FOOD ON ANCIENT COINS

Most ancient people lived close to hunger. One bad harvest could bring starvation. Therefore, food supply mattered to every ruler, city, and empire.

Ancient coins show this concern clearly. Grain, fruit, seafood, livestock, and food containers appear early and often on Greek and Roman coinage. These images also reveal the roots of the healthy "Mediterranean diet." That diet still depends on simple foods such as bread, olive oil, grapes, fish, and meat.

Nomos circa 540-520, AR 30 mm, 8.19 g. ME – TA retrograde Ear of barley. Raised and braided dotted border. Rev. Same type incuse. Notched border. Gorini 9, (this coin). AMB 129 (this coin). Perfectly struck and centred in exceptionally high relief, undoubtedly among the finest Archaic nomoi of Metapontum in existence. Numismatica Ars Classica Auction 154 19 May 2025 Lot: 1025 realized: $38,232

Barley on Ancient Coins

People domesticated barley as early as 9000 BCE. Barley grows better than wheat in hot, dry climates. However, it does not make good bread. Instead, ancient people boiled it for soup or porridge. They also brewed it into beer.

Barley appears very early on ancient coins. The earliest numismatic example comes from Metapontum in southern Italy. An ear of barley appears on both sides of a silver nomos. The city struck this coin between 540 and 520 BCE.

Moreover, Metapontum kept the barley ear as its civic emblem for centuries. A later stater of Metapontum, struck around 340 BCE, ranks as #36 on Harlan Berk's list of the 100 Greatest Ancient Coins .

Augustus, tetradrachm, Pergamum (?) 27-26 BC, Silver 12.03 g. IMP CAESAR Bare head r. Rev. AVGV – STVS Six bunched wheat-ears. C 32. BMC 699. Good extremely fine Numismatica Ars Classica Auction 86 8 October 2015 Lot: 48 realized: $16,546

Wheat, Bread, and Ceres

"Man shall not live by bread alone" (Matthew 4:4). Even so, bread formed the base of the diet for most ancient Greeks and Romans.

Plain round loaves did not make strong coin designs. Therefore, ancient die engravers used wheat stalks instead. Wheat appears very often on ancient coinage. Much later, from 1909 to 1959, two wheat stalks also decorated the reverse of the U.S. cent.

Ceres, goddess of cereal, also appears on coins. Artists often showed her with stalks of wheat woven into her hair.

A silver tetradrachm from Pergamum, struck under Roman rule around 27 BCE, shows six ears of wheat bound together .

Lesbos, Mytilene Electrum Hekte. Circa 375-326 BC. Female head to right, her hair bound up with ribbons / Panathenaic amphora with pointed lid, palm branch to left; all within linear frame. HGC 6, 1032. 2.56g, 10mm, 6h. Roma Numismatics Auction 8 28 September 2014 Lot: 574 realized: $8,122

To read the complete article, see:
Food On Ancient Coins (https://coinweek.com/food-on-ancient-coins-grain-grapes-fish-and-meat-in-the-ancient-world/)

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