1The Delian documentation enables us to associate with the actual coins the testimony of the inscriptions and in particular of the accounts that recorded the state of the fortune of Apollo’s sanctuary between the fifth and first centuries BC. The case of Delos sheds light on the monetary situation of a tiny city-state of the Cyclades that was at the same time a major cosmopolitan sanctuary. Through the building work that went on there, that sanctuary became a major construction company and, through the intensity of the movements of monies between the public treasury and the sacred treasury, a no‑less substantial credit bank, alongside an Aegean emporion whose activity grew constantly from the classical period onwards. The loans from the sacred fund benefitted Delians as private individuals and the city‑state of Delos collectively as it enjoyed a permanent line of credit virtually free‑of-charge.

2And yet, as already observed from examining the composition of the sacred fund, the type of currency in the treasury changed over the centuries. One of the major problems the Delian community had to confront was the recycling of money. Unlike Athens, Delos was hardly a military power capable of imposing its monetary policy on the Aegean world. It was a civic community that defined itself as sacred and politically neutral, devoted to the stewardship of its sanctuary. Even though the city‑state of Delos wielded very substantial financial clout as an economic heavyweight by virtue of the monetary funds it held, it is characteristic that its own coinage was never a means for it to impose itself in the Aegean world. A policy of the sort could plainly not succeed without military might behind it. The Delians therefore preferred to use existing currencies, as and when various hegemonies waxed and waned across the Mediterranean, and endeavoured to maintain diversified cash holdings that could be used for making payments.

3Under the circumstances, much of Apollo’s treasury, as has been surmised from the organization of the jars in the sacred chest, was made up of coins that had become obsolete by the beginning of the second century BC, probably Athenian owls for the most part. This situation required the Delians to turn their usable assets to a profit and they probably did not lack inventiveness in doing so through the improvement of their administrative and accounting practices: the formation of a specific fund like the sitonikon within the public treasury is evidence of this. The Delians could have melted down the specie in Apollo’s cash holding so as to mint new coinage in the name of their city-state in the way other great financial powers in the Eastern Mediterranean did. That they did not do so means that this solution would have been worthless in the political and economic context in which they found themselves in the third and second centuries, because it would have jeopardized the intensity and continuity of the very exchanges that underpinned the island’s prosperity.

4So there was a mismatch of sorts, in terms of economic rationality, between the “sacred city-state” model defended by the Delians in the form of a community protected by its neutrality but deprived of political and military power, and the hard facts of currency circulation in Hellenistic times that required their cash holdings be updated with means of pressure the Delians did not have.

5This was the constraint the Delians strove to overcome in most of their monetary decisions. Conversely, the Second Athenian Domination, that went along with the issuing of stephanophoric coinage, saw a return to earlier arrangements whereby Athens – this time with the help of other military powers – had the capacity to impose its own coinage.

6Previously, other models of domination had been contemplated around the financial power of Apollo’s sanctuary in the Cyclades but without lasting: from the early fourth century BC, the organization of the Nesiotic League by the Antigonids, then the Lagid influence in the Cyclades, and lastly the revival of Antigonid interest in the island in the late third century, followed by the Rhodian influence in the early second century, speak to the importance of power play in the region.1 The role of Tenos in the Nesiotic koinon in the second century under Rhodian patronage developed as a form of competition to the standing of Apollo’s island: as the headquarters of the koinon, and enjoying asylum for the island and its sanctuary, and a venue for banking, it might have hoped to play a central part in the organization of the islands. But, until 167 BC, Delian neutrality had in one way or another held its own: Livy points out that the Roman, Attalid and Macedonian enemy fleets in the waters of Delos in 168 observed the sacred island’s inviolability (XLIV, 29: sanctitas templi insulaeque inviolatos praestabat omnes).

7The question arises, then, as to how the use of the various coinages that made up Delian cash holdings was organized. On the basis of epigraphic texts containing inventories of coins or references to currency, and on the basis of coins excavated and hoard finds on the site, several aspects of monetary circulation can be highlighted and especially the diversity of monetary standards in use in the third and second centuries, and a chronology for Delian monetary issues can be proposed. Inscriptions and coins can quite often be examined together and account for the Mediterranean monetary context in which the city‑state of Delos had to take decisions about its own finances and the finances of the sanctuary.

The hieropoioi as money handlers: monetary recycling in the sacred chest

8The whole financial report by the hieropoioi was made out using the Attic standard, which must have meant, in preparing it, many conversion operations and accounting equivalences εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου λόγον, on the Attic or Alexandrian standard.2 While conserving this unit of account, the hieropoioi saw a widening gap form between their accounting standard and the hard specie they handled. Examination of the composition of Apollo’s treasury and the public fund in the early second century has allowed us to observe that there were several amounts in currency holdings that the hieropoioi eventually set apart from the rest of the jars: the ancient funds, on the one hand, and the histiatikon money of the endowment funds, on the other hand, but probably other monetary funds, too, such as the choregikon that had to be told apart from the rest of the cash holdings in the late third century. Added to these, in the second century in the public treasury, was the sitonikon fund reserved for grain purchases and whose currency composition was also an issue.3

Currency Changes in the Cash Holdings

9One important objective in the management of the sacred fund by the hieropoioi during the period of Independence was to provide a permanent line of credit for the city-state of Delos. Alongside the management operations relating to the proper running of the sanctuary – building maintenance and new constructions, organization of religious festivals, purchase of supplies –, the administrators received orders from the city-state about loans from the sacred monies. The city‑state thus took out numerous loans that it repaid more often than not within a short space of time. The sums borrowed went on purchasing grain at wholesale prices, honorific spending to ensure Delian neutrality, and major building work on the port. But the city‑state of Delos had the sacred fund foot the construction, upkeep and conversion of public buildings such as the theatre in the third century BC4 or the Ekklesiasterion between 231 and 189.5 The Delians as private individuals also benefitted from the credit opportunities the sacred fund provided. This source of ready money obviously provided the Delians, individually and collectively, with substantial facilities in the markets.

10How close did the sacred fund come to running out of its own capital for Mediterranean trade? This financial issue was both administrative and monetary. The administrators had to see that profits offset spending, but they also had to be watchful of the metal stocks in their cash holdings in a trading context where several coinages were legal tender. The sanctuary’s cash holdings, made up of sound Attic money in the late fourth century, came to be dispersed as and when the city-state of Delos borrowed, especially for its grain purchases, and likewise for payments of construction work. The problem of monetary specie could prove crucial in this domain, as shown for example by the case of sitonai of the Nesiotic League, who came to negotiate over a cargo of grain on the Delian market, around 194‑192 BC, and aided by the banker Timon of Syracuse, who accepted to exchange their currency on favourable terms (IG XII 5, 817).6 As and when spending was made, the money making up the sanctuary’s cash holdings was permanently recycled, since the Delian city-state could not make up the stocks of sound money by minting as Athens or Rhodes could have done. The intake of money, through taxes or farm and property rents, but also from loan repayments, altered the composition of the fund by bringing in other currencies in circulation instead of Attic standard specie.

11The city-state of Delos had to play on this diversity of standards to organize its payments according to circumstances. When buying grain at wholesale prices via the sitonai – with capital loaned by the sanctuary and then later out of a specific fund – it required coinage that was accepted in Aegean markets, very likely alexanders. When it sold the wheat on to Delians in the agora, there was every chance payments would be collected in Delian money, whereas it was going to need international currency to repeat the purchase operation. If it exchanged the Delian coins for Attic standard money at the banks when repaying the sanctuary, it lost its own metal stock and was faced with a leakage of metal that it could not afford. So it had to save the alexanders of the public treasury and the sacred treasury for specific payments, such as the wheat purchases. It cannot be ruled out, then, that the city-state repaid some of its borrowing from the sanctuary in non-Attic coins and in particular Delian coinage, by way of accounting equivalences, especially since the proceeds from taxes and rents, that were its regular resources for repayment, must have been paid to it in local currency. The formation of a fund in the public treasury specifically for the sitonia may also have been meant to meet this difficulty related to the nature of the currency and the need to save not only the capital but also its monetary composition without involving the whole of the sacred fund in this difficulty. The part played by banks in these operations would also be worth clarifying.

12The fact that the hieropoioi kept their books according to the Attic standard throughout the period of Independence covered over this reality that can be enlightened by other sources.

The Evidence of the Inventories of the Second Athenian Domination

The Athenian administrators’ methods

13Other indications provide particulars of the composition of the cash holdings and reveal the diversity of monetary standards to be found in Apollo’s treasury.

14At the time they recovered control of the island as from 167 BC, the Athenians set about a sort of audit of the sacred property.7 Apart from the offerings in the various buildings, they drew up a thorough inventory of the contents of the sanctuary’s coffers.8 The inventory of these coinages, that were in the Temple of Apollo when the Athenian administrators arrived in 167, is given incompletely by the act dated of the year of the archon Phaidrias (ID 1432, Bb, col. I and Ba, col. II, year 153/2). Gaps in it can be filled in part by other fragments of inventories that show the treasure remained untouchable from the first inventory around 160 to the last around 140 (Appendix 3).9

15It was the same money, then, as that the hieropoioi took stock of with the jar inventories. The same term stamnoi was used to designate the containers. The Athenian administrators added numbers to them in the form of letters, which the inventories of the hieropoioi never did because they mentioned only the descriptions by the banks: this indication of provenance meant the various sums of the treasury could be directly associated with the bankers’ registers.10 This was no longer meaningful once the funds no longer circulated under the Athenian administration. Inventory ID 1432 is incomplete because the lower part of the fragment containing the list of jars is missing. However it does reach number ZZZZ (78), showing there were certainly more than 80 jars of coined silver (Appendix 3 – Jar inventory by the Athenian administrators). Now, the near complete stele of account ID 442 shows that in 179 the sacred fund contained 44 jars and the public fund 37 jars, making 81 jars in all in Apollo’s temple. The data are therefore consistent.

16The layout of the Athenian inventory makes it possible to reconstruct the way in which the Athenian administrators set about their work, which was the reverse of the method of the hieropoioi: the Athenians clearly began their inventory and their numbering with the jars that were most readily accessible in the coffers and that were therefore the final entries of the hieropoioi.11 In point of fact, the first jars of the Athenian inventory contained large sums whereas the last ones often held only small residual amounts. So the last jars inventoried by the Athenians were actually the oldest in the cash holdings of the hieropoioi, since they had already been used up. Moreover, only five jars in the early series contained what was called phoinikophoric coinage, corresponding to the very last issue of Delian money in the 170s. Contrariwise, the hieropoioi kept their inventory in chronological order that presented first the jars of the ancient funds, then the residual amounts of the third century and finally the recent cash holdings.12

17Yet none of the amounts in the Athenian inventory corresponds exactly to the amounts stated in the Delian inventories. Close approximations may appear, as with the amounts of 40 drachmas that suggest the income from the horoi or the amount of the first jar (A) made up of phoinikophoric drachmas that comes to almost the same end result as jar 115 of the hieropoioi (… 5,978 and 5,968: see Appendices 2 and 3), but no exact match is to be found. Even allowing for the variance arising from two years of use by the hieropoioi between the final inventory and the transmission to the Athenians, it must be assumed that the Athenian administrators had set about a few reassortments, probably based on the currency, by merging the contents of jars with the same coinage while sometimes letting a few different specie remain in one and the same batch.

18This set of coinages therefore makes up a sort of virtual monetary treasury that is known to us through epigraphy. It is described by the Athenian administrators under the name καὶ ἀργυρίου τοῦ ὑπάρχοντος ἐν ταῖς κ[ι]βωτοῖς (ID 1429, B, col. II, l. 33), “the money that is found in the coffers” and this description of “money in the coffers” does not tell us whether it was the sacred chest alone or also the public chest. But with more than 80 jars, whereas the sacred fund only had 44 in 179, it is very likely that the Athenian inventory included both the jars of the sacred fund and those of the public fund, an appropriation legitimated by the Roman decision to remove the city‑state of Delos.

19However, it is surprising to observe that no coinage of Attic standard or Alexander’s standard figured there. Yet the ancient funds of the period of Independence, as we assumed about the first jars taken out of circulation, must have been made up of Attic coinage that had become obsolete. Other recent jars must have contained coinage of Alexander that were required on the grain market. So all these coins of Attic standard must have been withdrawn from the treasury by the Athenian administrators in view of some other use as J. Tréheux surmised.13

20Now, we may have an explicit trace of this selection operation in the fragmentary heading of two acts of the Athenian administrators in 153/2 and in 140/39: they say they received on coming into office a series of items of Apollo’s property, probably “with the offerings that were previously in the Temple of Apollo and selected coinage struck before the stephanos was minted” ([τάδε παρελάβοµεν? σὺν τοῖς? — —]έροις τοῖς ἐν τῶι τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ναῶι καὶ ἀργυρίωι λογαίωι τῶι πρότερον κοπέντι [τ]οῦ στεφανηφόρου ὃ παρελάβοµεν ἐν τῶι το[ῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ναῶι? –, ID 1450, A, l. 6; also ID 1432, A, col. I, a, l. 10‑11). This logaion money, “chosen” or “selected” (from the verb λέγω), might have been Athenian coinage of the classical period, removed from the sacred cash holdings, and listed in the inventory further on after the offerings. In point of fact, in another passage of an inventory, the Athenian administrators describe by the same wording what they called “glaukophoric” money (ID 1429, B, col. II, l. 22‑23: τέτραχµα ἀττικὰ γλαυκοφόρα τῶν πρότ[ε]ρον κοπέντων τοῦ στεφανηφόρου, “glaukophoric Attic tetradrachmas struck before the stephanos was minted”).14

21Contrary to these references to ancient Athenian coinage, the list of jars drawn up by the Athenian administrators came after the inventory of offerings and was always inscribed in the two columns of the inventories. It is to be understood, therefore, that from that point on these monies were part of a hoarded fund, kept in the temple in the same way as offerings. On the contrary, one of the acts of the Athenian administrators makes a clear distinction, in the layout of the text carved on the stone, between the inventory and the account: act ID 1408, between 163/2 and 162/1, sets out an inventory of several buildings, inscribed in two columns, then across the entire width of the marble (A, l. 35‑50), the account of interest and loan repayments.

22The gaps in the texts mean it is difficult to ascertain the total amount inventoried by the Athenians. The passages conserved record a sum total of 78,438 drachmas, or 13 talents. This amount is well below the total assets of the end of the period of Independence (public fund and sacred fund), as the account balances of the hieropoioi show,15 but neither does it correspond to the totality of the cash holdings inventoried by the Athenians since several amounts are incomplete and we do not know what the total number of jars was because the end of the inventory has not been conserved.

The nature of the specie inventoried

23What were these coins inventoried by the Athenian administrators? The inventories provide the following distribution (table 37):16

24The treasure was made up mostly of four specie:

• Delian coinage

25The phoinikophoric money refers directly to the depiction of the palm tree shown on Delian coins of the second series of monetary issues by the city‑state.18

• Eretrian coinage

26The “new” taurophoric coins were Eretrian issue on the Attic standard, minted as tetradrachmas, octobols and tetrobols.19

• Rhodian coinage

27What the Athenians called “Rhodian” money went by the same name, as shall be seen, in the accounts of the hieropoioi during the first half of the second century. The name referred to the light Rhodian drachmas, struck at about 2.80 g. At first sight, a category of the sort seems to correspond more to the definition of a monetary group than to a strict provenance because it is known that many imitations circulated in the Aegean with the payments of mercenaries, primarily after the Treaty of Apamea.20 However, as the imitations often weighed less than the light Rhodian drachmas, it is plausible that the administrators would not have mixed up the two categories. Yet because this cannot be confirmed with coins that have been conserved, it is difficult to be certain about it.21 As for plinthophoric money that followed on from these light drachmas, it is known that the Delian hieropoioi mentioned it once in an inventory,22 but it is seen to appear above all in the treasuries on Delos in the first century BC. It seems reasonable to think, then, that at that date, in the sacred fund, the rhodion does not refer to the plinthophoric coins but to coins of Rhodian standard corresponding to light drachmas at about 2.80 g.

