EUBOIA, CHALKIS, silver drachm, circa 338-308 BC

DescriptionChalkis (Chalcis) was the major city of the Greek island of Euboia (Euboea)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. It was under Athenian influence on and off until it was conquered by Philip II of Macedon.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.