Understanding Hoards

2021 ◽  
pp. 125-140
Author(s):  
Frank L. Holt
Keyword(s):  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Misery Index ◽  
Natural Impulse

The importance of coin hoards makes it imperative to study them properly. After classifying eight different kinds of hoards, this chapter shows how some historians and numismatists have not treated the evidence carefully. For example, the “Marner Paradox” warns against our natural impulse to reconstruct in detail the identities and lifestyles of hoarders. It is also important to remember that it is the non-recovery of buried treasure that is meaningful and measurable. Coin hoards are best investigated collectively rather than individually. In this way, certain categories of hoards provide a Misery Index that can illuminate changing historical conditions and the responses of populations to them. An example is the No-Tomorrow scenario faced by the victims of Vesuvius. Finally, hoard data are used to calculate how quickly the gold of Alexander the Great disappeared from circulation.

The Hellenistic Kingdoms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hornblower
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
The Mediterranean

Political and literary considerations alike suggest that the Alexandra dates from about 190 BC and that its closing sections celebrate the victory of the Roman consul Titus Quinctius Flamininus over Philip V of Macedon at the battle of Kynoskephalai in 197 BC. Lykophron’s world is essentially the Mediterranean and Black Sea zones. It ranges from Spain across to Phoenicia. All the kingdoms which succeeded Alexander the Great are featured in the poem, but the Seleukids less prominently than the rest. The poem’s Spartan and Theban myths are shown to have resonance for the Hellenistic period. Only Athens is regarded as a place of memory. Some great federations, notably the Boiotian, Aitolian, and Lokrian, are traceable in the poem, and with a particularly Hellenistic twist.

Corruption and Anticorruption in Democratic Athens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Individual Judgment ◽  
Collective Judgment ◽  
Hidden Knowledge

The chapter examines a major corruption scandal that involved the Athenian orator Demosthenes and an official of Alexander the Great. This episode reveals how tensions between individual and collective decision-making practices shaped Athenian understandings of corruption and anticorruption. The various and multiple anticorruption measures of Athens sought to bring ‘hidden’ knowledge into the open and thereby remove information from the realm of individual judgment, placing it instead into the realm of collective judgment. The Athenian experience therefore suggests that participatory democracy, and a civic culture that fosters political equality rather than reliance on individual expertise, provides a key bulwark against corruption.

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