Ancient Greece Coins Money

From the star of around 600 BC the entire Greek city states started to makes its own types of coins. A lot of the coins which are available in ancient Greece were made of silver. They were made by simply taking a tiny little lump of silver and then putting the lump on an iron mould and then striking this mould using a hammer which had a different kind of mould in it. this way a picture could be squashed into both of the sides at the similar time.

The different city states had different coin pictures. The Athenians had a picture of the owl of Athena on the coin. The ones from Corinth had the picture of Pegasus, the flying horse. The monetary system for them was similar to the one we had today. Some coins meant more in value than the others. The coin with the smaller value was called an obol and usually those laborers who dug ditches or unloaded boats would get around two to three obols a day.

All of the designs which were there on the ancient Greek coins would vary a tiny little bit from year to year. This helped numismatists make an assumption of the year on which a coin was made. After they had been contoured by the Romans they stopped making ancient Greek coins. Every Greek city state would actually make their own silver coins and hence these coins would look different from the others. This way you could tell which city state the ancient Greek coins came from.

The ancient Greek coins actually had three periods. The Archaic period, the Classical period and also the Hellenistic period. The very first coins were issued in the Archaic period which was before 600 BC. Then came the classical period where the coins where a high level of technical as well as aesthetic quality was reached. Large cities had started to produce a huge amount of gold as well as silver coins.

Finally came the Hellenistic period where the Greek culture had started to spread throughout the rest of the world. Various Greek speaking kingdoms also started to be established in places like Egypt, Syria and so on. Since the kingdoms were actually a lot wealthier, the coins were also being produced in mass orders. But then these ancient Greek coins didnt have the aesthetics like the previous age.

Ancient Greek Life History / Ancient Greece Facts for Kids

We owe a lot to Ancient Greek Civilization. History of ancient Greece is a fascinating. On this site, we have given information on various ancient Greek life aspects - Arts, Boys and Girls, Architecture, Dancing, Gods, Myths, Medicine, Inventions, Houses, Government, Religions, Wars, Politics, Weapons and ancient Greece Cities.