• Histiaian coinage

28Histiaian coinage prevailed and impressively so, although the accounts of the hieropoioi of the period of Independence do not explicitly say as much. At the end of the inventory of offerings in 169 (ID 461, Bv, l. 49), the hieropoioi mention a few coins, that were not recorded in the cash holdings but among the hoarded items: νόµους ἑπτά ῥόδιαι δύο παλαιαί· πλινθοφόρος µία ἱστιαιικόν·, “seven sesterces, two ancient Rhodians, one plinthophoros, one histiaiikon”.

29As with Rhodian coins, imitation coinage struck in the Third Macedonian War contributed to the spread of this coinage.23 In the course of the third century, the city‑state of Histiaia remained more often than not within the orbit of the Antigonid kingdom, except for a short spell of Euboean independence between 271 and 261. It served as a base for Macedonian troops in the First Macedonian War (214‑205). As such, the city was twice besieged by Roman and Attalid troops. In the second century, it supported the Aetolian League, then served as a naval base for Rome in the Third Macedonian War (171‑168).24 Abandoning the issues of octobols and drachmas that characterized Histiaian coinage until the end of the fourth century, the monetary workshops from the early third century and throughout the third and second centuries undertook the issuing of tetrobols of about 2 g, the sheer number of which betrayed the Antigonid and then Roman hold, in order to pay the armies in the Macedonian and Aetolian wars.25

30The inventory reports other erratic monetary series in the jars:

• one of the jars (HHH) contained drachmas of various origins (παντοδαποῦ δραχµάς);
• the euboïkon money (jar BB) refers to coinage struck in the name of the Euboean Confederation. In the second century, reformed by Flamininus, its monetary issue was known only through bronze coins. But in the third century, two of the last issues of silver by the Euboean League might correspond to the euboïkon coinage in the Delian coffers: the satyr-head drachmas (approximately 3.70 g), around 289 or 279, possibly issued by Eretria, or the dolphin drachmas (approximately 3.80 g, known also as subdivisions in hemidrachmas, diobols, obols, hemiobols), around 270‑267, issued by Euboean cities for their defence against Macedon.26
• the tetranoma (jar ΠΠ) were Roman denarii;27
• the “craterophoric” coins (jar ΥΥ) were drachmas or didrachmas of Naxos, struck between the third and first centuries;28
• the kattiterina (jar I) designate bronze coins that were silver plated.29

31This monetary treasure inventoried by the Athenian administrators can be compared with the proceeds from the offertory boxes recorded by the same administrators between the years 155 and 140. In 146‑145, the proceeds from the offertory boxes described by the Athenians (ID 1442, B, l. 50‑53) yield stephanophoric tetradrachmas, Rhodian drachmas and hemidrachmas, Macedonian coins, Lagid “eagle” bronzes, and Roman coins. Other inventories supplement the list with coins from Tenos called botryophorics and Rhodian plinthophorics.30 Without being radically different from the treasure in the Delian coffers, the contents of the offertory boxes in the mid-second century testify to the circulation of new species among the populations, notably the plinthophorics and stephanophorics that do not seem to have been part of the everyday experience of the hieropoioi who handled monies in the first half of the second century. So with the inventories of the Athenian administrators, we are clearly dealing with a snapshot of the cash holdings in the Temple of Apollo at the end of Independence.

32The classification by the Athenians was plainly based on a logic that took account of the various standards, but also of the weight ratios between coinages, that were accounting ratios at the same time. The jars of Histiaian coinage and sometimes the jars of Rhodian money sometimes contained Delian coins of small denominations, mostly chalkoi but sometimes obols (jars ∆ and I). When Delian obols, and so silver, were involved, the subdivisions were included in the addition and the description specified that the total was established σὺν δηλί[ο]ις δυσὶν ὀβολοῖς (jar ∆) and not καί that invariably referred to an extra addition to the jar. As shall be seen below, these associations were significant for understanding Delian coinage. One jar contained, with a majority of Rhodian money, 5 Delian chalkoi and a histiaiikon (jar Θ). Histiaian and Rhodian coins were besides found in the same way in the monetary treasures, alongside Macedonian coinage, in variable proportions.31 Another jar added histiaiikon coinage with craterophorics (jar YY).

33The Delian phoinikophoric drachmas did not weigh the same as Attic coinage, as shall be seen, and the Athenian administrators were well aware of this because they associated them with Rhodian and Histiaian coins. However, for Delian coins, the Athenian administrators did not specify any conversion to the Attic standard, just as for Eretrian coins which did follow the Attic standard. On the contrary, for Rhodian money in the same way as for histiaiikon and euboïkon money, the administrators systematically stated they drew up the account εἰς ἀττικοῦ λόγον because they converted the total to the Attic standard. This difference cannot be explained by there being an enforced rate of exchange of Delian money, as shall be seen: such inaccuracy in the accounts would besides have been senseless from the point of view of Athenian administrators who had every interest in establishing an accurate account on the Attic standard. Nor can it be explained by a difference in weight: Euboian coins were closer in theoretical weight to the Attic drachma than phoinikophorics were, and Rhodian drachmas weighing approximately 2.80 g were in line with Attic tetrobols.32 Moreover, as just seen, Delian obols were used to make up the addition in jars of Histiaian coins (∆, I) and craterophoric coins (approximately 3.90 g) for the addition of a jar of histiaiikon (YY): simple weight equivalences (for example three Naxian obols for one Histiaian tetrobol) made this possible. Ultimately only the descriptions of the jars of phoinikophorics did not bear the clarification εἰς ἀττικοῦ λόγον. Did the administrators overlook stating there had been a conversion to the Attic standard? Or is it to be thought that the Athenians might simply have counted them without converting the total to the Attic standard?

34It is not impossible that, in this hoarded reserve, Delian coins enjoyed special standing related to the fate of the city-state of Delos, while the Athenians drew up indications of the value of other coinages on the Attic standard.

The monies handled by the hieropoioi

The evidence of the account balances

35These monetary specie set aside by the Athenians with the Second Domination were those that the hieropoioi had handled daily in the second century. Although the accounting practice was unified, in practice payments were diversified. In their composition, the cash holdings of the hieropoioi therefore had nothing of the apparent unity of currency that the use of a single standard in the accounts might suggest. It is the account balances that state this, showing that the hieropoioi were concerned also by the classification of their coinages in accordance with different standards.

36The balance of the year 169 (ID 461, Ab, l. 55‑56), although partially conserved, is recognizable in that it is inscribed in larger characters than the rest of the account. It is expressed as follows, with a correction made:33

[κεφαλὴ πάσης εἰσόδου — — — —]∆Τ// καὶ ἀλεξανδρείου
ΜΜΜΗ∆∆[ —· παρελάβοµεν δὲ καὶ χαλκοῦ — — — ∆∆?].
[κεφαλὴ πάσης ἐξόδου — — — —]∆Τ// καὶ ἀλεξανδρείου
ΜΧΧΗ —· παρέδοµεν δὲ καὶ χαλκοῦ — — —]∆∆.

37The hieropoioi received a certain sum (not conserved on the stone) upon taking office. They were held to account for its use (spending, revenues, profit) and reflect under the terms “entry” and “outgoing” the accounting statement that sets out all the applications of the amount received. But that amount, even if it is calculated on the Attic standard, was not made up of a single type of currency: the hieropoioi were eager to specify that it contained both coinage of Alexander and bronze.

38It is hard to know what the wording καὶ ἀλεξανδρείου means exactly. The sum expressed in ἀλεξανδρείου cannot be the monetary conversion of a sum accounted in other specie: in this event, the hieropoioi invariably wrote εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου λόγον and not ἀλεξανδρείου. Moreover, the sum, that is besides not identical in the entry and outgoings would be ridiculously small compared with the assets kept in the sanctuary at the end of the period of Independence. The genitive here designates the nature of the specie accounted for. But was it an amount passed on outside of the account balance, as the καὶ might imply, or was it a sum that was part of the account balance for which the hieropoioi gave the particulars in their total?

39In his study of metrology, C. Doyen suggests restoring ῥοδίου in the gap and seeing in the make‑up of the account balance the three-way split in the cash holdings, made up of Rhodian money, Alexander’s money and money struck on the bronze standard, according to the interpretation defended in his book. He assumes, then, that the account would have been made up for the most part in line with the Rhodian standard, while observing a three-way division between the rhodiou, alexandreiou and chalkou.34 This solution is not in keeping with the accounting practices of the hieropoioi, who make the account balance a true statement of the entries and outgoings in equilibrium. Despite the gaps in the inscription, the use of larger lettering in the engraving of these lines leaves no doubt that this was the account balance.35 Had this account statement been merely the total of specie handled and classified by different monetary categories (Attic, Rhodian, bronze), it would have been impossible to make the account balance. What the hieropoioi formulated was therefore something different: the first part contains the account balance on the Attic standard, as was usual practice, with a number ending in 14 drachmas, 1/4 obol and 2 chalkoi and that did not change between the entries (κεφαλὴ πάσης εἰσόδου) and the outgoings (κεφαλὴ πάσης ἐξόδου), “total entries, total outgoings”. Then, in the second part of the formulation, the hieropoioi supplied a clarification they deemed important about the composition of the cash holding in currency: καὶ ἀλεξανδρείου, that is to be understood as “and in particular in alexanders”. They gave in that a figure that was the total of coins in the coffers, on a standard that was no different from their unit of account.

40Now in the course of the financial period, because of revenues and expenditure for the year, the composition of the cash holdings varied. Alexanders left the coffers (30,175 drachmas entering, 12,178 drachmas exiting) and were replaced by other coinages, always for the equivalent amount on the Attic standard so as to maintain the aggregate equilibrium of the accounts. The movements of the sitonia were certainly involved in this change of the composition of the cash holdings since the grain purchases meant money that was accepted on the market went out, probably Attic standard currency. Loan repayments meant other currencies came in.

41In that same year, the hieropoioi reported a loan repayment further to diplomatic spending by the city-state of Delos. The payment was made in a currency that was definitely not Attic because they indicated that the amount was established εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου λόγον, that is, further to the computation of accounting equivalences with the standard of Alexander (ID 461, Aa, l. 78: [ἀργύρι?]ο̣ν εἰ[ς ἀ]λ[ε]ξανδρείου λόγον, τὸ το[ῦ πρ]υτανείου εἰς τὴν ἀπόδοσιν τῶν στεφάνων, “money counted on the standard of Alexander, from the prytaneum, for the repayment of crowns”). The revenues used by the city-state of Delos to repay the loan came from the pyrtanikon fund and the hieropoioi reported on other occasions that the prytanikon money was counted in the cash holdings εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου λόγον (ID 461 Aa, l. 49: εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου λόγον ἀπὸ τοῦ πρυτανείου in a jar from a bank).36 The previous line on the stone shows the sign ∆∆ (70 drachmas) but neither the preceding nor the following figures are conserved so the size of the loan cannot be known. However, spending on honorific crowns generally topped 1,000 drachmas.37

42On the contrary, in the third century, the indications εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου λόγον in the accounts of the hieropoioi were reserved for cash holdings in various coinages for small sums of a few drachmas (IG XI 2, 161, A, l. 4: καὶ παντοδαποῦ ἀργυρίου εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου λόγ[ον] δραχµὰς ··; IG XI 2, 163, Bd, l. 5: καὶ ἀργυρίου παντοδαποῦ εἰς ἀλεξα]νδρείου λόγον ·∆·; IG XI 2, 1999, A, l. 3; καὶ ἀργυρίου παντοδαποῦ εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου λόγον ∆.).38

43So there was indeed, over the course of time, a far-reaching change in the cash holdings of the hieropoioi.

44In the previous year, in 170 BC, the account balance expressed the diversity of specie in the same way (ID 463, A, l. 10‑12):39

[κεφα]λὴ πάσης εἰσ[όδου] —
— καὶ ῥοδίου ΙΙΙ· κεφ[αλὴ πάσης ἐξόδου] —
— ου ΧΧΧΧΗΗΗ —

45Here the hieropoioi insisted on indicating that the cash holdings contained 51 drachmas and 3 obols of Rhodian money. The statement for the outgoings must have made the same distinction and it may be the term ῥοδίου that should be restored on l. 12, this time for 4,851 drachmas.40 The inscription is badly mutilated and it is not impossible that other monetary categories, in particular the alexandreiou, were also mentioned.

46The hieropoioi also used bronze under the same circumstances. It is plain that in the account balances, the category of χαλκοῦ received the same treatment as the monetary standards.41 The cash holdings in chalkou, like the ῥοδίου or ἀλεξανδρείου, was specified as such in the account balance. That of the year 169 specified παρέδοµεν δὲ καὶ χαλκοῦ — — —]∆∆. Since the equivalent expression in the entries was restored in the preceding line ([παρελάβοµεν δὲ καὶ χαλκοῦ — — — ∆∆?].), it is actually impossible to affirm that the figure for the entries in bronze was the same as for the outgoings: as for the alexandreiou, this category of coins may have been used in the course of the year.

47Some decades earlier, around 200 BC, account ID 376 contained the same formula and showed that the bronze was used in the course of the financial period (l. 19‑20):

[κεφαλὴ πάσης εἰσόδου] ΜΜΜΜΧΧΧΗΗΗΗ∆∆∆[∆/]
[— — — — παρελάβοµ]εν [δὲ] καὶ χαλκοῦ [ΗΗ]Η—
[κεφαλὴ πάσης ἐξόδου Μ]ΜΜΜΧΧΧΗΗΗΗ∆∆∆∆/̣
[— — — παρέδοµεν δὲ κ]αὶ χαλκοῦ ∆/. vac.

48Having received 800 drachmas of bronze and more on taking office, the hieropoioi passed on only 561 drachmas and 1 chalkos of it. However, the balance was maintained: it was therefore very likely epichoric coinage, for which it is possible to calculate, in accounting terms, a ratio with the Attic drachma, with the result that the total of entries consistently balanced the total of outgoings. As in 169 BC for the coinage of Alexander, the amount indicated in alexandreiou, in rhodiou and in chalkou did not alter the number in the balance; the precision as to the currency of the cash holdings was independent of the statement of entries and outgoings. In the account of 179 BC, the hieropoioi reported similarly in their handover protocol a sum in bronze of 3,733 drachmas and 2 obols, received and then passed on without having been used (ID 442, A, l. 75: παρεδώκαµεν δὲ καὶ τὸν χαλκὸν ὃν παρελάβοµεν). In the fragmentary balance of this account (ID 442, A, l. 255), the small denominations conserved make it understandable that the hieropoioi included this sum of chalkou in the addition.42 This is therefore probably what happened also in these three balances: the indication of the currencies in alexandreiou, rhodiou and chalkou was an additional indication as to the cash holdings, alongside the computation of the complete balance.

Changes to the cash holdings

49These indications on the account stelae of the hieropoioi are the sign that the composition of the sanctuary’s cash holdings was of interest to the Delian community and that it was aware of the difficulties caused by currency changes. As the Athenian inventory shows, a large part of the cash holdings was composed of Histiaian coinage that had plainly invaded the Aegean markets by way of military issues in the late third and early second centuries. To give an order of magnitude, this sum of more than 7 talents was equivalent to the amount of endowment capital managed by the hieropoioi. The minting of Histiaian tetrobols had expanded further in the late third and early second centuries with the military issues under Macedonian and then Roman domination.43 These coinages that were in use on the markets therefore circulated between the sacred fund, the public fund, private individuals and suppliers, by way of loans at interest and payments.

