage was in its infancy during Solon’s career if it existed at all. Quite possibly Athenians were using some form of coinage, a non-Attic one, but the increase of weights by 5 percent against the weight of coins came much later than Solon. We cannot date this change securely; but it is likely enough that such an equation was stated in or about 403, when the decree of Tisamenus bade the Athenians use the weights of Solon. The mina was to equal 105 coindrachmae in weight, and this 5 percent rise from the norm, ascribed to Solon, suggested to Aristotle that Solon had raised weights npos TO

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41 I thank Professors E. Badia n, J. P. Barron, A. L. Boegehold, M. Lang, C. G. Starr, and R. S. Stroud for their advice. That does not imply their agreement with any of my views.

FREDERICK M. COMBELLACK

1 See Kraay, An Interpretation of Ath. Pol. Ch. 10, Essays in Greek Coinage Presented to Stanley Robinson (Oxford 1968) 1-9; Kraft, Zur Übersetzung und Interpretation von Aristoteles, Athenaion Politeia, Kap. 10, Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 10 (1959/60) 21-46, with enormous bibliography [I refer to this essay as Kraft (1)]; idem, Zur solonischen Gewichts- und Münzreform, ibid. 19 (1969) 7-24 [Kraft (2)]. Other important studies are Kraay, The Archaic Owls of Athens, NC⁶ (1956) 43-68; W. P. Wallace, The Early Coinages of Athens and Euboea, NC¹ 2 (1962) 23—42, with Kraay’s reply, ibid. 417-423; E. J. P. Raven, Problems of the Earliest Owls of Athens, Essays Robinson 40-58; R. J. Hopper, "Observations on the Wappenmünzen," ibid. 16-39; M. Lang, The Athenian Agora vol. X: Weights, Measures, and Tokens (Princeton 1964).

2 I read noijaas with Wilcken, not iroiijoai (Kenyon et al.): see TAPA 102 (1971) 43.

3 On the reference of ravra see infra.

4 Kraft (1), 22, on the other hand, thinks that ravra...8i]fioriKa indicates that the metrological reforms did not appear popular to Aristotle.

5 So Kraft (1), 23 and Kraay, 2; both argue that, if the reforms followed only the xpeßv àiroKoirq, Aristotle would have written ravnjv.

6 Hammond, JHS 60 (1940) 75, n. 21.

7 Miller, Solon’s Coinage, Arethusa 4 (1971) 34.

8 No argument from the particles in AP 10 can be totally convincing, as Kraft (2), 10, somewhat reluctantly admits; but ôè Kal do seem a sharper break in the thought than the preceding Kal...Kal...S*. I find unnecessary Kraft’s suggestion that $v…Stöpaxpov may well be a gloss introduced into Aristotle’s text: Kraft (2) 9 and n. 6.

9 I translate xaPatcrVP as standard or most commonly used coin and vopiapa as currency, medium of exchange, coinage. This accords with Aristotle’s usage, for example at Nic. E th. 1133 b, where he discusses how money functions in a society. He uses vópiapa in such a way that it must mean coinage as a medium: perpetrai yàp navra vopia- pan. The Greek-English Lexicon, s. vv. xapanrép, vópiapa, also makes the distinction clear. Kraft (2), 11, adequately answers those who, like Milne, CR 57 (1943) 1-3, would translate vópiapa as most commonly used coin; elsewhere in his article Milne more sagaciously approves Kenyon’s translation, currency.

10 The question of what Pheidon did and did not do is searchingly studied by VV. L. Brown in his important paper, NC⁶ 6 (1950) 177-204. The tradition that Pheidon issued coins is but fourth-century speculation, but he probably designed measures that were widely used.

11 See Μ. N. Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions, vol. 2 (Oxford 1948), no. 140, lines 80-92, from Fouilles de Delphes 3 (5) 3.

12 is Cobet’s emendation of φίΐδωνίψ or φεώομίνψ (MSS).

13 Solon 15; FGrH 324 F 34.

14 Kraay, 5, citing the tables given by Raven, NC* 6 (1950) 4.

15 Kraft (2) 18-20. But M. Crawford, "Solon’s Alleged