Roma Numismatics Ltd
Auction XI 7 April 2016
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Islands off Thessaly, Skyros AR Stater. Circa 480 BC. Two goats back to back on either side of fig leaf, heads reverted / Stellate floral pattern within square incuse. J.M. Balcer, SNR 57 (1978), p. 96, 6, pl. 25 (same dies). 8.07g, 27mm.
Very Fine. Extremely Rare, Balcer cites only 2 examples: ANS, New York (Skyros hoard. IGCH 31) and Athens, Numismatic Museum.
This didrachm and other silver coins of the same type are all very rare and were often overstruck on Attic-weight coins of Akanthos. Since one such coin was found on Skyros (Balcer, no. 46) and six others were in the possession of an inhabitant of the island, it would appear that they were struck on Skyros prior to the arrival of Kimon, c. 475 BC. See J.N. Svoronos, JIAN 3 (1900), pp. 39-46 and Balcer, pp. 69-101.
In the early fifth century an expedition was mounted to the island of Skyros under the command of the Athenian general Kimon, ostensibly under the auspices of the Delian League. The conquest of the island is mentioned by Thucydides (1.98), but Plutarch's version in his Life of Kimon is much more detailed (Life of Kimon, 8). According to Plutarch the island was inhabited by non-Greek Dolopians whose constant plundering of ships, including those which were trading with them, eventually resulted in a request for Athenian intervention, addressed directly to Kimon, whose expedition 'cleared the sea of pirates'. To complete this heroic effort, Kimon also fulfilled the edict of the Delphic oracle by 'discovering' the bones of the Athenian hero Theseus on the island – who, it was said, had been murdered by the jealous and fearful king Lycomedes – and returning them to Athens. Plutarch relates that he identified as the remains of Theseus "a coffin of a great corpse with a bronze spear-head by its side and a sword."
Thucydides, who was to some extent a contemporary of Kimon, and whose account precedes that of Plutarch by over four centuries, is much less elaborate in his description of the invasion, and simply tells us that the Athenians enslaved the local population and established a colony of Athenian citizens there. De Souza (Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge University Press, 1999) points out that Plutarch's account is the only one to mention piracy (Diorodus and Pausanias also cover the invasion of Skyros), and it is unconvincing, and appears very much like an attempt to justify Athenian aggression. Dawe (Scandal at Skyros: The Delian League, Plutarch and the Maligning of the Dolopians, Studia Antiqua 6.1, 2008) arrives at the same conclusion, and contends that the real purpose of the expedition was to decrease Persian influence by removing a Medizing people from the Aegean, to expand the influence of Athens, and to add to his own political capital by returning the bones of the Athenian hero Theseus.
Modern historians have tended to take Plutarch's account at face value, and not question either his facts or motives, or why his version should differ markedly from those of Thucydides, Diodorus or Pausanias. Given no further evidence of piracy other than Plutarch's word for it nearly half a millennium after the event, it seems probable that rather than being the product of a pirate gang, this coin represents one of the last remnants of a people exterminated by Athenian imperialism; a people who in the days of myth had supposedly sheltered the young Achilles at the request of his mother Thetis.
Very Fine. Extremely Rare, Balcer cites only 2 examples: ANS, New York (Skyros hoard. IGCH 31) and Athens, Numismatic Museum.
This didrachm and other silver coins of the same type are all very rare and were often overstruck on Attic-weight coins of Akanthos. Since one such coin was found on Skyros (Balcer, no. 46) and six others were in the possession of an inhabitant of the island, it would appear that they were struck on Skyros prior to the arrival of Kimon, c. 475 BC. See J.N. Svoronos, JIAN 3 (1900), pp. 39-46 and Balcer, pp. 69-101.
In the early fifth century an expedition was mounted to the island of Skyros under the command of the Athenian general Kimon, ostensibly under the auspices of the Delian League. The conquest of the island is mentioned by Thucydides (1.98), but Plutarch's version in his Life of Kimon is much more detailed (Life of Kimon, 8). According to Plutarch the island was inhabited by non-Greek Dolopians whose constant plundering of ships, including those which were trading with them, eventually resulted in a request for Athenian intervention, addressed directly to Kimon, whose expedition 'cleared the sea of pirates'. To complete this heroic effort, Kimon also fulfilled the edict of the Delphic oracle by 'discovering' the bones of the Athenian hero Theseus on the island – who, it was said, had been murdered by the jealous and fearful king Lycomedes – and returning them to Athens. Plutarch relates that he identified as the remains of Theseus "a coffin of a great corpse with a bronze spear-head by its side and a sword."
Thucydides, who was to some extent a contemporary of Kimon, and whose account precedes that of Plutarch by over four centuries, is much less elaborate in his description of the invasion, and simply tells us that the Athenians enslaved the local population and established a colony of Athenian citizens there. De Souza (Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge University Press, 1999) points out that Plutarch's account is the only one to mention piracy (Diorodus and Pausanias also cover the invasion of Skyros), and it is unconvincing, and appears very much like an attempt to justify Athenian aggression. Dawe (Scandal at Skyros: The Delian League, Plutarch and the Maligning of the Dolopians, Studia Antiqua 6.1, 2008) arrives at the same conclusion, and contends that the real purpose of the expedition was to decrease Persian influence by removing a Medizing people from the Aegean, to expand the influence of Athens, and to add to his own political capital by returning the bones of the Athenian hero Theseus.
Modern historians have tended to take Plutarch's account at face value, and not question either his facts or motives, or why his version should differ markedly from those of Thucydides, Diodorus or Pausanias. Given no further evidence of piracy other than Plutarch's word for it nearly half a millennium after the event, it seems probable that rather than being the product of a pirate gang, this coin represents one of the last remnants of a people exterminated by Athenian imperialism; a people who in the days of myth had supposedly sheltered the young Achilles at the request of his mother Thetis.