50It is plain that the stocks of sound money of Attico-Alexandrian standard had become scarce in the Delian cash holdings by the early second century. Out of a total of entries made up of 350,000 drachmas in 168 BC for both funds, the 30,000 or so drachmas of Alexander reported in the balance of 169 in the section on entries (ID 461, Ab, l. 55‑56) now made up just over 8% of the total. So the proportion of alexanders in circulation that the Athenian administrators had managed to withdraw from the Delian coffers was low. What they set aside must have been composed above all of obsolete Athenian owls, that made up the cash holdings of the fourth century and that the hieropoioi had, as seen, already separated from the other jars to form cash holdings of about 8 talents of hoarded ancient funds.44 If allowance is made for the total estimated in the sacred fund at the end of Independence, that is, a little more than 23 talents, it will be concluded by and large for the total of nearly 13 talents inventoried by the Athenians in 167 that it must have corresponded both to histiatikon funds of the sacred treasury of the period of Independence, of a little over 7 talents, and of the circulating funds of some 6 talents, both made up of various currencies with the Rhodian, Histiaian and Delian being in the majority. There were still in the sacred fund at the end of Independence 8 talents of the hoarded ancient funds that must have been largely made up of Attic owls: the difference of 10 talents between the 23 talents of the end of the period of Independence and the 13 talents of the Athenian inventory shows that the Athenian administrators could hardly have taken more than 2 or 3 talents in alexanders out of circulation.

51The rhodiou was little represented in the account balances of the hieropoioi, which also corresponds to the proportions given by the Athenian inventory in which the rhodiou category is the smallest. But one should probably refrain from drawing too many conclusions from this about the circulation of Rhodian coinage in the course of these years, because although the hieropoioi reported these currencies in the statement of their account it was because large quantities were used during the financial period, as can be seen for the alexandreiou in 169 BC.45

52The cash holdings in chalkou are the most intriguing as they contain very large sums, up to 3,733 drachmas and 2 obols in the handover of the account of 179 BC (ID 442, A, l. 53‑55). This shall be addressed below when dealing with Delian coinage.46

The role of the coinage of Alexander

53The cash holdings of the hieropoioi are a good reflection of the monetary landscape of the Cyclades in the early second century: Histiaian money, Euboean coinage and Rhodian currency circulated in massive quantities.47 Does this mean, though, that Alexander’s coinage tended to vanish from exchange in this part of the Aegean? Probably not, but the Delian administration was clearly powerless to maintain stocks of this currency in the sanctuary’s cash holdings. Conversely private bankers continued to hold it.

54The well-known decree of the Nesiotic League for the banker Timon of Syracuse (IG XII 5, 817) sheds fresh light on the question: in the early second century, sitonai visiting Delos to purchase grain wholesale in the League’s name dealt with Timon, a banker settled on Delos and known besides for business dealings with the treasury of Apollo’s sanctuary, to secure the right currency to enable them to carry out their transaction profitably. This foreign exchange operation implied that Rhodian coinage and the islanders, judging from the preserved part of the decree, were negotiating over a rate of 100 for 105 ([τῶµ] πωλού[ντων τὸν σῖτον ἀντὶ ἑκατ]ὸν δραχµῶν τοῦ Ῥοδίου ἀργυρίου οὐκ [ἔλαττον ἀπαιτούντων] ἑκατὸν καὶ πέντε δραχµῶν, l. 4‑6). Commentators on this decree have long debated the nature of the drachmas exchanged: Teniot money against Rhodian money? Rhodian drachmas against Attic drachmas? A. Bresson provides two decisive arguments in two successive papers for understanding this document. First, only a foreign exchange operation between Rhodian light drachmas as the equivalent to Attic tetrobols and Attic standard currency seems relevant to providing a ratio of 100 to 105 as the inscription says. Second, the sitonai negotiated not directly with the grain merchants but with bankers on the Delian financial market, which makes it possible to restore instead of [τῶµ] πωλού[ντων τὸν σῖτον] the expression [[τῶµ] πωλού[ντων ἀργύριον ἀντὶ ἑκατ] ὸν δραχµῶν τοῦ Ῥοδίου ἀργυρίου οὐκ [ἔλαττον ἀπαιτούντων] ἑκατὸν καὶ πέντε δραχµῶν, τῶν τ[ε σιτωνῶν οὐχ ὁµολογούντ]ων, “the money sellers, in exchange for 100 drachmas of Rhodian money, demanding no less than 105 drachmas, and the grain commissioners not being in agreement”, l. 4‑7).48 As concerns the favour done for the Islanders by the banker Timon, it leads on to another debate as to the nature of the kollybos and the existence of foreign exchange agios.49

55The Alexander’s standard money therefore remained the recognized international currency for grain purchases on the Delian emporion and it was, as such, sought after by borrowers. The sitonai of the Nesiotic League went to Delos with Rhodian standard money with which to negotiate initially with bankers an exchange for Attic money and thereafter to negotiate their wholesale purchase of grain.

56This was probably also the case of the Delian sitonai whose cash holdings from the sanctuary must not have included enough Alexander coinage, in the early second century, to bypass the bankers. It is highly likely that, progressively through the third century, the sanctuary’s cash holdings had been bled of its stocks of Attic money because part of the stock became obsolete and because of movements of funds and transactions. In the early third century, loan agreements of Arkesine of Amorgos, that committed the city‑state with private creditors, provided explicitly that capital and interest should be repaid “in Attic or Alexander’s money that is legal tender in the city‑state alongside Attic money, intact, sound, safe from seizure, free from mortgage, net of any deduction” (IG XII 7, 67, B, l. 19‑21: Ἀττικὸν ἢ Ἀλεξάνδρειον νόµισµα ὧι [ἡ] πόλις χρῆται … ὁλοσχερές, δόκιµον, ἄσ[υ]λον, ἀνέπαφον, ἀτελὲς πάντων; also IG XII 7, 69, l. 20‑24).50 Quite patently the Delians had not provided such clauses as to the nature of the currency in loan repayments. The resale of grain from the sitonia, like the payment of taxes and rents in repayment of loans to the sacred fund, must have further modified the initial cash holdings. The Delian city-state could not solve the problems of obsolescence of the monetary stock either, having neither the necessary authority nor any interest in melting down the old coins to strike new ones in its own name.

57Had the island not been given back to the Athenians by the will of Rome, the Delians, having to deal with these diversified cash holdings in accounts established on the Attic standard, might have been tempted to reform their accounting system and replace it with a light drachma of 3.20 g or 2.80 g as the basic unit and comply more with the logic of circulation of the Rhodian and Histiaian currencies. That they did not do so is first because Alexander’s standard was an accounting benchmark in the Greek world whatever the specie actually handled.51 Moreover, the monetary landscape was constantly changing in the first half of the second century. The hieropoioi had already seen Rhodian plinthophoric drachmas weighing 3 g appear. The Athenian stephanophoric tetradrachmas of 17.20 g followed them, renewing the weight ratios. It can be understood therefore that despite far-reaching changes in their monetary environment the Delians kept to the Attic standard as their unit of account because it remained a reference unit in financial and commercial valuations.

58And so the Delian records enlighten over more than a century and a half what is virtually never highlighted by ancient sources: the recycling of monetary specie through their circulation.

Delian coinage

59The study of monetary issues by the city-state of Delos in the period of Independence illuminates the monetary policy of the Delians and the way the city-state chose to react to changes in the Aegean monetary landscape from the late fourth century to the mid‑second century BC. Although Delian coinage is very scarce archaeologically, the epigraphic texts reveal metrological phenomena that may provide a more effective way of understanding the Delian monetary situation. At the same time, this documentation opens up a valuable window for observing the Aegean monetary situation.

The Testimony of Coins

60Coinage of the city-state of Delos is known from some 220 small bronze denominations most of which are from excavations on the island and some from collections. However, there are only a score or so of silver coins in numismatic cabinets, judging from the plate of Delian coins collated by J. Svoronos in 1923,52 supplemented by subsequent publications. Some of the items reported by Svoronos in cabinets and collections have not been found and so their weights not confirmed. There is no stratigraphic context for any of these silver coins. On the basis of the best reported finds, the study of this disparate collection can, though, be used to define a few characteristics of this silver coinage, even if a study of the dies seems of little relevance here.

61The set is made up of two series: the first shows Apollo’s head on the obverse and a lyre on the reverse; the second series shows Apollo’s head on the obverse and a palm tree on the reverse. The name “phoinikophorics” found in the Athenian inventories therefore corresponds to this palm-tree series. It was certainly the last series struck in the period of Independence because palm‑tree coins appear in small quantities compared with lyre coins: only two palm-tree coins are found in numismatic cabinets for silver and similarly low proportions of bronzes of this type are found, suggesting they barely had time to circulate.

62The citharephorics were therefore the first monetary issue of independent Delos. It is inaccurate to ascribe these coins to the fourth century, as can be seen in several publications that sometimes associate them with a supposed phase of withdrawal of Athenian authority after the defeat of 405 BC.53 The return of the sanctuary to the Delians by the Lacedaemonian authority was very short-lived and did not besides lead to any break with Athenian circles in the festivals and economically.54 It is not to this time that the first issue of Delian coinage after that of the Archaic period should be attributed but instead to the early decades of Independence in the early third century BC.

63The bronze coinage used the same typos and the same symbols as the silver coinage and there was continuity between the two. It was one and the same monetary system, with some denominations minted in silver and others in bronze.55 However, the scarcity of silver coins is striking given the comparatively abundant number of bronze coins: the publication of the excavation of the Insula of the House of the Comedians attests to this scarcity.56

64The bronze coinage also falls into two types, citharephorics and phoinikophorics. Most of the coins found on the island are modules of about 10 mm diameter and weighing about 1 g. They display wide diversity of types, especially for the lyre which is depicted with many variants, and in the use of symbols added to the lyre on the reverse: swan, horn of abundance, and the legend ∆‑H positioned sometimes at the foot of the lyre and sometimes half‑way up on either side of the symbol. This diversity attests to the importance of this coinage in local monetary uses, that the city-state had to replenish on several occasions. In the phoinikophoric coinage it is the effigy of Artemis that was chosen, with the palm tree on the reverse, for the subdivision struck in bronze. One series displays another variant with the head of Apollo on the obverse and the head of Artemis on the reverse.

65  

Table 38 — The silver coinage of the independent city‑state of Delos57.

Citharephorics
Module A Head of Apollo left / four‑stringed lyre		Drachma58
(1) E. Babelon, Traité des monnaies grecques et romaines, II, 3, Paris (1914), p. 835, no. 1318 and pl. CCXL, 14. = J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923‑1926), pl. 105 no. 11. = Paris, Cabinet des Médailles, BN 188 Obverse: laureate head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre inscribed in square. ∆‑H on either side of foot of lyre.	3.31 g 15 mm
Module B1 Head of Apollo left / five‑stringed lyre		Triobol
(2) E. Babelon, Traité des monnaies grecques et romaines, II, 3, Paris (1914), p. 835, no. 1319 and pl. CCXL, 15. = J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923‑1926), pl. 105 no. 12. = Paris, Cabinet des Médailles, BN 189. Obverse: laureate head of Apollo left. Reverse: five-stringed lyre framed at mid-height by letters ∆-H.	1.60 g 12 mm
(3) Winterthur 2301: H. Bloesch, Griechische Münzen in Winterthur (1987), p. 216 and pl. 102. Obverse: laureate head of Apollo left. Reverse: five-stringed lyre framed at foot by letters ∆‑H.	1.37 g 11.1 mm
(4) Pozzi 4523: S. Boutin, Catalogue des monnaies grecques antiques de l’ancienne collection Pozzi, Maastricht, 1979. Obverse: laureate head of Apollo left. Reverse: five-stringed lyre inscribed in square.	1.27 g 10 mm
(5) Athens Numismatic Museum 50/4762 Obverse: laureate head of Apollo left. Reverse: five-stringed lyre inscribed in square.	1.13 g 10 mm
Module B2 Head of Apollo left / four‑stringed lyre		Triobol
(6) A. Meadows & R. Williams, SNG XIII. The Collection of the Society of Antiquaries Newcastle upon Tyne(2005), no. 395. Obverse: laureate head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre inscribed in square.	1.60 g 10 mm
(7) J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 18 (London).59 = Head,2 1911, p. 485 = British Museum 1890,0702.43 Obverse: head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre.	1.42 g 10 mm
(8) S. W. Grose, Catalogue of the McClean Collection of Greek Coins, Fitzwilliam Museum. Vol. II: The Greek Mainland, the Aegean Islands, Crete, Cambridge (1926), p. 518‑519, no. 7254 and pl. 245.29 Obverse: laureate head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre (?) framed at foot by letters ∆‑H.	1.36 g 10.5 mm
(9) J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 14 (collection Roussopoulos) = L. Forber, The Weber Collection, vol. II (1924), p. 561 no. 4657, pl. 169. Obverse: head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre.	1.37 g 11 mm
(10) J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 13 (Berlin). Obvese: head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre inscribed in square.	1.35 g 11 mm
(11) J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 17 (Berlin) Obverse: head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre.	1.32 g 11 mm
(12) J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 15 (Berlin) Obverse: head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre	1.19 g 10 mm
(13) J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 16 (collection J. Six) Obverse: head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre	1.19 g 10 mm
Module B3 Head of Apollo right / four-stringed lyre		Triobol
(14) J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 23 (Vienna) Obverse: head of Apollo right. Reverse: four-stringed lyre.	1.15 g 11 mm
Module C1 Head of Apollo left / five-stringed lyre, legend ΔΗΛΙΩΝ		Trihemiobol
(15) E. Babelon, Traité des monnaies grecques et romaines, II, 3, Paris (1914), p. 835, no. 1320 and pl. CCXL, 16. = J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 21. = Paris, Cabinet des Médailles, BN 190. Obverse: laureate head of Apollo left. Reverse: five-stringed lyre, framed by letters ∆ΗΛ‑ΙΩΝ.	0.85 g 11 mm
Module C2 Head of Apollo left / five‑stringed lyre		Trihemiobol
(16) E. Tsourti & M. D. Trifiró, SNG Greece 5. The A. G. Soutzos Collection, Athens (2007), no. 1224 Obverse: head of Apollo left. Reverse: five-stringed lyre.	0.71 g 11 mm
Module C3 Head of Apollo left / four‑stringed lyre		Trihemiobol
(17) J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 22 (Berlin) Obverse: head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre.	0.84 g 9.5 mm
Module C4 Head of Apollo right / four‑stringed			Trihemiobol
(18) J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923‑1926), pl. 105 no. 25 (Imhoof-Blumer)	0.82 g 9 mm
Module D Head of Apollo left / four‑stringed lyre			Hemiobol
(19) Pozzi 4524: S. Boutin, Catalogue des monnaies grecquesantiques de l’ancienne collection Pozzi, Maastricht, 1979. = J. Svoronos and B. Pick, Trésor des monnaies d’Athènes, Munich (1923-1926), pl. 105 no. 20 (collection Roussopoulos). Obverse: laureate head of Apollo left. Reverse: four-stringed lyre inscribed in square.	0.26 g 6 mm
Phoinikophorics
Module A Head of Apollo left / palm tree and swan flying left			Drachma
(20) British Museum 1900, 0606.19 cf. W. Wroth, NC 1900 p. 287 no. 18 and pl. XIV, 2; Head2 (1911), p. 485.60 Obverse: head of Apollo left. Reverse: palm tree topped by swan flying left.	3.04 g 15 mm
Module B Head of Apollo right / palm tree and swan flying right			Tetrobol
(21) J. Hirsch, Auctions-CatalogXIII, no. 3148, pl. XXXV. Obverse: head of Apollo right. Reverse: palm tree topped by swan flying right; ∆ at bottom right.	1.58 g 12.5 mm

66The scarcity of samples obviously makes any reconstruction of the Delians’ monetary system just guesswork, but the inscriptions provide valuable supplements on this question, especially on the subdivisions of the coinage and the chronology of the monetary issues.

