161 Ancient Greek Coins Facts To Learn About Their Usage And History

Ancient coins of Greece are full of history and still hold a lot of value.

The coinage system in the country started around the seventh century BC. The system even continued into the Roman Empire, till around the third century AD.

The ancient coinage system of Greece can be divided into four periods of time. Greece back then was divided into city-states, some powerful and some not. These city-states had their own coins with unique designs and materials. The monetary system had three standards where the coins were measured by their weights.

Read on to know more about ancient Greek coins and if you like this article, then also check out ancient Greek education facts and ancient Greek entertainment facts.

Fun Facts About Ancient Greek Coins

Ancient Greeks embraced artistry when they were minting their coins. This is not surprising as the artistry of the Greeks can be witnessed in the legacy they have left in the form of the beautiful architecture of buildings, sculptures, and even their written plays and philosophy.

Many of their coins held emblems that are called 'badges' in numismatics. These emblems mainly represented each city-state of that time. In numismatics, a coin's front is called the obverse, and the back is called reverse.

Some of these unique coins were - Mytilene's coins were extremely beautiful and they were mostly made of electrum, a natural alloy of silver and gold, and some were made of billon, an alloy of bronze and silver. They didn't have one specific iconography and had no inscriptions.

Pictures of various heroes, gods, and symbols were used in the Greek coins. Pictures of Leda, Apollo, the lyre, and Artemis had a unique place.

Miletus was quite famous for their coinage as well. The archaic Miletus coins were made of electrum that had an incuse square on its reverse and a lion's head on its obverse.

After the Persian War ended, the city changed its incuse square symbol to variations of flowers and adapted silver coinage. During the fourth century, the city changed its reverse picture to a lion with a star or a rose and the obverse picture to Apollo's.

The ancient coins of Ephesus still hold great value. They were one of the earliest to mint their own coin. The city's Temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Probably that's why they used beautiful pictures of bees on their coins. Artemis, the goddess of hunting and nature, was associated with bees.

Corinth at one time accumulated a great deal of wealth. Their coins were usually produced in silver.

The obverse of the coin was provided with a picture of Athena wearing the famous Corinthian helmet. The reverse of the coin had a picture of Pegasus, the mythical winged horse of Corinth's legendary hero, Bellerophon. The coins always had the Koppa symbol that represented the city's archaic name.

Athens was one of the strongest city-states of ancient Greece. Athenian coins were made of silver.

The city is home to the Parthenon, the temple of goddess Athena, the protector of the city and she is associated with owls. Hence, the coins had a picture of goddess Athena on its obverse and an owl on its reverse. That's why the coins were also called 'owls'.

It would be a shame if we didn't mention Sparta since it was such an important city-state, but interestingly, Spartans didn't believe in the coinage system. They used pelanoi, a type of large iron ingot because it had no value to the rest of Greece.

This way they didn't let anyone become weak by being materialistic. They started to produce coins only around 300 BCE when the city-states gave up their places to Alexander’s successors.

Historical Facts About Ancient Greek Coins

Ancient Greek coins not only have immense artistic value, but they also have great history attached to them. The Greek coinage system started around the seventh century BC. Before that, they used barter system for trade and since then, their coinage system can be classified into four time periods.

The Archaic Period - Greek coins started being produced around the seventh century and were in production till 480 BC. They started producing their first coins in electrum alloy and the perfect example of two early coins of the Archaic Period were Lydian and East Greek coins.

Later in the sixth century BC, during the time of King Croesus, Herodotus invented pure gold and pure silver coins that were called Croeseids.

About 50% of the city-states started minting coins of their own at that time and coins, like the silver stater or the Didrachm of Aegina were even used for inter-city trade. Archaic Greek coins even spread out of the country throughout the Achaemenid Empire.

Proofs of that have been found through the discovered Kabul hoard, Ghazzat hoard, and Apadana hoard.

The Classical Period - the classical period of coins started from around 480 BC and stayed till around 330 BC. At this time, the coins started gaining a higher level of technical and aesthetic quality. In this period, the artistic works on the coins were introduced more and more.

The larger Greek cities were producing coins with pictures of patron goddesses, gods, or the legendary heroes of a certain city on them. They also started inscribing their coins with mostly the names of cities in this period.

One of the finest coins that were produced during this period - the Decadrachm from Syracuse. This large silver coin had a picture of Arethusa on one side and quadriga on the other.

