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Davissolon

The article examines whether the drachmas mentioned in laws attributed to Solon could have referred to silver weights used as a currency in pre-coinage Athens. Through analyzing historical, archaeological, numismatic and literary evidence, the author argues that pre-Peisistratid Athens had a primarily agricultural economy where domestic transactions were usually denominated in barley, and weighed silver was only used limitedly in foreign trade and travel. Coinage was adopted in the later 6th century BCE in response to expanding domestic trade under the Peisistratids, following the Ionian model.

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Dating the Drachmas in Solon’s Laws

Article in Historia (Wiesbaden, Germany) · January 2012

DOI: 10.25162/historia-2012-0008

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Gillan Davis
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Historia
Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte
Revue d’Histoire Ancienne
Journal of Ancient History Historia Band 61 • Heft 2 • 2012
Rivista di Storia Antica © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart

DATING THE DRACHMAS IN SOLON’S LAWS*

ABSTRACT: Can the drachmas in the ‘laws of Solon’ be explained as silver weights, used in the Athenian
economy as a silver standard before the adoption of coinage in the second half of the sixth century
BCE? I believe the answer is a firm no. In this paper I marshal historical, archaeological, numis-
matic and literary evidence to demonstrate that pre-Peisistratid Athens had an essentially agrarian
economy in which local trade was usually denominated in barley, and weighed silver was used only
to a limited extent in foreign trade and travel. It was the expanding trade of the Peisistratid era that
led to the adoption of coinage, following a well-established Ionian model.

1. Introduction

Athenian historians and orators from the late fifth century BCE routinely attributed to
Solon the writing of a set of laws that formed the basis of their ancestral constitution.1
They also credited him with reform of their weights, measures and currency. How much
they really knew about Solon is debatable, for undoubtedly he was a convenient heuretes

* Many scholars helped me improve this article. First and foremost I thank Professor Jack Kroll
for his excellent suggestions and constructive criticism notwithstanding my challenge to his own
work. Likewise, I greatly appreciate the thorough and incisive critiques and recommendations by
the Journal’s readers. Finally, I am grateful to Professor Greg Stanton and Dr David Phillips for
reviewing the drafts, and especially for saving me from editorial errors.
1 The probable reason for Solon’s pre-eminence in the literature can be found in the ideological battles
of the late-fifth and fourth centuries between democrats and oligarchs in which the former positioned
Solon as the father of democracy. The triumph of the democrats is especially notable in the later
Atthides of the fourth century BCE when, as F. Jacoby, Atthis: the Local Chronicles of Ancient
Athens (Oxford 1949) 154–5, 155 n. 20 noted, Solon was “established as the creator of the laws”.
For the oligarchs’ position compare Ath. Pol. 29.3 which states that in 411 BCE, during the brief
government of the oligarchic Four Hundred, a certain Kleitophon suggested “that the commissioners
elected (to draft new public safety measures) should also investigate the ancestral laws laid down
by Kleisthenes when he was establishing the democracy”. J. McInerney, “Politicizing the Past: the
Atthis of Kleidemos”, CA 13.1 (1994) 17–37, 33, n. 60 noted: “Solon is mentioned four times in
the 75 extant speeches before 356, and 32 times in the 64 extant speeches after 356”. Reform of
weights, measures and coinage – Andoc. 1.83, Ath.Pol. 10.1–2.

Urheberrechtlich geschütztes Material. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar.
Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitungen in elektronischen Systemen.
© Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2012
128 GIL DAVIS

figure around whom myths and facts were mingled.2 Half a millennium later, Plutarch
too wrote about Solon. He provided much of the specific information on which modern
historians have come to rely including crucially, details of fines and payments in So-
lon’s laws denominated in drachmas. However, it has been convincingly demonstrated
that coinage per se could not have been used in Solon’s time.3 A solution put forward
by Rhodes was that ancient authors simply assumed Solon reformed coinage as well as
weights since the former was named after the latter.4 He suggested silver weights “served
as a form of currency”, and “Solon in 594/3 enacted laws which expressed values in
drachmae”.5 Strong endorsement for this suggestion has come from Kroll’s reading of
the literary evidence, which he has backed up with reference to contemporary use of a
silver standard in Western Asia Minor.6
In this paper, I test the hypothesis against a fuller set of evidence. My assumption is
that silver could not have been used as a standard unless and until there was an adequate
supply of the metal in Athens to meet day-to-day commercial requirements. I rule out
ab initio that the Athenians in this period were economically sophisticated enough to
have operated under a virtual standard, expressing values in silver without significant
quantities of the actual metal to satisfy debts. I start by seeking to understand the role
of silver in the Athenian economy, especially in trade, and the archaeological evidence
for its use. I then look at how silver coinage came to be adopted. Based on this under-
standing, I critically examine the Western Asia Minor analogy, and finally the literary
evidence. My investigation leads me to propose, firstly, that in the pre-Peisistratid period
Athens had an essentially agrarian economy in which domestic transactions were usually
denominated in barley, and there is little evidence for the use of weighed silver other than
in foreign trade and travel. Secondly, the Athenians adopted the Near Eastern invention
of coinage in response to domestic requirements in the second half of the sixth century.

2 I. Linforth, Solon the Athenian (Berkeley 1919) 281 provided a good definition of a heuretes: “It was
the universal Greek habit to attribute the great works of the past to definite persons without much
regard to probability”.
3 The clearest statement of the reasons was in J. Kroll & N. Waggoner, “Dating the Earliest Coins of
Athens, Corinth and Aegina”, AJA 88 (1984) 325–33. However, doubts were raised as far back as E.
Robinson, “Coins from the Ephesian Artemision reconsidered”, JHS 71 (1951) 156–167, and stated
explicitly by C. Kraay, Greek Coins (London 1966) 324, and a c. 545 date for the first Athenian
coinage was suggested by M. Price & N. Waggoner, The ‘Asyut’ Hoard (London 1975) 68.
4 P. Rhodes, “Solon and the Numismatists”, NC 15 (1975) 1–11.
5 P. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford 1981) 152–3 and 168.
6 Rhodes’ solution was endorsed by Kroll and Waggoner, Dating the Earliest Coins (as in n. 3)
325–33, and strongly amplified in J. Kroll, “From Wappenmünzen to Gorgoneia to Owls”, ANSMN
26 (1981) 1–32 & plates 1–2, J. Kroll, “Silver in Solon’s Laws” in R. Ashton and S. Hurter (eds.),
Studies in Greek Numismatics in Memory of Martin Jessop Price (London 1998) 225–32, J. Kroll,
“Observations of monetary instruments in pre-coinage Greece” in M. Balmuth (ed.), Hacksilber to
Coinage: New Insights into the Monetary History of the Near East and Greece (New York 2001)
77–91, and J. Kroll, “The Monetary Use of Weighed Bullion in Archaic Greece” in W. Harris (ed.),
The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans (Oxford 2008) 12–37.

Thirdly, the ‘Solonian laws’ quoted by Plutarch which included penalties in drachmas,
along with other literary references to pre-Peisistratid coinage, are anachronistic.

2. Silver use in the Late Archaic Athenian economy

There were several principal ways substantial amounts of silver could have entered the
Late Archaic Athenian economy: mining, warfare, and trade.7 The Laurion mines had
been exploited in Mycenaean times, but there is little evidence of any appreciable mining
there until the second half of the sixth century,8 and studies have indicated that the early
Athenian (Wappenmünzen) coinage was not minted from Attic silver.9 Peisistratos drew
some revenues from the Strymon region from mining, though the amount is disputed,
and this was well after Solon.10 The Athenians struggled to defeat tiny Megara early
in the century, and we know of no other military successes that would have brought in
substantial booty. This leaves trade as the remaining possibility. To establish whether
it is a sufficient explanation, we need to understand its nature and quantum, and the
people involved.

2.1 Silver in trade

At the beginning of the sixth century, the honourable source of wealth at Athens was
landed property.11 In fact, Solon’s reforms directly linked (or reinforced the link of)
agricultural produce with status and position.12 Most economic activities were house-
hold based, and agricultural production probably rarely resulted in more than a small

7 I exclude gift exchange as an adequate basis.

8 Mycenaean exploitation – N. Gale, W. Gentner and G. Wagner, “Mineralogical and geographical
Silver Sources of Archaic Greek Coinage” in D. Metcalf and W. Oddy (eds.), Metallurgy in numis-
matics, Vol. 1, (London 1980) 29, n. 4. Sixth-century mining – see O. Picard, “La découverte des
gisements du Laurion et les débuts de la chouette”, RBN (2001) 1–10 who demonstrated that mining
must have been occurring from around 540 BCE.
9 This is generally accepted based mainly on Gale et al., Silver Sources (as in n. 8).
10 Hdt. 1.64.1 supplemented by Ath. Pol. 15.2. B. Lavelle, “The Peisistratids and the mines of Thrace”,
GRBS 33 (1992) 5–23 argued that the Peisistratids could only have derived negligible income from
this source because (1) there is no archaeological evidence for an archaic Athenian settlement, (2)
Peisistratos still needed contributions from allies, (3) Thucydides did not mention this source of
revenue, (4) there is no proof of where the metal for their coinage came from, and (5) the coinage
was minimal. I do not believe any of these points is decisive enough to overrule the literary evidence.
In particular, the remains of an Athenian settlement could lie undiscovered in many parts of the
Strymon region.
11 Notwithstanding Plutarch’s rationalising attempt to portray merchants in a good light – cf. Sol. 2.3–4.
12 Ath. Pol. 7.3–4.

surplus.13 There was some manufacture and trade, with evidence for export of Attic
‘SOS’ amphoras dating to the seventh century. Pottery vessels have been found through-
out the Mediterranean and even the Black Sea. There is some suggestion they may not
have been carried on Athenian ships,14 but there can be little doubt that Athens was
linked in to wide-ranging networks of trade and exchange. Trade required (in modern
economic jargon) either a ‘comparative advantage’ – the ability to provide goods at a
lower cost than competitors, or a ‘competitive advantage’ – the creation of premium
quality goods to sell at high prices which outperform competitors. Sixth-century Ath-
ens increasingly did both in the form of exporting olive oil and ‘luxury’ goods such
as perfume and pottery.15
Trade was conducted by individuals, not the state, and those individuals were usu-
ally foreigners.16 Merchants, as Dietler put it, “by virtue of specialized knowledge of
disparate markets, were able to make connections between areas with complementary
sets of demands and goods to exchange”.17 Their motive was profit. It is unlikely these

13 Claims have been made that the land was being more intensively cultivated, principally to back
theories of the nature of the conflict Solon had to resolve, but the evidence from survey archaeology
is unsupportive – see S. Forsdyke, “Land, Labor and Economy in Solonian Athens: breaking the
impasse between archaeology and history” in J. Blok and A. Lardinois (eds.), Solon of Athens: New
Historical and Philological Approaches (Leiden 2006) 341–2 with references. See the Annexure
regarding the statistical chance of surplus or famine.
14 Some ancient testimony supports the notion that early Attic SOS amphoras may have been transported
by the Phoenicians (e. g., Pseudo-Skylax, Periplous 112). See M. Aubet, The Phoenicians and the
West: Politics, colonies and trade (Cambridge 1993) 287, S. Houby-Nielsen, “Attica: a view from
the sea” in K. Raaflaub and H. van Wees (eds.), A Companion to Archaic Greece (West Sussex 2009)
198, and D. Gill, “Pots and trade: spacefillers or objets d’art?”, JHS 111 (1991) 40–42.
15 ‘Luxury’ is not really an adequate term despite its widespread use in ancient history discourse. I use it
in the sense of distinguishing goods of high value relative to their bulk, from ‘staples’ or ‘necessities’.
It is a complex issue for which see N. Morley, Trade in classical antiquity (Cambridge 2007) 39–43.
L. Foxhall, “Village to city: staples and luxuries? Exchange networks and urbanization”, in R.
Osborne and B. Cunliffe (Eds.) Mediterranean Urbanization 800–600 BC (Oxford 2005) 240 used
the terms ‘everyday luxuries’, ‘semi-luxuries’, and ‘delicacies’ as they describe imports consumed
occasionally by non-elites as well as by elites in greater quantities. Gill, Pots and trade (as in n. 14)
29–47 argued from shipwreck evidence that pottery itself was of relatively minor importance in
trade and merely accompanied more bulky goods.
16 S. Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London 1978) 70, 160, 167–9 showed this was the
case even in the Homeric texts, notwithstanding examples of aristocrats travelling to finance the
acquisition of goods and luxuries for their own use. For a contrary view see D. Tandy, Warriors
into Traders: The Power of the Market in Early Greece (Berkeley. Los Angeles 1997) 4, and for a
balanced summary see C. Reed, Maritime Traders in the Ancient Greek World (Cambridge 2003)
64–5.
17 M. Dietler, Archaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient
Mediterranean France (Berkeley, Los Angeles 2010) 100. I accept that Archaic Greece was “a
world of interdependent markets” where “those engaged in trade (were) aware of varying demand
for particular commodities in different places” – R. Osborne, “Pots, Trade and the Archaic Greek
Economy”, Antiquity 70 (1996) 31.

