History of Money, Banking, and Trade
A historical look at the development and evolution of money, banking, and trade. From the ancient civilizations to the present.
History of Money, Banking, and Trade
Episode 48. Greek Silver, Ships, And Soft Power
Coins did what speeches couldn’t: they moved power across seas. We follow the rise of Greek silver as it financed fleets, paid jurors and rowers, and turned owls and gods into portable propaganda. Along the way, we pull apart the messy mechanics—clashing standards, missing denominations, and the birth of bankers who priced trust at simple tables in the Agora.
We dig into why Athenian silver outcompeted Persia’s gold, how taxes and fines created network effects, and why Sparta bet on iron to starve luxury and bribes. Beneath the shine sits a hard cost: enslaved labor in lethal mines that fed treasuries and liquidity. From the myth of barter to the reality of credit, ledgers, and letters of credit, we map how ancient finance enabled long-distance trade without hauling sacks of coin, and how metic bankers—often outsiders—built FX services, safeguarded deposits, and extended secured loans that smoothed consumption and seeded growth.
Risk and interest become characters of their own. Sea loans commanded high rates, philosophers attacked accumulation, and states discovered the dark arts of debasement. Athens’ long run of silver integrity stands against Rome’s slide and Ptolemy‘s deliberate dilution. We unpack counterfeiting methods, mint tech, and the ongoing cat-and-mouse between trust and fraud—from shaved edges to modern identity theft and laundering. Finally, we show how standardized coin wages converted time into money, expanded planning horizons, and shifted status from lineage to ledger, nudging dozens of city-states toward forms of democracy. Money’s true alloy is trust, law, and force; where those hold, markets scale and societies change.
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Markets thickened, and stamped silver began doing political work that speeches couldn't. Greek city states turned metal into money and money into power, financing fleets, paying jurors and rowers, and turning owls and gods into portable propaganda. Signorage became public revenue. The Agora became a humming marketplace, and social mobility crept in as status shifted from lineage to ledger. This was all developed through messy mechanics, clashing weight standards, missing denominations, and the rise of the bankers who sat at simple tables and priced trust for a fee. Athenians bankrupt prestige by paying Olympic and Itzmian champions, proving that sports funding is an ancient version of soft power. Philosophers pushed back. Aristotle's fears of endless accumulation echoes today's debates over fiduciary duty, environmental costs, and the obligations of wealth. Persia minted the gold derrick yet watched Greek silver dominate circulation through network effects, while city states navigated the basement and emergency bronze issues by anchoring coins to taxes and fines. Sparta was the only holdout, as it refused to join the modern world by producing their heavy iron money designed to choke off luxury and bribery. That austere system depended on Hellots and Pereo Koi, revealing how military readiness and economic insulation fed each other. However, there was a cost of liquidity, as DeLorean mines powered the money supply through enslaved labor in lethal conditions. Barter proved to be more myth than reality as ancient economies evolved from simple gift exchange to credit tracked by ledgers and letters of credit. With the advancement of debt came the hard truth that when war rises, interest rates and metal hordes rise with it. I am Mighty D. This is the history of money, banking, and trade. If this journey through ancient finance and power made you rethink money's true alloy, which is trust, law, and force, follow the show. Share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Payment in coins gave the worker the ability to convert their time into money. Before coins became popular, there were very few forms of money that held value. The ability to save gave workers a level of security with their finances. So instead of continuously worrying about their wealth and needing to spend their money immediately, coins allowed workers to store some of their wealth over time. The main issue was there wasn't a reliable place to store excess savings because the Greek world hadn't developed a reliable banking sector when coinage initially became widely adopted. The reason being was in ancient Greece, the banking system had many flaws. Without limited liability, an ancient Athenian banker was legally inseparable from its owner. This meant that the banker was personally responsible for all debts, and if the bank failed in ancient Greece, the banker would be ruined. Since deposits were not legally guaranteed, a bank failure could lead to customers losing their entire savings. Of course, this wasn't just an ancient problem. Prior to the FDIC in the United States, one could lose their savings if they didn't get their money out of an insolvent bank in time. This is why bank runs could easily happen if their fears permeated the population. And this wasn't only limited to the United States. During