How The Greeks Did Business – Greece Ancient Currency

Over the ages, peoples from different civilizations produced their own medium of exchanges as a means to pay debt. This took the form of virtually anything as long as it responded to the immediate need and portability, and agreed upon by both parties doing the exchange. It was even prevalent in the ancient years (and awfully until today in other cultures) for a woman to be made as payment of and especially "blood money". Blood money served as a payment by someone who has committed murder.

In Herodotus' writings, the first Greece ancient currency or coinage was invented by the Lydians around 650 BC (Lydia was located in Western Asia Minor, present day Turkey). The first coins were made of silver and gold. Its usage momentarily spread across mainland Greece and other cities soon came to follow suit, each set in their own standards. The Lydians used electrum in their first line of coins. Electrum was a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver with pale yellow color. The coins were not exactly as what you would imagine them today. The Lydian coins were irregularly shaped, mostly shaped like kidney beans squashed at the center with designs stamped on one side.

Over time, coin minters discovered ways on how to make the coins flatter for easy stacking and allow designs to be added on each side. They used iron or bronze molds engraved with designs distinct to each state to pour the malleable alloy into. By 5th century BC, the city-states were already competing in their coin designs (which is also one of the innovations of the Golden age of Greece). Sparta, meanwhile, stuck to using a 3-ft. iron spit as currency because they did not believe in the accumulation of wealth through the coins.

Greece ancient currency was denominated as follows: obol is the smallest silver coin; 6 obols was equal to 1 drachma (the basic unit of Greece ancient currency); 1 stater equaled to 2 drachmas; 100 drachmas made up of 1 mina; and 60 mina equaled 1 talent. The drachma was further divided into smaller denominations: a didrachm was 2 drachma, tetradrachm equaled 4 drachma, and decadrachm made up 10 drachmas. Aside from the coins, the drachma also came in bills that measured 50, 100, 500, 1000 and 5000 drachmas.

No one has yet to make any comparison between the Greece ancient currency and the one used in contemporary times. In Greece ancient currency, an ordinary laborer during Pericles' time earned 2-3 obols for a day of work. The Parthenon was said to have cost 469 talents (a talent was equivalent to 57 lb. or 26 kg. of silver).

The use of coinage/currency was another innovation by the Greeks and indeed was a great contribution to future civilizations.