people were Athenian Eupatridai, unless they were impoverished.18 Members of wealthy
citizen families could profit through owning ships, or selling goods from their estates
to the traders,19 but they “were not the ones to sail off and haggle with ‘barbarians’ ”.20
Ship owners were naukleroi, and distinct in the sources from emporoi who were the
actual traders.21 This is important when we come to consider the later literary evidence
about naukleroi. Some of the ships may have been quite small, and suited to local cabo-
tage, hawking goods along the coast, such as the triakonta (thirty-oared vessel) used in
Solon’s raid on Salamis.22
It is unlikely the polis took a direct interest in trade in Solon’s time except possibly
to tax imports and exports.23 This is because Athens had rudimentary institutional and
bureaucratic structures.24 There was no standing military force.25 There were few (and
modest) public buildings, and little by way of infrastructure works.26 This meant the
polis must have had minimal requirement for money. Well attested ‘Solonian’ meas-
ures may have actually reduced economic activities. The cancellation of debts was, in
economic terms, a huge ‘sovereign risk’, and it is not surprising Plutarch records that

18 B. Bravo, “Remarques sur les assises socials, les formes d’organisation et la terminologie du com-
merce maritime grec à l’époque archaïque”, Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 3 (1977) 24–5 made this
suggestion. Solon himself is a good example, cf. Plut. Sol. 2.1.
19 Financing trade is another possible way in which wealthy people could profit discreetly. However,
we have no evidence for bottomry loans before the fourth century, though their existence is inferred
by some in the early to mid-fifth century, cf. Reed, Maritime traders (as in n. 16) 40–1.
20 Dietler, Archaeologies (as in n. 17) 142.
21 Reed, Maritime Traders (as in n. 16) 9 and 12.
22 Plut. Sol. 8.2.
23 Dietler, Archaeologies (as in n. 17) 140. As trade developed, there would have been increased need
for harbour infrastructure, a dedicated market space (emporion), and laws to deal with disputes, but
there is little evidence for this before the Late Archaic Period.
24 There were holders of official posts, though their roles and functions are debatable. For instance, in
the ‘Kylonian conspiracy’ of ca. 630 BCE, the officials were either naukraroi or archons. We learn
of basileis, ephetes, thesmotetes, and a polemarch, along with bodies such as the Areopagos, courts
and a general assembly, but it is unlikely any of these required a paid secretariat.
25 F. Frost, “The Athenian Military before Cleisthenes”, Historia 33 (1984) 283–94 convincingly
demonstrated that there was no state army until the citizen hoplite army created by Kleisthenes’
reforms, except for the forces maintained by the tyrants. Warfare at the beginning of the century
was characterised by thieving raids (cf. Dig. 47.22.4 = E. Ruschenbusch, Solonos nomoi [Weisbaden
1966] fr. 76a) and border conflicts. Expeditions were manned on a volunteer basis, such as Plutarch’s
report of Solon’s capture of Salamis (Plut. Sol. 9.2).
26 Athens in the seventh century had been in Camp’s word ‘quiescent’ (J. Camp, The Athenian Agora:
Excavations in the Heart of Classical Athens [London 1986] 34). This situation changed dramatically
during the sixth century, but at the commencement of the century the process was just beginning. On
the Acropolis, there may have been a temple to Athena Polias preceding the ‘Bluebeard’ temple, and
there were possibly other buildings on its east slope – a Bouleuterion and Prytaneion were identified
by Thucydides 2.15.2 in an area plausibly identified as an early polis centre – see N. Robertson, “The
City Centre of Archaic Athens”, Hesperia 67 (1998) 283–302. Financing possibly came privately
from aristocrats as prestige offerings. We have no evidence for any substantial infrastructure works.

“the rich were vexed because he took away their security” (Sol. 16.1), and profiteering
(insider trading) was alleged to have occurred (Sol. 15.6–7, Ath. Pol. 6.2). Security for
domestic loans was diminished by the law against borrowing on the person of the bor-
rower (Sol. 15.4).
One measure we hear of which may have directly affected trade was Solon’s law
against selling Athenians into slavery, potentially a lucrative cargo, but this was for
political and social, not economic reasons. 27 Another alleged measure was the banning
of the export of all agricultural produce except oil (Plut. Sol. 24.1). In theory, this would
have lowered food prices temporarily until production of non-exportable produce fell
to the reduced level of demand, and distorted the market.28 However, Frost usefully
asked: “Would such a ‘law’ have prevented Marathonians from trading with the Euboian
coastal towns?”29 Foxhall noted that it would almost certainly have been unenforceable
with the limited coercive powers of the state at the time, and that the measure is not
well supported archaeologically, given that amphoras from the period probably carried
wine as well as oil.30 I suspect that not much agricultural produce was being exported
given the competing local demand, the costs and economies of scale required to ex-
port bulky goods efficiently, the cost of risk of loss, and the prudent requirement for
a farmer to retain a surplus against future crop failure.31 Furthermore, Osborne noted
that regular trade links as evidenced by the pottery finds “presuppose more or less con-
sistent exchange patterns, not the capricious patterns which are the product of periodic
agricultural crisis”.32 The ‘law’ recorded by Plutarch may therefore just have been a
later explanation for an economic reality.

27 Slave trading is generally an archaeologically invisible cargo, but can be inferred from Solon’s
poems, cf. M. West, Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum Cantati II (Oxford 1998) fr. 4.17–25
and 36.8–12. Homeric and archaic slavery is discussed in Humphreys, Anthropology (as in n. 16)
161–4.
28 See G. Stanton, Athenian Politics c. 800–500 BC: a sourcebook (London and New York 1990)
60, n. 1 and 65, n. 1. Methodologically I fully agree with Prof. Stanton (in a comment made to me
privately) that we should accept what the ancient sources say unless there is some reason to reject it.
However, for the reasons following in this paper, I suspect Plutarch was providing a later explanation,
or possibly even recording a law enacted later than Solon.
29 F. Frost, “The Rural Demes of Attica”, Politics and the Athenians (Toronto 2005) 14, n. 4 (originally
in W. Coulson et al. [eds.] The archaeology of Athens and Attica under the democracy [Oxford
1994]).
30 L. Foxhall, Olive Cultivation in Ancient Greece: Seeking the Ancient Economy (Oxford 2007) 16–17.
Also see note 34.
31 The price paid locally for grain should generally have exceeded the price able to be paid by an
importer covering large costs and risk (including loss from piracy and shipwreck) – see the Annexure
on price volatility and statistical risk of crop failure. Export of other, less bulky agricultural produce
is certainly possible, such as wool and textiles, olives, pomegranates and so forth, but these are rarely
visible in the archaeological record. Attica was later a net importer of food, especially of grain in
the fourth century.
32 Osborne, Pots (as in n. 17) 39.

Archaeological evidence demonstrates that non-domestic markets were very nar-

rowly targeted.33 For instance, the market in southern France was restricted to wine and
drinking ceramics, including Attic drinking cups.34 This is not particularly surprising.
Traders would have learnt early on that demand is not based primarily on availability
of goods. Buyers have to want a product, and be willing and able to afford it.35
So where were Athenian products sold in Solon’s time? Osborne has analysed
pottery finds for the sixth century.36 His statistics reveal that “Most Athenian pottery
manufactured in the first quarter of the 6th century has been found in Athens and At-
tica”. Specifically, he tabulated 310 items of which 207 (67 %) were found in Attica.
The remainder travelled mostly to Aigina, Naukratis, and Vari (in Etruria), with scat-
tered finds elsewhere.37 Gallant stated there was very small pottery production in the
first quarter of the century. He arrived “at a figure of 10–15 men working at any one
time”.38 Webster recorded a mere eight painters and five groups for the entire period.39
Osborne’s figures then show that in the second quarter, pottery production had more than
doubled (310 to 810), albeit off a very low base, with only 237 (29 %) found in Attica,
and the rest widely distributed from Marseille to Naukratis.40 In the second half of the
century, production increased dramatically with distribution all around the Mediterra-
nean and Black Sea, and Attic pottery was driving Corinthian pottery from the market.41
The relationship between “surviving and vanished pots is uncertain”, though various
guesses as to a likely multiplier have been made, based (it seems to me) on numbers that
writers imagine ought to have been there.42 More useful for this study is the trend of
almost exponential growth of numbers of surviving pots from relatively small numbers
at the beginning of the sixth century to large numbers at its end. This virtually forces
the conclusion that income to the polis in silver from taxation of trade in Solon’s time

33 Dietler, Archaeologies (as in n. 17) 194. The evidence comes from finds in excavations and shipwrecks.
34 All from Dietler, Archaeologies (as in n. 17) 194–6. We know the amphoras were used for wine from
the presence of pitch lining their interiors. They cannot have been used for olive oil, because pitch
is soluble in oil.
35 There has been a great deal written recently on demand. See especially L. Foxhall, “Cargoes of the
Heart’s Desire: the Character of Trade in the Archaic Mediterranean World”, in N. Fisher and H.
Van Wees (eds.), Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence (London 1998) 295–309.
36 Osborne, Pots (as in n. 17) 31–44. The quotation in the next sentence is from p. 34.
37 Our knowledge of the distribution of wares is strongly influenced by “the vagaries of excavation,
identification and publication” (Osborne, Pots [as in n. 17] 31). However, the fact that quantities
were substantially less in the first quarter of the sixth century than later seems undeniable.
38 T. Gallant, “Agricultural Systems, Land Tenure, and Reforms of Solon”, BSA 77 (1982) 121.
39 T. Webster, Potter and Patron in Classical Athens (London 1972) 2.
40 Osborne, Pots (as in n. 17) 36–7.
41 H. Shapiro, Art and Cult under the Tyrants in Athens (Mainz 1989) 10. The same trend was tabulated
by Gill, Pots and trade (as in n. 14) 47, Table E for imported Greek pottery arriving in Etruria (using
Meyer’s data). Attic pottery: 625–600 – 1 (0.04 %); 600–575 – 17 (0.68 %); 575–550 – 99 (3.96 %);
550–525 – 443 (17.72 %); 525–500 – 1470 (39.32 %).
42 Osborne, Pots (as in n. 17) 40 summarised these.

must have been minimal. It could not have constituted an adequate supply of silver to
operate a silver standard.
The situation had changed dramatically by the second half of the century. The sub-
stantially growing maritime trade would have brought in port taxes. There was increas-
ing urbanisation, building, and specialisation of manufacturing.43 These required raw
materials, labour, some of it brought in or attracted from abroad, and most importantly,
finance. Peisistratos had to pay his mercenaries, and fought wars.44 Arguably, these are
the circumstances which led to official monetary change. Until then, ubiquitous barley
was an adequate monetary standard as an official means of specifying value, but Descat
is probably correct in characterising the economy as one employing “multiple money”.45
By this he meant anything that was commonly accepted, including barley, livestock, and
precious metals. However, commodities would not have been the ideal denominator for
more complex trading transactions involving people outside Athens on account of their
price volatility, and bulky, ephemeral nature.46 Precious metals would gradually have
become more and more acceptable because of their durability, portability, and accept-
ability by trading partners. When the State intervened by adopting the Ionian system
of a legally supported and guaranteed currency, all transactions would have had to be
performed and expressed in the State’s coinage. This enhanced State control, with a
financial benefit to the polis through a charge on minting.

43 Urbanisation – see I. Morris, “The early polis as City and State” in J. Rich and A. Wallace-Hadrill
(eds.), City and Country in the Ancient World (London/New York 1991) 25–57; building – see J.
Boersma, “Peisistratos: building activity reconsidered” in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (ed.), Peisistratos
and the Tyranny: a Reappraisal of the Evidence (Amsterdam 2000) 49–56; specialisation – see
Osborne, Pots (as in n. 17) 31 who recorded that 96 % of the production of the Nikosthenic workshop
went to the Etruscan area. I do not propose to enter into the discussion of how much of the building
work was directly attributable to Peisistratos, just to note that it was occurring. For a general summary,
see Houby-Nielsen, Attica (as in n. 14) 206–7.
44 Herodotos 5.94.1 mentioned that Peisistratos seized Sigeion in Asia Minor from the Mytilenians,
and maintained overlordship of the Chersonese (Hdt. 6.35–41), which Miltiades obtained with the
help of mercenaries (Hdt. 6.39.2). Peisistratos himself used mercenaries to help establish his tyranny
(Hdt. 1.61.4 and 1.63.1).
45 R. Descat, “Monnaie multiple et monnaie frappée en Grèce archaïque“, RN, 6th series, 157 (2001)
71.
46 See the Annexure. People had been paid in grain and other produce in Egypt for millennia, and
this practice would continue into Hellenistic times. Cf. D. Crawford, “Food: tradition and change
in Hellenistic Egypt”, World Archaeology 11 (1979) 136–46. However, Egypt had long-standing
traditions and administrative practices quite different from Mesopotamia and Greece, and the worker
payments were within the domestic economy.

