THE CRIME OF
DIOGENES
by Michael E. Marotta ANA 162953
In
mid-300s BCE, the two most famous men of the Greek world were
Alexander of Macedonia and Diogenes of Sinope. Alexander ruled the
world. Diogenes lived like a dog. "If I could not be Alexander,"
said the Macedonian, "I would want to be Diogenes." For all
of his fame in his own day, we have only second-hand accounts of the
life of Diogenes and many of them contradict each other.
All historians agree that Diogenes came to Athens in the wake of
some crime against the coinage of Sinope. In 400 BC, Sinope was the
most prosperous city on the Black Sea. As in other Greek towns, the
assembly chose the public officials, including the mintmaster. In the
broadest terms, either Diogenes or his father was convicted of
tampering with the coinage. However, just which crooked path either
man took is not clear to us today.
Bertrand Russell, in A History of Western Philosophy, called
Diogenes "the son of a disreputable money-changer who had
been sent to prison for defacing the coinage." According to
the Encyclopedia Americana: "Diogenes is said to have gone to
Athens as an exile with his father, when either his father or he
himself was accused of counterfeiting or tampering in some other way
with the currency of Sinope."
In The Life of Greece, Will Durant called Diogenes "a
bankrupt banker from Sinope." The citation in The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy says that he was "... an eccentric tramp at Athens and
Corinth, defacing the conventional human standards -- as he or his
father, Hicesias, was supposed to have defaced in some way the
currency of Sinope..." Yet another spin comes from the
Encyclopedia Britannica Micropaedia: "Almost certainly forced
into exile from Sinope with his father... He made it his mission to
'deface the currency,' perhaps meaning 'to put false coin out of
circulation.' That is, he sought to expose the falsity of conventional
standards and to call men back to a simple, natural life."
The most authorative work is the Loeb Classic Library edition of
the Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Written by another Diogenes, called
Laertius, 400 years later, whose biographies were assembled from a
wide variety of sources, some reliable, some not. According to the
translator of Laertius, the crime of the earlier Diogenes was "adulterating
the coinge." Laertius allowed that Diogenes may have conspired
with the workers in the mint to "alter the political currency"
or to "adulterate the state coinage." Another story from
ancient times is that Diogenes' father entrusted him with the money
and he debased it, causing his father to be imprisoned. Is there any
way to reconcile these accounts?
Suppose that Diogenes adulterated the silver bullion from which
the coins were made. As an elected official, he would have no more
access to the mint than our own secretary of the treasury. Therefore,
he would need the help of at least some mint workers. To cover his
tracks, as the mintmaster, he could then make a test cut on each
debased coin. The test cut would be taken by most people as showing
the coin to be genuine.
Another way to approach the matter is to look at the specific
wording of the source documents. Where the translator says "adulterate"
the Greek word is "parachaksas" ( Use your symbol font:
PARACAXAS -- there was no lower case in ancient Greek.) In modern
Greek this is understood to mean "forge" in the sense of "fake"
or "counterfeit." However, we need to appreciate the sense
of it in the context of the ancient world. There is a cliche: "The
Greeks have a word for it."
The ancient Greeks, living in changing times, took delight in
making up new words. They attached prepositions to roots and they
stuck roots together to form compound words. We can do both in
English, as well, and we often use Greek (or Latin) when we do. We
know "para" from paradox, paraphrase, and parasol. The root "charaks"
means cut or dig and appears in our word "character." The
ancient Greek word "para-charaksas" could have meant "deface"
or even "counterstamp." The Anglo-French word "counterfeit"
could be considered as a direct translation of "paracharaksas."
Philosophers and historians, with their own domains of special
study, do not necessarily share our numismatic expertise. For
academics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the very act of "defacing"
coins may have seemed criminal. They did not belabor the differences
among counterfeiting, defacing, and debasing. The matter is more than
a detail in the life of Diogenes of Sinope.
Consider that we are also unsure of what he slept in. Some say it
was a washtub, others say a barrel, some say a huge jug or crock. The
difference between these two problems is that Diogenes is recorded to
have said that he came to Athens to "deface the coinage" (or
"debase the coinage"). No one claims that he came to Athens
specifically to sleep in a washtub.
Almost all writers, no matter how far their accounts drift from
the record, admit that he came to Athens in the wake of some problem
with the coins of Sinope. Just what that problem was remains
uncertain. We do have some tantalizing evidence, perhaps. The British
Museum and the Danish Museum are not alone in cataloguing coins from
Sinope signed DIO and with a test cut on the obverse. I acquired just
such a coin and sent it to the ANA Authentication Bureau for a
determination of the specific gravity. My specimen's specific gravity
was measured to be 10.32, which is about the same as an alloy of 90%
silver and 10% copper.
We accept this as normal coin silver today. However, in the
ancient world, silver coins were nominally pure. Was this coin
purposely debased by Diogenes the Cynic when he served as the town
moneyer? It is tempting to give in to the desire to believe. It is
also just as tempting to remain cynical.
(Special thanks must go to David Sear and Basil Demetriades who
answered my queries by providing their own expertise. Any errors in
this article are mine alone.)
Copyright Michael E. Marotta |
Technical Writer | ANA Member 162953
Return
to the CoinLink Club Main Page
..........
|
CoinLink
was last Updated On:
|
|
