jahrbuch numismatik geldgeschichte - Medievalcoinage.com

Significance of „Boiotian League/Chalkis" Silver Issue 29
argued on the basis of the shared eagle-and-snake obverse type, nor can it be
maintained on the basis of the Tanagra issue that Chalkis had formed an
alliance or actually joined the Boiotian League23 shortly after the Persian
Wars. Similarly, the shield/wheel coin should be seen as symply a short-lived
issue struck probably at Chalkis late in sixth century, a period in which
changes in coin types were yet common and neither the heroic shield nor
the wheel was identified with specific league or polis.
course, struck by existing political structures, not coinages struck upon the formation of
an alliance. It is, moreover, not apparent that the Boiotian-Chalkis alliance of c. 507 B.C.
would have had the opportunity or reason to produce coinage.
23 Babelon, Traite III, p. 974 no. 1372; C.T. Seltman, Athens, its History and Coinage before
the Persian Invasion, Cambridge 1924, 92-93 do attempt to equate the Tanagra
shield/wheel issue with the alliance of c. 507 and the shield/wheel issue presumably struck
at Chalcis. The style, fabric, and legends of the Tanagra coins, however, all indicate a date
well into the fifth century; B.V. Head, On the Chronological Sequence of the Coins of
Boeotia, London 1881, 20-23 dated them thusly over a century ago, and the concensus of
numismatic opinion continues to agree, e.g. Kraay, Archaic, 110.