3. Archaeological evidence for silver use before coinage

There are no recorded finds of Hacksilber (silver as bullion) in Athens or mainland

Greece dating to the sixth century. Kroll accounted for this evidential deficiency by
appealing to:
“the minimal value that such scraps of silver could command on the antiquities
market; any chance finder or clandestine excavator of a silver hoard would have
little choice but to melt it down. As for controlled excavations, it is usually cem-
eteries and sanctuaries that produce 8th- and 7th-century finds in metal; early strata
of urban sites, where savings are most likely to have been secreted, were normally
chewed up and plundered in later building activities”.47
These points were well made, but Hacksilber hoards have been found throughout the
Near East where silver was used in commerce.48 Mixed hoards of sixth-century Hack-
silber and coinage have also been found in Magna Graecia and the Greek East, but none
in mainland Greece.49 Controlled excavations over many decades have been conducted
in many ancient Greek mainland poleis and sanctuaries, which make it increasingly
unlikely such deposits would have left no trace if they existed.50 Markoe concluded
that the “exclusive presence of gold and the corresponding absence of silver in tombs
and deposits of this time lead to a single conclusion: that there was neither a market for
silver at this time in Greece nor was there any native silverworking tradition”.51 The
problem may be indicative of a lack of supply of silver, or expertise, or both. Triester
noted: “In contrast to the Classical period the treatment of precious metals was not
developed in the Athenian workshops; all that is known is one silver sphinx dated to
ca. 560 B. C.”52
The archaeological evidence points to very little use of silver in Athens in the first
half of the sixth century. Can this be accounted for purely in terms of survival? In the
Classical Period, there is good evidence that silver and gold objects such as cups were
usually made to standardised coin weights. Vickers and Gill usefully summarised the

47 Kroll, Observations (as in n. 6) 78.

48 Over two dozen according to Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 229.
49 Kroll, Weighed Bullion (as in n. 6) 24–35 conceded this, as well as providing details of bullion
finds in Magna Grecia, but he pointed to the “asymmetry of Greek vs. NE excavation” (in private
correspondence). Kroll, Observations (as in n. 6) 77–8 himself reported upon a find of ‘Hackgold’
from late eighth-century Eretria.
50 G. Markoe, “In Pursuit of Metals: Phoenicians and Greeks in Italy”, in G. Kopcke and I. Tokumaru
(Eds.) Greece between East and West: 10th–8th centuries BC. (Mainz 1992) 70 noted the “paucity of
native-manufactured silverwork in late 8th- and 7th-century Greece is accompanied by a corresponding
absence of Near Eastern silver imports”, especially notable at the major sanctuary sites of Delphi
and Olympia where such objects might be expected.
51 Markoe, Metals (as in n. 50) 71.
52 M. Yu Treister, The Role of Metals in Ancient Greek History (Leiden 1996) 63. Silver was natively
found in northern Etruria – Markoe, Metals (as in n. 50) 73.

recorded weights of silver dedications in the Pronaos of the Parthenon dating to near the
end of the third quarter of the fifth century.53 They noted that the “inventories appear to
show a preponderance of material made to a Persian, as opposed to an Attic standard”.54
This implies that even then they were still rare and frequently imported from the east,55
notwithstanding the enormous output from Athenian silver mines. A silver cup in Aris-
tophanes Babylonians 68 was used to make a payment, but it was a major asset valued in
minas.56 This was presumably beyond the reach of all but the wealthier Athenians, and
makes it unlikely that silver objects, other than coinage, were ever in wide general use.

4. The adoption of coinage at Athens

In this Section, I look at how a silver standard came to be adopted in the form of coin-
age. I note at the outset that there have been many studies into the beginnings of coin-
age use in Greek poleis, and they tend to look for generally applicable reasons for its
invention and spread.57 Ideally, it would be preferable to base this understanding on
detailed knowledge of the particular circumstances in each case, but for most Greek
poleis such knowledge is not available. However, we do know that by the time Athens
introduced coinage, it was already a well known phenomenon in Ionian poleis and
possibly elsewhere.58 This suggests that it could have been implemented rapidly us-

53 M. Vickers and D. Gill, Artful Crafts: Ancient Greek Silverware and Pottery (Oxford 1994) 46–51.
The exact dating is contested, but unimportant here.
54 Vickers and Gill, Artful Crafts (as in n. 53) 49.
55 I do not accept the unjustified assertion in Vickers and Gill, Artful Crafts (as in n. 53) 49 that “there
is some evidence that the Persian standard was in general use at Athens even in the thirties and
twenties of the fifth century”.
56 The debt was 200 drachmas (2 minas). It was normal for valuable objects to be valued in round
figures of minas – cf. Vickers and Gill, Artful Crafts (as in n. 53) 40–1.
57 The spread of coinage was not uniform or universal. See C. Kraay, “Hoards, small change and the
origin of coinage”, JHS 84 (1964) 76–91 for a general summary, and more recently G. Le Rider, La
naissance de la monnaie: Pratiques monétaires de l’Orient ancien (Paris 2001) 71 ff., and H. Kim,
“Small change and the moneyed economy”, in P. Cartledge, E. Cohen and L. Foxhall (eds.), Money,
Labour and Land: Approaches to the Economies of Ancient Greece (London and New York 2002)
44–51.
58 It has usually been stated that Aigina’s coinage predated that of Athens. Kroll and Waggoner, Dating
(as in n. 3) 335 ff., and T. Figueira, Aegina, Society and Economy (New York 1981) Chapter 2 both
suggested a date in the second quarter of the sixth century, but this is now considered to be too
early (including by Kroll in private correspondence). K. Sheedy, The Archaic and Early Classical
Coinages of the Cyclades (London 2006) 6–10 dated his Phase 1a of the Aiginetan coinage to
c. 555–550 BCE based on counting back issues from the Apadama foundation deposit at Persepolis
(now convincingly dated to 515–510 BCE) which contained a Phase 2b silver stater. However, H.
Nicolet-Pierre, Numismatique grecque (Paris 2002) 137 argued that there is no conclusive evidence
of Aiginetan coinage before the last quarter of the sixth century, and sought to compress the earlier
issues into a shorter time span making it roughly contemporary with, or later than the introduction
of coinage at Athens.

ing some other system as a model, albeit with local variation. Weighed silver probably
already had a growing role in trade, but silver would only be accepted outside the polis
at its bullion value. Any minting costs would be a loss to the merchant.59 This provides
an explanation for the hoard found at Kolophon dated to the late sixth century, which
attests to the introduction of a “bi-specie monetary system: small coins for very low
level transactions, and bullion weighed on the balance for transactions involving more
substantial sums”.60 Of key importance here is the fact that the use of coined money at
Kolophon was apparently implemented in a very short period.61

4.1 Coinage at Athens

When the Athenians adopted coinage in the second half of the sixth century, their earli-
est coinage known as Wappenmünzen had the following characteristics:
1. Use of both electrum and silver apparently concurrently62
2. Multiple types
3. Abundant fractions (coinage denominations of a drachma or less)
Each of these characteristics must have had a function or purpose that requires explanation.
Both the silver and electrum coinage appear to be based on the Attic-Euboic standard.
They must have been related by weight and value but we do not understand how.63 The

59 Prior to the availability and wide acceptance of so-called ‘trade coinages’ such as Athens’ coinage
became in the Classical Period.
60 H. Kim and J. Kroll, “A Hoard of Archaic Coins of Colophon and Unminted Silver (CH I.3)”, AJN
Second Series 20 (2008) 53.
61 The authors noted that “[i]n all likelihood, the coinage entered circulation in two contiguous phases,
beginning with a sizeable initial issue” – Kim and Kroll, Colophon (as in n. 60) 61. The authors
contended that silver bullion use was already well established, and the introduction of coinage
extended its use for low value transactions.
62 A summary of Athenian electrum coinage is in J. Jongkees, “Notes on the coinage of Athens”,
Mnemosyne 12 (1945) 81–117, but much more work needs to be done especially as regards dating.
Electrum coinage is part of the ‘Early Attic Coin Project’ at Macquarie University, Sydney – a
comprehensive new study of early Attic coinage down to 480/79 BCE being undertaken by the writer
and Dr. Kenneth Sheedy. A sufficient number of the find spots of electrum coins were in Attica for
there to be little doubt they were Athenian. The principal types of the owl, bull and wheel reinforce
this. Some scholars with very good eyes have identified a D on the reverse of the owls. This could
be an alpha for Athens (Jongkees, Notes [as above] 94–6 and Kroll, Wappenmünzen [as in n. 6] 8,
n. 26), a delta for Delphi (J. Six, “Monnaies grecques inédites et incertaines”, NC [1895] 179) or
Delos (C. Seltman, Athens: its History and Coinage before the Persian Invasion [Cambridge 1924,
reprint Chicago 1974] 81), or no letter at all. Kroll, Wappenmünzen (as in n. 6) 8, n. 26 proposed
that it is the same alpha or alpha-tau monogram found on some bronze spearheads on the Acropolis,
and as a shield device on later Athenian armour tokens.
63 According to the frequency table of Jongkees, Notes (as in n. 62) 97, the normal weight of a hemihekte
was 1.35 grams. It should be noted that for the electrum coins (unlike the silver coins), there is very

weight of an electrum hemihekte equalled approximately one sixth of a silver didrachm.64

However, in value the electrum coin would have been worth many times more than a sixth
of a silver didrachm. Jongkees suggested that the electrum hemihekte equalled a silver
tetradrachm in value, meaning that “the ratio of electrum to silver would then be about
12,6 which is not inconceivable in a country which possessed silver mines, but had to im-
port its electrum”.65 This ratio seems too high, and a better explanation is required for the
existence of a bi-metallic currency.66 It may relate to a distinction in use. Wappenmünzen
coinage has not been found in any appreciable quantity outside Attica,67 meaning it was
used for intra-polis transactions, rather than inter-poleis trade like Aiginetan coinage.68
The fact it was dominated by fractions suggests silver filled a need for small coinage in
the Agora.69 The more valuable electrum coins could have been used for larger transac-
tions and wealth storage, before being replaced by tetradrachms at the end of the Wap-
penmünzen series. More likely, it was a function of supply – the Athenian polis minted in

little weight variation with most examples falling within 5 %. The exceptions were the ‘eye’ and
‘flying beetle’ types which I suspect were not Athenian.
64 This is understandable considering the Attic use of a duodecimal and decimal system. For instance,
there were six obols in a drachma, but 100 drachmas in a mina.
65 Jongkees, Notes (as in n. 62) 98.
66 See the article on the relationship of electrum to silver and gold by J. Melville-Jones, “The value
of electrum in Greece and Asia” in R. Ashton and S. Hurter (eds.), Studies in Greek Numismatics
in Memory of Martin Jessop Price (London 1998) 380–93. He demonstrated that in 409/8 BCE the
ratio of electrum to silver was 6.66 to 6.75:1. At its highest, it is unlikely the ratio exceeded 10:1,
and by the end of the sixth century, cementation was a well known technique for separating electrum
into its main constituent parts.
67 A careful study of provenances is part of the ‘Early Attic Coinage Project’ – cf. n. 62. The clearest
understanding of provenance comes from hoards. The overwhelming majority of Wappenmünzen
have been found in Attica or Euboia, with only occasional examples elsewhere – Kraay, Hoards (as
in n. 57) 80–81 provided a summary. However, it should be noted that Kraay’s list included several
finds of ‘wheels’. I have argued elsewhere (G. Davis, “Where are all the little owls?” in R. Pitt and
A. Matthaiou [eds.], Festschrift in honour of Harold Mattingly [forthcoming]), that these may be late
sixth to early fifth century in date. Furthermore, the Sakha Hoard (IGCH 1639) found in Egypt which
contains the two horse-type Wappenmünzen didrachms probably dates to the early fifth century, and
its assortment of coins from very many different poleis and bullion suggests the hoard was valued
as bullion.
68 A crucial difference of Aiginetan coinage from earlier coinage was the use of a single static type.
This may be explained in terms of the primary motivation for introduction of coinage at Aigina being
inter-poleis trade, rather than internal use as in Lydia, or trade that was dominated by Lydia. Aiginetan
‘turtles’ acquired a wide degree of acceptance outside Aigina, and especially in the Peloponnesos
where the Aiginetans traded. This is confirmed by historical sources (Pollux 9. 74 and Hesykhios
s. v. chelōnē), and the adoption by other poleis of the Aiginetan standard. Use of large denominations
was a characteristic of trade coinages such as the later Athenian tetradrachm. There was relatively
little fractional coinage because the smaller denominations were only required for local use.
69 See Davis, Owls (as in n. 67): 79 % of Wappenmünzen were found to be fractions in a survey of
all early Attic coins in coin catalogues carried out by the author. It is also amply demonstrated in
Seltman, Athens (as in n. 62) – see types B and D, even though his interest in assembling fractions
was restricted.

