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II.3 – Silver tetradrachm with incuse from Athens (6th-5th century BC)

Silver was the metal most often used for coinage in ancient Greece. Improvements in production techniques led all the Greek mints to begin using coin blanks with images in relief on both sides in place of the primitive method of hammering an indented impression on the reverse (known as incuse squares). The coins of some of the Greek city-states soon came to play a leading role in international trade, as was the case of the Athenian "owls", the "tortoises" of Aegina, and the "Pegasus of Corinth".
After the Persians had been defeated and a peace treaty drawn up, in 449 BC Athens issued a decree ordering the poleis in the Delio-Attic League to shut down their mints and strike their coinage in Attica, based on the Athenian currency. The decree was partly an attempt to reassert Athens' supremacy in the League, but it also called into question the complete freedom of the poleis, which regarded the right to coin money as a symbol of their political independence. For a while, the Athenian tetradrachm had many of the characteristics of an international currency.

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