World War I, you can see lines of people outside of Paris banks, for example, as fear permeated that population because the war made people fearful that they would lose their entire savings. Early on, temples were considered the safest place to store valuables, as they were the strongest and most secure buildings in the city. However, even these could be plundered during times of war. In fact, they would probably be the main target of foreign armies looking for an easy score. Private banks also faced the risk of theft, with a depositor's recourse depending entirely on the bank's ability to cover the loss. In this system, based on trust, a banker's reputation was everything. Depositors relied on the banker's personal integrity for the safety of their assets. As such, this left them vulnerable to fraud, as there was little legal recourse for being manipulated by a dishonest banker. In the modern United States, for example, one of the key frauds is often affinity fraud, whereas a person will deposit money with an investment advisor because that person belongs to the same church or has a similar ethnic background or immigrated from the same part of the world. So there's often a built-in trust. But that trust can often lead to easy theft. Because a fraudster knows this. And a fraudster will use that as cover to basically steal. And oftentimes, when the person gets caught, the person that had their goods stolen or their assets stolen, especially in the United States, doesn't really want to prosecute the person because they have a connection with the person, this infinity connection. Whether it's, hey, this person goes to my church, they're really a good person, they didn't mean to steal, or this person is of the same ethnic background to me, and I don't feel comfortable sending that person to jail because it's like sending my own people to jail. Now, in ancient Greece, there wasn't really so much this of a problem, but there was still an issue with the fact that if a banker was in fact a fraudster, there would be little recourse for any kind of dishonest banker unless you can definitively prove that they in fact stole the money from you. Despite these risks, the Athenian banks offered valuable services for its depositors. For example, the banks were often able to facilitate cashless transactions by making book transfers between accounts. In addition, they could arrange payments in different locations by utilizing their network and relationships with other bankers. Since these were banks, the ancient Greek bankers regularly made loans, both short term to finance trade and long term for purchases like real estate. These banks expanded into commercial credit as they extended larger loans to finance overseas expeditions. These were essentially letters of credit, whereas a lender in a Greek port would write a note so that he could collect in another city, saving the customer the danger of carrying coins with him during this trip. The Medici family in later medieval Italy will be famous for this type of transaction as this financed long distance trade but also subverted Catholic usury laws. One of the earliest known merchant bankers was a man named Pythias, who operated in Lydia around 480 BCE. This was around the same time that the Persian king Xerxes I was preparing to invade Greece. While his story, told by historian Herodoton, highlights his wealth and early version of banking practices, the context does not explicitly detail a credit note system. Pythias was the grandson of the late Lydian king Cretius, who was known as the second richest person in the world, second only to Xerxes. His fortune initially came from gold mines in Selena, located in Phrygia. While Xerxes and his massive army arrived in Selena, Pythias hosted them lavishly. To show his loyalty to the king, he offered to fund the entire Persian campaign with his fortune. Xerxes declined the offer and rewarded Pythias by giving him 7,000 gold directs to his wealth. However, when Pythias asked Xerxes that his eldest son be released from the army to care for his aging father, Xerxes was infuriated. The king may have overreacted a bit because he had his son killed and his body cut in half as a warning to his troops. Now is a good time to remind you that this story comes from Rodotus. So who knows if that part of the story is true or not? While the story does not mention much in terms of banking, Pythias' actions demonstrate key features of early banking and capital accumulation in the ancient world, and even the modern world, in that Pythias' great wealth from gold mines gave him significant economic and political power. His ability to offer vast sums of money to fund a war shows that he commanded immense liquid capital, which is a key function of banking. In offering support to Xerxes' campaign, Pythias attempted to use his financial power to gain favor and leverage with the most powerful ruler at the time. Of course, he didn't take the bribe. The story underlines the development of financial practices beyond simple money storage and lending. It illustrates how powerful individuals could function as early bankers and how they used their accumulated wealth to influence political and military events. Although Pythias wasn't operating in Greek