electrum when it obtained a supply of that metal. It is important to note for the purposes
of this study that initially the number of Wappenmünzen minted, though not insubstantial,
must have been limited compared with later issues, with considerable increase in the last
quarter of the sixth century.70
The multiple types followed the Ionian pattern, and are similarly best explained
as magistrates’ devices.71 The Athenians regarded themselves as autochthonous Ioni-
ans with strong links to their brethren in western Asia Minor, and it seems clear that
Ionian practices exerted strong influence over them.72 Furthermore, it appears certain
that coinage was first introduced to Athens by Peisistratos only after he had secured
his pre-eminence in 545 BCE.73 It is plausible that while in exile gathering troops and
chrēmata, he came to understand the practicality of coinage as used in Ionia. Some of
the mercenaries whom he recruited may have wished to be paid in electrum currency if
this was familiar to them.74 However, electrum would have been a limited and expen-
sive resource to import. According to literary evidence, Peisistratos subsequently had

70 The ‘Early Attic Coin Project’ (cf. n. 62) will also provide a better understanding of the number of
dies than currently available using Seltman, Athens (as in n. 62). It is difficult to assess how many
coins a single die could strike, even if it were used until it broke. F. de Callataÿ, Quantifications et
numismatique antique: choix d’articles 1984 – 2004 (Belgium 2006) summarised the scholarship and
suggested between 10,000–30,000 coins per die. We should assume the very earliest dies performed
much less well than later ones. For the sake of calculation, 1,000 didrachms = 0.3 Attic talents = ca.
8.6 kg of silver.
71 A useful summary of the types and the problems with current theories can be found in C. Flament,
Le monnayage en argent d’Athènes: De l’époque archaïque à l’époque hellénistique (c. 550 – c. 40
av. J.-C.), (Belgium 2007) 9–16.
72 Solon called Athens the “most ancient land of Ionia” (West, Iambi [as in n. 27] fr. 4a). Kroll,
Wappenmünzen (as in n. 6) 7 put it well: – “under the cultural patronage of the Peisistratids an
unprecedented wave of Ionian influence all but transformed Athenian architecture and sculpture”
with references p. 7, n. 25.
73 I broadly follow the reasoning provided by Kroll, Wappenmünzen (as in n. 6) 23 based on counting
back annual issues from the inception of the first ‘owls’. He concluded on page 30 that the
Wappenmünzen were “initiated between 546 and ca. 535”. However, I note the point made by Fla-
ment, Monnayage (as in n. 71) 16 that “rien n’atteste qu’Athènes, à cette époque, frappait monnaie
chaque année”.
74 For Peisistratid use of “numerous mercenaries” see Herodotos 1.64.1. Many were from Argos
(1.61.4) – one thousand according to Ath. Pol. 17.3. Herodotus 6.39.2 recorded that Miltiades under
the Peisistratids in the Chersonese employed five hundred mercenaries. Mercenary use may account
for the find of two electrum scarabs at Ephesos which the excavator suggested were Attic from their
fabric, weight and type, but “the Euboic standard was in use in many places besides Athens” – see
D. Hogarth (ed.), British Museum Excavations at Ephesus, the Archaic Artemisia (London 1908) 87,
Nos 81 and 83. I do not mean to reprise Cook’s discredited association of royal Lydian electrum with
Asia Minor mercenaries as the reason coinage was invented (R. Cook, “Speculations on the Origin
of Coinage”, Historia 7 [1958] 259–60). Rather I suggest that the mercenaries known to have been
employed by Peisistratos may have wished to be paid in a type of currency more familiar to them,
and that mercenaries more generally in the Near East would have been paid in bullion for a long
time. Possibly mercenary pay was a source of precious metal back to Greece in the Archaic Period.

access to better silver supplies from Attica and north-east Greece which he could use
for local currency.75
Coins may have been viewed with suspicion by members of any society using them
for the first time, and especially at Athens where the weights of the early coins varied quite
considerably. The histograms provided by Hopper show a 23 % difference between the
lowest and highest weight of the didrachms (7.4–9.1g).76 Even the centre of the histogram
(close to the point of maximum frequency with approximately 85 % of the coins) has an
8.75 % range (8–8.7g). The differences were more pronounced for the wheel drachmas
(46 % difference overall and 10 % at the centre), and the horse hindquarter drachmas
(90 % difference overall and 28.5 % at the centre). It seems clear the denomination could
not have been relied upon for the intrinsic value of any particular coin. Indeed Carradice
and Price argued that the “invention of coinage did not by any means spell the end of
the age-old practice of weighing in transactions”.77 However, this can only have been
the case for bullion, as in the case of Kolophon mentioned earlier. When a polis adopted
coinage, it guaranteed the value of its currency at a premium above its bullion value, and
therefore must have enforced its exclusive use as dokimon (state-approved legal tender).78

75 Herodotos 1.64.1 related that Peisistratos was “drawing increased revenues from both Attica itself
and from the region of the river Strymon” (trans. A. Purvis in R. Strassler, [ed.] The Landmark
Herodotus: the Histories [New York 2007] 36). Electrum was also mined and panned in the Pangeion
region of Thrace and some local cities like Dikaia minted an electrum coinage. Support for a non-
Laurion, volcanic origin of the silver used in the Wappenmünzen comes from the metal analysis by
H. Nicolet-Pierre, ‘Monnaies archaïques d’Athènes sous Pisistrate et les Pisistratides (c. 545 – c.
510). II. Recherches sur la composition métallique des Wappenmünzen, en collaboration avec Jean-
Yves Calvez’, RN, 6th series 27 (1985) 30–31. However, this need not have been the only source. I
favour the suggestion of Kroll, Weighed Bullion (as in n. 6) n. 74 that a substantial part of the original
source of Wappenmünzen silver could have been recycled bullion already on hand. When silver has
been mixed, it is impossible to accurately determine its sources by analysis.
76 R. Hopper, “Observations on the Wappenmünzen” in C. Kraay and G. Jenkins (eds.) Essays in Greek
Coinage presented to S. Robinson (Oxford 1968) 16–39 36–7 re-analysed the material collected in
Seltman, Athens (as in n. 62).
77 I. Carradice and M. Price, Coinage in the Ancient Greek world (Los Angeles 1988) 22.
78 Some have suggested that the earliest coins were produced by other trusted authorities, such
as moneyers, not necessarily the king, cf. A. Furtwängler, “Neue Beobachtungen zur frühesten
Münzprägung”, Schweizerische Numismatische Rundschau 15 (1986) 153–65. However, this
view has little current support. M. Price commented at the end of a paper by R. Wallace, “On the
production and exchange of early Anatolian electrum coinages”, in Revue des Études Anciennes 91
(1989) 87–96 (p. 95) that “There can be little doubt that the earliest coinage in electrum was valued
at an artificial rate in excess of the value as bullion…If that is the case, the exact weight of each
piece may not be so significant… Much more important would be the need for the mint workers to
produce a particular number of coins from a given amount of metal”.

5. Contemporary silver use in western Asia Minor

I now wish to examine Western Asia in more detail, which Kroll has claimed as “an
instructive monetary model”.79 He noted that there, “silver, along with grain, had been
used since the 3rd millenium for the full range of monetary purposes, including the mak-
ing of payments and lending at interest, for exchange, for the storing of wealth, and as a
standard measure of value”. In this he was undoubtedly correct, but is it a valid analogy?
The Neo-Babylonian Empire ruled from Cilicia as far south as Egypt and east to
Persia in the period from 626 to 539 BCE. It therefore was contemporary with the period
under discussion, and its zone of dominance included the Phoenician city-states in the
Levant who were major traders in the Mediterranean. The Empire was ruled by a King
who to all practical purposes was the Government, albeit hemmed in by long-standing
traditions, administration and bureaucracy. He was the most important landholder, and
through a large centralised bureaucracy he controlled land use and labour. Other impor-
tant landowners were the temples operating as an extension of government, and military
landholders with direct obligations to the crown. Although primarily an agrarian-based
economy, there was considerable specialisation of products and trade, together with
a developed system of accounting. The King needed money for vast expenditure on
public works (especially building and irrigation), his military apparatus, and patron-
age. He acquired it through taxation, feudal dues, and income from his estates. Most of
all he liked to hoard it, forcing the conversion of surpluses into non-perishable forms,
especially silver and gold.80 The temples needed to acquire basic materials not readily
available in Babylon through long distance trade, and silver was used in lieu of perish-
able foodstuffs. They also required substantial quantities of silver for manufacture of cult
objects.81 Silver was still a commodity which could be bought and sold, but it operated
within the system as a form of money as it had done for a millennium. Thus, as Van
Driel pointed out, those “hired in Babylonia to do a job in Elam were certainly paid in
silver and not primarily in agricultural goods”.82 However, the economic basis of this
system, and its need for silver, was completely different from that of Athens in Solon’s
time, and there were no (or very minimal) links between the two economies. Even in
Babylon, Bongemaar has shown that silver was too valuable to be used as everyday

79 Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 229 for this and the continuation of the quotation following.
80 G. Van Driel, Elusive Silver: in Search of a Role for a Market in an Agrarian Environment. Aspects
of Mesopotamia’s Society (Leiden 2002) 273 summarised his extensive evidence by noting: “The
land for service system had evolved into a system of taxation in which all sorts of obligations had
to be fulfilled by payments of silver”. He estimated (p. 320) that “roughly one third of agricultural
production plus what the government in all its ramifications received as a landlord” went to the King.
The massive payments continued under Persian administration according to Herodotos 3.89–98.
81 A. Bongemaar, “Money in the Neo-Babylonian Institutions”, in J. Dercksen (ed.) Trade and finance
in Ancient Mesopotamia: Proceedings of the First MOS Symposium (Leiden 1997) 167 and 171.
82 Van Driel, Elusive Silver (as in n. 80) 272.

money by the majority of the population.83 Instead, they “used agricultural and other
products as a medium of exchange on the basis of reciprocity”.84
Western Asia does provide a useful demonstration of how use of a metal as currency
is dependent upon supply.85 During the eighth century, the Neo-Assyrian empire expe-
rienced a silver shortage. This was a period of stagnation for the empire and diminished
revenues. The critical silver shortage has even been suggested as a causal factor in the
Phoenician exploitation of silver in Spain.86 As a result, copper (and bronze) was the
metal used most often as currency, and competed against silver down to the late seventh
century.87 Silver only replaced copper as the most frequently used metal following the
militarily successful campaigns of Sargon II (722–705 BCE), especially the Battle of
Carchemish (717 BCE) which resulted in the capture of huge quantities of silver, and
control of rich ore mines in the Taurus mountains. Similarly, Wallace has suggested that
large stocks of electrum were an essential pre-condition for the adoption of the first
coinages minted from that metal in Lydia and Ionia.88
Another factor should be considered. The kingdoms in the east had an insatiable
requirement for silver that could not be fully met by domestic supply.89 They would
have provided competition for Greek use of silver. This may have been exacerbated by
a general shortage of supply in the sixth century, evidenced by a possible drop in qual-
ity and quantity of silver used in the Neo-Babylonian Empire.90 By contrast in the fifth
century, when the supply of silver had increased dramatically, the Babylonian evidence
shows that the shekel only purchased on average a quarter as much barley as it had in
the sixth century.91

83 Bongemaar, Money (as in n. 81) 159–174. A shekel of silver roughly constituted a month’s pay for
the average worker.
84 Bongemaar, Money (as in n. 81) 174.
85 This information is from K. Radner, “Money in the Neo-Assyrian empire”, in J. Dercksen (ed.),
Trade and finance in ancient Mesopotamia: proceedings of the First MOS Symposium (Leiden 1997)
129.
86 Aubet, The Phoenicians (as in n. 14) 51 ff.
87 Radner, Money (as in n. 85) 129 noted that “bronze is used as a currency before and during the
reign of Adad-nērãrī III – who got 3,000 talents of bronze as tribute from Damascus – and not at all
attested afterwards”. Adad’s reign was 810–782 BCE. F. Fales, “Prices in Neo-Assyrian sources”,
State archives of Assyria Bulletin 10/1 (1987) 20 suggested that “1 mina of copper corresponded
roughly in value to 1 shekel of silver”.
88 R. Wallace, “The origin of electrum coinage”, AJA 91, 385–397.
89 This phenomenon continued into classical times. Kraay, Hoards (as in n. 57) 84 noted, “Greek coins
were attracted to the Near East as scrap silver”.
90 See P. Vargyas, A history of Babylonian prices in the first millennium BC: 1. Prices of the basic
commodities. (Heidelberg 2001) 47 ff.
91 Vargyas, Babylonian prices (as in n. 90) 128, Fig. 39.

