The Greek City in the Roman Period form is one of the most striking features of imperial city culture. But so also is
the profusion of coinage, with the extra dimension that it involved the selec-
tion of visual images to accompany the (inevitably brief ) written legends.
The figures are remarkable: more than Greek cities or city leagues (koina)
minted coins at one time or another, in the first three centuries of the Em-
pire, and the largest total for a single reign was reached under Septimius
Severus (..–), namely something over .^55 The result is an ex-
traordinarily rich repertoire of images-plus-legends deployed to express the
collective identity of cities; to portray and sometimes name the deities which
were important to them; and on occasion to commemorate recurrent events,
such as festivals, which played a central point in their collective existence, or
individual events, such as visits by emperors. It is important to stress that the
city coins, almost all only in bronze, were produced discontinuously; their
strictly economic function, and their role within the framework of properly
‘‘Roman’’ coinage, in gold, silver, and bronze, awaits serious analysis. More
important is the conclusion which has to be drawn from the late Konrad
Kraft’s study of the coinage of Asia Minor.^56 He showed that the same work-
shop (however we might imagine the physical reality of a ‘‘workshop’’) might
produce coins for two or more different cities. We cannot therefore speak of
‘‘the mint’’ of Ephesos, or of any other city, but only ofcoins‘‘of ’’ Ephesos; and
this term can be used legitimately only where the city (or rather commu-
nity; see below) concerned is explicitly named. Deductions of the form that
(for instance) silver tetradrachms struck under Caracalla, but naming no city,
were produced by ‘‘the mint of Laodicea,’’ because the types resemble those
on coins of Laodicea, are wholly illegitimate.^57 We have no basis for imag-
ining the existence of stable city ‘‘mints’’; all that we can know is the coins
themselves, as extremely explicit and—in artistic terms—often very refined
and beautiful expressions of collective identities and values. How, where,
and by whom they were actually produced or manufactured is a matter of
speculation.
Until recently the best introduction to these coins, the ‘‘Greek Imperials,’’
has been in a well-illustrated study by K. Harl of the Greek city coinages of
the period from.. to their complete disappearance in approximately
the third quarter of the third century.^58 It is a pity that this fine study, con-
. T. B. Jones, ‘‘Greek Imperial Coins,’’North American Journal of Numismatics ():
; see A. Johnston, ‘‘Greek Imperial Statistics: A Commentary,’’RN (): .
. K. Kraft,Das System der kaiserzeitlichen Münzprägung in Kleinasien().
. For these misleading presumptions, see, e.g., A. Bellinger,The SyrianTetradrachms of
Caracalla and Macrinus().
. K. Harl,Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East,..–().