Corinthian Stater

The Corinthian stater was the main silver coin of the ancient Greek city of Corinth, struck from the sixth century BCE and nicknamed the "Pegasus" (plural "Pegasi") after the winged horse on its front. It was one of the earliest coinages of mainland Greece and became a leading trade coin in western Greece, Sicily and southern Italy.

The stater weighed about 8.6 grams and was divided into three drachms rather than two, which made it easy to exchange with Athenian silver while keeping a system of its own. Corinth's colonies and allies struck matching Pegasi, spreading the type across much of the Greek west.

Corinth, which controlled the isthmus between the Peloponnese and central Greece, was among the first mainland cities to strike coins, probably around the middle of the sixth century BCE, at roughly the same time as Aegina and Athens. Coinage had started a few generations earlier in Asia Minor with the Lydian stater, and the Greek word stater, meaning a standard weight, was carried over to the main coin of many cities.

The front shows Pegasus, the winged horse that, according to legend, the Corinthian hero Bellerophon tamed at the spring of Peirene in the city. Beneath the horse stands the archaic letter koppa (ϙ), the initial of Corinth's name in the local alphabet. The earliest reverses carry only an incuse punch mark. From around the early fifth century BCE the reverse showed the head of Athena wearing a Corinthian helmet, often accompanied by a small symbol or letter identifying a particular issue. This combination stayed in use with only gradual changes of style for about two centuries.

The Corinthian stater of about 8.6 grams matched the weight of two Attic drachms, but Corinth divided it into three drachms of about 2.9 grams each. This made conversion with the Attic drachma straightforward and allowed Corinthian money to move freely within a wider Greek currency exchange. Smaller silver coins, including hemidrachms and the obol, were also struck, and bronze small change such as the chalkous appeared later.

Larger sums were counted in the standard Greek units of account, the mina and the talent, although the exact silver value of these units varied between weight systems.

Corinth founded or influenced many settlements along the western sea route, including Leucas, Anactorium and Ambracia in north-west Greece and Syracuse in Sicily. Several of these struck their own Pegasi, adding their own initial letters in place of the koppa. In the fourth century BCE, after the Corinthian general Timoleon helped restore Syracuse, Pegasi from Corinth and its colonies poured into Sicily and became a common medium of exchange there, partly because they were used to pay soldiers and settlers.

For a time the Pegasus was one of the most widely recognised Greek coins outside Athens' own sphere, a regional trade currency comparable to the later Rhodian drachm in the eastern Aegean.

Corinthian silver output fell away in the third century BCE. For much of that century the city's citadel was held by Macedonian garrisons, and the kingdom's own Antigonid coinage and Alexander-type tetradrachms circulated widely in Greece. In 146 BCE the Roman commander Lucius Mummius sacked and destroyed Corinth. When Julius Caesar refounded it as a Roman colony in 44 BCE, the new city struck bronze coins under Roman authority, and silver money in the region was supplied by the Roman denarius.

• American Numismatic Society
• British Museum – Collection online