6. Literary evidence

In this Section, I review the literary evidence in chronological order, with a focus on
its reliability and dating. Much of it comes from Plutarch and Pollux who were both
writing at the end of the second century CE when coinage was completed embedded in
the economy and society. Clearly they simply did not realise that this was not the case
in Solon’s time. It is tempting to summarily dismiss all their ‘evidence’ on the basis
that even if the Athenians had used weighed silver, these authors would not have known
that.92 However, the fourth century Athenian writers and orators also believed coinage
was used in Solon’s time. Together, their evidence preserves fragments of information
which can be extracted and interpreted especially for use of a barley standard. More im-
portantly, this is the evidence principally relied upon by proponents of a pre-Peisistratid
silver standard, and therefore it warrants full discussion.

6.1 Testimonia

a) Pollux 9.83
Pollux mentioned a tradition that the mythological kings Erikhthonios or Lykos were
the first to mint coins.93 Clearly this was an invention.

b) Plutarch, Theseus 25
“Ekoye de; kai; novmisma, bou'n ejgcaravxa~…∆Ap∆ ejkeivnou dev fasi to; eJkatovmbion
kai; to; dekavboion ojnomasqh'nai.
“He (Theseus) also struck coinage, stamping an ox upon it…From this they say
that hekatomboion and dekaboion (sacrifices of a hundred and ten oxen) got their
names”.94
Plutarch seems to be recording a memory of a time when oxen were used as a unit of
valuation, as is preserved in Homer.95 It is possible his source had some knowledge of
the ox-type of Wappenmünzen.96

92 This was suggested by one of the Journal’s readers.

93 See Ath. Pol. fr. 2. For a discussion of the treatment of these early kings by the Atthidographers see
P. Harding, The Story of Athens: the Fragments of the Local Chronicles of Attika (Abingdon and
New York 2008) 39–50. Hyginus, Fabula 274 recorded that Erikhthonios was the first “to bring
silver to Athens”.
94 Text and translation J. Melville-Jones, Testimonia Numaria: Greek and Latin texts concerning ancient
Greek coinage, Volume 1: texts and translations (London 1993) 36–37.
95 There are many examples – for instance, at Il. 23.705 the value of a slave-woman is estimated at
four oxen.
96 Cf. Seltman (as in n. 62) Group D, A49.

c) Pollux 9.60–1
Divdracmon. To; palaio;n de; tou't∆ h\n ∆Aqhnaivoi~ novmisma, kai; ejkalei'to bou'~, o{ti
bou'n ei\cen ejntetupwmevnon. eijdevnai d∆ aujto; kai; ”Omhron nomivzousin eijpovnta
ÔEkatovmboi ejnneaboivwn. [61] Kai; mh;n kajn toi'~ Dravkonto~ novmoi~ e[stin ajpotiv-
nein eijkosavboion.
“…didrachm. This last was in ancient times the coin at Athens, and was called an
ox, because it had an ox represented on it. And they consider that Homer knew this
when he said, ‘(Arms) worth a hundred oxen in exchange for those worth nine’.
And we also find in the laws of Draco, ‘to pay twenty bulls’ worth (as a fine)’”.97
The passage preserves a number of pieces of information which Pollux conflated.
Didrachms were used at Athens, but only in the second half of the sixth century, and,
as mentioned in the previous entry, one type had the image of an ox.98 The term eikos-
aboion clearly indicates that oxen were used as a valuation unit, but in Drakon’s time,
traditionally 621/0 BCE, this must refer to the animals, not the coins.

d) . 4.2–3
Chapter Four of Ath. Pol. dealt with the thesmoi of Drakon. It has a number of monetary
references including valuing property in minas (4.2), and fining Councillors in drach-
mas for failing to attend Council or Assembly meetings (4.3). These measures seem to
reflect a concern of the oligarchs in 411/10 BCE.99 Furthermore, the wealth qualifica-
tion for a general or hipparch was set higher than for an archon or treasurer, which was
appropriate in the late-fifth century but certainly not in the seventh.100 The references
are therefore anachronistic.101

97 Text and translation Melville-Jones, Testimonia Numaria 1 (as in n. 94) 440–43, No. 60. The passage
went on to mention an alternative tradition that the ox was a coin of the Delians, which J. Melville-
Jones, Testimonia Numaria: Greek and Latin texts concerning ancient Greek coinage, Volume 2:
addenda and commentary (London 2007) 287 noted is also incorrect. The Homer quotation refers
to Il. 6.234–6 when Glaukos exchanged his gold armour with Diomedes for bronze armour.
98 A similar version was picked up by the scholiast to Aristophanes, Birds 1105–8 – tw'n protevrwn
didravcmwn o[ntwn, ejpivshmon te bou'n ejcovntwn.
99 The measures include admittance to full citizenship by property qualification, and fining citizens
for not attending the Assembly, rather than paying them to attend as under the democracy. For the
latter see Rhodes, Commentary (as in n. 5) 117.
100 Rhodes, Commentary (as in n. 5) 113.
101 The chapter is widely condemned as an interpolation. The general view was well summarised by
Rhodes, Commentary (as in n. 5) 84–8 who did however admit 4.1 as being genuine. In its defence,
R. Wallace, “Aristotelian Politeiai and Athenaion Politeia 4” in R. Rosen and J. Farrell (eds.),
Nomodeiktes: Greek studies in honor of Martin Ostwald (Ann Arbor 1993) 269–286 reviewed the
arguments for dismissing the chapter and demonstrated that they are not conclusive. He concluded
that the chapter, though awkward and possibly derived from different source material from the
remainder of the work, was an original component of the Ath. Pol. Regardless of this, the monetary
references are anachronistic.

e) Solon’s verses
Solon in one of the elegies attributed to him (possibly dubiously), described wealthy
people as having “much silver and gold” along with land, horses and mules.102 Similar
references can be found in Homer, but the difference is the inclusion and primacy of sil-
ver. For instance, in the Iliad 23.262–70, prizes in the games included gold expressed in
talents, as well as livestock, cauldrons, tripods and a slave. And King Odysseus’ treasure
in his store-room included stocks of gold, bronze and wrought iron (Od. 21.9–10).103 In
Homer, silver was mentioned in decorating items such as furniture and cups. However,
all the items described by Solon were being considered as stores (and possibly displays)
of wealth, which is one function of money, but not its only one.104 There is no evidence
in the extant Solonian poems of silver being used for any other monetary function. The
word used in the quoted fragment was arguros meaning silver as a metal. It was not the
word argurion, later used as a synonym for coined money. When Solon wanted to describe
financial wealth more generally in his poems, he mostly used the word chrēmata.105 This
is the case even in the fragments quoted by Plutarch: Solon 2.3, “Chrēmata I desire to
have, but wrongfully to get it, I do not wish”; Solon 3.3, “While chrēmata change their
owners every day”; and Solon 18.4, “those who had power and chrēmata…”

102 Plut. Solon 2.2 = West, Iambi (as in n. 27) Solon fr. 24 = Theognis 719–21. Although this fragment is
much quoted in the discussion of early silver use with the primacy of silver being stressed, it should
be noted that the passage is also attributed to Theognis of Megara. Indeed, the final four lines of the
elegy are only found in Theognis (724–8).
103 See S. Morris, Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art (Princeton, New Jersey 1992) 125–149 for a
survey of the exploitation of copper and iron in the bronze and iron ages in the Mediterranean. The
suitors in Odyssey 22.57–9 also sought to buy off the wrath of Odysseus for “the value of 20 oxen”
repaid in bronze and gold.
104 K. Polanyi, in G. Dalton (ed.), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies: essays of Karl Polanyi
(New York 1968) 166–90 coined the term ‘special-purpose money’ to describe what other writers
have called in less politically correct terms ‘primitive money’, that did not fill all the functions of
‘general purpose money’ – cf. A. Hingston Quiggon, A Survey of Primitive Money (New York and
London 1949) 3–4. Bullion could fit this as it had done for centuries before without being coined,
but this merely places it in the hierarchy of exchange goods. Other necessary functions for it to
be considered true ‘money’ are to constitute the recognised measure of value, and be the generally
accepted means of payment. In the same way, cauldrons and tripods could be “used in Homeric
Greece as media of exchange without being used as standards of value” as P. Einzig, Primitive
Money (Oxford 1949) 313 pointed out. There has been extensive discussion in the literature on
this question. See L. Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games and Gold: the Politics of Meaning in Archaic
Greece (Princeton 1999) 10–11, H. Kim, “Archaic Coinage as Evidence for the Use of Money” in
A. Meadows and K. Shipton (eds.), Money and its Uses in the Ancient Greek World (Oxford 2001)
7–21, R. Seaford, Money and the Early Greek Mind (Cambridge 2004) and Sheedy, Cyclades (as in
n. 58) for differing points of view.
105 The poems contain frequent references to wealth, however, J. Lewis, Solon the Thinker: Political
Thought in Archaic Athens (London 2006) 97 noted, “The identity of wealth is ambiguous in Solon’s
fragments; the terms he uses – such as aphenos, ploutos, chrēmata, kteanon, agatha, and olbos – span
from physical goods to complex ideas associated with necessity, moral standards, social status and
political authority”.

f) Plutarch, Solon
All the evidence for the laws of Solon expressing prices in drachmas and obols comes
from Plutarch’s Life of Solon summarised in the following table. 106107108109

ITEM REFERENCE CONTEXT QUOTATION

1 21.1 Laws against The transgressor must pay106 3 drach-
slander mas to the person injured, and two
more into the public treasury.107
2 21.4 Restriction on When they (women) went out, they
women were not to carry…more than an
obol’s worth of food and drink.
3 23.1 Laws concerning If a man committed rape upon a free
violence against woman, he was merely to be fined108
women 100 drachmas; and if he gained his
end by persuasion, 20 drachmas.
4 23.3 (a) Valuations In the valuations of sacrificial offer-
ings (or property),109 at any rate, a
sheep and a drachma are reckoned at
a medimnos (of grain).

106 The verb ajpotivnein is generally translated ‘to pay’ with a monetary connotation. However, the
meaning had evolved. In West, Iambi (as in n. 27) Solon fr. 4.16 = equals Thgn. 1c it meant ‘to take
vengeance’, and in Homer, Il. 4.161 and 18.93 it had a sense of ‘to atone’.
107 Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 226 had the following addition, “For libel of the deceased, the penalties
were 5 drachmas to the family and 3 drachmas into the public treasury (cf. Plut. Solon 21.1)” citing
Ruschenbusch, Solonos Nomoi (as in n. 25) F 32, 33. I note Ruschenbusch F 32a = Plut. Solon 21.1;
F 32b = Lysias 10. 6–12 discussed penalties but not these; F 33a = F 32a; F 33b = Lex. Cantabr. 671.7
did indeed prescribe penalties for slander of the dead and the living, but they are 200 drachmas to
the State (following the restoration of J. Lipsius, Das attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren [Leipzig
1905] 650, n. 54) and 300 drachmas to the individual. Kroll’s suggestion requires emending the text,
presumably on the basis that the figures were inflated from Solon’s time.
108 The noun zhmiva means a penalty or fine in a monetary sense. Its primary meaning is loss or damage.
109 The manuscripts have ta; timhvmata tw'n qusiw'n. U. Wilcken, “Zu Solon’s Schätzungsklassen“, Hermes
63 (1928) 236–8 suggested an amendment to oujsiw'n meaning ‘property’. He himself described the
suggestion as a ‘conjecture’ and his argument was based purely on what suited his interpretation of
Solon’s reforms. Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 226–7 and 226 n. 13 strongly defended the emendation
and like Wilcken saw the extract pertaining to Solon’s property census. While the arguments have
considerable merit, they are not decisive and seem to rest on a preference for seeing the passage
dealing with property rather than sacrificial evaluations. M. Gagarin, Early Greek laws (Berkeley, Los
Angeles 1986) 71, n. 92 wrote “we should probably retain the ms. reading and assign the fragment
to Solon’s religious legislation”. G. de Ste Croix, Athenian Democratic Origins and Other Essays,
D. Harvey and R. Parker (eds.), (Oxford 2004) 45–6 was emphatic in rejecting it. In the absence of
a compelling reason, I also prefer to use the text as received.

ITEM REFERENCE CONTEXT QUOTATION

5 23.3 (b) Prizes The victor in the Isthmian Games
was to be paid 100 drachmas, and the
Olympic victor 500.
6 23.3 (c) Rewards The man who brought in a wolf was
given 5 drachmas, and for the wolf’s
whelp, 1; the former sum, accord-
ing to Demetrios of Phaleron, was
the price of an ox, the latter that of a
sheep.
7 24.1 Penalty 100 drachmas to be paid into the
public treasury by the Arkhon for
failure to pronounce curses on anyone
exporting agricultural produce other
than olive oil. Cited on the 1st axon.

