POLITICS AN DSOCIETY 25into a flood—a development of profound cultural significance that is frustrat-
ingly difficult to interpret. Why, apart from the commercial strength of Athens,
should Gree kproducts and the Gree kstyle have acquired such prestige in
coastal Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine in the fifth centuryB.C.E.? What are
the implications of this development? In the absence of written sources, it is
almost impossible to say.^14
By the fourth century, the flood of Gree kgoods reached the Palestinian
interior, including Judaea. The coins of Persian Judaea, for example, are all
modeled on Greek, especially Athenian, coins. Indeed, the practice of stamp-
ing pieces of preweighed silver (probably originating in the seventh century
B.C.E. in the kingdom of Lydia in western Turkey) spread in the eastern Medi-
terranean in the sixth and fifth centuries primarily due to Gree kinfluence;^15
the minting of coins itself was thus in some measure an aspect of hellenization.
The coinage of Judaea’s northern neighbor, Samaria, is similar to that of Ju-
daea, but remarkably enough some of these tiny coins bear Greek inscriptions.
These coins were almost all of very small denomination and so intended for
local use, not interstate trade.^16 They reflect the tastes and interests of Judaeans
and Samarians, not their foreign commercial partners. When Alexander the
Great conquered the east coast of the Mediterranean in 332B.C.E., he found
a world that was not completely foreign to him, in which certain aspects, at
least, of Gree kculture already enjoyed widespread acceptance.
The Macedonian Conquest and Its ImpactJosephus recounts that when Alexander marched down the Palestinian coast,
he detoured to Jerusalem to meet the high priest, Jaddus (Yaddu‘a). When he
saw that venerable figure, he at once realized that it was Jaddus who had
appeared in his dreams, foretelling his victory over the Persians; so the great
conqueror prostrated himself at the old man’s feet. (Ant11.321–39) This is
surely a folktale. In reality, Alexander never left the coastal road but entrusted
(^14) The most serious attempt at interpretation is J. Elayi,Pe ́ne ́tration grecque en Phe ́nicie sous
l’empire perse(Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1988).
(^15) On the origins and early history of coinage, see L. Kurke,Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold:
The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 6–
23; C. Howgego,Ancient History from Coins(London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 1–11.
(^16) On the Judaean coins, see L. Mildenberg, “Yehud: A Preliminary Study of the Provincial
Coinage of Judaea,” O. in Mørkholm and N. Waggoner, eds.,Greek Numismatics and Archaeol-
ogy: Essays in Honor of Margaret Thompson(Wetteren: Cultura, 1979), pp. 183–96, with correc-
tions of D. Barag, “A Silver Coin of Yohanan the High Priest and the Coinage of Judaea in the
Fourth Century B.C.E.,”INJ9 (1986–1987) 4–21. On the Samarian coinage, Y. Meshorer and
S. Qedar,The Coinage of Samaria in the Fourth Century B.C.E.(Jerusalem: Numismatic Fine
Arts International, 1991). See also my discussion: S. Schwartz, “On the Autonomy of Judaea in
the Fourth and Third Centuries B.C.E.”,JJS45 (1994): 159–61.