Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The Public Sphere 217
their behavior was determined by economic considerations of the
kind that influence modern nation states. More fundamentally still,
they did not regard the economy as an autonomous category over
which the state might exercise control. There was no such thing as
a budget prepared by officials in charge of the state treasury. Except
in extreme circumstances, it is doubtful whether the Greeks had
any way of determining what we would call today the health of
their economy.
So far as there was anything resembling economic policy, this
was generally limited to the supply of basic necessities, the most
essential of which was corn. Prices fluctuated according to the law
of supply and demand, and these fluctuations affected the standard
of living. The Peloponnesian War had a profound effect upon
wealthy and poor Athenians alike as a result of the devastation of
the countryside by the enemy coupled with the heavy burden of
taxation. Similarly, at the end of the Social War in 355 b.c.e. , Athens
was practically bankrupt. Its need to recoup its losses is evident in
the subsequent reluctance of its citizens to engage in hostilities with
the rising power of Macedon in the reign of Philip II. Because the
Greeks, unlike ourselves, had no expectation that their standard of
living would increase over the course of their life time, however,
they were probably less unnerved by fluctuations than we are.
Coinage
Coinage first appeared in western Anatolia (modern Turkey)
around 600 b.c.e. Legend also connects its origins with this region
through Midas, the king of Phrygia, whose touch turned everything
to gold. Prior to the invention of coinage, most transactions were
conducted in kind. At the beginning of The Odyssey, Athene, in the
guise of Mentes, declares that she has a cargo of iron that she is
going to exchange for bronze (1.182–84). Elsewhere in the Homeric
poems, bronze utensils and cattle are cited as standards of value.
No doubt many exchanges throughout antiquity were conducted
by bartering, even after the introduction of coinage.
The first kingdom to mint coins was Lydia, whose king’s name,
Croesus, has become a byword for wealth (“as rich as Croesus”).
The earliest coins were made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver
found in the waters of the River Paktolos near the Lydian capital of
Sardis. Later, the Lydians struck coins of pure gold and silver. Coinage
was introduced to the Greek mainland in the first half of the
sixth century b.c.e. The leader was the island of Aigina, which began