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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
ATHENS AND OTHER GREEK POLEIS
Writing in fourth-century Athens, Aristotle had two explanations for the origins of coined money (nomisma). In the Politics he points to the intrinsic value of metals, and their use as coins in trade among people with no social or political connection (Pol. 1257a 31–8, quoted on p. 1). In the Ethics, by contrast, he suggests that coinage had its origin and principal function within communities. By convention (nomos), citizens had given value to legal tokens (nomismata) in order to achieve justice in exchange. These tokens compensated those who provided services to another citizen at precisely the value of the benefit produced for the exchanging partner. They thus provided the possibility of compensating each citizen for the different use value of their products:
The number of shoes exchanged for a house (or for a given amount of food) must correspond to the ratio of builder to shoemaker. For if this does not happen, there is no exchange and no community … All goods must therefore be measured by some one measure, as we said before. Now this unit is in truth ‘need’ (chreia) which holds all things together … But coinage has become by convention some kind of representative of utility; and this is why it has the name nomisma – because it exists not by nature but by law and convention (nomos)
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