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The Monetary Reform of Solon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

J. G. Milne
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Extract

As a preliminary to the consideration of the changes introduced by Solon into the currency system of Athens, it will be well to review the situation which he had to face. He had found the farmers of Attica in a condition of hopeless insolvency owing to the burden of borrowed money, and had relieved them by a summary process of cancelling their debts: in effect, he had adjudged them bankrupt and then given them their discharges, so that they could start afresh with the moral guarantee of the State to support their credit, like any modern trader who has similarly gone through the courts. But it would have been of little use to do this unless he had at the same time provided some safeguard against the recurrence of the trouble: this had been so widespread that it must have been due to some cause which operated throughout the industry, not to the shortcomings of individuals; and, as the step which Solon took was to reform the currency, it is clear that in his view it was the currency which had been at fault.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , November 1930 , pp. 179 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1930

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References

1 The date of the earliest Aeginetan coins is usually taken as not earlier than 700 B.C. But, so far as their style is concerned, they might quite well be dated to the middle of the the eighth century; and, as the beginnings of coinage in Asia Minor can hardly be put later than 800, there is no improbability in supposing that the idea was taken up in Greece some years before 700.

2 The conditions in regard to the acceptance of coin in Greece about 600 B.C. may be assumed to have been somewhat similar to those that prevailed in many parts of the Near East within recent years. A money-changer would have a regular tariff for any class of coin; but the ordinary man, if offered a coin with which he was not familiar, would regard its value as a matter of bargain, like that of any other commodity: he would ask the tenderer what it was worth in his opinion, and then propose a lower figure for negotiation: if evidence as to the rate at which the coin was accepted elsewhere could be brought, it would naturally affect the transaction. I have spent a long time haggling over the value of a napoleon in a Greek village, and the exchange moved some way in my favour when a spectator present said that he had seen such coins in Athens and believed they passed there at the figure I quoted.

3 So long as Aegina controlled the sea, she could hinder effectively the shipment of silver from Laureion to Phaleron for the Athenians if she wished.

4 There is no reason to suppose that the difference in weight would have interfered with the circulation, any more than the difference in fineness affects the circulation side by side of “silver” coins struck before and since 1922.

5 There are no instances, so far as I know, of Athenian didrachms which show signs of being restruck on other coins; but if the Athenian mint did its work thoroughly, it would entirely obliterate the old types. It is only in the output of less efficient mints, such as those of South Italy, Lycia, and Cyrene, that it is possible frequently to discern the original types of the coins which were re-used under the new types overstruck on them.

6 It is possible that the heavier unit was also more convenient for trade by sea: water-borne commerce naturally can handle a greater weight, proportionally, than land-borne, under the conditions that existed in the Greek world. The Lydians, who invented coinage, wanted a unit of exchange which was more suited to caravan trade than the articles, bulky and heavy compared with their value, which are traditionally represented as having served as units; and their coins naturally tended to be small. The Greek shippers would not be so limited in regard to loading; and, especially when much of their silver was exported as bullion, it would be easier in dealing with large amounts to have a bigger unit.

7 The increase in standard may also have been designed to popularise the new coinage locally; and Peisistratus could doubtless afford to give more silver as a drachma, when he mined the metal himself instead of buying it in a rather dear market, and still cover his expenses of mintage. Certainly at the beginning of the fifth century the Athenian State was making handsome profits out of the silver mines, and a tetradrachm must have cost substantially less than four drachmas for its production.