As mentioned earlier, Plutarch believed that in Athens at the beginning of the sixth
century, silver was monetised to the extent that all legal penalties, commercial transac-
tions, and rewards were expressed in a common denomination of drachmas. For ‘drach-
mas’, Rhodes and Kroll ask us to understand ‘weighed silver drachmas’. However, the
examples Plutarch gave raise a number of difficulties. One of these is pricing, which
defied his best effort at rationalising: “For although the prices which Solon fixes in
his sixteenth axon are for choice victims, and naturally many times as great (as those
for ordinary ones), still, even these are low in comparison with present prices”.110 We
need an explanation for how a sheep could have only cost one drachma in Solon’s day,
when a sheep in the Athenian State calendar of sacrifices published at the end of the
fifth century cost twelve to fifteen drachmas.111 For this to be true, the earlier value of
silver must have been extremely high (assuming there was not some phenomenal glut
of livestock), and devalued as it became more abundantly available in the Aegean. The
large increase in the supply of silver at Athens, which would have caused a dramatic
reduction in the value of silver, only happened in the final quarter of the sixth century
with the exploitation of the Laurion mines.112

110 A key problem with Plutarch’s information is that he does not provide the original context, only his
Roman recontextualisation, as a reader of this paper noted.
111 The alternative is to accept, as one reader suggested, that the passage is inexplicable because it lacks
its proper context.
112 Much the same is true of the rest of the Aegean, for although the Siphnians had been exploiting their
mines from earlier in the century, the “peak of their prosperity” when they were the “wealthiest of
all the islanders” was c. 524 BCE – Hdt. 3.57.2. I also consider that the extent of their fabulous
wealth from mining has been overdramatised by modern commentators. At this financial ‘peak’, after
annual distributions of the profits of the mines to the Siphnians less a tithe to Delphi (Hdt. 3.57.2),
the Samians defeated the Siphnians and held them hostage. They succeeded in extorting 100 talents

Plutarch’s price comparisons present more serious problems. In 23.3 (Item 4) he

stated, logivzetai provbaton kai; dracmh;n ajnti; medivmnou. This was translated by Kroll
as “a sheep and a drachma are reckoned as equivalent to a medimnos” (presumably of
barley) which neatly preserves the ambiguity of the Greek.113 Waters pointed out that
technically in Greek the sentence says a sheep plus a drachma equals a medimnos.114
Alternatively, it can loosely mean a sheep equals a drachma equals a medimnos.115
Plutarch had been informed by reference to Demetrios of Phaleron that a sheep cost a
drachma (23.3 – Item 5), but in the Classical Period, when the afore-mentioned sacrifi-
cial sheep cost twelve to fifteen drachmas, a medimnos of barley cost three, and the two
items cannot have had price parity.116 One explanation is that the prices were the result
of Demetrios’ rationalisation and should be rejected.117 It is probably better to envisage
Plutarch having some accurate information from Demetrios and wrongly applying it to
other non-contemporary items. Be that as it may, the importance to this discussion is
that a sheep and a drachma were reckoned against (anti) the medimnos. Thus Plutarch’s
source was revealing that the usual unit of valuation was the medimnos of barley, not the
silver drachma. One solution is to propose that the medimnos valuation was a legal relic
relevant only to offerings, 118 but as will be shown in examples to come, the medimnos
valuation appears to have had more general application in the sixth century.

(2,600 kg of silver) which was a very large sum, but presumably it represented the entire, combined,
accumulated, liquid wealth of the polis. By comparison, the Athenians in 483 BCE were to receive
10 drachmas per citizen from their Laurion mines (Hdt. 7.144). If there were say 30,000 citizens,
then 300,000 drachmas equals 1,287 kg of silver as the polis’ share in one year only.
113 Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 226.
114 K. Waters, “Solon’s “price-equalisation” ”, JHS 80 (1960) 185–90.
115 Most scholars have understood the passage this way.
116 There is little good information, but see W. Pritchett, “The Attic stelae: Part II”, Hesperia 25 (1956)
186 for the figure given here. See the Annexure for the variability of barley prices. It is important to
note that Demetrios’ other information appears to have been internally consistent. Therefore an ox
cost five drachmas, which was five times the cost of a sheep. This was the same ratio as applied in
classical times, for instance on the sacred calendar from Thorikos (IG I3 256) c. 440–30 BCE and
the Salaminioi calendar (SEG 21, 527) c. 363/2 BCE. This implies Demetrios had a good source,
presumably axon 16. However, the problem remains that the silver value of animals is low, whilst
the silver value of barley is high.
117 See D. Schaps, The Invention of Coinage and the Monetization of Ancient Greece (Ann Arbor 2004)
Appendix 3 for a discussion of the problems and the rejection of Demetrios’ reconstruction (p. 239).
The solution proposed by K. Freeman, The Life and Work of Solon (London 1926) 59 that a person
could count a drachma as being equal to a medimnos if not a landholder seems unnecessary, as it is hard
to envisage any situation before or after coinage when one medimnos of barley could not have been
acquired. However, the theory was revived and extended by Schaps (p. 238) to defend the equivalence
of a sheep, a medimnos and a drachma as a “reasonable thing” payable for a ritual offence depending
on one’s occupation, but this too seems unlikely and optimistically utopian. A medimnos of barley
might cost a drachma depending on the harvest and time of year purchased, as discussed earlier.
118 Given that the old Attic standards of value were in medimnoi, it might be argued that rather than
change the existing laws that contained them when circumstances changed, it was preferable just to
give alternate equivalents of value and payment.

Item 2 refers to restrictions on the public appearances of women including a limita-

tion on carrying food or drink worth more than an obol. Presumably such a law (even if
true) could only have applied in a practical sense to upper class women as de Ste Croix
pointed out, and not those who needed to make a living and had to handle money.119
It should be considered alongside the prohibition against a woman (or child) making
legally valid agreements “greater than a medimnos of barley” which may also have
dated to a time before drachmas were used.120
Item 5 refers to prizes in games. This is anachronistic as the Isthmian Games were
probably not instituted until 582 BCE which was after Solon’s archonship.121 The laws
can only belong to Solon if his reforms are down-dated. However, as Wallace persua-
sively argued, there is “no good reason to reject the ancient tradition that Solon’s legis-
lation was passed during the course of his archonship”.122 Furthermore, Gebhard noted
from an examination of the archaeological evidence, that the Isthmian games were not
expanded from local to Panhellenic games until after the middle of the sixth century.123
Item 7 contains a curious dichotomy. The archon was required to pronounce curses
on anyone who exported agricultural produce except olive oil, yet if he failed to do so,
he was to be punished by a substantial monetary fine. As Foxhall pointed out, “[i]t is
difficult to understand the purpose and impact of this law since we cannot easily fit it
into an historical or social context”, and it is hard to imagine how such a law could have
been enforced.124 However, the former penalty has the hallmark of belonging to an early
law, and this is strengthened by its designation of being on an axon.125 Whatever the

119 G. de Ste Croix, “Some observations on the property rights of Athenian women”, The Classical
Review N. S. 20 (1970) 238. There is also no explanation as to how the law was to be enforced though
presumably it was left to the woman’s kurios as no penalty was provided.
120 Ste Croix, Democratic Origins (as in n. 109) 39 pointed this out. The law is from Isaios. 10.10; (cf.
Dio Chrys. 74.9; Harpokr., s. v. hoti paidi; parodied at Ar. Ekkl. 1025 plus schol.). There is, as one
reader pointed out, a considerable chronological gap between pre-coinage Athens and Isaios in the
fourth century. However, if the law was passed when coinage was regularly used and indeed dokimon,
it seems unlikely that a medimnos of barley would be used as the measure of value by the State.
121 This traditional date of 581/0 BCE comes from Eusebios who said the games were founded in the
49th Olympiad. Rhodes, Commentary (as in n. 5) 134, n. 9 suggested “it is possible there were games
called Isthmian before the re-foundation” (my emphasis) but provided no evidence.
122 R. Wallace, “The date of Solon’s reforms”, AJAH 8 (1983) 81–95 with quotation from page 87. The
down-dating was first advanced by C. Hignett, A History of the Athenian Constitution to the End
of the Fifth Century B. C. (Oxford 1952) 316–21 and has received considerable support, but I agree
with Wallace that the grounds for so doing are weak and unsupported by any ancient testimony.
123 E. Gebhard, “The Beginnings of Panhellenic Games at the Isthmus” in H. Kyrieleis (ed.), Olympia
1875–2000: 125 Jahre Deutsche Ausgrabungen (Berlin 2002) 221–37. This would weaken any
attempt to use Plutarch’s evidence to down-date Solon’s archonship.
124 Foxhall, Olive Cultivation (as in n. 30) 17–18. If the provision is genuine, it probably tells us
something about the limited area of control of the leaders in the astu of Athens before Peisistratos.
125 The first in fact, though the order in which the axones were inscribed is more likely to relate to
subject matter, given my contention that they were recorded later than Solon’s time – see G. Davis,
“Axones and kurbeis: a new answer to an old problem”, Historia 60 (2011) 1–35.

social implications of the cursing, it seems to suggest a time before the use of money
when the polis had limited practical power over its strongest citizens.126 More impor-
tantly, its requirement for payment to the dēmosion is anachronistic for Solon’s time.127
Bearing this in mind, it is worth considering that the additional penalty for slander in
Item 1 in the form of a fine payable to the polis was presumably imposed to assist the
litigant in extracting payment.128 However, the sums of two and three drachmas are
relatively small, and perhaps Plutarch was wrong about the amounts. The fines cited in
Lex. Cantabr. 671.7 for the offences were 200 and 300 drachmas. More likely this law
too, or at least the monetary penalty, dated to a time later than Solon.

g) Ath. Pol. 7.2

According to Ath. Pol. 7.2 – Solon “divided the people by assessment” (Loeb translation).
The Greek is timhvmati diei'len. Rhodes noted that a timēma “is a valuation in general
and a valuation of property for political purposes in particular”, but the evidence for
this is from the fourth century.129 It is the same word used by Plutarch (Sol. 23.3). The
name of the top class of wealthiest citizens was the pentakosiomedimnoi. Literally these
were “the 500 medimnoi men” whose property produced annually at least this amount in
“wet and dry” measures (metra).130 Three other pre-existing property classes were also
defined by their production of medimnoi.131 The information was repeated with slight

126 There are three early fifth-century laws of Teos and Thasos “where the imprecations are not really
primitive but seem to be regarded as a more powerful deterrent than a monetary penalty” (I.
Arnaoutoglou, Ancient Greek Laws [London and New York 1998] nos. 7–72). R. Parker, Miasma:
Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (New York) 194 noted the offender would suffer
public retribution especially if declared atimos but that is too extreme for this case. Perhaps the
penalty was applied to the magistrate because he could not curse himself as Professor Kroll suggested
to me (in private correspondence). For differing penalties, see Z. Papakonstantinou, Lawmaking and
Adjudication in Archaic Greece (London 2008) 122–3.
127 This was pointed out by R. Sealey, “Regionalism in archaic Athens”, Historia 9 (1960) 157.
128 A feature of Athenian law through to classical times was the difficulty for a plaintiff of enforcing
judgement except through self help. The polis might try to assist by boosting the penalty for non-
compliance as in the dikē exoulēs (cf. Dem. 21.44) Annexure Cit. 32, widely considered to be Solonian
because it was said to be on an axon – but see Davis, Axones (as in n. 125). It provided (scholion
to Il. 21.282): “Ejectment – the full value of a settlement awarded in a lawsuit to be owed to the
dēmosion (public), and an equal amount to the individual to whom it was awarded if the unsuccessful
party prevented the individual from collecting the award”.
129 Rhodes, Commentary (as in n. 5) 136–7. The fourth-century eisphora (tax) was levied on the timēma
of property assets over a certain value.
130 Ath. Pol. 7.4. The income qualification had to come “from the produce of his estate” (ejk th'~ oijkeiva~)
in “dry and liquid measures” (ta; sunavmfw xhra; kai; uJgrav) .
131 Ath. Pol. 7.3 claimed the four classes were pre-existing. Plut. Solon 18.1 claimed that Solon
distinguished a new class of pentakosiomedimnoi. The measures for the other classes could have
been later rationalisations, cf. L. Foxhall, “A View from the Top: Evaluating the Solonian Property
Classes”, in L. Mitchell and P. Rhodes (eds.) The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece (London
and New York 1997) 131 and n. 97.

variation by Plutarch (Sol. 18.1–2). Clearly we have no way of knowing whether these
changes were really carried out by Solon, or simply represented rationalisations by the
Atthidographers.132 Of importance to this discussion is that the assessments were not
based upon property value, but upon yield expressed in medimnoi.133
There is another more acute problem. Quantitatively and qualitatively, wet and dry
measures were not the same, and no farmer would remotely contemplate such an equa-
tion.134 A medimnos of wheat would be much more valuable than one of barley, both
of which were staple crops. Likewise a medimnos of olive oil was far more valuable
than one of wine, and neither would have had the same value as their dry counterparts.
Furthermore, the medimnos measure was not used for wet measures. 135 Many other
types of produce and livestock would need to be included in a comprehensive assess-
ment and thus would have required valuation. In an economy supposedly sophisticated
enough to be valuing everything else in silver drachmas, this seems impossibly clumsy,
and clearly something is wrong with the received account. It is likely that the system
as reported by Ath. Pol. and Plutarch was a simplified version of what actually oper-
ated. It makes more sense to envisage the medimnos of barley implicit in the name of
the wealthiest class being the standard official measure of value,136 with exchange for
other products fluctuating according to the market for each at any particular time. If this
system was operating as the basis of the constitution, including defining status, rights

