THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

THE COLLECTOR SERIES
coinage belongs. Other important coin-yielding centres
were Tanagra on the Asopus ;
Coroneia, just mentioned ;
Haliartos, celebrated as the seat of a temple of Neptune
(who is represented on its money) and as a second
meeting-place of the Amphictyonic council ; Orcho-
menos, a very early commercial city in relations with
JEgina, and Pharae. Athena and Poseidon seem to
have been the divinities chiefly revered throughout the
Boeotian confederacy ; but there are also vestiges of
the cults of Dionysos, Eros, Aphrodite, and Herakles.
After the destruction of Thebes in b.c. 335 and the
suspension of autonomy, the periods of prosperity and
numismatic production were intermittent and limited ;
the most glorious interval of political restoration was
that associated with the names of Pelopidas and
Epaminondas (b.c. 379-338). The Roman imperial
coinage for Bceotia is only of three reigns (Galba,
Hadrian, Domitian); but long prior to this period
(b.c. 146) the financial condition of Greece had become
very unsettled, and here money of necessity appeared in
the form of bronze coins made to pass current for silver
values. A special group of Theban coinage for Bceotia
was that struck under Macedonian authority, with the
type of Alexander the Great and the Boeotian shield
as a subsidiary emblem on reverse (b.c. 288—244). But
there can be no doubt that the most interesting epoch
is that which immediately followed the archaic one.
Eubcea.—The oldest coinage of this island is assignable
to the seventh century B.C. and to the town of Chalcis.
The other principal places were Carystos, Cyme, Eretria,
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