territories, it is worth noting that early Greek bankers were often foreigners residing in Greek city-states. The reason why they were often foreigners was there was a certain social stigma associated with banking. Many of the elites in Greece still held on to the esteemed idea of landed aristocracy. Trade and commercial activities, including banking, were often viewed as less prestigious and potentially corrupt by the noble elite of society. Additionally, they preferred to focus on activities like warfare to gain wealth. Banking was seen as a craft or trade requiring personal commitment, knowledge, and skill, rather than a noble pursuit. Therefore, much of the banking sector was left to the Metics, who were free residents of the city-states, but were not citizens and could not own land. Consequently, they ended up playing a vital role in the Athenian economy, and many came to Athens specifically to benefit from economic opportunities. As a financial help of the ancient world, Athens attracted many metics or resident foreigners. As it were, many gravitated towards banking because there was an obvious void left by the citizens of Athens, because banking was viewed as a profession that was beneath the social elite. Therefore, this void left a pathway for Metics to achieve wealth and upward mobility in the Athenian society. In addition, by providing the essential financial services, Metic bankers became an essential driver of the Athenian economy. There are some parallels to the Jewish populations of Europe. Now, the Jews of Europe in the late medieval period and early Renaissance were there to be bankers because the Christians couldn't charge interest to other Christians. So there was kind of a loophole where you can have Jewish bankers that could lend to Christians and charge interest. And therefore, they ended up taking up banking because it was the void left by Christianity. Christianity basically shunned any kind of interest that was charged. And therefore, lending cannot work without charging interest. The fact that medics became bankers was based purely on the supply and demand curve. There was a demand for bankers, and the local citizens wouldn't supply the labor for the most part. So the medic stepped in. This opened opportunities for medics, which also included freed slaves, to take on prominent roles and eventually inherit the bank. The bankers provided key services. With more than a thousand cities minting their own coins, traders needed experts to exchange currencies and authenticate money. These medic bankers were therefore critical in changing money as they effectively became the ancient version of foreign exchange brokers. Without these bankers, long distance trade would have been much less efficient due to the lack of uniform currencies. Furthermore, merchants and regular people needed a place where they could safely store their coins and other valuables, as this would run safer than storing them in a personal residence or burying the coins somewhere in their backyard. Bankers also provided credit to merchants for trade and to individuals for personal consumption. Therefore, it wouldn't have been uncommon for Greek bankers to provide liquidity so that the individual can smooth out consumption. In fact, if a farmer had a poor harvest or needed monies for seed, a banker could be the difference between making it through another season and starving to death, let alone having the capital to continue on for another planting season. The bankers didn't give out just unsecured loans as most would have been secured with either a mortgage or other assets. Additionally, these bankers facilitated complex business transactions, such as payments among foreign merchants and the transfer of large sums. There were steps in the process of becoming a banker. The first step was they started as foreign exchange brokers. This is where many worked behind the table in the open marketplace. As they grew the business and enhanced their reputation as honest brokers, successful money changers began accepting valuables for safekeeping and using customer deposits for loans. Thus, they were effectively acting as semi-modern banks. While depositors expected the return of their funds, the banker was not required to segregate the depositors' money from his own. Some sources indicate that some of the bankers did not always maintain 100% reserves and illegally lent out some of their deposits. For example, an order named Isocrates accused the former slave banker Pasion in 393 BCE of holding fractional reserves. This practice allowed him to profit by lending out deposits that he held for safekeeping, a model similar to modern fractional reserve banking. Despite these accusations, after acquiring great wealth, Pasion was eventually granted Athenian citizenship. In addition, upon the owner's death, banks were often transferred to the most trusted slave or the owner's wife. Because medics were often the business owners, this practice allowed the business to remain within the family. However, since the upper class of Athens looked down upon these bankers, medics faced substantial social and political restrictions despite their economic prosperity. Since they were not citizens, medics were not allowed to participate in Athenian politics