of metal smelted by metalsmiths. Th e minters had ceramic
rectangles with rows of holes in the shape, usually circular,
of the coins to be minted, and the minters would pour the
liquid metal into the carved holes. Aft er the metal had cooled,
they would have blanks, which were coins that had yet to be
stamped. Th eir dies had two parts, one engraved with the im-
age for one side of the coin and another with the image for the
other side of the coin. A blank would be placed on one of the
engravings, and the other engraving would be placed over it.
Th e die was held together by hand while the minter struck the
top of the die hard enough to impress both images into it. It is
likely that a wooden mallet was used.
By about 70 b.c.e. southern Europe was developing a
cash economy in which coins were the primary medium of
exchange. Th ere are indications that some tribes were be-
coming sophisticated in their use of money. For instance,
Julius Caesar noted that when Gauls married, the wife was
expected to contribute a dowry. Th e husband was expected
to contribute the equivalent of the wife’s dowry and invest
the total money. If the husband died, the wife would receive
the total value of the investment. Th is indicates that banking
existed in parts of Europe by Caesar’s time and that banking
was safe enough to entrust with a woman’s future prosperity.
Further, it indicates that money as wealth had become part of
the thinking of many Europeans.
Even aft er Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, Europeans never
stopped minting their own coins, even though they may have
minted fewer of them during the Roman era. Local peoples
who wanted to show their independence from Rome some-
times minted their own coins to display their independence.
In other cases, wealthy people minted their own coins be-
cause local business depended on reliable coins and their lo-
cal economies did not trust Roman owing to the fact that the
Roman government oft en adulterated the silver in coins to
counteract infl ation, which in the long term just fueled infl a-
tion. By 400 c.e. almost all of Gaul had slipped back to the
barter system. As diff erent Germanic tribes moved through
Europe during the 400s c.e., their leaders tried to display
their legitimacy as rulers by issuing coins.
GREECE
BY PAUL MCKECHNIE
Even before coins were invented in the ancient Greek world,
the Greeks had a conception of relative value. In Homer’s
Iliad and Odyssey value is sometimes expressed in terms of
the number of oxen an item is worth. For example, in the
Iliad Achilles holds a wrestling competition in which the
fi rst prize is a bronze tripod worth 12 oxen, and the run-
ner-up gets a slave woman worth four oxen. In the Odyssey,
when the suitors attempt to apologize for their misbehavior
at Odysseus’s house, their leader off ers compensation, say-
ing, “Each of us shall pay you a fi ne worth twenty oxen, and
we will keep giving you gold and bronze till your heart is
soft ened.”
Oxen, however, were not exactly “money.” Sometimes
they were used in payments—as when Lycaon was ransomed
for 100 oxen when he was captured by Achilles. More oft en
they were a conventional measure—as when Glaucus and Di-
omedes, discovering that their fathers were friends, agree to
exchange armor: Diomedes’ bronze suit of armor was worth
nine oxen, but (according to Homer) Zeus made Glaucus
lose his mind and exchange his gold suit of armor, worth 100
oxen, for it.
In the seventh century b.c.e. in Asia Minor (particularly
Lydia) to the east of Greece, stamped precious metal coins
began to be produced. Before then, precious metals had been
used as a means of exchange, and sometimes they had been
made into unmarked disks of a set weight. Coinage hastened
economic change. One of the consequences of the widespread
use of money was that people could save and accumulate their
spending power.
In the sixth century b.c.e. Greeks began minting coins,
usually in silver. Cities stamped coins with their individual
marks. Some of the earliest Greek coins are from Aegina,
marked with a turtle, and from Corinth, marked with Pega-
sus, Bellerophon’s mythical winged horse. Peisistratus (d. 527
b.c.e.), a contender for power at Athens, began minting coins
marked with an owl (symbolizing Athena, goddess of Ath-
ens) and an olive branch. “Owls” were minted at Athens and
widely recognized and trusted for centuries.
Th ere were hundreds of city-states in Greece, and many
had mints and coins that were not necessarily acceptable
outside their own cities but were made of precious metal and
could be exchanged for local currency by bankers or melted
down and reminted. Some Greek coins in museums today are
overstruck with marks showing that they were once weighed
and passed for use somewhere other than where they were
minted. Diff erent cities used diff erent weight standards, so a
drachma in one place did not necessarily have the same value
as a drachma elsewhere. Th e two most widespread weight
standards were the Attic standard (used at Athens) and the
Aeginetan standard.
According to the Attic standard, money was measured in
the obol, drachma, mina, and talent. Th e obol was the small-
est denomination, and the drachma was worth six obols. Th e
larger units (minas, talents) were not single coins: a talent, for
example, would represent a heavy chest full of coins. Back in
the sixth century b.c.e. the most widespread kind of coin was
a didrachm, also known as a stater, but by the fi ft h and fourth
centuries b.c.e. Greek cities minted mostly tetradrachms,
which were worth four drachmas. Smaller coins, including
fractions of an obol, were minted in silver, but not until the
fourth and third centuries b.c.e. did bronze coins begin to be
regularly minted in Greece.
For centuries the conventional daily pay for ordinary
work in the eastern Mediterranean was unchanged. Rowers
on At henia n wa rships in t he fi ft h century b.c.e. were paid one
drachma a day, and in the fi rst century c.e. vineyard labor-
ers were to receive one denarius a day, which was equivalent.money and coinage: Greece 759