Money and coins in ancient Greece: the drachma and the owl

Long ago, people did not pay with coins. They swapped things: a goat for some wheat, or olive oil for a pot. People also paid with pieces of metal. They weighed the metal on scales to know how much it was worth.

The historian Herodotus wrote that the Lydians, a people in what is now western Turkey, were the first to make coins of gold and silver. Soon Greek cities made their own coins too. A coin is a νόμισμα. At first, this word meant something that everyone agrees to use, a custom.

Some Greek money words are older than coins. In early times, people used iron spits or nails as money. A word for such a spit was ὀβολός. Six spits made a handful, a δραχμή. This word comes from a verb that means “to grab”. Later the old names stayed, and they became the names of small silver coins.

In ancient Athens, money worked like this:

• 6 obols made 1 drachma.
• 100 drachmas made 1 mina, a μνᾶ.
• The talent, the τάλαντον, was the biggest unit of all. It was a huge sum.

An obol was a tiny silver coin, good for small things at the market. The Athenians also made a big coin worth four drachmas, the τετράδραχμον. One of them weighs about 17 grams of silver.

At the market, the agora, a money-changer sat at a table, a τράπεζα. Visitors came from other cities with other coins, and he changed them into Athenian money. That is why a bank in Greek today is still called a τράπεζα, and a banker is a τραπεζίτης. In ancient Greek, a τραπεζίτης was a money-changer.

Small change had its own word too: κέρμα. Greeks still say κέρματα for the coins in their purse.

Athens began to make its famous four-drachma coins at the end of the 6th century BC. Experts do not agree on the exact year: most say about 515 BC, but the dates go from about 525 to 510 BC. On the front was the head of the goddess Athena, with a helmet. On the back was her bird, the owl, a γλαῦξ, with a small olive branch and a moon. Three letters, ΑΘΕ, meant “of the Athenians”. People simply called these coins “owls”.

The silver, the ἄργυρος, came from the mines of Laurion, south of Athens. Around 483 BC, the miners found a lot of new silver. Every citizen was going to get ten drachmas. But a leader called Themistocles, Herodotus tells us, persuaded the Athenians to build 200 warships instead. Soon these ships fought for Greece against the Persians.

Owls were used in the whole Greek world, even in cities that did not like Athens. In a comedy by Aristophanes, someone sees an owl and asks: “Who brought an owl to Athens?” It was a joke, because Athens already had plenty of owls. Later in the same play, the birds promise the judges “owls from Laurion”. These owls, they say, will nest in their purses and hatch small change, κέρματα.

The drachma lived for a very long time. After the Greek War of Independence, the governor Ioannis Kapodistrias made the first coins of the new Greek state in 1828. They were called “phoenixes”, after the bird that is born again from fire. In 1832 the old name came back: Greece had a drachma again. It used the drachma until 2002, when the euro took its place.

Many money words are still alive in Greek today:

• An οβολός is a small gift of money for a good cause. A sign at a charity box may say «Δώστε τον οβολό σας», “Give your obol”.
• A νόμισμα is a coin, or the money of a country. On New Year’s Day, Greek families cut a cake, the βασιλόπιτα, with a coin hidden inside. Whoever finds it is lucky for the year.
• A τάλαντο is now a talent, a gift for music or art.