and had no voting rights. Since they lacked citizenship, they were generally prohibited from owning real estate, a key component of wealth accrual, and therefore future generations had a harder time benefiting from this wealth accumulation. If you don't get how important this is, just look at the United States. This is a major reason why black Americans are still so far behind white Americans in terms of wealth accumulation. This is in large part due to the fact that while black Americans were never fully prohibited from owning real estate by an explicit nationwide law, there were a series of discriminatory practices, laws, and policies that created significant barriers to land and home ownership that effectively denied them this right for decades. These systemic actions included racial covenants, redlining, and predatory lending, which restricted where and how black people could purchase property, severely limiting their opportunities for home ownership and wealth building, as they were often redlined out of the best neighborhoods. Redlining became illegal with the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, but families still feel the effects today. So when your white friend's grandparents bought a house in a neighborhood, like my old neighborhood, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, for$20,000 in the early 70s or late 60s, and black people were still prohibited from buying there. Maybe not by law, but they were still prohibited. Your friend's grandparents couldn't buy a house in Bay Ridge for$20,000 that is now worth$2 or$3 million. Instead, they would have to buy a house in a poor neighborhood like Brownsville or East New York, and the value of that house might be only worth$400 or$500,000 today. That's a big difference. Today, black people are still feeling this from the 1960s and 70s. And it still happens today. So while these early ancient bankers couldn't vote or own real estate, but unlike Athenian citizens, medics were required to pay a special annual tax. For those that made their way up from the bottom, wealthy medics were also liable for war taxes, which were used to fund public projects. It is worth pointing out that while banking was starting to flourish in Athens, the idea of bankers taking deposits and giving out loans had been around for maybe 2,000 years by this point, as Sumer and Babylon were practicing banking operations from temples, not benches. But it wasn't just Athens that was developing their version of a banking sector. There were thriving bankers in other ancient cities as well. One of the earliest known retail bankers was that of Philistophanos of Corinth, as he was identified as the first person to have participated in ancient Greece to some degree as a banker. However, the stories of Philistophanos of Corinth may be pure fabrication. Because these bankers provided loans, they would have charged interest on these loans. The interest rate that bankers charge on loans included a risk premium to compensate them for default risk. It is one of the main ways that banks ensure profitability while managing the inherent risk of lending. The antibanker class have called them usurers. The subject of usury has been a controversial topic for literally thousands of years. Some cultures accepted interest rates as part of doing business, while others still reject it to this very day. The Catholic Church famously forbade usury, even though bankers were able to easily get around the ban. Neapolitan Fernando Galini, an Italian economist, a leading figure of the Enlightenment, wrote extensively about interest rates and the concept of usury. While his conclusion was every lender who lent money to someone else had to live in fear that they might not get their entire principal back. Thus, every lending agreement carried some sort of risk. Some risks may have been small while others were much larger. Therefore, the risk of default and the fear and anxiety that brought it on should be compensated. Consequently, he rejected the traditional view that charging for loans was inherently unjust. Instead, he argued that interest was a representation between the difference of present money and money that is in the distant time. In other words, interest and risk are interconnected. This idea has had ancient roots, as we have seen that in the Babylonians, Greeks, and the Romans, as they all charged higher premiums for loans on sea voyages because they knew that the risks were much higher and therefore the interest rates needed to match the risk premium. In modern times, the Bank of International Settlements has noted that monetary regimes shape interest rates. Just as interest rates in Babylon were higher than those in ancient Greece, real interest rates averaged higher under the gold standard, which was before 1914, than under the Bretton Woods standard after 1945, and were lowest of all in the post-Breton Woods era, which was from 1971 onward. It wasn't just interest rates that people had to worry about. There was and still is deeper concerns with money. These concerns were only enhanced by the cynic, who was born in Sinope, and likely came from a well-to-do family, with his father working as a banker. Sometime around 380 BCE, his life took a radical turn due to a scandal