established trading giants. Yet, in terms of annual production, leaving
aside the altogether exceptional production of coins in the name of
Alexander the Great and the gold staters of Philip II, the numbers of
fresh coins brought into circulation by other authorities, civic and royal
alike, rarely reach anything beyond singlefigures. As de Callataÿ has
emphasized, minting on these terms could easily be accommodated‘by a
single craftsman using a single hammer’—if we accept that the ratio of
coins to dies was a relatively constant one, a procedural matter that can
neither be proved nor disproved. Notwithstanding the formidable needs
of individual military rulers, including such exceptionalfigures as Anti-
ochos III, their demand for capital, to cover military pay, appears on
present evidence to represent a very modest amount in comparison with
overall patterns of exchange over time, even if coin production was
a well-developed mechanism, when compared with other periods and
places.^103
The idea that the defining characteristic of early Macedonian king-
doms, and those of their Hellenistic successors, was royal requisitioning
for military purposes either needs to be quite differently conceived, or it
represents only one aspect of royal economies. If it needs to be recon-
ceived, then other commodities must be factored in, as well as coined
money; and, if so, then other players must also be included. Booty, in the
form of commodities, was a troublesome asset, because it needed
guarding, transporting, and storing, if not conversion into liquid form.
‘Liquid’form primarily meant ingots or scrap silver and gold. De Call-
ataÿ has compared the relative amounts of different forms of booty
recorded in Roman republican triumphs to calculate the general volumes
of liquid precious metals as compared with coined money. The relation-
ship between three forms of recorded booty appears to be relatively
consistent. Ingots and similar forms of metal, termedinfectiby Livy
and other authors, represents the largest proportion, at around 70 per
cent. Precious metals converted into plate consist of around 10 per cent
of the total, while coined money forms the remaining 20 per cent.^104
These three categories refer only to the most compact and easily trans-
ferable resources, which are in any case a subset of the range of resources
that could be drawn upon and utilized within the northern Aegean
region. Our conception of royal economies needs to be enriched by a
(^103) De Callataÿ 2005a, 86–7; [Antiochos III]‘the mean global activity for his entire
kingdom represented the full productivity of a quarter of a single hammer in a single mint,
i.e. a maximum of 1/48th of the available productivity (four monthly obverses per hammer
and 12 mints)’(ibid. 87).
(^104) De Callataÿ 2006a, 64–7 and Annexe 1, 70–4.
Herdsmen with golden leaves—narratives and spaces 83