Ancient Greek coins: an Athenian silver coin with Athena’s owl
How Greeks minted coins
Beginning around 600 BC, each Greek city-state minted (made) its own kinds of coins. (They got the idea from the Lydians in West Asia). A lot of the Greek coins were silver.
What is a city-state?
History of money
Archaic Greece
All our Ancient Greece articles
You made them by taking a small lump of silver and putting it on an iron mold, and then striking it with a hammer that had another kind of mold in it. That way you could squash a picture into both sides at the same time. Mostly, probably enslaved people worked making these coins.
History of silver
Slavery in ancient Greece
Athens under the Tyrants
The Athenians had a lot of silver from their silver mines at Laurion, so a lot of their coins were silver.
Ancient Greek coins: Corinthian coin with Pegasus, the winged horse
Images on ancient Greek coins
The pictures on the coins were different for each city-state. Athenians put a picture of Athena’s owl on their silver coins. Can you see that the coin says ATHE on it in Greek letters?
Who is Athena?
What is Pegasus?
Where is Corinth?
Silver obol (front and back) from Kelenderis in Cilicia (300s BC)
Silver coins from Corinth had a picture of the flying horse Pegasus. Can you see him?
Obols
Just like today, some coins were worth more than others. This coin is worth less. It’s an obol (it has a centaur on it). An unskilled worker, like someone who unloaded boats or dug ditches, in Athens, would earn about two obols a day.
Cargo ships in Greece
Ancient Greek economy
So two silver obols a day was approximately minimum wage in ancient Athens.
Chalkos (Athenian bronze coin)
Chalkoi
Even an obol was too much to spend at the store, so the Athenians also made tiny silver coins and larger bronze coins. Eight chalkoi were worth one obol.
What is bronze?
All the designs on these coins changed a little from year to year, so numismatists can tell what year (more or less) a particular coin was made, or struck. The government changed the coins so that if anyone cheated and put less silver in some coins, it would be easy to know which were the bad coins.
After the Romans conquered the Greeks, Greek cities stopped minting their own coins and used Roman coins instead.
More about Roman coins
Learn by doing: making Athenian coins
Check out the coins of other Greek cities.
Bibliography and further reading about Greek coins:
Eyewitness: Money (Eyewitness Books) (2000).
Sold!: The Origins of Money and Trade (Buried Worlds) (1994). School Library Journal says, “Grade 6-10-Covering primarily the ancient Mediterranean civilizations, this well-written, beautifully illustrated account describes early forms of money, how the first coins were made, and what they reveal to archaeologists about the people who used them.”
Ancient History from Coins, by C. J. Howgego (1995). Not so easy to read, but a good introduction to what we can learn about history from coins.
Greek Coins, by Ian Carradice (1995). This handbook for beginners shows some of the different types of Greek coins, with a little historical background. About a page per century.
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