132 W. Connor, “Tribes, festivals and processions: civic ceremonial and political manipulation in archaic
Greece”, JHS 107 (1987) 47 ff. made the interesting suggestion that the grain classification was used
by Solon to determine status in the first-fruit offerings presented in agricultural festivals. Central
to this proposal is that grain was the measure used irrespective of how the income was derived,
enforced by social pressure.
133 Based primarily upon this passage, Ste Croix, Democratic Origins (as in n. 109) 37 ff. proposed that
Athens in Solon’s time had used a “barley standard”.
134 See the discussion in Ste Croix, Democratic origins (as in n. 109) 33 ff., and the summary in Rhodes,
Commentary (as in n. 5) 141–2.
135 V. Rosivach, “The requirements for the Solonic classes in Aristotle AP 7.4”, Hermes 130 (2002)
37, n. 6 pointed out that if “the census ratings really were expressed in moist and dry measures
as Aristotle says…we would expect the topmost class to have been called pentakosiometroi, not
pentakosiomedimnoi (which only refers to dry measures)”.
136 The standard does not have to be barley. It could be wheat. However, the Athenians grew approximately
four times more barley than wheat, cf. P. Garnsey, “Yield of the land” in B. Wells (ed.), Agriculture
in ancient Greece: Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium at the Swedish Institute at
Athens, 16–17 May 1990 (Stockholm 1992) 147–8. Furthermore, krithe forms the smallest unit basic
in the weight standard, and it is barley, cf. Theophrastus De Lapidibus 46 (though the passage is not
without problems, cf. Theophrastus, De Lapidibus in D. Eichholz, ed., trans., and commentary [Oxford
1965] 74–5 and 118–9). A barley standard is accepted in the convincing discussion by H. van Wees,
“Mass and elite in Solon’s Athens: the property classes revisited”, in J. Blok and A. Lardinois (eds.)
Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological Approaches (Leiden 2006) 351–389. R. Osborne,
Classical Landscape with Figures: the Ancient Greek City and Countryside (London 1987) 46 notes
that Attica was famous for its high barley yields. I hope to settle the matter in metrological terms in
a forthcoming article on Late Archaic Attic weights and measures.

and entitlement to hold office, there does not seem to be a significant place for official
use of weighed silver in valuation or law as early as this.137

h) Ath. Pol. 10, Androtion F 34, Philokhoros F 200

There has been enormous discussion in the literature on the meaning of the passages in
Ath.Pol. (10) and Androtion (FGrH 324 F 34 = Plut., Sol. 15.4) regarding Solon’s alleged
raising of the standard of weights and measures and of coinage.138 Of importance here
is the remarkable and generally overlooked implication of the line in Ath. Pol. 10.2: h\n
d∆ ajrcai'o~ carakth;r divdracmon which Chambers translated as “The previous standard
coin was the didrachm”.139 For this to make any sense, it must have been referring to
the change from the didrachm to the tetradrachm which occurred at the end of the sixth
century. This was appreciated by Philokhoros (FGrH 328 F 200) when he wrote that
preceding the tetradrachms, “the previous coins that were didrachms had an ox as their
device”.140 However, the statement in Ath. Pol. is directly linked to the previous state-
ment, which claimed the mina was increased from a weight of seventy drachmas to one
hundred, by the particle de. It is marked off from the following passage, which states
three minas were added to the weight of a talent, by de kai, implying that that change
occurred separately and, by inference, even later. It proves once again that the author of
the Ath. Pol., writing in the fourth century BCE, had no understanding of when coinage
was introduced, but by passing on what he had gleaned from his sources, inadvertently
revealed the changes were made much later than Solon’s time.

137 One would have to envisage two economies – the first using traditional agricultural wealth, and the
second using silver presumably for mercantile activity. I am prepared to contemplate this, but do not
see silver being dominant as a basis for evaluation and laws as early as Solon’s time. In supporting
this proposition, Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 226 cited the study by A. Giovannini, Rome et la circulation
monétaire en Grèce au IIe siècle avant Jésus-Christ (Basel 1978) 36–7, 115–18 as providing “a
number of evaluations in local Greek monetary units that had become obsolete except as units of
account, while the taxes or other payment on the properties were rendered in denarii”. However,
these were old and familiar coinages, minted and used locally for several centuries.
138 Most discussion continues to be based upon the alternative interpretations of K. Kraft, “Zur
Übersetzung und Interpretation von Aristoteles, Athenaion Politeia, Kap. 10”, Jahrbuch für
Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 10 (1959/60) 21–46 and C. Kraay, “An interpretation of Ath. Pol.
Ch. 10” in C. Kraay and G. Jenkins (eds.), Essays in Greek Coinage Presented to Stanley Robinson
(Oxford 1968) 1–9. See especially the analysis in M. Chambers, “Aristotle on Solon’s Reform of
Coinage and Weights”, California Studies in Classical Antiquity 6 (1973) 1–16. On my view, cf.
n. 136.
139 Chambers, Coinage and weights (as in n. 138) 3 with n. 9 explaining why charactēr should be
translated as “standard or most commonly used coin”.
140 It is interesting that all the later writers only conceived of the didrachms having an ox-type as we
have seen earlier, when the ox was one of many didrachm types. It suggests reliance on one source,
perhaps Homer or a folk-etymology.

i) The naukrariai and Androtion F 36

In a description of the Solonian constitution, Ath. Pol. 8.3 made reference to forty-eight
naukrariai each headed by officials called naukraroi who, in Solonian laws “no longer
in force”, were responsible for levying and expending argurion.141 The naukrariai
were a venerable institution first attested in the Kylonian affair in the second half of the
seventh century if Herodotos (5.71.2) is to be believed, but it also seems clear it was in
place at least until the naval reorganisation of Themistokles early in the fifth century.142
It therefore overlapped half a century of true coin use in Athens. The attribution of this
change to the time of Solon depends upon acceptance of the assumption that the law was
actually enacted by Solon.143 However, the stock phrase ‘Solon’s laws’ does not prove
this.144 In fact Ath. Pol. specifically did not say Solon enacted the law, and switched de-
liberately to an impersonal construction to describe the tribes (phylai), ‘thirds’ (trittyes)
and naukrariai as the author supposed they existed in Solon’s time. The arrangement
was patently an artificial creation of the Atthidographers.145 The laws concerning the
naukrariai were not retained at the general revision of laws by the anagrapheis com-
mencing 411 BCE for the simple reason that the institution itself was by then defunct.146

141 Conventionally translated as Ship-Boards, Ath. Pol. 21.5 regarded them as the administrative units
of Attica before the Kleisthenic reforms of 508/7 replaced them with demes, but this may not be
correct. See Rhodes, Commentary (as in n. 5) 151–2. The Atthidographer Kleidemos (fr. 8 = Phot.
Lexikon s.v naukraria) evidently also connected them with ships and shipping.
142 Herodotos’ evidence concerning the role of the naukrariai in the Kylon affair was implicitly
contradicted by Thucydides 1.126.8 who did not mention them in his description of the same incident.
The naukrariai may have retained a limited naval role after 508/7. For a compilation of the evidence
about naukrariai and their likely evolution from providing local coastal defence using privately owned
small ships and horsemen (per Pollux, Onomastikon 8.108) to an institution, see H. Wallinga, “The
Athenian naukraroi” in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (ed.), Peisistratos and the Tyranny: a Reappraisal of
the evidence (Amsterdam 2000) 131–146. For excellent discussions of the issues see Hignett, History
(as in n. 122) 68–74, 129–31 and P. Harding, Androtion and the Atthis (Oxford 1994) 134–8.
143 As far as I can determine, this was the sole reason for Wilamowitz’ attribution (U. von Wilamowitz-
Moellendorff, Aristoteles und Athen [Berlin 1893] 51 ff.), followed by F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der
griechischen Historiker, III b Suppl. texts and notes (Leiden 1954) 147 and others. A reader of this
paper pointed out that the suggestion was first offered by Dobree a century earlier, cf. D. Holwerda,
Scholia in Vespas, Pacem, Aves et Lysistratas 3: Scholia vetera et recentiora in Aristophanes Aves
(Groningen 1991) l.1541, ap. crit.
144 A century ago J. Schreiner, De corpore iuris Atheniensium (Bonn 1913) 30 provided examples of
laws ascribed to Solon that clearly were first enacted later than Solon. He proved, and it is generally
accepted by scholars today, that the phrase “Laws of Solon” as used by the orators simply meant all
laws whether or not they were genuinely Solonian in origin.
145 Ath. Pol. fragment 5 (= Lexicon Patm. p. 152 Sakkel) related that there were four phylai divided
into three to make twelve trittyes or phratriai, each with thirty genē imitating the seasons, months
and days in the year. Hignett, History (as in n. 122) 47 ff. convincingly demonstrated why this was
an invention of the Atthidographers with no claim to authority.
146 The anagrapheis were a board charged with recording the laws at the end of the fifth century. They
are known from the prescript to the reinscription of Drakon’s homicide law, and the speech recording
the prosecution of one of their members, Nikomakhos, in Lysias 30.

The only known example of the use of naukraric argurion was to provide travelling
expenses for sacred ambassadors to Delphi.147 The relevant portion of F 36 has:
wJ~ ∆Androtivwn gravfei ou{tw~ toi'~ de; ijou'si Puqw'de qewroi'~ tou;~ kwlakrevta~ di-
dovnai ejk tw'n nauklhrikw'n ejfovdion ajrguvria, kai; eij~ a[llo o{ ti a]n devh/ ajnalw'sai.
Androtion writes as follows: the kolakretai are to give money for travel expenses
from the naukraric (?) (fund?) to those who go on sacred embassy to Delphi and
they are to make expenditure on any other matter that is necessary.148
The translation relies upon an emendation of the text from ‘naukleric’ to ‘naukraric’
suggested by Wilamowitz in line with a fund of that name referred to in Ath. Pol. 8.3.149
The so-called ek-rubric (underlined in the text) is reminiscent of the six such found in
the Athenian State Calendar and others such as the military and theoric funds. Dow even
doubted there were separate funds as such, and suggested that the rubric designated the
legal source and purpose of the payment.150 The word comes from the verb nauklhrevw
– to be a ship owner. It is not inherently unlikely that travel funds for a sacred mission
were subsidised by wealthy and important ship owners, who were anyway the most
likely group in society to be using silver (for trade).
There was nothing specifically to tie the provision of travel expenses to Solon and
this theōria and the kolakretai pre-dated him. The kolakretai had a variety of func-
tions, and were probably only abolished at the end of the fifth century.151 It is therefore
not possible to state when the laws were originally passed, and whether they referred
to weighed silver or coinage. It really only tells us that at some stage during the sixth
century, a fund was established which used argurion for travel expenses.

j) Lysias 10.8
In Lysias 10.8 the speaker quoted another “old law of Solon” that “argurion is to be
weighed out (stasimon) for as much as the lender may choose”. Lysias was specifically
explaining obsolete terms and went on to say: “This ‘weighing out’, my good man, is
not a matter of placing in the balance, but of exacting interest at whatever rate he may

147 Scholion to Aristophanes, Birds 1541, includes Jacoby, FGrH (as in n. 143) 324 F 36 (Androtion).
148 Translation by Harding, Androtion (as in n. 142) 69 (my question mark and brackets) with discussion
pp. 134–8. S. Dow, “The Law Codes of Athens”, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society
71 (1953–7) 3–36 used the term ‘ek-rubric’ to designate the funding sources in the sacrificial calendars.
149 Wilamowitz, (as in n. 143) i. 52. L. Pearson, The Local Historians of Attica (1942, reprint Michigan
1981) 83 rationalised the evidence by supposing “ta; nauklhrikav is a “modern spelling” for ta;
naukrarikav”.
150 Dow, Law Codes (as in n. 148) 3–36. I question whether the emendation of the text is warranted
given the little that is known about polis finances in this period.
151 The kolakretai were ancient ‘financial’ magistrates whose name possibly derives from collecting
parts of victims of sacrifices (kola means limbs). They lost most of their functions to the apodektai
in Kleisthenes’ reforms, cf. Harp. s. v. apodektai. The scholiast (Ar. Birds 1541) also mentioned on
the authority of Aristophanes the Grammarian that they were “stewards of pay for jury duty” and for
the “expenditures on the gods”. We have no evidence of their mention in literature after 411 BCE.