67The samples that have been conserved attest to weight relations that can be used to make an initial hypothesis about the organization of citharephoric coinage, that could logically be subdivided into drachmas, triobols, trihemiobols and hemiobols. The triobols are most plentiful with 13 samples out of the 19 conserved and with weights ranging between 1.60 g and 1.13 g.

68The first picture to form (table 39) is that the citharephoric coinage may have gone through several series in succession with a gradual fall in the weight of the drachm, that must have been about 3.40 g at the beginning of the series and around 2.30 g towards the end, judging from the sample conserved.

69However, none of the coins is as minted and it is not known either how long they were in circulation for. This makes it virtually impossible to estimate the degree of wear and to define their original weight from the examination of the coins alone. It is therefore through the accounts of the hieropoioi that the table can be made more specific.

The Chronology of Monetary Issues from the Accounts of the Hieropoioi

The date of issue of the citharephorics

70The inscriptions bear witness to the monetary issues inasmuch as they affected the management of the sacred fund.

71In 279 BC, among the various payments into their cash holdings, the hieropoioi stated they also received 100 drachmas “in replacement of the old money” (IG XI 2, 161, A, l. 42: καὶ παρ’ Ἀντικράτους τοῦ Τιµησιδήµου ἀντὶ τοῦ παλαιοῦ ἀργυρίου δραχµὰς·Η). The city‑state of Delos had therefore struck money in or before 279 and introduced the new coinage into the sanctuary’s fund. The 100 drachmas paid “in replacement of the old money” indicate that the Delians withdrew from the sacred fund Delian coins that it was entitled to remint as new types, and therefore silver coins dating from before the First Athenian Domination.61 The man who made the payment, Antikrates son of Timesidemos, was known as a choregos in 279, a logista in 269, and a tax farmer in 269 and 268. He may have been one of the commissioners tasked with supervising the monetary issue but the documentation says nothing more about him.62

72The city‑state of Delos must, of course, have procured other sources of metal apart from the currency in the sacred chest. Metal analyses have shown that coins of Chalcis had been struck from melting down silver vases.63 The same possibility for those of Delos should not be ruled out, but there are no indications to specify the source of the metal that served for this first monetary issue in the period of Independence.

73In the same account of the year 279, it can be seen, though, how the city‑state of Delos may have facilitated the circulation of its new money via the sanctuary fund.

74The accounts statement of the inscription mentions the transmission of an additional sum that the Assembly allocated to the sanctuary by a vote (IG XI 2, 161 A, l. 124‑27):

σὺν ταῖς ·ΜΜΧΧΧΧΗ∆∆∆· αἷς ὁ δῆµος ἐψηφίσατο [ἐν παραδ]όσει παραλαµβάνειν ἀεὶ τοὺς ἱεροποιοὺς τοὺς ἐν τέλει ὄντας,

with the 24,630 drachmas for which the people voted by decree that the hieropoioi in office should receive them each time in the passing‑on of the cash holdings.

75The same fund was mentioned again the following year (IG XI 2, 162, l. 4‑6) and in 276 (IG XI 2, 163, l. 9‑10) when it increased because it stood at 35,000 drachmas at least. It was probably thereafter included with the sacred fund as a whole since it was no longer mentioned separately in the subsequent cash holdings.

76There was a specific feature about this sum and its being maintained in the fund was decided on by the city-state. Several reasons have been invoked for this payment: the necessity of freezing certain funds, the need to keep a certain sum in the cash holdings that the borrowing by the city-state tended to drain.64 In point of fact, in 281, the hieropoioi only handed on to their successors slightly more than 5,220 drachmas in cash holdings (IG XI 2, 159, l. 69‑70) because much of the monies circulated in the form of loans to the city-state. The account of 281 shows a total of outgoings that comes to 81,287 drachmas, 3 obols, ½ obol, 1 tetartemorion and 1 chalkos (σύµπαγ κεφάλαιον ἀναλώµατος σὺν ὧι ἡ πόλις ὀφείλ[ει ․․․․․․][— —c.13— —] δραχµαὶ ·ΜΜΜΧΗΗ∆[∆∆]ΙΙΙ/., l. 68‑69). Now, it is easy to calculate the amount of current spending for the year. The inscription of 281 is fragmentary but those of the following years can be used to calculate that the total spending (building work, monthly expenditure and operating costs including staff wages) came to between 13,000 and 14,000 drachmas at most.65 The amount withdrawn by the city‑state could therefore reach 10 talents, or the larger part of the treasury. In 279 the hieropoioi received in cash holdings a little more than 20,000 drachmas at the beginning of their term of office and received various payments in the course of the year for slightly more than 34,000 drachmas, including nearly 20,000 drachmas from the city‑state (16,221.6 drachmas in loan repayments and 3,539 drachmas from the choregikon, l. 24‑26). The remainder of the revenues were made up of regular income from farm rents, property rents, taxes and interest paid by private individuals.

77It is tempting to make a connection between the order – the only one of its kind in the corpus of accounts – given to the hieropoioi by the assembly to keep 24,630 drachmas in the coffers and the new Delian monetary issue. These 24,630 drachmas must have been not Attic but Delian drachmas, the amount, this time, not being converted to the Attic standard. That was no longer necessary since the hieropoioi gave on the previous line the amount they handed down to their successors, which came to 41,442 drachmas, ½ obol, 1 tetartemorion and 1 chalkos. Now, these 24,630 Delian drachmas, with a Delian drachma weighing 3.30 g if we use the weight attested by the only sample of silver known for this modulus and this type, found an equivalent in the payments made by the city-state of Delos to the sacred fund and reported in the account. In the course of that year, the sums paid back by the city-state and the sums paid for the choregikon came to a total of 19,760.6 Attic drachmas, which, for an Attic drachma at 4.33 g, came to 24,630 Delian drachmas with a Delian drachma of 3.473 g. This weight is a little more than the sample conserved, but it lies within the range of theoretical weights that the subdivisions attested would enable us to restore. If the payments made by the city-state in 279 were of newly minted Delian coinage, the city‑state would thus have taken the opportunity of paying back loans to pay this new money into the sacred chest.

78The large withdrawals made by the city-state in 281 were perhaps not all loans. It may be that, with these withdrawals, the Delians made a comprehensive count of the money and selected the ancient Delian coins for melting down.

79This would explain the account statement inscribed by the hieropoioi of 279 BC (IG XI 2, 161, A, l. 122‑127):

κεφάλαιον οὗ τε παρελάβοµεν ἀργυρίου καὶ τοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς ἡµετέρας ἀρχῆς εἰσελθόντος δραχµαὶ · ΧΧΧΧΗ∆ · ἀργυρίου παντοδα-
ποῦ εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου λόγον δραχµὰς ·∆· καὶ χρυσοῦς ·∆ΙΙ· καὶ τεττίγια χρυσᾶ δύο καὶ φωκαΐδα. κεφάλαιον ἀναλώµατος δραχµ[αὶ]
ΜΧΧΗΗ∆∆. τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν παρεδώκαµεν ἱεροποιοῖς τοῖς ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος Μενεκράτους ∆ηµόνωι τῶι Νίκωνος, Πίστηι τῶι Ξένωνος, πα-
ρόντων βουλευτῶν καὶ γραµµατέων, τοῦ τῆς πόλεως Ἀντιπάτρου τοῦ ∆ηµητρίου καὶ τοῦ τῶν ἱεροποιῶν Κλεινοδί[κου τ]οῦ Κλεινο-
δίκου, ἀργυρίου νοµίσµατος δραχµὰς · ΜΜΜΜΧΗΗΗΗ∆∆∆∆/· σὺν ταῖς ·ΜΜΧΧΧΧΗ∆∆∆· αἷς ὁ δῆµος ἐψηφίσατο [ἐν παραδ]όσει παρα-
λαµβάνειν ἀεὶ τοὺς ἱεροποιοὺς τοὺς ἐν τέλει ὄντας vac. καὶ τεττίγια ·ΙΙ· καὶ φωκαΐδα· καὶ ἀργυρίου παντοδ[αποῦ ·∆· καὶ χρυσ]οῦς ∆Ι[Ι].

Total of the money we have received and of the money that came in over the course of our term of office: 54,162 drachmas. Money from various provenances converted into Alexander’s drachmas: 11 drachmas and 12 gold staters, two gold coins with cricket and one coin from Phocaea. Total outgoings: 12,720 drachmas. We have passed on as the balance to the hieropoioi of the archonship of Menekrates, Demonous son of Nikon and Pistes son of Xenon, in the presence of the advisors and secretaries, that of the city‑state Antipatros son of Demetrios and that of the hieropoioi Kleinodikos son of Kleinodikos, in silver coinage: 41,442 drachmas, 1/2 obol, 1 tetartemorion and 1 chalkos [of Attic standard], including66 the 24,630 [Delian] drachmas which the people voted the hieropoioi in office should always receive in the cash holdings handed down to them.

80This provision passed by the assembly made it possible both to maintain a stock of metal minted by the Delian city‑state in the sanctuary’s coffers in the form of a cash reserve, while the new Delian money circulated at the same time through the sacred fund, which received it by way of payments and used it as necessary for its own movements of funds and transactions. Given that these Delian drachmas did not correspond to the full Attic weight, it was not surprising that the hieropoioi mentioned them in the account as a separate batch, while at the same time ensuring through accounting conversion that a record of the account as a whole was kept on the Attic standard.

The date of the issue of the phoinikophorics

81About a century later, the Delians issued a second series of coinage, changing the symbols of their money: on the obverse was still Apollo’s head but on the reverse a palm-tree topped by a swan replaced the lyre. In certain issues of bronze, it was the effigy of Artemis that was chosen with the palm‑tree on the reverse. The inventories of the Second Athenian Domination named them δραχµὰς φοινικοφόρους.67 Once again a date can be provided by virtue of the inscriptions.

82In 169 BC (ID 461 Aa 76) the jar inventory mentions a deposit in the sacred fund from the bank of Philon and therefore denominated on the Attic standard. It came from the commissioners “elected to take charge of minting money” ([ἄν]δρες ο[ἱ] αἱρεθέντες ἐπὶ τὴν κοπὴν τοῦ νοµίσµατος). So the city‑state of Delos seems to have struck coinage in the years before 169 and deposited that money in the sacred fund. The event took place between 179 and 169, since the jar in question was already in the Artemision when the hieropoioi of 169 took office and the complete inventory of 179 does not mention it, probably between 173 and 170.68 The city‑state had therefore decided to replace the old citharephorics of Apollo’s treasury with the new Delian drachmas.

83The Athenian inventories of the jars in the sanctuary speak for the phoinikophorics of tetrobols (ID 1450, B, l. 4 [σὺν] δηλίοις τετρωβόλοις) and obols (jars ∆, I, ∆∆).69 It is these subdivisions, therefore, that must be sought out among the existing specimens. But the extreme scarcity of this coinage plainly shows it did not have time to circulate between the first issues and the end of Delian independence.

The consecration of dies

84The inventories attest to the consecration of monetary dies, which also provides an interesting clue about issues. This was probably equipment left over once minting was completed that was kept safe from any fraudulent use by consecration to the god.

85An ἄκµων (obverse die) features in the inventories of Apollo’s temple as from 200 BC (ID 372, B, 36; 442, B, l. 168). This was therefore equipment from the citharephoric issues, that had to be supplied in several series.

86Later, the inventories of the Second Athenian Domination recorded 18 reverse dies and 5 obverse dies in the inventory of Apollo’s temple (ID 1430f, l. 13 and 1450, A, l. 198):70

— [χα]ρακτ[ῆρας σιδηροῦς] δέκα ὀκ[τώ· ἄ]κµονα[ς π]έντε —

87The equipment for the phoinikophoric issue probably featured in it at that date.

88The small quantity of Delian coinage has often been emphasized: an order of magnitude is given by the jar inventories of the Athenian administrators who arrived in 167 BC, who counted some 11,000 phoinikophoric drachmas in the sacred chest. It is invariably difficult to make quantitative estimates especially in the case of small amounts of coinage with little information about it. But if it is accepted that an obverse die could be used to strike between 15,000 and 30,000 coins, the five obverse dies in the Athenian inventory would have enabled an issue of between 75,000 and 150,000 coins, without it being possible to specify what moduli were involved and for an issue that must anyway have used more dies since the Delians consecrated only those that were unbroken. With the 18 reverse dies conserved in the Temple of Apollo, we come to a volume of at least 500,000 coins, to be apportioned among the different subdivisions.

Metrology of Local Coinage

Accounting issues: the question of the artificial exchange rate of the Delian drachma

89The fact that part of the sacred fund was made up of Delian coinage meant the administrators had to make allowance for currency conversions. Most computations were probably made by the banks through which the monies transited, but some simple ratios would certainly have been known to the hieropoioi, as later to the Athenian administrators under the Second Athenian Domination.

90Now it did sometimes happen that the hieropoioi mentioned amounts in Delian drachmas after establishing a total on the Attic standard.

91Careful scrutiny of the accounts of the hieropoioi reveals the criteria and processes for their monetary conversions. But the question was long overshadowed by the role of the Attic standard in their accounting. For J. Tréheux, the fact that the hieropoioi drew up their accounts using the Attic standard meant that the Delian drachma benefitted from an artificial exchange rate on the island and that, while it weighed less than an Attic drachma, it was counted as its exact equivalent: an operation that Tréheux himself characterizes as “simple, or rather simplistic, financial administration”.71 This interpretation does little justice to the meticulousness and the accounting skills of the hieropoioi who, over the years, would thus have allowed a substantial variance to arise between the funds actually handled and the accounting records of the sacred property.

92Certain passages of the accounts show, on the contrary, that the hieropoioi, when handling Delian currency, set about conversion operations so as to account for their exact equivalent on the Attic standard and did not count one Delian drachma as equal to one Attic drachma.72

93At the festival of the Eileithyaia, the hieropoioi received a subsidy from the city‑state of Delos that was necessarily in the local currency for a festival that was exclusively a civic festival and with local provision, too.73 The subsidy was invariably for 40 drachmas. In their books, the hieropoioi presented a note on spending for the festival with a section heading. Account ID 445, dated of the year 178, gives a full text for this section (l. 12‑16). Detailed spending came to 58.6 drachmas (58 drachmas and 4 obols) whereas the total of this expenditure, corresponding to the subsidy received, was inscribed for 40 drachmas. P. Bruneau rightly noted that the hieropoioi in this case did not report, as they did for the Posideai, that they used other income to make good the expenditure. This has prompted several commentators to see this as a counting mistake. ID 445 (a. 178), l. 12‑16:

                                                                             λόγος τῶν
εἰς Εἰλειθύαια· ἀπὸ τῶν ∆∆∆∆· πρόβατον ∆· πυροὶ ∆·
τυρὸς · ἐρέβινθοι, κύαµοι · σήσαµα · µέλι · στεφανώ-
µατα ΙΙΙΙ· ἀρτοκόπωι · λάχανα · τάριχος · ὄψον ·
κάρυα · οἶνος .

Account of the Eileithyaia. Out of the 40 drachmas: ewes 14 drachmas; grain 10 drachmas;74 cheese 2 drachmas; chickpeas, broad beans 4 drachmas; sesame 2 drachmas; honey 2 drachmas; wreaths 4 obols; baker’s (wages) 2 drachmas; vegetables 3 drachmas; preserves 3 drachmas; seasoning 6 drachmas; walnuts 2 drachmas; wine 8 drachmas.