involving tampering with currency. This resulted in his exile from Sinope, which resulted in his embracing a lifestyle as a recluse and cynic philosopher. The details surrounding his exile are a bit hazy, but it appears that it involved the debasement or counterfeiting of coins. Some have suggested that it was Diogenes' father who was solely responsible for the crime. Others indicate that Diogenes himself was involved, which led to his banishment. This exile prompted him to embrace a life of poverty, self-sufficiency, and rejection of traditional values and societal norms. As such, he became a prominent figure in the Cynic movement, advocating for virtue and a simple life lived in accordance with nature. However, a cynic might say that he only embraced this lifestyle because he got caught cheating the system. Additionally, some have claimed that Diogenes was the first known counterfeiter. However, this claim is not supported by the current scholarship. While either he or his father were surely involved in a currency scandal and forced into exile, the results don't conclusively state that he was the absolute first individual to have been known to engage in counterfeiting. There is also the story of the Oracle Delphi advising him to falsify the currency. This is likely a later embellishment or possible crime went well beyond currency manipulation and fraud. In most cases, it was outright theft. For example, a case in Ptolemaic Egypt reported that a villager named Orosophanes, who may have only been eight years old, filed a report with a local official complaining that a worker renovating his house found and subsequently stole a hoard of valuables that were hidden in the house's walls. Orosophanes claimed to know the contents of the plundered box down to the exact weight of each item of jewelry in it, alongside 60 silver drachmas, even though the hoard would have been hidden for over 40 years prior. In another case, dated 140 years prior to this report, some Greek cavalrymen broke into the room of a complaint's mother and carried off a jar containing a hoard of 1600 copper drachmas. So, in other words, theft is nothing new as it incurred almost at the same time that coinage was introduced in various societies. The biggest difference in theft in modern societies is stealing credit card and debit card information rather than actual paper money or coins. Therefore, the theft can occur thousands of miles away. But the real prize was plundering during times of war, not this small time version of pickpocketing. When he was defeated by Rome, King Perseus of Macedonia allegedly left his heirs a treasure map making the locations of two hordes, one under a road at Amphibius, containing 900,000 drachmas, and another at Thessaloniki with 420,000 drachmas. The thing is, people even in these days of the ancients knew about these hidden hordes, but maybe not the exact location. They also knew about the hordes that went down in shipwrecks. As such, salvage diving had a long and dangerous history dating back to ancient Greece. The ancient Greek salvagers Scyllas and his daughter Hydna are famous examples of early practitioners. Scyllas was an expert diver, known as the best diver of his day, who also trained his daughter Hydna. It appears that he must have had a pretty big reputation because, according to the ancient Greek writers Pausanias and Herodotus, King Xerxes I captured them to use in the retrieval of treasure from shipwrecks. Reportedly, around 480 BCE, while they were captured, a major storm was brewing in the Mediterranean while the Persian fleet was anchored near Mount Pelion, waiting out the violent storm. Silus and Hydna realized that it would give them cover as they took the opportunity to make their escape. But before doing so, they wanted to repay the Persians for their capture and aid in the Greek cause. With knives in hand, the pair dove into the sea and silently swam along the boats, cutting their moorings. The storm caused the ships to get tossed about in the wind and the waves. As such, the ships crashed together. Some sank and many were crippled and no longer serviceable. The pair then swam 15 kilometers or about 10 miles to safety in Greece, reportedly using homemade snorkels, which enabled them to remain underwater to avoid detection. Later, the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis, in part because of their actions. Did this really happen or was this pure legend? Probably the latter, but it's a great story nonetheless. Also, Silas appeared in the 2014 film 300, Rise of an Empire. However, Haida does not appear as a female, instead, she is replaced by a male son named Callisto, played by Jack O'Connor. Not all accounts of salvage divers were this glamorous. In fact, it was just the opposite, as salvage divers often face dangers due to underwater natural hazards. Those that were lucky enough to survive these dangers intact potentially faced their biggest threat, in that it was not uncommon for some to be killed to ensure their silence after recovering these valuable hordes. And it turns out that you actually get to keep more money when you don't have to share it with anyone else. Despite these dangers of retrieving hordes and theft, probably the biggest concern for the broader population