Turning silver into coins catalysed the overthrow of the oligarchies of dozens of ancient Greek city states and their replacement with versions of the idea that all free men should share in governing
Dr Albarède is a geochemist at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France. His definition of “geochemistry” stretches, however, well beyond many people’s, into political and economic history. In particular, he has just finished running the European Research Council’s project. This, by studying the isotopic composition of ancient silver coins, has tried to draw conclusions about where the metal in a coin was mined, and thus about patterns of trade.
Both the silver and the free men came, in his interpretation of events, from the contemporary Persian empire’s habit of hiring Greeks as mercenary soldiers. Hoplites, the heavily armed infantrymen who formed the core of Greek armies of this period, were much in demand as soldiers of fortune, and many found employment in non-Greek armies—not infrequently fighting their fellow Greeks.
Persia was a particularly large customer during its wars of expansion around the end of the sixth century, and frequently paid its hoplite recruits in the newfangled medium of silver coins. These were a form of easily portable and exchangeable wealth invented in the kingdom of Lydia, one of Persia’s conquests, and adopted by Cyrus, the Persian empire’s founder.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline"Piecing it together"
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