94Yet it can be calculated that at this date, with a Delian citharephoric drachma weighing just under 3 g, these 58.6 Delian drachmas were equivalent to 40 Attic drachmas counted at 4.33 g. When they found epichoric drachmas in their cash holdings, it is very likely that the hieropoioi were in the habit, as good accountants, of calculating the exact monetary correspondence in Attic drachmas. In no event did they count a Delian drachma as equivalent to an Attic drachma.

95Other Delian funds are amenable to a similar demonstration. The nesiadeion fund, among the endowment funds, saw a reduction in its capital from 3,863 drachmas initially in 250 BC (IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 193‑195, based on the interest paid and owed by various debtors) to 3,500 drachmas in 207 (ID 366, A, l. 134). This is odd because the loss of capital in loans was not consistent with mortgage practices and the care surrounding loan operations out of endowment funds.75 However, the reduction in capital might be related to the change in value of the Delian drachma. This consecration by Nesiades, a Cycladic name, may relate to an initial capital amount in epichoric coinage. The initial amount of capital is surprising because endowment fund capital generally came to a round number. The figure therefore probably expresses the conversion of a sum to the Attic standard. If the initial capital had been composed of Delian drachmas, although marked on the Attic standard (in the form of 3,863 drachmas), its value in Attic equivalent might have been re‑evaluated at a given moment at the time of repayments, with one Delian drachma maintaining its value of one drachma on the city-state’s territory even if its reference weight declined with successive mintings. Assuming to begin with a donation of 5,000 Delian drachmas, the conversion to 3,863 Attic drachmas with an Attic drachma counted at 4.33 g is obtained with a Delian drachma weighing exactly 3.34 g for the year 250 BC. For the year 207, if the Delian drachma was gradually reduced in weight over the following decades, the initial capital, on the Attic standard, then came close to 3,500 drachmas with a Delian drachma of about 3 g.

96These clues are of unequal value because of the gaps on the stelae and because of the extreme scarcity of Delian coinage. This means that, other than from approximations based on epigraphic data supplied by the accounts, the change in reference weights of local monetary mintings cannot be established for certain. But the way the hieropoioi kept their accounts and expressed their cash holdings seems explicit enough. The amounts in Delian drachmas, probably like the other currencies of non‑Attic standard were subject not to foreign-exchange operations but to accounting conversions to the Attic standard for reasons of unit of account.

97Of course, these operations took a monetary standard as the benchmark: there was no question in the calculations of the hieropoioi of weighing the coins and making allowance for their wear and tear. It was the official weight of the coin that was used in the computations. But the practices of the hieropoioi suggest that the decline in weight of silver coinage – a well-known phenomenon in monetary treasuries where coins of the same denomination but variable weights existed side by side – were taken into consideration in the accounts and might, at some point, give rise to a re‑evaluation of parities between monetary specie: a parallel can be found at Delphi with the epikatallage of the sanctuary’s accounts.76

98The conclusion of all this is that there was no artificial conversion rate on Delos but, on the contrary, operations establishing the value on an official weight basis, the only means of obtaining accurate accounting as to the monetary value of the assets in the coffers.

Hypothesis on the change in weight of the citharephorics

99The observations collected above suggest a pattern for the change in weight of the citharephorics in the course of the third century and in the early second century, until they were superseded around 170, after about a century in being, by the new phoinikophoric coinage. The evidence of the accounts of the hieropoioi seems to converge with the evidence of the coins and refines the information, even if the summary presented below maintains the hypothetical component of any reasoning based on approximate figures.

100If we bring together the various epigraphic testimony that can be used to evaluate the weight of the Delian citharephoric drachma at different stages when it had currency, compared with the Attic drachma, based on the hypothetical calculations used previously, we find the following pattern (table 40):

101These estimates are based on the principle that the hieropoioi, having maintained the Attic standard throughout their accounts, maintained at the same time as their reference value in their accounting conversion calculations – with the help of the bankers – an Attic standard drachma of 4.33 g. True, the weight of alexanders varied through the Hellenistic period:79 it was 4.20 g among the Seleucids and the Attalids around 170, but 4.20 g from around 275 for the alexanders of the Pontos. It is impossible to determine where the alexanders the hieropoioi handled came from, but it is clear that, in their accounting methods, they never used actual coins as their reference – which would have caused countless inconsistencies from one year to the next given the weight variations – but the official theoretical weight of their reference, the Attic standard.80 A passage from the account of 250 attests to this for the weighing of offerings: the hieropoioi indicate that silver vases were “weighed in the same scales of the agoranomion, by the full Attic silver standard” (ταῦτα ἐστήσαµεν ἐν τῶι ζυγῶι τῶι ἐλάττονι τῶι ἐν ἀγορανοµίωι πρὸς ἀργύριον ἀτ<τ>ικὸν ὁλοσχερές, IG XI 2, 287, B, l. 143‑144).81

102So the citharephorics, whose number was probably increased by several successive issues over the course of a century, supposedly diminished in weight. The reason might be that it was impossible for the Delians to procure enough metal to supply the local monetary circulation. But the reduction in weight might also be explained by their wanting to align their coinage on the changes in Aegean weights and measures of which they were prime observers in the emporion.

Changes in weights and measures in the Mediterranean as seen from Delos

103The Delian epigraphic records throw light on questions of metrology attesting to significant changes on several occasions. These changes were not made at the instigation of the Delians, who could only follow the changes coming about through the Aegean commercial and financial operations negotiated on the island. So the Delians merely adapted their own system of money and weights to changes imposed on them from the outside. The corpus of the accounts of the hieropoioi can thus be read as an interesting window onto changes in the Aegean in this domain.

The 12‑Chalkos Obol

104It is widely accepted that the Attic obol was made up of 8 chalkoi whereas the Aeginetic system had a 12‑chalkos obol.82 And yet in the accounts of the hieropoioi of Delos, who used the Attic standard as their accounting system, the obol was made up not of 8 but 12 chalkoi. This can be observed in the accounts of the third century, because the hieropoioi never indicate more than 2 chalkoi after a tetartemorion, which should not be possible in a system in which one tetartemorion (or a quarter obol) is worth 2 chalkoi if an obol is worth 8 and a half‑obol 4.83 From 246 BC, the hieropoioi generalized the habit of inscribing sub‑totals on their stelae, enabling us to verify, when the passages on the stone are complete, the method of calculation used. If we count, whenever possible, the number of chalkoi indicated in the enumeration of expenditure or income and compare the result with the end of the total as added and recorded by the hieropoioi, we invariably reach the conclusion that there were 12 chalkoi to the obol, in an accounting system that used the Attic standard as its unit of account.

105The readings set out below (table 41), that use only the ends of the numbers, with the subdivisions of the obol in the complete passages,84 show this: the tetartemorion or quarter obol was equivalent to 3 chalkoi in the accounts of the hieropoioi. The half‑obol is noted C, the quarter-obol or tetartemorion is noted T or ), and the chalkos is noted / or X.

106Just once, in the account of 192 BC, does the obol not seem to be counted as 12 chalkoi, in a passage about the cash holdings of the public fund. But some letters are pitted and have probably been misread because the total inscribed does not correspond anyway to the total that can be calculated.

ID 399 (a. 192), A, l. 36‑54: cash holdings of the public fund
l. 38 CX
l. 41 TX
making a total of 1/2 ob. 1/4 ob. and 2 ch. transcribed in the account total:
l. 54 C

107Besides, that same year, the additions of lines 16 and 35 shows that 3 chalkoi are worth ¼ obol and so the obol is indeed counted at 12 chalkoi.

108It would be surprising, however, that on Delos in the late fourth and early third centuries, while the Delians maintained their accounts on the Attic system further to the Athenian Domination and while coins of Attic standard must still have made up most of the currency in circulation on the island, that there would be a 12‑chalkos obol. Admittedly, as of IG XI 2, 146 (B, l. 31), at the beginning of Independence, we find the repetition of the chalkos sign after the quarter-obol sign (∆∆∆ΙΙΙΙ //), but we do not have, for the first half of the third century, the possibility of checking how the hieropoioi counted because they did not record sub-totals at that date. So it might be wondered whether the signs , T or  and X or / did not have, at least in the third century, a usage value, much like that of the other acrophonic signs. The signs noting the subdivisions of the drachma are given a symbolic value designating a fraction (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/12). One might equally well assign them a numerical value, that is, take it that  = 4 chalkoi, T or  = 3 chalkoi, X or / = 1 chalkos. The system of notation, understood in this way, would be fully consistent with the acrophonic system that assigns a numerical value to each letter (Η = 100, ∆ = 10, etc.). Accordingly, it should not be ruled out that, in the first half of the third century, when the hieropoioi wrote T// or TXX, they meant 5 chalkoi and the sign of the tetartemorion maintained a usage value of 3 chalkoi, without us being able to determine, for that time, on the basis of those notations alone, how many chalkoi there were to an obol. The occurrence of sub-totals can alone provide such proof.

109However, it is possible to specify the date at which the Delians made the choice of counting the obol at 12 chalkoi.

110It is interesting to observe that the Delians hesitated, in the first half of the third century, about the subdivisions of the systems of weights in use in this part of the Aegean. So the questions about Delian weights and measures are not confined to monetary matters alone.85

From the amphora to the 12‑khous metretes

111The purchases of pitch in the accounts of the hieropoioi86 reveal that several units of measurement were in use at the beginning of Independence: the keramion, the hemiamphorion and the metretes. As in the accounts of Eleusis, the Delian accounts of the late fourth century and until 296 BC mention the keramion as a unit of measurement (IG XI 2, 138, Be, l. 3‑5; 144, A, l. 94 and l. 111‑112; 145, l. 3, I and 10; 154, A, l. 2, 37 and 48).

112In 296 BC (IG XI 2, 154, A, l. 15) the name metretes first appeared for wine. Shortly before 282 BC it also appeared for purchases of pitch (IG XI 2, 156, A, l. 74).87 It was also around 280 that the use of the metretes appeared as a unit of measurement for oil (IG XI 2, 161, A, l. 108; 168, A, l. 5‑6). It was used from then on systematically throughout the period. In the second century, the keramion was no longer used as a wine measurement (ID 401, l. 18; ID 452, l. 9; ID 461, B, l. 53; ID 440, A, l. 62, 66, 68; ID 442, A, l. 222; ID 464, l. 10, 12), in competition besides with the metretes for sweetened wine (ID 406, B, l. 70; 461, Bb, l. 51).

113This use was not related to one particular commodity: it was the gradual introduction of a measurement system in the uses of the emporion. The various merchants who supplied the sanctuary, according to their geographical origins and the provenance of their products, took these changes on board at varying speeds. The hieropoioi, in recording their accounts, were very careful about units of account and measurement and endeavoured to keep them uniform, although not without difficulty on their part. It was not just a question of vocabulary and of terminological use: the term metretes was employed in Attica already in the fourth century, as attested for instance by the corpus of Demosthenes (Against Phenippos [XLII], 20).

114The accounts of the hieropoioi of Delos show, on the contrary, that the transition from the keramion to the metretes reflected in point of fact a metrological reform that occurred between the 280s and the mid third century (table 42).

115However, the adoption of the metretes did not go without metrological difficulties for the Delians. These were particularly apparent for their purchases of pitch and concerned the subdivisions of the metretes. A purchase of oil in 279 BC (IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 131) proves that the metretes was divided into two hemiamphoria. The addition transcribed by the hieropoioi left no doubt on the matter since with a unit cost of 18 drachmas per metretes, they inscribed a payment of 81 drachmas for 4 metretai and one hemiamphorion. Yet, the same did not always hold for pitch.

116In 282 BC the hieropoioi made two purchases of pitch in succession in the course of the year (IG XI 2, 158, A, l. 75‑76 and l. 77‑78). For each purchase, they indicated an identical unit price of 24 drachmas per metretes. The first purchase was for 3 metretai and 2 khoeis. A price of 78 drachmas was paid. It can therefore be inferred that the metretes comprised 8 khoeis making, at the rate of 3 drachmas per khous, 78 drachmas for 26 khoeis. But the second purchase was for 3 metretai and 1 khous, for which a price of 74 drachmas was paid.88 In the latter case, the metretes was necessarily divided into 12 khoeis, that, at a rate of 2 drachmas per khous, come to 74 drachmas for 37 khoeis (otherwise one should read 75 drachmas and one cannot suspect a misreading for this number).

Table 42 —Transformations of the metretes from pitch purchases by the hieropoioi in 282 BC.

IG XI 2, 158 A, l. 75‑76 (reading of the total figure is assured in Addenda p. 147)	πίττης µετρητ[αὶ τρεῖς] χοεῖς δύο ὥστε τὸγ Κερατῶνα ἀλεῖψαι παρ’ Ἀµφιθάλο[υς], ὁ µετρητὴς ∆∆· ἡ πᾶσα τιµὴ ∆∆· ἀλείψαντι τὸν Κερατῶ[να Ἀµ]φιθάλει µισθὸς ∆·	3 metretes and 2 khoeis	24 dr. per metretes = total 78 dr. (8‑khous metretes)
IG XI 2, 158 A, l. 77‑78 + correction of Glotz REG 1916 p. 284, n. 1 on total price: ∆∆ and not ∆∆, by Addenda p. 147.	ἄλλοι πίττης µετρη[rasura]ταὶ τρεῖ[ς] καὶ χ[ο]ῦς, ὁ µετρητὴς ∆∆· ἡ πᾶσα τιµὴ ∆∆·	3 metretes and 1 khous	24 dr. per metretes = total 74 dr. (12‑khous metretes)

117These inconsistencies in prices have led the editors of the corpus on many occasions to consider that the hieropoioi made mistakes in their calculations. Not so, especially as the accounts were duly verified in the procedure for surrendering the accounts.

118In actual fact, in the course of their two purchases, in the same year but probably from different suppliers, the hieropoioi used two different systems of weights and measures, one with the 8‑khous metretes and the other with the 12‑khous metretes.

119This situation probably arose from the gradual adoption of the metretes and the concomitant discarding of the keramion which was the measurement unit in use previously in the accounts in the late fourth century. This keramion also features in Attic sources and this continuity was unsurprising because several indications suggest that at the classic period most of the supply of Delos was related to commercial circuits of Attica.89

120According to the lexicographers from whom F. Hultsch collated the testimony, the keramion was the equivalent of the Roman amphora of 8 khoeis.90 But however valuable it might be, the metrological work of F. Hultsch in the late nineteenth century was based essentially on lexicographers and very little at the time on the epigraphic and papyrological texts that have since provided other information about the changing contexts.

121Did the amphora hold 8 or 12 khoeis?

122The oil purchases of 279 BC suggests that the amphora was the equivalent of the metretes, since a half-amphora was the equivalent of a half-metretes. Before mention was made of the metretes for oil purchases in the accounts of the hieropoioi, purchases of oil by the khous appeared from the late fourth century, for 8 and 9 khoeis (IG XI 2, 138 and 159) suggesting that oil was already counted by a 12‑khous and not an 8‑khous. The price paid for a half-amphora of pitch in 279 BC was also half the price paid the same year for a metretes of pitch (IG XI 2, 161, A, l. 121 and l. 100‑101), with the result that one might judge the equivalence to be well established, although there is nothing in the formulation of the purchase to show this. However, other purchases of pitch, in the ensuing years, cast doubt on it when subdivisions are mentioned with the totals.

