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Copyright 1995 by Michael E. Marotta, 22 Aug 1995
[This is from a manuscript submitted to The Celator.]
The coinage of Lycian League has become increasingly available. Unfortunately, the standard references, the BMC Lycia and David R. Sear's Greek Coins and their Values, are both out-dated by new research, discoveries, and syntheses. The SNG Von Aulock remains substantially correct, in part because von Aulock was one those who opened the door to understanding Lycia. Because most dealers rely on Sear, the BMC, and Historia Numorum, much Lycian silver is misidentified in the sale catalogs.
Archaeology suggests that the Luwian-speaking people who called themselves Trmmili first came to Lykia only 3000 years ago. According to Herodotus, Harpagus the Persian attacked Xanthos. The Lycians were greatly outnumbered and they withdrew into their citadel. They killed their wives and children and torched the building. Then they rushed the field and died to a man. However, 80 families were away from the city at the time and escaped the slaughter. However, under Persian rule, Xanthos was rebuilt. Before this, only the Xanthus Valley towns of Tlos, Xanthos and Pinara were Lycia per se. However, under the Persians, independent villages of Lycian peoples to the east came into the coordinated government of the region.
In the words of Hyla Troxell: "The start of the League has often, especially in numismatic circles, been taken as 167 BC. This date was based not only on the obvious fact that in 167 Lycia became free, but also on the BMC's dating of the League coinage. Head in Historia Numorum has followed the BMC in calling 167 the start both of the coinage and of the League itself."
However, the roots of the League go back 300 years, according to Trevor Bryce, who wrote: "Certainly, the network of dynastic alliances which developed in the wake of the Persian conquest gave the country the semblence of a relatively unified and coherent political structure in the 5th and 4th centuries. But political coherence was, I believe, an artificial, Persian-inspired development, rather than a natural one, and depended for its maintenance on the Persian-backed dynasts based at Xanthos."
In 104-100 BC the Lycian League consisted of 23 towns. The major cities of the League were Xanthos, Patara, Pinara, Olympus, Myra, and Tlos. Phaselis was not at that time in the League. The League had no official central site, though the records were kept at the temple of Apollo at Pinara.
The earliest Lycian coins are dated from circa 520 BC. They are associated perhaps with a ruling dynasty in Xanthos which must have had Persian support--if they were not under Persian control. The most common obverses are boars and the most common reverses are triskeles. In all, there are 19 dynasts, down to Perikle whose portrait appears on SGCV 5240. Sear's Greek Coins and their Values also lists coinage from 27 cities. These towns were ruled by various dynasts down to 360 BC. After the Macedonian conquest 334/3 BC very few coins were struck in Lycia until the 2nd century BC. Typical of the city issues is a stater (9.8 grams) from Limyra, SGCV 5286, which features a lion scalp facing and triskeles and Lycian inscription ZEM for Zemuri, their name for the town.
Troxel identifies the obvious similarities to the coins of Rhodes. However, no mention is made of the coins of Kolophon in Ionia which also display an Apollo and Kithara.
Late in 1970 a hoard of 200 drachmas probably from Kemer on the eastern coast (not the Kemer on the western coast) was unearthed. Most of the coins came from Olympus and Phaselis. There were none from Kragos or Masicytes, the territories of the League. Furthermore, virtually all of these were of Rhodian weight, about 2.80 grams, whereas, on the other hand, nearly all of the Kragos and Masicytes coins are at 1.80 grams and below.
Troxell points to this as evidence of two different league coinages in silver. The first type is called "civic" and the second "district." Hill (BMC Lycia) and Head (Historia Numorum) both confuse the two issues and are therefore unable to assign to them values of drachma or hemidrachma. Otto Morkholm, however, in the SNG von Aulock calls the heavier coins drachmas and the lighter ones hemidrachmas. The older silver met the Rhodian standard. Once independence from Rhodes was achieved with the help of Rome, the new silver met the Roman standard and was meant to correspond to the quinarius.
Coins are considered League strikings if they include: either LYKION or LY; or else either KP or MA, the abbreviations of the League's two great subdivisions in the late first century, Kragos and Masikytes. (These are geographic districts, not cities.) Since Sear's GCV was published before the work of Morkholm and Troxell, most dealers who sell these coins misidentify or misattribute them.
Michael E. Marotta
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