Posted on 08/04/2011 6:28:10 AM PDT by COBOL2Java
The Greeks may have got the idea of coinage from their neighbours across the Aegean in Lydia, but the Greek world was the first society to use money in much the same way as we do – state-issued currency as a universal and guaranteed form of exchange.
Money was probably introduced in the early part of the 6th century BC – and was a wild success.
Its first mention, notes Richard Seaford in his book Money and the Early Greek Mind, comes in the laws written by the 6th-century Athenian reformer Solon, which, prosaically enough, lay down prices to be paid for animals in public sacrifices and standard rates of compensation for injuries. By the mid- to late-5th century BC, the great flowering of Greek intellectual life, money was universal and commonplace.
But it was still a fresh enough phenomenon to cause Greek writers to submit it to some powerful observations, as Seaford also points out.
The Greeks noted its seductive but somewhat suspect universality, the way it can be exchanged for absolutely anything – rather like a prostitute, who will go with anyone. In Aristophanes' comic play Wealth, money is characterised as a force with power over everything. You can have enough of all kinds of things, he writes – music, bread, sex, honour, courage, pea-soup – and yet nobody ever feels they have enough money. A fragment of Solon's poetry reads: "Of wealth there is no limit that appears to men. For those of us who have the most wealth are eager to double it."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Thought you’d be interested...
inbeforethemontypythonreference
What have the Greeks ever done for us?
And the Greeks are doing a fine job managing their money these days.....
Probably more than the Modern Greeks can do for us...
first representative senate.
first form of term limits
first form of universal language
math (not obama math)
physics
figured out how round the earth is
commerce on the seas
libraries as valuable
forced perspective
golden mean
mechanics
multiple military innovations
society of laws
discussion and voting on the discourse
language of the new testament
stoning those practicing undesirable social acts...
school
art (and teaching the brish what parts to steal)
proving hitler’s elites could be fought and beaten (crete 1941)
Defeating musulini
Greek organizations sold the most us war bonds of any private grooup during ww II
high heat ceramics for protective coatings.
pastries.
exporting their smartest to the USA. (there is a deep resentment there by that brain drain. those that stayed behind have this notion that those that prospered in the USA could have done their prospering in the current socialism of Greece.)
Marathon running industry. (can still run that marathon in marathon every year)
Olympic games. -pre doping
one of the hardest road rally races in world due to tough mountain roads
citizenship can be earned by more than mere birth.
beat back persians.
For the answer, see the chapter on Thermopylae and Salamis :)
(time index set to the Delphi segment)Mysteries of the Ancient World - Myths and Legends (at 43:15)
March 13, 2016 | Questar Entertainment
Oh, wow, thanks for the ping 11 years ago, I managed to miss it, but somehow managed to get the keywords in here. Must have just flot-out forgotten to post anything before.
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