123In 269 BC, the hieropoioi again made a purchase of pitch with the indication of a hemiaphorion (IG XI 2, 203, A, l. 47‑48). They bought 9 metretai and a half-amphora of pitch at the unit price of 25.5 drachmas and paid 238 drachmas in all. The 9 metretai at 25.5 drachmas per unit came to 229.5 drachmas and so there remained in the total 8.5 drachmas (i.e. 1/3 of 25.5) for the price of the hemiamphorion: the half-amphorion was therefore one-third of a metretes and the amphora two‑thirds of a metretes. The keramion, if it was the equivalent of the amphora, must therefore also have held 8 khoeis.

124It is significant besides that the hieropoioi continued in the second century to distinguish between the keramion and the metretes in their wine purchases, that is, probably the same distinction between an 8‑khoeis and a 12‑khous measure.91 Some lexicographic information points in this direction: Hesychius indicates κεράµια χόες η’ (i.e. a keramion of 8 khoeis) and Dioscorides: ἔστι δὲ ὁ µετρητὴς ιβ’ (i.e. a metretes of 12 khoeis).92

125It seems that these hesitations were resolved around the mid-third century, as shown by the purchase of oil of 250 BC with a metretes divided into two half-amphoras (IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 131). The addition transcribed by the hieropoioi left no doubt on this subject since with a unit cost of 18 drachmas per metretes, they inscribed a payment of 81 drachmas for 4 metretes and 1 hemiamphorion.

126The final mention of the hemiamphorion, although restored by F. Durrbach, is found in the account of 246 BC and shows that the half-amphorion has firmly become the measure of half of the metretes since the hieropoioi then paid 82.5 drachmas for 5 metretai and 1 half-amphorion of pitch at the unit price of 15 drachmas (5 × 15 = 17 + 7.5 = 82.5) and 75 drachmas for five other amphoras of pitch, again at the unit price of 15 drachmas per metretes (ID 290, l. 78‑80).

127It was therefore a devaluation of the amphora from 8 khoeis to 12 khoeis that was at work on the Delian market in the course of the first half of the third century, at the same time as the metretes divided into 12 units took over as the unit of measurement.93 The metrological problems encountered by the Delians touched on everyday exchanges of the entire population in the emporion, but we see them clearly as accounting problems with which the hieropoioi were confronted when they restored, on the basis of a total purchase price, the indication of unit prices.94 These innovations did not stem from a local initiative: they were the reflection of changes in the Aegean circuits for which the Delos market operated like a centre of trade and in which the new authorities were in the process of making their mark.

From the Epidekaton to the Ephekton

128Now the transition from 8 to 12 for the subdivisions of the metretes converge with an identical change in the 280s for the subdivisions of the obol, as just seen.

129Another transformation of the same kind was to be seen in the building contracts for which the hieropoioi were responsible. These contracts were attributed by adjudication and gave rise to different forms of payment for contractors and craftsmen who won the contracts: in a large number of cases payments were made upon completion of the work. But for bigger jobs, payments had to be spread out, while keeping back a final payment that was only made once the work had been finally accepted, once it had been officially observed that the work had been completed in accordance with the contract, and that served as a surety.95 Now this final amount changed in the course of the first half of the third century from 1/10th (ἐπιδέκατον) to 1/6th (ἔφεκτον). It is true that some contracts simply provided for a surety of more than 1/6th or 1/10th. But the chronology of the change is coherent: the epidekaton was to be found in the early contracts of the period of Independence (IG XI 2, 161, A, l. 54 in 279) and lasted until 246 BC, while the ephekton first appeared in 274 (the first epigraphic evidence is in ID 291, e, l. 4 shortly after 248) and until 200 BC.96

130The interpretation generally used for this change is that the hieropoioi sought to facilitate their accounting operations, as E. Schulhof wrote in 1908: “The drachma being divided into six obols and the obol into twelfths, the withholding of the sixth had the advantage that an exact account was possible all round”.97 The idea is right, but this transition from 1/10th to 1/6th, with hesitations in the 280s‑270s, is also evidence of the transition from a base 10 to a base 12 as the reference for weights and measures, which was plainly becoming dominant in the first half of the third century in the Aegean context that prevailed on Delos.

131The problems of 8 and 12 in liquid measures do not therefore seem to have been merely a question of containers. Several clues converge to reveal significant metrological changes around the 280s‑250s, and the accounting documents of the hieropoioi have recorded the trace of this.

132It was precisely in this period, in 279 BC or just before, that the Delians opted to mint their own coinage aligning their monetary system on a model that was not Attic and that was extending across the Aegean world.

Aegean Metrological Models from the Third to the Second Centuries BC

The citharephorics in the Aegean monetary landscape

133In opting to issue their first coinage of the period of Independence as part of a pattern that did not fit the Attic standard, while taking due note of the changes in weights and measures that were required in the emporion, the Delians made choices that certainly responded to the way they viewed their inclusion in Aegean trading circles. This coinage issued on the basis of a drachma of about 3.47 g, as assumed from epigraphic data,98 might pass simply for the low‑weight coinage of a modest civic community were it not that of a city-state with the immense wealth of the sanctuary and did it not fit in with other metrological transformations that occurred around the same date, as just seen.

134Delian coinage was not meant to leave the island nor was there any point in it doing so: the alignment on the major existing monetary currents could limit the drawbacks of foreign exchange, both for individuals and for the city-state or the sanctuary. Nor did Delos any longer need to issue coinage to finance major construction projects, as seen for other city‑states. It used the sanctuary’s reserves comfortably for its architectural programmes.99 Enjoying asylum throughout the island territory, it had no military budget other than its spending on honorific crowns as part of the diplomacy that promoted its neutrality.100 It is therefore likely that the Delians’ metrological choice was aligned on coinages that they saw gaining the upper hand in the Aegean in the early third century. Their purpose was above all to supply small denominations allowing the payment of taxes, farm rents and property rents, while finding supplements among other foreign coinages, suitable for exchange outside the city‑state. The coinage of the city-state of Delos was in a sense devoid of any economic impact; it merely revealed the monetary context in which the Delians operated in the emporion and more widely in an Aegean framework.

135The choice of weight of the citharephoric drachma probably had to meet this requirement of inclusion in the Aegean monetary landscape of the third century BC. The treasuries listed in the IGCH for the first half of the third century show unsurprisingly that monetary circulation in the Aegean was organized around three main currencies: Attic standard money from the mints of Alexander and his successors, Ptolemaic money and the didrachmas of Rhodes. G. Le Rider has emphasized that in the hoards from Greece and the Aegean, Ptolemaic money was to be found beside money of Attic weight.101 These metrological changes also correspond to the shrinking of Attic commercial networks faced with the expansion of Rhodian activities (as attested, for example, by Polybius, IV, 47, 1, with the call of the city‑states for Rhodian aid against Byzantium when a tax on the Straits was introduced). The understanding between Rhodian power and Lagid power in the Aegean Sea, which was well known from the time of the siege of Rhodes by Demetrios Poliorcetes in 306 BC, also brought into play commercial networks that probably extended pretty much to all parts.102

136In 280 BC the Delians might legitimately think these Rhodian and Lagid coinages were becoming the new norm in force in the Aegean world. They could then have decided to supplement with their own coinage, in the form of subdivisions, another existing coinage. The weight of the first citharephoric drachmas brought the Delian coinage close to the mainstream Rhodian currency, the didrachmas of which weighed between 6.50 and 6.79 g and the tetradrachmas 13.25 g in the years 250‑230 (i.e. a drachma of 3.40-3.25 g).103 This choice would have been consistent with Rhodes’ involvement in commercial flows and the links it must have had with the Delian emporion. It can be assumed that Rhodian money was already in circulation on Delos at that date and that it was in the Delians’ interests to use it.

137However, the date of issue of the Delian citharephoric coinage invites us to explore another lead because the period was also that of the establishment of Lagid domination in the Cyclades. Several contacts with Lagid officials are attested on Delos and in the Cyclades as from 286 BC.104 The circulation of silver coins of the first two Ptolemies, in particular through the payment of subsidies to the city‑states combatting the Antigonids, is attested in the Peloponnese and Euboea and in the treasuries of Greece and the Aegean, but only Corinth (in 308‑306) and Ainos (under Ptolemy III) served as mints for royal issues.105 Yet the Ptolemaic silver tetradrachmas saw their weight gradually decline to 14.50 g under Ptolemy I (giving a theoretical weight for the drachma of 3.60 g)106 so the Delians might equally well have sought to fit in with the Lagid system by developing complementary subdivisions locally. In the context of the 280s BC, the Delians had every reason to believe that this authority that was gaining hold in the Aegean Sea was going to determine the framework of weights and measures, nor can it be ruled out that the Lagid authorities exerted pressure on the monetary choices of the city‑states.

138With the wiping out of Lagid domination from the Aegean islands in the second half of the third century, Delian currency seems to have undergone fresh changes. Here again, it may be thought that the Delians acted in accordance with their monetary environment.

139If the Delian citharephoric drachma saw its weight fall through the third century to approximately 2.90 g as we have assumed based on the evidence of the accounts, it moved gradually closer in weight both to the light Rhodian drachmas which were massively circulated with the outbreak of the Cretan Wars at the end of the third century107 and also to Histiaian coinage at 2 g which meant Delian money and its subdivisions had ready equivalents. The changes that seem to have affected the nesiadeion fund between 250 and 207 and the re‑ordering of the choregikon, suggest that it was shortly before 207 that the citharephoric drachma underwent these changes. Histiaian coinage practically supplanted the island’s epichoric silver coinage. That would explain both the large quantities of histiaiikon silver in the sacred chest and the small number of Delian silver coins compared with the bronze coinage: it would be plausible that the city‑state promoted the striking of small denominations of bronze coins for everyday local exchanges, while a foreign currency found in large quantities on its territory meant it did not have to further supply silver for circulation. From the users’ point of view, both fulfilled their functions in trade.

The phoinikophorics in the Aegean monetary landscape

140The reasoning about the weight of the phoinikophoric coinage that appeared in the 170s BC, a century after the minting of the citharephorics, is plainly far more difficult to ascertain given the paucity of information we have about it.

141The phoinikophoric coinage, with a drachma of about 3 g, meant it was in agreement with the emergence of Rhodian plinthophorics of 3 g and it maintained the equivalence with Histiaian coinage: since the existence of phoinikophoric tetrobols is attested epigraphically, it is to be assumed that this subdivision, that can then be restored at 2 g, was an alignment on Histiaian currency, which we have seen circulated in large quantities on Delos.

142This would also explain why the Athenian administrators, in their inventories, sometimes added Delian obols to the coinage of Histiaia or Rhodes to round amounts up. The choice of new subdivisions in Delian coinage, with the phoinikophoric tetrobol superseding the citharephoric triobol, must have met this need for simple accounting equivalences, but it was primarily the subdivisions of bronze, as had been the case for the citharephoric issue, that the Delian city-state introduced into exchange.

143The citharephoric silver currency must have been melted down for the issuing of phoinikophorics, which would by the same token explain its scarcity on the site. Was the same operation performed for the citharephoric bronze subdivisions? The quantity of these small specimens that keep turning up on the site makes this doubtful.

144Patently the city-state of Delos did not look to increase its monetary mass when the phoinikophorics were struck: substantial quantities of coins remained hoarded in the sanctuary, as attested by the jar inventories for the end of the period of Independence. Contrary, for example, to the initiative of the Delphian amphictyony to strike money in 336 BC by melting down the triobols of the Phocidean fine,108 using the obsolete currency in the sacred fund to strike local coins would have been of no interest for the Delian city-state, which, supported by the emporion, would have been compelled to engage in foreign exchange operations to trade on the Aegean markets and so would have seen its own metallic stock dwindle away. It was in its best interest, on the contrary, to limit its coinage to local use and so promote small denominations by using possible equivalences with other more widely used coinages to supplement local monetary circulation.

145But with the phoinikophoric issues, the change the Delians made to their coinage also marked a cut‑off point, with a revision of the type of coinage that saw the lyre relinquished for the palm-tree and, in the bronze coinage, the introduction of the effigy of Artemis.109 These new choices of representation clearly emphasized Delian religious history by recalling, alongside the figure of Apollo, the symbols related to Leto and the birth of the divine twins. In the worrying context of the 170s BC, with the Macedonian Wars and the Romans coming to dominate the eastern Mediterranean, the Delians were visibly reaffirming their rights over the island of Apollo by recalling the originality of the sacred island. Athens, which had sided from the outbreak of the conflict between Rome and Macedon and expected some rewards from Rome for this alliance, was probably already threatening Delian Independence. In an embassy sent to Rome in winter 198/7 BC, the Athenian Kephisodotos, subsequently honoured by his city-state,110 set out Athens’s claims, which may well have included already the return of Delos, as Polybius suggests (XXX, 20, 3) in relating the episode of 167 BC when he pointed out how old Athens’s claims were.111

146This choice of a new coinage could not be explained without the existence of a political and economic cut‑off, in the same way as the issue of citharephorics had marked the break with Attic networks. The emergence of Rhodian plinthophoric coinage could have been the cause: the alliance of Rhodes with Roman power against the Antigonids, in the preceding decades, could only have inclined the Delians towards the Rhodian model, even if, some years later, they, like Rhodes, were to pay the cost of Roman decisions.

147This plinthophoric coinage, as emphasized many a time, marked a clear break in Rhodian issues with the lightweight Rhodian drachmas.112 In circulation since 190-185 BC, it was a significant reduction of the Rhodian standard compared with the tetradrachmas weighing 13.6 g and the didrachmas of 6.8 g that had continued to serve as the reference including alongside the lightweight drachmas and their imitations.113 Dismissing A. Bresson’s interpretation that the issue of plinthophorics was a Rhodian reaction to the proliferation of imitations – before their intensification that dated from after the Peace of Apamea, these pseudo-Rhodians flooded in in huge numbers from Crete between 205 and 200 and under the Rhodian military authority – R. Ashton suggests this new coinage was an alignment on the cistophoric system of Pergamon, Rome’s other ally, as the first cistophoric drachmas weighed just over 3 g, like the plinthophorics, and appeared in the same context around the end of the 190s BC.114

148If the Delians’ choices reflected something of a waiting game with respect to the changes already made in the surrounding monetary systems in the years 190‑185, although they certainly saw their repercussions sooner in the emporion, it was because the decision to issue a new coinage corresponded mostly to local uses, to which the Aegean transformations were more remotely relevant.

149The city‑state of Delos, which, both because of its economic activities and its sanctuary and through the presence of the emporion, was involved in Aegean exchange networks, constantly sought to align its coinage on that of the great powers that followed one another in the Aegean, so as to best take advantage of being in the monetary mainstream. The Delians sought thereby to facilitate both the accounting operations and the market operations conducted by the city‑state, the sanctuary and the individuals on the island of Apollo, by reducing as far as could be done the losses engendered by foreign exchange operations since the Delian drachma, designed necessarily for local use, was not conducive to regional transactions.

The Cyclades: “The Island Standard”

150The study of Hellenistic coinages of Naxos and Paros led H. Nicolet-Pierre, and then J. Tully, to highlight the existence of a monetary standard of 3.90 g to the drachma which, between the late fourth and early second centuries BC, was supposedly a norm among the Aegean islands.115 Unlike Delos, Naxos issued above all didrachma staters and few drachmas, alongside a bronze coinage. Paros issued tetradrachmas, didrachmas and drachmas and their subdivisions and a bronze coinage. This choice of an atypical monetary standard was, according to J. Tully, the expression of the will of the biggest two islands in the Cyclades to form a separate currency area and to turn a profit from foreign exchange dealing.116

151The choice of a drachma of 3.90 g is interpreted by J. Tully as a connection with the Chiot standard, whose development in the Aegean might date back to the activities of Lysander in Ionia.117 But that standard had been abandoned for more than a century and its seem doubtful that the choice by Paros and Naxos should be related to Asia Minor.118 Although the coinages of Carystos seem to be aligned on a similar norm, conversely, north of Delos, the islands of Andros and Tenos made different metrological choices, by maintaining first the Attic standard and then striking coinage at between 3.60 g and 2.90 g the drachma.119

152Subject to a more thorough study of the question of Cycladic coinages, it might be concluded that the monetary history of Delos, probably because it was closely bound to the commerce of its emporion and the influence of the major coinages that imposed their use alongside the alexanders in Aegean commercial networks, was not written in the same way as the monetary history of the two large rival islands of Paros and Naxos, whereas Tenos and Andros, which may have been more reliant on the Delian emporion and sanctuary, seem to have followed the trends found on Apollo’s island. This observation suggests it might be worth re‑examining, economically, the idea of Cycladic regionalism that supposedly developed in the power vacuum in the Cyclades in the second half of the third century.120 The islands plainly did not form a unit.

