CHAPTER ELEVEN
Religion and Roman Coins
Jonathan Williams
Ever since its first appearance in western Asia Minor in the seventh century bc, ancient
coinage was intimately bound up with religion. The earliest known coin hoard from
classical antiquity was found concealed in a pot buried in the foundations of the mid
sixth-century bctemple of Artemis at Ephesus. Divinities and their attributes regu-
larly adorned the coin issues of the Greek cities – Athena and her owl in Athens,
Helios (the Sun-god) at Rhodes, Arethusa at Syracuse – and those of the Hellenistic
kings, beginning with Alexander the Great, whose mythical ancestors Zeus and Hercules
dominated on his silver coins, Athena and Nike (Victory) on the gold. Even before
Alexander, some Persian provincial governors and other rulers in Asia Minor had
suggestively usurped the place of divine portraits, supplanting them on the obverse
with their own likenesses.
Designs on Greek coins typically remained unchanged for decades or even cen-
turies, varying only in style or detail over time. The earliest Roman coin types in the
late fourth and early third centuries bcdrew heavily on the Greek repertoire, com-
monly depicting gods such as Mars, Hercules, or Apollo, and religious symbols –
tripod, eagle on thunderbolt, caduceus (the herald’s staff ) – familiar from the Greek
coinages of Italy and elsewhere (fig. 11.1). Apart from early diversions into unwieldy
cast ingots of bronze, both oblong and circular (the so-called aes signatumand aes
Figure 11.1 Roman silver didrachm, c. 275 bc, showing a wreathed head of Apollo and
horse in a typically Greek style. 19 mm (diameter measured along a horizontal axis on the
obverse).