Historia Numorum, a Manual of Greek Numismatics

Philip II, B.C. 359-336. Philip of Macedon, having obtained possession of the hitherto unworked gold mines of Pangaeuin (B.C. 356), the immense output of which rapidly brought down the market price of gold in relation to silver in European Greece from 12:1 (its then rate of exchange at Athens) to 10:1, found it politically as well as financially expedient to reorganize the Macedonian currency on a new system modelled upon, though not identical with, that of Athens. His new gold stater, which was destined to obtain a world-wide reputation, rivalling that of the old Persian daric, be made equivalent to the Athenian gold stater of 135 grs., which had, hitherto, at the existing ratio of 12:1, been tariffed at 24 Attic drachms of 67.5 grs.

In order to preserve the customary Greek (though not Asiatic) habit of exchanging 1 gold stater against 24 silver drachma, while at the same time taking account of the sudden fall in the silver value of gold, he now issued side by side with his gold stater, silver drachms of circ. 56.25 grs., thus abandoning the Persic silver stater of 173 grs., which had for about half a century been established in the Kingdom of Macedon, in favour of the so-called 'Phoenician' stater of 225 grs. (drachm 56.25 grs.), which was at the time prevalent in the silver coining cities included in Philip's dominions (e.g. the money of the Chalcidian league). On the whole of this subject see Th. Reinach (L'Histoire par les monnaies, pp. 41-73). Philip's gold staters, soon popularly known as 'Philippi', continued to be issued in some districts long after his death, like the posthumous gold and silver coins of his son Alexander the Great in other districts.

The coinage of Alexander is a branch of Numismatics too extensive and complicated for discussion in detail in the present work. The gold Philippi and the silver tetradrachms (225 grs.) of his father Philip had, for a period of about twenty years, been the chief currency throughout Philip's European dominions, and it is hardly likely that Alexander would have abolished these coins and introduced a new standard (the Attic) for his silver money until he found himself compelled to do so for commercial reasons. The fall in the price of gold in relation to silver was probably one, though not perhaps the chief, of these reasons. The general depreciation of gold made it no doubt impossible for hira to maintain, by royal decree, the old relation of 13.3∶1 to silver which had prevailed in the East down to the fall of the Persian Empire, according to which 1 gold Daric of about 130 grs. was tariffed as equivalent to 20 silver sigloi of about 86 ½ grs., or to 10 silver staters of Persic wt., of about 173 grs. The inveterate conservatism of the East, which could brook no change in the number of silver coins exchangeable for a gold piece, would not however be startled by a modification of the weights of the two denominations.

The duodecimal exchange system of Philip's coinage, which might have satisfied the European portion of Alexander's empire, where gold had always been subject to variations in its market price, being thus unsuitable for countries where a fixed legal exchange rate had been established for centuries, it became necessary to substitute for it a decimal coinage which would satisfy both East and West. Alexander's choice of the Attic standard for both gold and silver met every requirement, and was, at the same time, in harmony with the existing relation (10∶1) of the two metals. Athens alone was the sufferer. Her 'Owls' were gradually superseded on all the foreign markets and her mint was practically closed.

There were, however, some countries, such as Phoenicia and probably India, where the Attic standard had never taken firm root and where the new Alexandrine coinage would be less welcome, and it is to an Indian satrapy shortly after Alexander's death, B.C. 323, that I would attribute the rare tetradrachms of Indian weight (227 grs.), obv. Head of Zeus, rev. ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ, Eagle with head reverted on fulmen, which Imhoof (Mon. gr., PI. D. 8) beleived to have been Alexander's first coinage in Macedon, issued immediately after his father's death. A cogent argument in favour of giving these tetradrachms to one of the Eastern satrapies rather than to Macedon is the adjunct symbol, a satrapal tiara, in front of the eagle on the reverse. This very characteristic symbol, formerly mistaken for a prow, would seem to specialize tho issue as that of a governor of one of the satrapies of Alexander's empire between B.C. 323 and 305, and the Eagle with head reverted on fulmen as the reverse-type points distinctly to India.