This lovely late Classical stater (above, sold by Miller Ancients in September 2025) does not come from the famed city of Argos in the Peloponnesus, which can lay claim to being the oldest city in Greece (founded 5,000 BC) and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe. Instead, this coin comes from the second Argos in Acarnania, in western Greece along the Ambraciot Gulf. Legends stated that it was founded by dissatisfied men from the original Argos, who returned from the Trojan War and were unhappy with the state of affairs in their native city.

Unfortunately for us, this second Argos appears very little in the historical record. The only detailed account of the city’s history occurs during the Peloponnesian War and is recounted to us by the great historian of that conflict, Thuycididies. An Athenian, the historian was impressively unbiased but nevertheless keen to recount the events that occurred around Argos, which were some of the most favorable for Athens in the otherwise disastrous thirty-year war.

Argos in Acarnania was a close and devoted ally of Athens, and when threatened by a Spartan force, the Athenians dutifully sent their general Demosthenes with 10,000 hoplites to protect them. At the Battle of Olpae in 426 BC, Demosthenes ambushed the Spartans in a deep ravine and killed their commander Eurylochus. The Athenian general followed up his victory with an even greater triumph against the army of the city of Ambracia, though Athens did not take the initiative to move on Ambracia itself. Thuycididies would later write that the two victories of Demosthenes in 426 BC, in alliance with their friends from Acarnanian Argos, were some of the greatest Athenian triumphs of the war.