would have been debasement. When Ceylon took office in Athens in 594 BCE, there were concerns that he may have introduced a partial currency debasement. However, it is worth noting that this claim is debated by scholars. In addition, there may have been some interpretations that may not have aligned with the facts. While Ceylon did alter the standards of payment around 594 BCE, allegorical interpretation of his subsequent philosophical approach to societal currency norms. The lasting stability of the Athenian drachma silver content for centuries afterward is historically supported, as the Athenian drachma maintained a nearly consistent silver content of 67 grains of silver before Alexander and 65 grains afterward for the next 400 centuries until Greece fell under Roman rule. The drachma became the standard coin for trade not only in Greece but across much of Asia and Europe. By the second century BCE, well after Rome had begun its expansion into the Mediterranean, the drachma continued to be widely minted and used. Rome's experience with coinage took a different path. The Roman silver denarius was introduced around 212 BCE and it was modeled on the Greek drachma. However, Rome began debasing its older copper coinage, the Libra, shortly after the denarius was introduced. The Libra's weight fell dramatically, from about one pound or 450 grams to just half an ounce or 15 grams by the start of the empire. In contrast, the silver denarius and the gold Arius introduced around 87 BCE saw only a slight debasement before Nero's reign in 54 CE. Under Nero, Rome began tampering with its coinage almost continuously, reducing the precious metal content while increasing the proportion of alloy to as much as three-fourths of the coin's mass. This debasement allowed Rome to generate revenue through money creation to compensate for its inability to fully fund expenditures through taxation. However, it also led to rising prices, worsening Rome's economic problems and contributing to the empire's eventual collapse. Ptolemy XII of Egypt, who was a Macedonian king of Egypt, ruled from 80 to 58 BCE and again from 55 to 51 BCE. He initiated a dangerous economic tactic through deliberate currency devaluation. His method was simple but effective. He issued coins with progressively less gold and silver, which were masked by their unchanged face value. The process of ancient devaluation worked through several steps. At first was debate. The state minted coins with reduced precious metal content but circulated them at their original domino value. Initially, the public accepted these coins at face value, unaware of their degraded worth. Once the debasement was discovered, prices soared. What once cost one coin now required two or more, effectively inflating the economy. By time the ordinary citizens realized the scam, the ruling elite had already siphoned wealth from early recipients, disproportionately harming the poor through eroded purchasing power. Athens was the rare exception. While most ancient states succumbed to the temptation of currency manipulation, Athens took a principal stand in part because it suffered from an ancient financial crisis. As such, Athens took decisive action. It had withdrawn all the based bronze coins from circulation, and it prioritized restoring the Acropolis treasury, a painstaking process that took nearly fifty years. Ptolemy's devaluations in Greek Egypt expose how easily monetary systems could be weaponized by the powerful. Athens' restraint remains a striking anomaly in the ancient world's checkered history of financial integrity. In modern times, debasement isn't what would cause inflation instead of purposely debasing currency. Governments purposely print excess amounts of paper currency. In fact, it can be a weapon of war. The Nazi Party's Operation Bernhard was a large-scale counterfeiting operation during World War II that produced a significant amount of fake British pounds. Estimates vary regarding the total value of these forged notes. But it appears that they may have printed 132 million pounds. Others provide a higher estimate up to 300 million pounds. The notes were printed in five, ten, twenty, and fifty pound denominations, while a large portion of them being the five-pound note. The Operation Bernhard counterfeited notes were so skillfully made that they could have easily passed as real money. The goal was to get them into the UK and then use them to cause massive inflation and therefore inflict serious damage to the health of the British economy. Operation Bernhard was discovered because British intelligence officers learned of the plot in 1939 before it fully began, though the counterfeiting operation itself wasn't stopped until the end of the war. The Bank of England was alerted early, but the full scope of the operation wasn't clear until after the war, when the notes were later found, and some counterfeit notes were detected in circulation in 1943. So counterfeiting had been around for thousands of years. The minting process for Greek coins had taken a step forward from the previous Lydian coins. The metal, whether it was silver or gold or even bronze, was placed in a large forged furnace where it was melted down. From there, the liquid metal was poured into molds that