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Over time, Athens' plentiful supply of silver from the mines at Laurion and its increasing dominance in trade made this the pre-eminent standard. This is not unlike present day Euro coins, which are recognisably from a particular country, but usable all over the Euro zone.Īthenian coins, however, were struck on the "Attic" standard, with a drachm equaling 4.3 grams of silver. As such coins circulated more widely, other cities began to mint coins to this "Aeginetan" weight standard of (6.1 grams to the drachm), other cities included their own symbols on the coins. Some coins circulated widely beyond their polis, indicating that they were being used in inter-city trade the first example appears to have been the silver stater or didrachm of island of Aigina that regularly turns up in hoards in Egypt and the Levant, places which were deficient in silver supply. The Greek world was divided into more than two thousand self-governing city-states (in Greek, poleis), and more than half of them issued their own coins. Reverse: ΑΙΓ (" Aeg") and dolphin within a geometrical drawing :237 Various multiples of this denomination were also struck, including the trihemitetartemorion (literally three half-tetartemorioi) valued at 3/8 of an obol. This coin (which was known to have been struck in Athens, Colophon, and several other cities) is mentioned by Aristotle as the smallest silver coin. The obol was further subdivided into tetartemorioi (singular tetartemorion) which represented 1/4 of an obol, or 1/24 of a drachm. In addition to its original meaning (which also gave the euphemistic diminutive " obelisk", "little spit"), the word obol (ὀβολός, obolós, or ὀβελός, obelós) was retained as a Greek word for coins of small value, still used as such in Modern Greek slang (όβολα, óvola, "monies"). Because of this very aspect, Spartan legislation famously forbade issuance of Spartan coin, and enforced the continued use of iron spits so as to discourage avarice and the hoarding of wealth.
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In archaic/pre-numismatic times iron was valued for making durable tools and weapons, and its casting in spit form may have actually represented a form of transportable bullion, which eventually became bulky and inconvenient after the adoption of precious metals. This suggests that before coinage came to be used in Greece, spits were used as measures of value, perhaps for paying fines. Drachmae were divided into six obols (from the Greek word for a spit of iron), and six spits made a "handful". The word drachm(a) means "a handful", literally "a grasp". The central denomination to the Ancient Greek monetary system was the drachm.