The Delian chalkou and its metrological challenges

153The issuing of silver citharephorics had been accompanied by bronze series, probably in large quantities for the needs of everyday exchanges on the island. As archaeology provides many parallels, coins from excavations were mostly bronze and no Delian silver coinage has been found in any hoard other than for the archaic period. For the period of independence, only a small hoard of 13 citharephoric bronzes has been found on Delos.121 The accounts and inventories of the hieropoioi, however, attest to there being large sums of epichoric bronze. As early as 269 BC (IG XI 2, 203, A, l. 3‑4), that is, 10 years after the issuing of citharephorics, the proceeds of an offertory box in the sanctuary provided the sacred fund with an amount of 108 drachmas ½ obol of silver (ἀργυρίου δ̣ρ̣α̣χµὰς), 52 drachmas of bronze (χαλκοῦ), 6 Rhodian drachmas and 5 obols (ῥοδίας δραχµὰς) and 1 Cos drachma and a bracelet. An inventory of the Artemision around 190 BC (ID 407, l. 22) records 500 drachmas of χαλκοῦ δηλίου with, in addition, subdivisions of the half obol and tetartemorion ( ). The account balances also attest to large amounts denominated in chalkou. Around 200 BC, account ID 376 (l. 17‑20) mentions a hand-over of chalkou for 561 drachmas 1 chalkos. In 179 (ID 442, A, l. 53‑55), they took in in their cash holdings from the treasurers 3,755 drachmas 2 obols of chalkou.

154These amounts might provide a clue as to the scale of coining of Delian bronze, but their extent is surprising. Apart from a hoard of coinage found at Magnesia of the Meander and running to more than 4,000 bronze coins of the city‑state,122 it remains a surprising fact, especially in the context of coinage of Delos.

155Literary sources have, it is true, preserved the testimony of the aes deliacum which was famed in Antiquity. Pliny the Elder (Natural History, XXXIV; 9‑10) relates that Myron used Delian bronze for his statues, whereas Polykleitos preferred metal from Aegina. But it was the alloy made in the Delian manner that was then famous and the geology of Delos does not reveal any seams of copper on the island.123 Yet a quote for work dated 297 BC, and so before the first issue of Delian coinage in the period of Independence, concerning changes to the Temple of Apollo, sets out an interesting detail: it states that the craftsman will not need to supply bronze, that will be provided to him by the city-state (χαλκὸν δὲ τῶι ἐργώνηι ἡ πόλις παρέξει, ID 502, A, l. 23). A similar clause is known at the time of the First Athenian Domination, in an estimate about the construction of the Pythion (ID 104‑4, aA, l. 8‑10), except that this time the craftsman does not need to provide lead, because it was to be supplied by Athens, which could easily procure it from its own mines.124 Delos doubtless found it easier to procure bronze than silver, which would explain why it made extensive use of this metal in its monetary issues.

156It is significant, in any event, that as from 279 BC, after the initial issue of Delian citharephorics, the inventories should contain the first reference to a batch of local bronze (χαλκοῦ ἐπιχωρίου) associated with dokimon silver of the Attic standard and of Alexander (IG XI 2, 161, B, l. 20: ἀργυρίου ἀττικοῦ καὶ ἀλεξανδρείου δοκίµου καὶ χαλκοῦ ἐπιχωρίου — — δραχµὰς ·∆∆ΙΙΙ· ). This was a batch of coins that were part of offerings of the Artemision and for which references continued in the inventories of the following years.125 It arises from this description that, for the Delians, the local chalkou could be accounted for in the continuation of this sound Attic standard coinage since a total for it could be given in Attic drachmas.

157This way of treating the chalkou corresponded perfectly to the practices observed at the end of the period of Independence in the account balances, where the chalkou that made up part of the cash holdings was handled in the same way as other monetary standards.

158Conversely it differed from the habits of the hieropoioi when dealing with foreign bronze coins collected in the offertory boxes. For that same year of 279 BC, the inventory of the offerings in the Temple of Apollo mentioned a batch of bronze coins from various provenances, in a hydria and a bronze jar: everything, coins and vases, was weighed for a total of two mina (IG XI 2, 161, B, l. 100: χαλκοῦ ἐπισήµου παντοδαποῦ ἐν ὑδρίαι καὶ στάµνωι χαλκ[οῖ]ς, ὁλκὴν σὺν τοῖς ἀγγείο[ις] µναῖ ·ΙΙ·, “bronze struck from all provenances in a hydria and in a bronze jar, weight with handles, 2 mina”).

159The way in which the cash holding in chalkou was processed by the hieropoioi differed also from the way the Athenians at the time of the free port recorded a few rare Delian bronzes in their jar inventory: they counted them individually without including them in the total for each jar.126

160There are therefore instances where the bronze coins, as the hieropoioi did with the bronze coins from all provenances, were weighed or alternatively set aside from the total in Attic silver and other cases where it is possible to account for the bronze in continuity with Attic silver.

161From this observation, O. Picard concluded that the coinage of the city-state of Delos was of the Attic standard and that this accounting practice could be explained by the Delian coins being legal tender.127 Yet, as seen, Delian money did not correspond to the weight of the Attic drachma nor was it legal tender on the island.128

162First, one should not overestimate the importance of this often cited passage: it relates at this point (IG XI 2, 161B, l. 20) to the part of the account about the inventory of metal items. Its purpose is to provide a monetary estimation of the value of hoarded assets, especially those hoarded in the form of phialai. The hieropoioi inventoried batches that were considered as units solely by the will of the dedicant. When they did not know how to count the miscellaneous coins that made up a batch, they weighed them and gave the value by weight of silver on the Attic standard. When they could make a computation, they gave the total converted to the Attic standard. For that matter, a rasura betrays their hesitations at this point about the account of chalkou. It emerges from the accounting practices of the hieropoioi about Delian drachmas that they probably, in the case of the Delian chalkou, set about the same operation of conversion as with the spending of the Eileithyaia, to obtain a total on the Attic standard.129

163Taking matters further, in his study on silver and bronze metrology, C. Doyen saw in the comparison between the sound weight Attic standard and a reduced Attic standard, used for civic monetary issues of Delos, a sign of there being a reduced silver standard, named the chalkou. The coins referred to in the accounts as χαλκοῦ ἐπιχωρίου were said to be in fact silver drachmas struck to the reduced standard, existing alongside the full Attic standard as part of a system of weight equivalences whose changes can be traced throughout the Hellenistic period. In the same way, the Lagids had jointly operated two standards, the πρὸς ἀργύριον and πρὸς χαλκόν.130 This argument, which has been fiercely contented by J. Kroll,131 cannot really be discussed in any detail for the time being, for want of a corpus of weights, both for Delos and for the rest of the Greek world.132 While they do not fully converge with the demonstration by C. Doyen and his synthetic table of metrological changes in the Greek world,133 the hypotheses I have arrived at independently, about the theoretical weight of Delian citharephorics based on equivalences that can be ascertained in the accounts do present two striking similarities with the scheme: a citharephoric drachma whose theoretical weight was 3.47 g when first issued around 280 BC (Attic-Alexandrian “bronze” standard at a ratio of 125:1 for C. Doyen) and whose weight in the late third century BC supposedly fell to 2.92 g (Attic-Alexandrian “bronze” standard at a ratio of 150:1 also corresponding to the Symmachic “silver” standard, for C. Doyen). Number play, it will probably be said, insofar it is a matter of proportions. But both the sheer amount in chalkou in the Delian cash holdings and the handling of the chalkou as a monetary standard in the account balances do raise questions as to the definition of this currency that it is decidedly difficult to consider as bronze metal.

164The observations made on the strength of the accounts of the hieropoioi tend therefore to show that the question ought not to be overlooked in future numismatic studies, because the Delian records contribute to the revival of the debate.

Monetary circulation on Hellenistic Delos

The Testimony of the Treasuries

165In light of the wealth of epigraphic accounting records, monetary finds are ultimately few and far between: for the whole island, we currently know about 6,000 coins. The collection housed in Delos Museum runs to nearly 3,500 coins, mostly bronze, found during the second major series of excavations on Delos from the 1960s: the insulae of the Bronzes, the Jewels, the House of the Comedians, House of the Seals, Rhenea, then in more recent excavations of the Agora of the Competaliasts, the Sarapieion, the Heraion, the Aphrodision and the Farm with Granite Posts. To this must be added the collections in the Numismatic Museum of Athens, to which hoards were transported for restoration and remained, with the coins discovered in the earliest excavations, of which there were some 2,500. In all, 32 hoards are counted for Delos, identified by J. Svoronos then by T. Hackens, between the late nineteenth century, when the first excavations began, and the late 1960s (table 43).

166They were unearthed in various places, from the early years of the twentieth century in the course of excavations financed by the endowment of the Duke of Loubat as from 1903.134 The earlier campaigns, that of A. Lebègue on the western slopes of Mount Cynthus between 1873 and 1876 and those of T. Homolle in the plain of the sanctuary between 1877 and 1880, seemed to have yielded hardly any monetary hoards, barring two exceptions. As expected, it was essentially excavations of dwellings that, as of 1903, supplied almost all of the material. From 1905, J. Chamonard, with M. Bulard and F. Mayence, began clearing several insulae of the Theatre District, while the Hieron was also progressively cleared by F. Courby, G. Leroux, J. Hatzfeld and C. Dugas. From 1909 to 1911, P. Roussel set about excavating the Terrace of the Foreign Gods, while in 1911, C. Picard explored the surroundings of the Sacred Lake and then went on with C. Avezou to excavate several monuments in the sector, and A. Plassart worked on the Stadium District as from 1912. Accordingly the vast majority of the hoards inventoried in the IGCH correspond to finds made between 1905 and 1912. With the exception of a hoard found during the construction of a new wing of the museum in 1931, the remainder of the finds came from exploring housing districts north of the sanctuary, as of 1961, by P. Bruneau, C. Le Roy, E. Lévy and G. Siebert. J. Svoronos, for finds during the first excavations, and then T. Hackens from the excavations of the 1960s, have identified the coins in these hoards, the composition of which was taken up in the IGCH. Two subsequent finds made in the Insula of Jewels and in the House of Seals must be added to them.

167These hoards generally contain few coins – thirty or so on average – but some are larger and run to 200 to 300 coins. The multiplication of burials was essentially because of the Mithridatic crises that hit Delos in 88 and 69 BC and it will come as no surprise that almost all of these hoards comprise stephanophoric tetradrachmas and drachmas of Athens compounded by Athenian bronzes corresponding to the Second Athenian Domination.135

168Few among these 6,000 coins from Delos can be used to document the period of the third century BC, which corresponds in the main to the accounts of the hieropoioi. Allowance must be made here for the fact that, contrary to appearance, Delos has been little excavated in the strata corresponding to the period of Independence, and even less for the layers of the classical period.136

169The table gives the impression that the hoarding of silver that appears with the Attic tetradrachmas in the late fourth century (IGCH 110 and 126) only resumed with the arrival of stephanophoric Attic coinage.137 This observation is in part because excavations concentrated on the archaeological layers of the first century, but is not without convergences with the nature of the currency, little of which was Attic, that must have circulated on Delos in third century and early second century according to the accounts of the hieropoioi. The nature of the currency in circulation might therefore influence hoarding practices and to date no Rhodian or Histiaian coins have been found on Delos.

170Another interesting feature is the thesaurization of small bronze coins: most of these finds are Athenian coins corresponding to the types discovered in excavations of the Agora of Athens.138 Only one small hoard of 13 Delian bronze coins bears evidence to the period of Independence (IGCH 298). Another citharephoric coin is hoarded with a batch of bronzes of Athenian types, an additional sign that Delian phoinikophoric coinage did not have time to circulate on the island.

171This hoarding of bronze raises questions as to the conservation of these monies in what were mostly dwelling places. The House of Dionysos alone has yielded four of these hoards (IGCH 298, 319, 320 and 321). Unfortunately the locations are not precise enough to ensure the interpretation but it may be wondered whether, in this sector of the Theatre District where many house fronts were altered and made into shops, some of these bronze coin hoards were not rather the cash boxes of shopkeepers, abandoned at the time of the Mithridatic catastrophes.139

172The small scale of such hoarding is consistent with the importance of the role of bankers on the island.

The Role of Bankers on Delos

173The hieropoioi had recourse to bankers’ services from as early as the third century BC: in 250 BC handovers were made via banks (διὰ τραπέζης) and by an order of payment (διεγράψαµεν).140 In a fragment of an earlier account (IG XI 2, 225, l. 6‑7), we find what may be, through the transmission of sums διὰ τῆς ∆ηµά[ρους?]— ἄλλας διὰ τῆς Στη[σίλεω?] —), the mention of two banks belonging to Delians, Demares and Stesileos.141 So from the middle of the third century at least, the involvement of bankers in the sanctuary’s financial operations is therefore attested.

174The inclusion of public accounting in the accounts of the hieropoioi, as from 192 BC (ID 399), certainly goes along with more systematic resort to bank accounts. The use of banks was initially explained by the fact that the coffers could not be opened regularly: revenues received in the course of the year were therefore deposited in a bank before being paid into the sacred chest.142 It was probably necessary, too, to deposit sums in a bank that, at the beginning of the year, were removed from the sacred chest in anticipation of building works, so they would be available for paying the contractors.

175The bankers did not merely receive these amounts as deposits: they also set about the necessary conversion operations when the amounts made over to them were made up of varied currencies. As R. Bogaert observes, the inscriptions associated with the jars refer to the “bags sealed and tagged indicating the sum, weight, firm, name of the bank clerk who had assayed, counted and weighed the money and the date; bags that circulated as a means of payment in the Frankfurt banks around 1860”.143 Accordingly the changes in the Delian cash holdings made it possible to further specify the role of bankers. The hieropoioi, forming a board that rotated annually meaning they could not “capitalize” on their administrative experience, certainly needed the expertise of bankers, who alone were truly knowledgeable about the currencies in circulation in a monetary landscape that saw frequent changes between the late third and early second centuries.

176It was probably through contact with these bankers who were finance specialists that the hieropoioi gradually developed more proficient accounting practices. We may have an indication of this in the person of the hieropoios Silenos, who was in office in 179 BC.144 The exemplary character of the account of 179 (ID 442) appeared at first reading. It is a model of accounting organization characterized by its capacity for clearly distinguishing between operations for the transition from a narrative accounting scheme to an orderly and normative form of accountancy, despite the chronological complexity of the handing over of monies. Now the hieropoios Silenos, whose name is typically Delian, may also have been a banker: the name is also that of the partner of the bank of Philon, one of the six banks that worked at the same time with the sanctuary. It occurs several times in the jar inventories for operations extending from 180 to 172 BC. The name Silenos is that of a figure in activity between 200 and 170, who appears as a hieropoios, a banker, a tax farmer and a guarantor.145 This would explain why the account of 179 BC differed from the others in its clarity, if at least one of its authors had been in a position to use his financial skills in the stewardship conferred on him for that year.