kept the size, shape, and weight of the coin standardized. It was at this point that the engraver would carve each side of the coin. As the coins were often worth close to the value of the coins itself, counterfeiters realized that if they extracted some of the valuable metals that could make a small profit on each coin that they altered and sent into circulation. In order to do this, they would have used techniques to replace the original metal, such as silver, with a cheaper metal. One of the techniques is to use an alloy, which is a mix of metals that resembles the original metal but was less expensive to procure. As such, the fraudsters used the alloy as the base and put a light outer coating of the real metal, thus passing off as the whole metal coin as it could look good to the naked eye. The Greeks quickly picked up on this and therefore made the designs of the coins more complex in order to make it harder for the counterfeiters to counterfeit. Another form of fraud was to debase the coin. This was the process of discreetly removing some of the metal from the coins in the hopes that it wouldn't be noticed. This can be done by scraping the outer parts of the coin. If this is done on a large enough scale, one could melt down the shavings to generate a weight that could be made into coins. The fact remains is debasement and fraud will be something that every society has had to deal with ever since. Nowadays, people can print counterfeit notes of any currency, but worse yet, they can steal user identification and wire money directly out of people and business accounts into an offshore account and then washed through cryptocurrency transactions in another country, thousands of miles away from the source of the theft or fraud. While the Greeks weren't the first to invent coinage, they were the first to systemically study its role in society. The historian Herodotus meticulously documented the origins and spread of coins, reflecting Greek curiosity about the transformative technology. As the world's first numisticists, Greek scholars analyzed how coinage shaped economies and cultures. They contrasted monetized societies with non-monetized ones, thus pondered coinage's net societal impact. Furthermore, the geographer Strabo noted that some non-Greek peoples, unfamiliar with coins, lacked precise systems for weights, measures, or counting beyond 100, highlighting the cognitive economic shifts coins introduced. Athenian drachmas are among the most prized coins of ancient Greek nemistics, with minimal amounts surviving in public and private collections. The dating of these large and valuable coins, along with their purposes, had been a long debate among scholars. However, relatively recent horde discoveries have enhanced the study as current evidence has overturned many old assumptions. As such, it is now believed that they were minted sometime between 470 and 465 BCE, around the same time as the Demiriteon Decmydrachmas of Syracuse. These coins were named after the wife of the Syracuse tyrant Galen. Syracuse was a prominent Greek colony on the eastern shores of Sicily. It was founded by the Dorian Greek colonists from the Greek city-states of Corinth in 733 BCE. Herodotus once claimed that these coins were used to pay bonuses to Athenian citizens from silver surpluses at the Lorian mines, implying that they were minted after the Greek victory at Marathon in 490 BCE. According to historian Diadorus Siculus, the Carthaginians, after being defeated, gave Demireti a coin of 100 gold talents. She struck a coin from this, calling it the Demiraton, a silver deck of drachma worth 10 attic drachmas. Of course, that doesn't really make a lot of sense unless something is missing from this account. Furthermore, despite its name, it is believed that the coin's imagery does not reference Demerite, but rather the cherry victories of her brother-in-law, Harrion I, who succeeded Jelian. The purpose of Decadrachmas has been debated. Nearly a century ago, Barclay had reflected the views of his time, suggesting that Decadrachmas were issued mainly for special occasions or personal pride of tyrants and kings, not for everyday circulation. In reality, we know that the Athenian Decadrachmas and the Syracusan issues played legitimate, though limited roles within the monetary system. The reason for their limited use was due to the high value and large size, which was precisely why silver was a preferred medium of exchange, as it can easily be broken down into smaller versions. Even though large silver coins from northern Greece, such as Octodrachmas, were primarily commercial issues, often struck for export use in their international trade, some decadrachmas, like those of Acrakus, may have additional commemorative purposes. The Acrakas Decadrachmas, for instance, likely celebrated a charioteer's victory at the 92nd Olympiad in 412 BCE. The end result was the development and legacy of financial institutions. Coinage ultimately made both the Athenian and Roman economies possible in large part because both were reliant on imported grain. There is something to be said about the lack of vital resources that make societies innovative. The Greeks were following a similar path laid out by the Sumerians in southern Iraq, except they had