What was spartan currency

With the diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were banished from Lacedaemon; for who would rob another of such a coin? Who would unjustly detain or take by force, or accept as a bribe, a thing that it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have, or of any use to cut in pieces?

For when it was just red hot, they quenched it in vinegar, and by that means spoilt it, and made it almost incapable of being worked. It is unlikely, but possible, that Sparta was attempting to compensate for a shortage of domestic supplies of gold and silver, possessing no gold or silver mines of its own.

One of these things was money, even coins. The apparent exception was Sparta. Many serious collectors of ancients have never seen Spartan coins. Some believe Sparta struck no coins at all. Sparta issued Spartan coins , in small quantities, well after it had ceased to be a major power in the affairs of the Greek world.

The purpose of this policy was to discourage Spartans from accumulating wealth so they could focus their energies on preparation for war.

The Greek word for roasting spits obeloi , however, is closely related to the word for a small silver coin obol , so the connection is credible. Among themselves, Spartans might use awkward bundles of iron spits for legal or ceremonial transactions, but in dealings with other Greeks they had to use current money.

Because of their selective breeding and superb physical fitness, Spartans were serious contenders in the Olympic Games. And all Greeks attending the games, even Spartans, used the special coinage struck by the city of Elis , which managed the sacred site of Olympia. Because Sparta sometimes allied with Persia and received Persian subsidies during its long wars with Athens , Spartans would have been familiar with the Persian daric — at 8.

The cooking spit, which was about 3 ft. The names of a couple of dozen coins are known and examples exist. Why they survived and were not melted down for their metal content is the result of where ancient Greeks tended to store their wealth- buried in the ground. A number of these hoards have been unearthed in modern times. Some of the more common denominations were as follows:. It is difficult to make a comparison between our currency today and the currency of ancient Greece.

According to the historian Donald Kagan The Peloponnesian War, page 61 one talent was the cost to build one warship of the trireme class. It was also the cost of paying the crew of that warship for a month approximately bodies. The published accounts of the Parthenon construction project which were engraved in stone and put out in the agora for everyone to see said the temple cost talents. A talent represented 57 lb 26 kg.

An ordinary clay pot sold for one obol. A labourer working at the time of Pericles could expect to earn obols per day while an artisan or specialized tradesman such as a stonemason earned twice that. That's good info. I agree caution over a possible folk etymology is needed, but the idea of metal spits as money is certainly not to be dismissed, at least not outright. It's maybe not so easy to reconcile something called a "meal-cake" with an iron spit!

It does sound more like a conventionally shaped coin, though maybe not pressed.