Lecture | Ancient History Research Seminar
Soldiers of Fortune at Home: Remarks on the Social and Economic Footprint of Cretan Mercenary Wealth in the Hellenistic Period
- Date
- Thursday 3 April 2025
- Time
- Serie
- Ancient History Research Seminars 2024-2025
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room (2.60)
Abstract
Even though Cretan mercenaries emerge most frequently in ancient sources, archaeological reports often underplay their key role in importing wealth to the island from abroad. This paper’s first part offers an outline of numismatic and other indicators of monetary imports, which may have been associated with Cretan mercenaries. More specifically, the initiation of civic coinages on Crete and the sudden proliferation of silver metal on the island in the 330/320s BC presumably coincided with the return of (at least some of) the participants in Alexander the Great’s Asia Minor campaign to their respective homelands, including Crete. Overstrikes and countermarks on local and on foreign specimens may also elucidate intraregional exchange patterns, as well as foreign connections presumably fostered by Cretan mercenaries. Not least, the iconographic echoes of Hellenistic royal coinages on Cretan civic numismatic imagery confirms the tight bonds associating Cretan mercenaries with most Hellenistic rulers.
In the paper’s second part, an attempt is made to reconcile the above-mentioned numismatic evidence with the very poor/extremely limited presence of testimonia of ‘imported wealth’, such as, large quantities of foreign silver in Cretan hoards, especially of royal precious-metal coinages, large-scale investments in public or private civic buildings and/or projects, or the occurrence of foreign precious-metal objects on Crete. An attempt to explain this paradox in economic and social terms may then enable us to assess more accurately the economic behaviour of these economic agents, both on a local microeconomic scale and in a macroeconomic, Mediterranean context.
About Katerina Panagopoulou
Ass. Prof. Katerina Panagopoulou obtained her PhD at the History Department at University College London. On a postdoctoral level, she has been Fellow at the Program of Hellenic Studies at the University of Princeton (2002) and at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford (2003). She currently teaches Hellenistic and Roman History at the University of Crete (as from 2004). Her research interests encompass ancient numismatics, the economic behaviour of precious metals (primarily silver and gold) in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, demography, politics and economy in Hellenistic and Roman Macedonia, Social Network Analysis and economic history, social history of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
For whom?
All are welcome, including and especially BA, MA and RMA students of all programmes. This lecture is in English.