Memnon (55 page)

A
PPENDIX
II:
On Currency

 

T
HE USE OF STANDARDIZED METAL COINAGE BEGAN IN THE MID
-seventh century BCE in Asia Minor, in the region known as Lydia (modern Turkey). These first coins were flattened pebbles of electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of silver and gold, bearing the stamp of the issuing authority—generally a stylized lion representing the Lydian king—on one side and a punch mark on the other. The Greeks of the Aegean coast of Asia Minor were quick to adopt this new currency and by 575 BCE the use of coins had spread throughout the Greek world.

Later coins were minted of pure gold or silver, stamped on both sides, and often displayed patriotic or religious designs. Each
polis
(city-state) reserved the right to issue its own currency, thus making trade between
poleis
a complicated affair due to variations in their standard weights (differing sometimes by as little as a fraction of a gram). Finally, around 449 BCE, Athens issued a decree to its allies and client states barring them from using anything but Athenian coinage, weights, and measures. For simplicity’s sake,
Memnon
makes use of the Athenian system, formally known as the Euboic-Attic standard.

Because of the scarcity of gold on the Greek mainland most coins were of silver—a commodity Athens had a plentiful supply of thanks to the nearby mines of Laurium. The smallest silver coin was the
obol.
Six
obols
equaled one
drachma
; one hundred
drachmas
equaled a
mina,
and sixty
minas
(or six thousand
drachmas)
equaled one
talent,
about fifty-eight pounds of silver. The two larger denominations existed only as units of accounting or for assessing the worth of bulk goods; no
mina
or
talent
coins were ever produced. Mints, called
argyrokopeion,
turned out a variety of coins including the
didrachm,
or
two-drachma
piece, also known as the
stater,
and the
tetradrachm,
or four
-drachma
piece. By the fourth century BCE, the Athenians were also producing bronze or copper coins, called
chalkoi,
to represent the smallest denominations. Twelve
chalkoi
equaled a single
obol.
One other coin favored by the Greeks was the Persian
daric
—a type of gold coin first minted circa 512 BCE by King Darius I. Renowned for its purity, the
daric
was easily worth twenty Greek
drachmas.

Though direct comparisons are impossible, in a modern context the ‘minimum wage’ for an unskilled laborer in Memnon’s era was one-and-a-half
drachmas
a day (nine
obols)
. A pint-and-a-half of the lowest-quality wine could be had for one
obol;
the same measure of fine wine, perhaps from Chios, cost as much as fourteen
drachmas.
A full set of hoplite armor would set a man back two to three hundred
drachmas.
Horses cost anywhere from five hundred to six thousand
drachmas;
contrast this price to that of Alexander’s Boukephalos, for which Philip was rumored to have paid the astronomical sum of eighteen thousand
drachmas
(three
talents),
a substantial fortune by anyone’s reckoning.

A
PPENDIX
III:
On the Greek Calendar

 

I
T’S ESPECIALLY DIFFICULT TO DEFINE AN EVENT FROM ANTIQUITY BY
our modern calendar due to the great discrepancy in the way the ancients recorded time. The Greeks, for example, had no one system for marking the passage of months and years. Each
polis
kept at least two calendars—its original lunar calendar and a civil calendar in sync with the solar year—and different regions often started their calendar years at different times. In Attica, Athens and its environs, the New Year began in the modern month of July, while Macedonians began their year in October. The Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor had their own system of reckoning time, no doubt influenced by their long association with Persia and the East; I imagine Memnon himself would have been most familiar with the Ionian calendar. Yet, for simplicity, I have opted to use the Athenian system in
Memnon,
as it is the best known.

The Greek year was comprised of twelve months, each with an alternating number of days, either twenty-nine or thirty. Because of its lunar origins, magistrates and city fathers found it necessary to insert extra days—known as intercalation—in order to reconcile their civic calendars with the solar year. The names of the months, and their approximate modern equivalents, were as follows:

                    Hekatombaion (June/July)
                    Metageitnion (July/August)
                    Boedromion (August/September)
                    Pyanopsion (September/October)
                    Maimakterion (October/November)
                    Poseideon (November/December)
                    Gamelion (December/January)
                    Anthesterion (January/February)
                    Elaphebolion (February/March)
                    Mounichion (March/April)
                    Thargelion (April/May)
                    Skirophorion (May/June)

By Memnon’s time, Greek historians were using the quadrennial Olympic Games, held in honor of Zeus at Olympia in the western Peloponnese, as a benchmark for dating events unfolding in the wide Hellenic world. Each four-year cycle between Games was known as an “Olympiad,” and they were numbered from the first—held in 776 BCE.

As the premiere Pan-Hellenic festival, the Games were of incalculable importance to all Greeks, not just athletes. To Olympia came the most influential men in the known world, statesmen and generals, poets and artists. By religious decree all hatreds and animosities were put aside for the duration of the Games, so that even states engaged in an active conflict (such as Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian War) could compete side by side and in relative peace. It made sense to historians, then, that they should mark the passage of time from the inaugural Olympic festival, making it Year One of the First Olympiad.

But, by the late fourth century BCE, after the conquests of Alexander the Great brought Egypt and the East under Greek control, the superior systems of the Egyptians and Babylonians were adapted for use with the Macedonian/Greek calendar, and reckoning by Olympiads fell into disuse.

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