The Hellenistic Period - this period of the Hellenistic coins started around 330 BC. This period marked the international expansion of the Greek coins. Owing to the Greek-speaking kingdoms settling in many parts of the world like India, Syria, Iran, and Egypt, the designs of the coins were influenced; also, the kingdoms started minting their own coins.

Not only did these coins feature pictures of the reigning kings of a certain place, but they were also larger in size than mainland Greece. These coins, mostly made of gold, were also being produced in larger quantities, mainly because these kingdoms were richer than mainland Greek city-states.

The Roman Period - The Greek coins of the Roman period were no different than the Hellenistic period. Mainly because even though the Hellenistic period ended with the reign of King Strato III, many Greek communities were still producing these coins in the Roman Empire's eastern parts.

These coins were called Roman provincial coins and even Greek imperial coins. The production of these coins continued till around the third century AD.

Facts About Ancient Greek Economy

Greek economy of ancient times was mainly dependent on the import and export of goods.

The taxation system was quite different from modern days and the agriculture in Greece was quite bad owing to the poor soil quality of the country.

In ancient times, Greeks were only able to produce grapevines, olive trees, and other such oil-producing plants. Hence, they had to rely on colonialism to import other necessary plants, food, and livestock.

In Greece, only goats and sheep could be seen raised by people along with bees for honey which was the only source of sugar in Greece. Most of the people around the country were somehow employed in agriculture as the process needed quite a lot of work.

Only olives, wine, pottery, and metalwork were exported out of the country and many necessary grains and pork were imported from Egypt and Sicily. Artisans and peasants sold their crafts and other things and merchants sold vegetables, fish, and oils which they brought from around the world, whereas women sold ribbons and perfumes.

The merchants and women, all were divided into guilds.

These sellers sold their products in shop centers that were called agoras. Agora literally means 'a gathering place' or 'an assembly'.

These agoras were not only shop centers, but they were also used for spiritual, athletic, artistic, political reasons, and even for military duty or to hear council's and the king's rulings.

Merchants had to pay to sell things in an agora and they were not quite popular among the common people. That's why people tried to avoid buying things from them; however, if a peasant sold surplus goods, people would come to them and the peasants made quite a profit.

The tax system of the country mainly targeted wealthy people. The eisphora tax and liturgies, all targeted the riches and the tax went to public works. However, some cities in the country perfected the indirect taxation system. Slaves, houses, herds, flocks, all came under this kind of indirect taxation system.

Facts About Ancient Greek Currency

Ancient Greeks used coins of different value for trade as we do with money today. These coins had various denominations as per their values.

The existence of 13 such coins - as far as is known - and the entire Greek currency and trade system depended on these coins.

Coin makers of Ancient Greece produced coins by hand with no help from machines, unlike today. The designs that were to go on a coin were carved on a piece of block that was usually made of iron or bronze. These blocks were called a die.

First, a blank disc of electrum alloy, silver, or gold was taken and cast in a mold. Then the coin maker would place the mold in a certain die and strike the top of the die with a great force by a hammer. This impressed the design over the metal molds.

These handmade coins followed mainly three standards of the monetary system in ancient Greek. First was the Attic standard that was based on the Athenian silver Drachma of 66.3 grains - 0.15 oz (4.3 g).

The second, the Corinthian standard was based on the silver stater of 132.7 grains - 0.3 oz (8.6 g). The silver stater was further divided into three silver Drachmas of 44.7 grains - 0.1 oz (2.9 g).

The last was the Aeginetan stater or otherwise known as Didrachm of 188.3 grains - 0.4 oz (12.2 g). This Didrachm was based on the 94.1 grains - 0.2 oz (6.1 g) Drachma.

The Attic standard of the monetary system did not only have the 66.3 grains - 0.15 oz(4.3 g) Athenian silver Drachma coins. This Drachma coin wasn't even the smallest coin. The smallest was Hemitetartemorion.

The rest of the denominations went a little like this - two Hemitetartemorion made one Tetartemorion.

Three Hemitetartemorion made one Trihemitetartemorion. Two Tetartemorion made one Hemiobol. Three Tetartemorion made one Tritartemorion. Two Hemiobol or four Tetartemorion made one Obol. Two Obol made one Diobol. Three Obol made one Triobol. Four Obol made one Tetrobol. Six Obol made one Drachma. Two Drachmae made one Didrachm. Four Drachmae made one Tetradrachm.

Finally, the biggest known currency of this system was one Decadrachm of 663.6 grains - 1.5 oz (43 g) which was made up of 10 Drachmae.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 161 ancient Greek coins facts to learn about their usage and history then why not take a look at ancient Greek literature facts, or ancient Greek pottery facts.