Definire la città, raffigurare la città

The study investigates the relationship between the essence of the polis and the typological choices of the main mints. The Thucydidean reconstruction of the Greek archaiologhia defines the polis as a safe living space, not necessarily fortified, with its means of subsistence and capable of consolidating itself in various ways. The term paraskeue refers not only to the breadth of resources but also to the provision of infrastructures (fountains, roads, ports, mines), the establishment of relations with the outer world, as well as the features of the urban space. Thucydides compares the different ways of “making a city”, from Sparta to Athens, the Siceliote poleis and the Greek mainland including the Thracian “tribal” experiences, and identifies the peculiarity of Athens in its synoecistic choice, emporic vocation, industriousness and also in the assistance provided to supplicants, adynatoi, astheneis. Even in its typological choices, Athens, after a plurality of images, chose a unifying iconography for its coins, which seems to echo the shield-goddess of the second millennium BC in its tetradrachms.