Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
The remarkably high numbers of silver items (traded goods and coins) found around the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period, compared to the earlier periods, is inextricably bound with the increase in the amounts of silver extracted and with the wider recognition and acceptance of this metal in the Hellenistic world. Not least, the fact that silver, through its dual role as money and as a commercial commodity, binds use value with exchange value in Hellenistic societies, challenges one to explore the economic behaviour of this metal within the broader economic picture.
The present article offers a multidisciplinary approach to the role of silver in Hellenistic economies along these lines. Through the study of literary, epigraphical and archaeological evidence, it embarks on a survey of the ways in which mining, the function of metal workshops, trade and population movements, wars regulated or influenced the spread of silver commodities around the Mediterranean. The construction of a theoretical model regarding the economic behaviour of silver enables us to identify broadly the mechanisms of (re)distribution of silver items in Hellenistic micro- and macroeconomics.