choose”. Kroll rightly identified this passage as important, but interpreting it is difficult
because it is out of context and refers to a practice which was out of use.152 There is no
way of knowing when the law was enacted. Kroll contended it was Solonian and used
the testimony to demonstrate that borrowing of silver precipitated a debt driven crisis
which led to Solon’s appointment.153 In my opinion this is going beyond the evidence.
Lysias (10.20), writing in the early fourth century, simply said that “in some cases we
do not use the same terms as we did formerly”. This could just as easily apply to any
time in the sixth century, and even after the introduction of coinage. We also do not
know why or in what circumstances such a law might have been passed, considering
it was basically stating that the rate of interest was not to be controlled. This seems an
unlikely and unnecessary interference in private matters by an archaic polis.154
The passage does indicate that argurion was being used for lending in private
transactions.155 This too is of considerable importance because, as Kroll pointed out,
“one does not borrow to store wealth, one borrows to put money to use”.156 We need
to ask who had to borrow this argurion and why? One candidate is merchants for trade
purposes, rather than say farmers needing grain for seed, which would be borrowed in
kind. Arguably the merchants specifically required silver because it was non-perishable
and exchangeable at par for goods with overseas trading partners who used silver. Thus
it was being valued intrinsically and needed to be weighed. In fact, merchants would
not want to pay a premium for minting unless that cost could be passed on (or they were
forced to pay it), and the lack of finds of Wappenmünzen outside Attica indicates this did
not occur often. Another candidate might be elites borrowing to meet large expenses, and
perhaps for social/political purposes, which had the side effect of enmeshing families
in a network of mutual obligations.157

152 Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 228. The inference is that many of the Athenians in the audience did not
know this usage. We should be exceptionally wary of Greek etymological explanations. In another
example provided by Lysias in the same passage, the obtuse meaning of a term in an archaic ‘Solonian
Law’ may well be wrong. See E. Carawan, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 98.6.02 review of C. Carey,
Trials from Classical Athens (London 1997) regarding Lysias’ gloss that epiorkein meant ‘to swear’
which was the opposite of its normal meaning ‘to swear falsely’. He noted that Lysias was either
wrong, or misinterpreting the intended sense.
153 Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 226. He stated “Solon’s laws were published on pillars called kurbeis and on
revolving wooden beams called axones” referencing Rhodes and Stroud though they have different
interpretations – see Davis, Axones (as in n. 125) 5 and 7. He argued heavily that the laws citing money
must have been Solonian and (p. 229) “it follows that the debt crisis that led to Solon’s appointment
as a lawgiver was largely precipitated by monetary borrowing in silver rather than by the simple
lending of goods in return for produce and services in a barter type of exchange”. I do not believe
the case for a monetary crisis being the principal cause for Solon’s appointment is convincing.
154 The state did interfere to prevent lending on the security of the borrower’s person (Plut. Sol. 15.3),
but that was to prevent citizens being sold into slavery.
155 Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 229.
156 Kroll in private communication.
157 I thank one of Historia’s readers for drawing my attention to this. P. Millett, Lending and Borrowing
in Ancient Athens (Cambridge 1991) 79–89 noted that even wealthy Athenians typically did not have

On the assumption argurion in this passage meant bullion silver and not coined
money made out of silver, Kroll was correct that it demonstrates “lending at interest
was originally characterized by the weighing of silver”, and helps explain why silver
came to be the dominant metal used as coinage.158

k) Obolostatai
The word obolostatēs (in its various forms), literally a weigher of obols, was used to
describe a petty money lender. Weighing in this context was glossed by the lexicogra-
phers as lending with a connotation of usury.159 Kroll proposed that lending obols by
weight was “another relic from this pre-coinage era”, and suggested that the obols may
have referred to the rate of interest charged by the obolostatai.160 However, there is no
evidence that the term or concept went back to archaic times. The earliest reference to
the word was in Aristophanes, Clouds 1155 produced in 423 BCE.

7. Conclusions

To sum up, there is no good evidence in the literary or archaeological sources for sub-
stantial use of silver before the advent of coined money in Athens, though probably it
was used in trade and travel. Coinage did not develop out of weighed silver directly in the
Greek world – it came out of Lydia and Ionia and was applied to the most suitable metal.
The change of standard from barley to silver did require a period of pre-conditioning.
It has been demonstrated that there was a culture of increased exposure to maritime trade
during the sixth century evidenced by the growing trade in Attic pottery. This meant there
were more and more men in Athens who had familiarity with silver and electrum, and
appreciated the advantage of these intrinsically valuable metals as a means of exchange
and valuation, especially in comparison with barley with its constantly fluctuating value
(see Annexure). Many of these men were wealthy and influential, and came to occupy
important magistracies. Their experience will have paved the way for the successful
adoption of currency, with silver winning out over electrum on account of its availabil-

much cash on hand to meet large expenses such as liturgies and dowries, yet land was very rarely
sold. Despite conspicuous display, families were often poorer than popularly believed, and wealth
was chronically unstable across generations. Lysias 19 provides a good example of all these things.
Of special interest is Lys. 19.24–6 where it was proposed that a gold cup be lent as security for a
loan of sixteen minas and redeemed at twenty (equals four minas interest), because the lender of the
cup did not have sufficient cash to meet the requirements of a trierarchy. Foxhall, Olive Cultivation
(as in n. 30) 48–50 commented on the social aspect of the eranos dowry loan. These examples come
from classical times. It is unknown whether the same occurred in archaic times.
158 Kroll, Silver (as in n. 6) 229.
159 Harp. s. v. obolostatai = Melville-Jones, Testimonia 1 (as in n. 94) number 784, is one of a number of
such glosses. The derogatory connotation presumably arose from the very small amounts involved.
160 Kroll, Weighed Bullion (as in n. 6) 16. The suggestion that “an obol per XX was a rate of interest”
was made in private correspondence.

ity, and suitability for low value transactions in the Agora.161 When enough people were
accustomed to using silver bullion as their medium of choice in bartering, the next step
was for the State to step in with its own legally dokimon metal currency. The agent of
change was undoubtably Peisistratos. He went to the mining region of western Thrace to
raise chrēmata in the form of bullion precisely because he understood the importance of
money.162 Subsequently as tyrant, he had the power to mandate the use of coinage which
transformed the Athenian economy when silver supply (from exploitation of the Laurion
mines) and demand (especially for building) shot up towards the end of the sixth century.163
Returning to the central question of laws denominated in drachmas, it is clear these
could not have belonged to Solon’s time as quoted by Plutarch. It is possible to make
a claim that some of the laws were passed at or around that time, but the penalties in
drachmas are more likely to have been added any time during or from the second half
of the sixth century when coinage was being commonly used. This does not absolutely
exclude from consideration the possibility that some of the drachma laws preceded
coinage (referring to weighed silver), but there is no evidence to prove it.

Annexure – Price volatility of barley

One area where comparison with Western Asia is particularly valuable is in commod-
ity prices.164 Detailed work has been carried out by Vargyas on Babylonian prices,
which were expressed in silver shekels.165 The most useful indicator for our purposes
is barley. The mean of the average price for Babylonian barley in the whole of the sixth

161 The smallest Wappenmünzen electrum fraction was a 1/24th which was still worth approximately 3
obols – too much for small purchases.
162 As Professor Kroll pointed out to me in private correspondence, Peisistratos was not alone in this
understanding. It was presumably shared by many members of the power elite in the Aegean at that
time. For instance, a fragment of Alkaios mentions a payment by the Lydians to Greeks of 2,000
staters to attack a city in the early sixth century (Melville Jones, Testimonia 2 [as in n. 97] number
A41). Peisistratos simply put this knowledge to effective use in raising his army.
163 Boersma, Peisistratos (as in n. 43) 53 noted, “Building activities that are usually agreed to have a
connection with the tyranny start after 528 when the Peisistratids began to compete with the building
projects of the other tyrants”. There was also building by leading families especially on the Acropolis.
Athens presumably had a stock of silver accumulated over an extended period which only becomes
visible in the sources in the time of Peisistratos. However, I see minting being directly related to
supply and therefore providing indirect proof of the earlier scarcity of silver. I do not agree with the
suggestion made by T. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome (London 1995) 397 and endorsed by Kroll,
Weighed Bullion (as in n. 6) 37 that “[i]n economic terms, the introduction of coinage [was] not of
great significance in itself”. It is well accepted economic theory that the growth rate of an economy
is directly linked to its money supply, and this was enabled by coinage. Furthermore, the velocity
of money (the frequency with which a unit of money is spent) would have been vastly sped up by
using coinage rather than ‘multiple moneys’ even including bullion.
164 I do not seek to imply that the Athenian and Babylonian economies were directly linked.
165 P. Vargyas, Babylonian Prices (as in n. 90). The study was based on the astronomical texts kept by
the Babylonians recording the prices of basic commodities for half a millenium.

century was 144 litres per shekel. To make this meaningful in an Attic context, an Attic
medimnos equalled roughly 52.5 litres (dry volume), and a shekel was very close in
weight to a Wappenmünzen didrachm.166 Therefore, one drachma on average purchased
approximately 1.37 medimnoi (or one medimnos cost 0.73 drachma).167
The Babylonian data indicates that the “average yearly movement of the price
of…barley was around 50 %” on account of seasonal factors.168 Prices also varied
enormously between years. In good years, the price fell as low as one drachma buying
3.45 medimnoi, but in a famine prices could rise catastrophically to the point where a
drachma would only buy a single litre.169 26 % of harvests were statistically ‘bad’, and
21 % ‘failed’ to the point where the resultant shortage could be considered a famine.170
Similar fluctuations must have occurred in Attica in the sixth century though we lack
contemporary evidence for it.171

Macquarie University Gil Davis

Sydney, Australia
[email protected]

166 One Babylonian shekel (šiqlu) weighed 8.33 gr. (evidenced by four mina weights found in Persepolis
weighing 499.80 gr divided by the 60 shekels in a mina). I averaged the 51 Wappenmünzen didrakhms
in Seltman, Athens (as in n. 62) to arrive at 8.36 gr., though there is considerable variance between
coins. I disregarded the question of fineness of silver for this rough guide, though coinage had greater
fineness than the Babylonian silver used early in the sixth century, respectively c. 93+ % to c. 87.5 %,
because by the end of the century, Babylonian silver under Persian control had a similar fineness
to coinage. For Attic measures I have used the curreatly accepted volume as given in A. Moreno,
Feeding the Democracy (Oxford 2007) Appendix 1. However, I will argue in a forthcoming paper
that the Attic medimnos weighed somewhat less than this.
167 Vargyas, Babylonian prices (as in n. 90) 128, fig. 39, based on figures from 39 years of available
data. Of course, most land in Attica was not as productive as in Babylon. This was well attested in
ancient sources, for instance Pl., Crit. 111b5 described Attica with its rocks and thin soil as “the
bones of a wasted body”, and Plut. Solon 22.1: “most of the country was unfruitful and worthless”.
168 Vargyas, Babylonian Prices (as in n. 90) 281a (the page is actually un-numbered but comes after
p. 281 and before 282. It is headed “11. Conclusions”).
169 See Vargyas, Babylonian Prices (as in n. 90) 56–7 for examples.
170 Vargyas, Babylonian Prices (as in n. 90) 119.
171 It is dangerous to compare prices from different time periods, but there is some Athenian evidence
from the late fourth century attesting to short term price fluctuations. In ca. 330 BCE, the price of
barley was 5 drachmas per medimnos (IG II2 408, 13–14). One year later, the price was down to
3 drachmas per medimnos (IG II2 1672, 283). Also in the 320s, from Demosthenes 42.20 and 31
(Against Pheinippos), one can deduce a price of 6 drachmas per medimnos. This corroborates the
substantial reduction in value of silver over two hundred years. See the discussion of Lysias 22
on the subject of grain profiteering in G. Stanton, “Retail Pricing of grain in Athens”, Hermes 113
(1985) 121–3. Moreno, Feeding the Democracy (as in n. 166) 27 noted in his detailed study of the
subject: “Because the average annual rainfall level is 400 mm, very close to the minimum amount
required by the most important staples, Attica suffered from a permanent and considerable risk of
crop failure”.

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Dating the Drachmas in Solon’s Laws

Article in Historia (Wiesbaden, Germany) · January 2012

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DATING THE DRACHMAS IN SOLON’S LAWS*

2. Silver use in the Late Archaic Athenian economy

2.1 Silver in trade

7 I exclude gift exchange as an adequate basis.

Archaeological evidence demonstrates that non-domestic markets were very nar-

3. Archaeological evidence for silver use before coinage

There are no recorded finds of Hacksilber (silver as bullion) in Athens or mainland

47 Kroll, Observations (as in n. 6) 78.

4. The adoption of coinage at Athens

4.1 Coinage at Athens

weight of an electrum hemihekte equalled approximately one sixth of a silver didrachm.64

5. Contemporary silver use in western Asia Minor

92 This was suggested by one of the Journal’s readers.

ITEM REFERENCE CONTEXT QUOTATION

ITEM REFERENCE CONTEXT QUOTATION

Plutarch’s price comparisons present more serious problems. In 23.3 (Item 4) he

Item 2 refers to restrictions on the public appearances of women including a limita-

g) Ath. Pol. 7.2

h) Ath. Pol. 10, Androtion F 34, Philokhoros F 200

i) The naukrariai and Androtion F 36

Annexure – Price volatility of barley

Macquarie University Gil Davis

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