177But given the complexity of the Delian cash holdings, it can be supposed that the bankers did not just carry out accounting conversion operations but that they also contributed to organizing the batches kept in the jars in monies suitable for the planned exchanges, switching currencies where necessary among the various jars. The association of the public fund with the sacred fund could only have extended the possibilities from this standpoint. Typically, unlike the Athenian administrators, the Delian hieropoioi never simply numbered the jars but always meticulously indicated in the account the wording of the caption supplied for each lot by the bankers. This was probably because this indication meant the sums could be traced to the bank registers that must have supplied further particulars about the currency in question.

178The bankers might also have set about foreign exchange operations for the two Delian funds, especially when the Delians required alexanders for purchases of wheat and they did not have enough in their holdings, but such operations are entirely unknown to us because the accounts of the hieropoioi provide no trace of any foreign exchange fees.146 It may be that the transaction by Timon of Syracuse with the Nesiotic League in the early second century indirectly casts light on this matter.147 Timon, who was also one of the bankers of the Delian fund, had accepted to exchange Rhodian drachmas free of charge against Attic standard coins for the League (IG XII 5, 817). In doing so, he may have extended to the Nesiotic League a service that the bankers rendered to the sanctuary of Delos.

179And the fact is that the bankers settled on Delos did indeed benefit from the advantages the sanctuary procured for them. Even if they had to pay dues to the city‑state of Delos in the forms of occupancy fees, they largely benefitted from Delian political and monetary neutrality. Unlike the great states capable of imposing a monopoly on foreign exchange fees, like Lagid Egypt or Delphi in the second century, that auctioned foreign exchange fees to tax farmers,148 the city‑state of Delos left the benefits of foreign exchange to the bankers. This favourable situation – related to the emporion of Delos where, as the Nesiotic League affair shows, people also came looking for credit – explains the presence of several banks on Delos from the third century. In leaving this profit to the bankers without exploiting it among its public revenues, whereas it could have taxed foreign exchange transactions, the city‑state of Delos could probably obtain from them something by way of consideration, particularly as, by using the services of several banks, it divided the risks but at the same time spread the burden among bankers.

180The banks thus contributed widely to the recycling of specie in the monetary fund, probably in close conjunction with the Council and the hieropoioi, since it was in the interest of the Delians at the same time not to let Delian currency flow out (fig. 6). Conversely, the sacred chest operated at the same time as a bank that supplied capital via interest-bearing loans. As observed for the account registers, banks were, alongside the civic administration of the Delian fund, one of the cogs in a complex financial mechanism that extended beyond the narrow framework of managing the sanctuary.

Fig. 6 — The recycling of money in Delian finances.

181The banks involved in operations for managing the Delian funds have been studied by R. Bogaert, who has collected and analysed the information available in the accounts and in the honorific decrees about them.149 He notes the growing number of banks involved in payments of the city-state and the sanctuary. The table below collates the main information about them (table 44).

182The evidence of the decrees suggests there were other banking houses, or at least other financiers, not directly involved in managing the sanctuary’s coffers. The decree from an unknown city for the Delian Mnesalkos (IG XI 4, 1049), in the early third century, shows that the civic bodies came to seek credit on Delos: Mnesalkos had lent money to this city-state on several occasions (l. 9‑11). Some of the financiers were not Delians: around 240 BC, sitonai from Histiaia did business on Delos with a Rhodian, Athenodoros son of Peisagoras, who lent them money interest free (IG XI 4, 1055). As the affair of Timon with the Island League shows, the bankers were inescapable intermediaries for loaning and circulating Alexander coinage, whenever the Delian sacred chest no longer lent to city‑states and as it had ever less of this currency to hand in the Hellenistic period.

183Other bankers came to set up on Delos when the free port was promulgated. The bank of Demon and Cleandros, which is mentioned in the acts of the Athenian administrators for keeping contracts of loans of sacred money, but also of Italians and Orientals to which dedications of the time attest: Marcos Minatios, Maraios Gerillanos, Loukios Auphidios and Philostrates of Ascalon were honoured by various beneficiaries of their good deeds.153

184The importance of bankers from Italy is more visible on Delos after 167 BC, but it is characteristic to find, from the late third century, a Syracusan family with a partner from Tarentum for the bank of Timon and the bank of Herakleides. The settlement of Sicilians in Egypt, Greece and Asia Minor is known from the second half of the third century.154 With the destruction of Syracuse and Tarentum in 212 and 209 during the Second Punic War, family firms moved to Greece and the Cyclades.155 Bankers from southern Italy like Timon and Herakleides, Greeks steeped in Roman culture, certainly played a major part in the construction of economic ties among the islanders and the Roman negotiatores.156 Roman military operations in Asia and the need to supply the legions may have made them valuable intermediaries for Rome’s power: the emporion of Delos could lend itself, without being alone in that, to the organization of procurement for troops, but that was certainly not the only reason for Timon’s presence on the island.157 In point of fact, bankers began to work with the administrators of the Delian sanctuary at a very early date, in the course of the third century BC, and foreign bankers were present at least as early as 195 BC: so they settled on Delos by the late third or the onset of the second century, at a time when the business was booming in the emporion.

185The development of the role of bankers on Delos from the time of the free port is inseparable from the development of stephanophoric Athenian coinage. According to a revised chronology of this coinage, the earliest issues supposedly date from 164/3 BC and correspond therefore directly to Athens taking back control of the island of Delos; but other hypotheses have been advanced and have the issues beginning earlier, if not from 196 BC then at least in the years 180‑175 BC.158 The control that Athens then held over Delos was certainly one of the decisive factors enabling the city-state to develop a coinage that could take the place of alexanders as “Hellenic money” in the Aegean Sea: true, the free port did not bring in any tax revenues, but through currency exchange, it probably operated there again as a gigantic crucible for monetary recycling, promoted by large-scale activities of Italian negotiatores and merchants from the Eastern Mediterranean.159 The role of bankers, in their continuing activity on Hellenistic Delos of before 167 BC, was directly related to currency exchange and the conversion of non-Attic coinage into stephanophoric currency which was legal tender. That they were unavoidable in the financial operations of the free port explains their presence in such number until the Mithridatic catastrophes of 88 and 69 BC. O. Picard, while emphasizing what little information we have in the Greek sources to understand “how money came to the monetary workshop”, made the very plausible hypothesis that businessmen settled on Delos and involved in numerous foreign exchange operations might have secured the right from Athens to have stephanophoric coins restruck from their stocks of various currencies.160 The situation as a free port would have led after a fashion to the practice of free minting.161

186We may have a trace of it in a few fragmentary passages of the acts of the Athenian administrators that concern the public bank (δηµοσία τράπεζα) of Delos set up by the Athenians on the model developed at Athens in the late fourth century.162 For the sanctuary, its purpose was, as with the private banks of the period of Independence, to manage the entry of certain revenues (ID 1416, B, col. I, l. 40‑41) but it should also be wondered whether it did not have a role to play in recycling foreign coins as stephanophoric issues. In the administrative acts we see only the part concerning the sanctuary’s accounts, but this may give a glimpse of the same practices on the part of businessmen.

187One passage from an administrative acts does report, after the inventory of the old jars of the Delian fund, the entry of a new jar, the caption for which is drafted in the same way as at the time of Independence (ID 1421, Ab, col. I, l. 8‑15):

ἄλλον στάµνον ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγρα[φή· ἀπὸ τῆς τραπέζης τῆς ἐν ∆ήλωι, κεχειροτονηµένου ἐπ’ αὐτὴν Θ[εοδώρου τοῦ] Στράτωνος Μαραθωνίου ἐπὶ Ἀνδρέου ἄρχον[τος, µηνὸς] Ἀνθεστηριῶνος τετράδι Παραµόνωι καὶ Εὐµήλωι τ[οῖς κεχειροτο]νηµένοις ἐπὶ τὴν φυλακὴν τῶν ἱερῶν χρη[µάτων — — — — —]— — —καὶ τὰς ἄλλας προσόδους ὥστε εἰς [τὸ ἱερόν· κα]τέβαλεν ∆ιόφαντος παρ’ Ἀλεξίωνος στεφα[νηφόρου] ΧΧΧΧ· ἐλλείπει τέτραχµα ΙΙ. vac.

Another jar, bearing the inscription: from the bank of Delos, for which Theodoros son of Straton of the deme of Marathon was elected to be in charge, under the archonship of Andreas, on the 4th of the month of Anthesterion, to the administrators Paramonos and Eumelos elected for the custodianship of the sacred property, [an amount], together with the other income, for the needs of the sanctuary. Payment of Diophantos, from Alexion, 3,500 stephanophoric drachmas. Two tetradrachmas are missing.

188Dated by the archon of the year 154/3 or 152/1, it came “from the public bank for which Theodoros son of Straton of the deme of Marathon was elected to be in charge” and contained a payment of 3,500 stephanophoric drachmas, that was passed on to the administrators for the sanctuary’s needs. The payment was made by another figure, Diophantos, παρ’ Ἀλεξίωνος (“from Alexion”). One Diophantos son of Hekataios is known as an administrator of sacred property in the preceding years (ID 1416, a. 156/5) and the wording has been understood by P. Roussel in the corpus as a simple handover from a private bank. But the wording might equally well suggest a payment from a monetary workshop, with this Alexion being the master of the workshop. He is unknown besides but that same year a similar payment was mentioned in a jar δι’ Ἀλεξίωνος, “by way of Alexion” (l. 7) in a very fragmentary passage. Diophantos, here named without a patronym or demotic, which is unusual in referring to administrators on jar captions, may not have been the administrator of 156/5 BC but could be named here as the monetary magistrate. The public bank might thus have served as an intermediary allowing coinage that was not of Attic standard to be recycled, received by the bankers through the negotiatores, to be changed into stephanophorics.

189This hypothesis can be partially confirmed by the monetary lists, but runs up against other difficulties. By the high chronology, a ∆ΙΟΦ was second monetary magistrate in 164/3 BC (the ∆ΩΡΟΘΕ-∆ΙΟΦ board) and third monetary magistrate in 153/2 (the ΚΑΡΑΙΧ-ΕΡΓΟΚΛΕ board), whereas a ∆ΙΟΦΑ was first monetary magistrate in 175/4 BC (the ∆ΙΟΦΑ-∆ΙΟ∆Ο board, 144/3 BC by the low chronology).163 By this high chronology, it was therefore the monetary magistrate of 153/2 that would be appropriate, which would lead at the same time to dating the archon Andreas mentioned in the inscription of 152/1 following W. Dinsmoor rather than P. Roussel, which seems plausible.164 However, the low or intermediate chronologies do not allow the same resolution. But even accepting with C. Habicht that the dates before 145/4 BC remain approximate, because the regularity of the initial series is not certain,165 it can be seen that the hypothesis runs up against too much uncertainty for headway to be made on the question.

190Without following A. Giovannini who considered a systematic reminting of Macedonian coins supposedly orchestrated by the Athenians pursuant to a decision by Rome,166 it has to be admitted that the connections between the issues of stephanophorics and business circles of the Delian free port are flagrant, first because most stephanophoric monetary dealers belonged to families active on Delos.167 This convergence of economic and political interests among the Athenians, the negotiatores and the bankers, with Rome’s blessing, found a place to thrive in the free port of Delos and made stephanephoric coinage one of its instruments.168

191In imposing its money in exchanges in the emporion – and more broadly in Aegean exchanges – the power of Athens under the authority of Rome succeeded in doing what Delian neutrality had failed to achieve.

Conclusion: an ever‑changing monetary landscape

192Between Lagid economic power that had developed a specific monetary system to take advantage of foreign exchange operations, Seleucid power that promoted the Attic standard and Antigonid power whose military operations contributed to developing reduced-weight coinages, the Cycladic Aegean appeared to be an intermediate space, criss-crossed by multiple influences and open to the circulation of highly diversified monetary specie. As a transhipment point on maritime routes, Delos and the city-state of Delos, because of the sanctuary and the emporion, very specifically represented that form of neutrality which, in monetary terms, led to the circulation of a wide variety of specie. The coffers of the sanctuary of Apollo do indeed seem to have been the crucible of constant monetary recycling.

193The accounts of the hieropoioi and the acts of the Athenian administrators are thus a window on the Aegean economic and financial situation, both in terms of the economic situation and of financial practices. The search for the metrological influences to which Delos was subject reveals the particularly shifting character of the Aegean monetary context as from the late fourth century, once the end of Athenian domination was finally taken note of. It was in a monetary landscape that was certainly difficult to read and unconducive to anticipation that the Delians endeavoured to find their marks.

194Lagid domination in the Cyclades has been studied in detail for its Aegean political and military aspects.169 The presence of Lagid garrisons and magistrates on the islands in the third century is documented by a few inscriptions (Keos, Ios, Cos, Thera, Crete), where the wide-ranging intervention of the Lagids in the islanders’ judicial and financial affairs, especially through organizing the despatch of foreign judges, but also on Delos in favour of Delian finances with the interventions of the nesiarch Bacchon and the king of Sidon Philokles with the debtor islanders (IG XI 4, 559).170 Accordingly Ptolemy III could assert, on the stela of Adoulis (OGIS 54) that he had received the Cyclades from his father. But the role played by the Lagids in Aegean weights and measures, with the support of Rhodes, in the first half of the third century, certainly deserves to be re‑examined in light of the Delian records. In Egypt, the reforms of Ptolemy II show besides the completion of metrological thinking, whereas a centre of skills on the subject was developing in Alexandria.171 It would be astonishing that the rest of the Aegean world, especially by way of the Rhodians, should not have benefitted from this thinking. Traces of it are probably to be found in the Delian accounts, through the transition to a base 12 that was evident in the weights and measures of the emporion (metretes of 12 khoeis, obol of 12 chalkoi, ephekton) in the 280s BC. This change corresponds at bottom to a devaluation of the initial reference value of the fourth century, based on the Attic drachma. If, for the equivalent of a talent in weight of silver, more Rhodian or Lagid drachmas were required, it was logical that these changes should appear. The whole of the metrological system, in the Delian emporion as probably elsewhere too, had gradually adapted to this change.

195The collapse of this Lagid domination after the mid-third century patently created a void in metrological and monetary terms,172 that was soon filled from the late third century by coinages related to the multiplication of military operations: the Cretan wars, then the conflicts of the Antigonids against Rome and the War of Antiochos. Rhodes remained a stable feature in this power play and it was probably to Rhodian monetary policy that the Delians tied themselves, while playing on the equivalences imposed by changes in the currency in circulation. This situation, which saw in particular the massive arrival of tetrobols of Histiaia in exchanges, went along with the dwindling of alexanders available for the sanctuary. The dissemination of these Histiaian coins, directly related to military operations, was not specific to Delos but concerned exchanges between mainland Greece and the Cyclades far more widely.173 A situation of the kind could not but have repercussions on everyday exchanges, placing some of the players in the Aegean economy at a remove from business flows that implied currency of Attic standard.

196That does not mean that other financial powers, and more particularly the networks of bankers whose counters were then clearly visible in the Delian documentation, did not have alexanders to hand. But this situation that made it difficult to have access to currency of Attic standard required for mainstream exchanges was perhaps to herald what was to be the Delos of the free port: a society of financiers and businessmen who progressively ousted, in a process that began as far back as the end of the third century, the Delians “parasites of the god”. The Delians ultimately attempted so far as they could to ensure the prosperity of the god’s fortune on which their own fortunes depended. But in the end they were caught in the trap of their claim to neutrality: while being protected from military risks, they did not have sufficient political authority to sustain the quality of the sanctuary’s cash holdings.