sort of an opposite problem in that they had the ability to grow excess grains, but didn't have much of anything else in terms of natural resources. So places like Anatolia would have made for natural trade partners with each filling a need for the other. In modern times, the Japanese are some of, if not the best, at developing new technologies, in large part because they are resource poor. In fact, the curse of the natural resources is a phenomenon where countries with an abundance of natural resources often have lower economic growth, higher rates of conflict, and weaker democratic institutions than countries with fewer resources. This paradox is often called the paradox of plenty. The Greeks had to figure out an innovative approach to feed its people. The expansion of coinage became the linchpin of their overall development, of which law and money became two of their greatest exports. Lawsuits over trade disputes were regularly argued before juries of hundreds of citizens. It has been hypothesized that the general population of free men must have had a financial literate society if they were going to litigate these cases. In addition, unlike modern courts, there were no professional lawyers, and citizens were expected to argue their own cases or act as jurors on complex matters. The use of coinage meant that there was a standardized medium of exchange that enabled complex financial transactions, from long distance commerce to the payment of taxes and salaries. As such, a trade network developed between Greece, Egypt, and Anatolia. As trade picked up, so did shipbuilding technology, especially by the Phoenicians. But this technology was passed on to the Greeks where they used it to expand trade and defense. Foremost among these techniques was the Pegmortis and tenant joint, a strong and watertight method for constructing halls. The Greeks adopted and refined this technology, which was key to the development of their powerful fleets. These new ships were bigger, stronger, and faster, meaning the Greeks could get economies of scale. Therefore, as trade expanded, so did the use and overall acceptance by the Greeks and non-Greeks alike to use coinage. Even though the Phoenicians were the world's first sea power, as they were the culture that developed almost an ancient version of the assembly line to mass-produce ships, they were very slow to adopt coinage as they still relied on the cumbersome ingots or metal bars that were needed to be weighed out. The Phoenicians eventually took a step back from the seafaring dominance in the eastern Mediterranean, however, their Carthage cousins dominated the western half of the Mediterranean until three wars of the Romans knocked them out. In order to facilitate trade even more efficiently, permanent trading posts were established, whereas merchants from many different nationalities would meet where all the goods were being bought and sold. This wasn't just a Greek phenomenon. This idea was initially started by the Phoenicians and later Carthaginians, but it nonetheless established the model for Greeks to apply. Therefore, having the added efficiency of better ships and ports outside of the Greek mainland and the abundance of coinage allowed for much improved economic efficiency through Greek merchants. These silver and gold coins, gold to a lesser extent, meant that now the individuals who had them had the ability to store value and wealth over time, meaning that their silver or gold coins would retain their value, unlike inferior currencies such as copper, bronze, or even perishable commodities such as wheat. They could save silver or gold, which enabled them to purchase larger, more expensive goods and services down the line. Additionally, a worker who gets paid in coinage is essentially converting their time into money. On the flip side, if there is inflation and the worker saved his money, the worker loses their purchasing power, which basically means the worker essentially had their time wasted or taken from them. The ability to store wealth brings with it economic freedom. This means merchants could focus squarely on their businesses, which ultimately meant they could get some economies of scale, as their businesses would incur less costs and time dedicated to non-core functions. Furthermore, this allowed for long-term planning. When people do not have to worry that their currency will quickly lose value, they can take a long-term approach. This is as true today as it was in 500 BCE. Therefore, an ancient industrial revolution took place that one could make the case was driven in large part due to the adoption of coinage by the ancient Greeks. This shift also led to the decline of the old school aristocratic farming families and saw the rise of the new rich with the advent of market-based economies and the entrance of proto-democracies that were flourishing in various city-states, as it wasn't just Athens. In fact, up to 52 city-states had some form of democracy, such as places like Corinth and as far away as Syracuse and Sicily. In other words, the adoption and the use of coinage democratize cities in Greece.comslash history of money banking trade. Or you can visit our website at moneybackingtrade.com. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon.
