IONIA. Teos. Circa 470/65-449 BC. Stater (Silver, 22 mm, 12.00 g), Aeginetic standard. Griffin, with curved wings, seated to right on ornamented ground line, raising left foreleg; before to right, swan or duck seated to right. Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. Balcer Group LII, 101 (A101/-) = BMFA 1939. Matzke Group Cb1. A perfectly centered and very sharp piece with a particularly powerful griffin. Extremely fine.


The finding of the so-called Teian Imprecations, a series of inscriptions from Teos recording the punishments for abuse of magisterial power and for the installment of tyrannies (SEG 31.984-985), showed how close the relationships between Teos and its Thracian colony Abdera were: the texts clearly state that the enactments applied to both cities, which has led some scholars to suggest a sympoliteia with common laws and citizenship. However, this might be somewhat anachronistic and reflect later Hellenistic developments. In any case, the coinage of Teos and Abdera is remarkably similar in terms of iconography, as both cities use a seated griffin as coat of arms, albeit facing in different directions. On the other hand, the weight standard is not the same: Teos used the Aeginetic standard, whereas Abdera introduced its own standard, which allowed an easier reckoning of its massive silver exports in terms of gold. Balcer suggested that Teos, as a subjected member of the Delian League, was forced to comply with the Athenian Currency Decree of circa 449 BC, which unified the weight standards throughout the Athenian Empire. If this is true, the city did not strike any coinage between circa 449 BC and the Teian revolt in 412 BC, since no Teian coins of Attic weight have come to light. When coinage was reintroduced in 412 BC, the city used the Aeginatic standard once again for a few years, before, in the course of the second revolt, switching to the Chian standard in 407 BC.