EUBOIA, HISTIAIA, diobol, 3rd century BC

DescriptionThe standard Histiaean types were struck over several centuries in the home city and in Macedonia, and were imitated by the Romans when they were campaigning in the region.Histiaia (Histiaea), also known as Oreos, was a town near the north coast of Euboea. It had a strategic location, and was fought over by larger powers over several centuries. After an Athenian conquest the inhabitants were expelled, apparently moving en masse to Macedonia.Euboea (Evia) is the second largest of the Greek islands, very close to the mainland in the Aegean Sea. There were a lot of people on the island, they did a lot of business. It got wrecked several times during the Persian Wars. Conquered by Athens, it threw off that yoke, created a Euboean League, and maintained independence into Roman times.We think that our culture grew out of the culture of Greece because it was in Greece (and in China) that people started thinking about how things could be different than they were in a world where everything was dangerous and might made right. They also established principles of artistic expression that we still use today. We see this approach to art in their coins.Ancient Coins includes Greek and Roman coins and those of neighbors and successors, geographically from Morocco and Spain all the way to Afghanistan. Date ranges for these begin with the world’s earliest coins of the 8th century BC to, in an extreme case, the end of Byzantine Empire, 1453 AD.