GREEK COINAGE

One of the smaller Greek coins was the silver obol. In the Attic standard of weights and coinage six silver obols were worth one silver drachma. It is interesting to note that before the development of coinage six of the pointed spits or elongated nails used as tool currency constituted a customary handful similar to that of the even earlier grain-based methods. Therefore one of the early Greek coins, the obol, was simply a continuation of a primitive form of money - the iron spit or pointed rod.

Inflation was a problem even in the early days of coin production. In 407 BC Sparta captured the Athenian silver mines at Laurion and released around 20,000 slaves. As a result Athens was faced with a grave shortage of coins and in 406 and 405 BC issued bronze coins with a thin plating of silver. The result was that the shortage became even worse. Good coins tended to disappear from circulation since people naturally kept them and used the new coins instead in order to get rid of them.

This gave rise to what is probably the world's first statement of Gresham's law, that bad money drives out good, in Aristophanes' play, The Frogs, produced in 405 BC. Aristophanes wrote "the ancient coins are excellent...yet we make no use of them and prefer those bad copper pieces quite recently issued and so wretchedly struck." These base coins were demonetized in 393 BC.

Considerable rivalry developed between different currencies. "In coinage as in other matters the Greek city-states strove desperately for predominance, as did their arch-rivals the Persian emperors."

City-states with strong and widely accepted currencies would have gained prestige. In the 1960s newly independent countries in the Third World took pride in the trappings of nationhood - their own airlines, national banks, and currency. The city states of ancient Greece took a similar pride in their currencies - as is suggested by the beauty of their coins. Glyn Davies quotes another author, J. Porteous, who wrote " the fifth century saw the minting of the most beautiful coins ever made." He also quotes two historians, Austin and Vidal-Naquet, who claimed that "in the history of Greek cities coinage was always first and foremost a civic emblem. To strike coins with the badge of the city was to proclaim one's political independence."

Coercion played a role in establishing monetary uniformity. In 456 BC Athens forced Aegina to take Athenian 'owls' and to stop minting her own 'turtle' coinage and in 449 BC Athens issued an edict ordering all 'foreign' coins to be handed in to the Athenian mint and compelling all her allies to use the Attic standard of weights, measures and money. The conquests of Alexander the Great brought about a large degree of monetary uniformity over much of the known world. His father, Philip, had issued coins celebrating his triumph in the chariot race in Olympic games of 356 BC - an example of the use of coins as propaganda.

The Roman emperors made even more extensive use of coins for propaganda, one historian going so far as to claim that "the primary function of the coins is to record the messages which the emperor and his advisers desired to commend to the populations of the empire."

On pages 85-86, Glyn Davies points out that "coins were by far the best propaganda weapon available for advertising Greek, Roman or any other civilization in the days before mechanical printing was invented."