Prevalence and Profitability

Fraudulent activities flourished throughout the Archaic and Classical Greek world. One such understudied fraudulent activity was the counterfeiting of Greek coinage during this period. Many numismatists have examined individual cities' coinages and have, in several instances, discovered the prevalence of this type of fraud in numerous individual cities across the Greek world. However, there is not a single collection of all this evidence, archaeological, literary or epigraphic, which draws together the many examples from several Greek cities in the Archaic and Classical Greek world. This Thesis will examine the evidence at hand and include a detailed diachronic study of the major Greek coinages during the Archaic and Classical periods to draw together a vast amount of evidence into one body. The examination will include a detailed assessment of ancient authors' views along with ancient rules and regulations regarding counterfeiting, and existing coin samples to determine how prevalent counterfeit coins were in antiquity. This research demonstrates that counterfeiting was more prevalent than previously expected, especially in major trade coinages such as Aegina, Athens and Corinth. The find spots and analysis of the extant evidence indicates that previously help assumptions of where and how counterfeit coins were passed into circulation need rethinking and further study.