¹ e.g. Vernant, J.-P., Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (trans, by Lloyd, Janet, 2nd ed., New York 1988) 23–8Google Scholar.

² See e.g. Easterling, P.E., ‘Anachronism in Greek Tragedy’, JHS 105 (1985) 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, whose two paragraphs on coinage are the only treatment known to me of tragic money, apart from occasional remarks on money from a perspective very different from mine in ch.7 of von Reden, S., Exchange in Ancient Greece (London 1995)Google Scholar.

³ The cultural consequences of money in early Greece have received far less attention than those of literacy. Notable exceptions are Thomson, G., The First Philosophers (2nd ed., London 1961)Google Scholar; Shell, M., The Economy of Literature (Baltimore & London 1978)Google Scholar; Kurke, L., The Traffic in Praise: Pindar and the Poetics of Social Economy (Ithaca, NY, and London 1991)Google Scholar.

⁴ See 6, 76 and 78 below. The question of to what extent, if at all, there is money in Homer, and the crucial question (on which it depends) of how we define money (too broad a definition is useless), I will deal with in my larger study.

⁵ For this analysis see e.g. Polanyi, K., The Livelihood of Man (New York, San Francisco & London 1977) esp. 102–6Google Scholar. But on any reasonable definition of money, money barely exists in Homer.

⁶ Despite the few indications of a special status for gold as representing wealth in general: e.g. Od. 3.301.

⁷ The only cases invoving trade are Il. 21.79 (sale of Lykaon); Od. 1.43 (purchase of Eurykleia). The others are Il. 2.459 (golden tassel on Athena's aigis), 6.236 (suits of armour exchanged), 23.702-5 and 885 (prizes); Od. 22.57 (compensation).

⁸ Fr. 90 D-K.

⁹ πνρὸς άνταμοιβὴ τὰ πάντα καὶ πῦρ ὰπάντων ὂκωσπερ χρνσοῦ χρήματα καὶ χρημάτων χρνσός.

¹⁰ PMG 910. This fell on receptive ears, being referred to by Hipponax (or Ananias: Ananias fr. 2 West).

¹¹ as at e.g. Ar. Peace 1201.

¹² e.g. 2.180; 3.56, 58-9, 131; 5.51, 77; 6.79, 92.

¹³ e.g. Melville Jones, J. R., Testimonia Numaria (London 1993) ns. 46–9Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Thuc. 1.80.3-4, 83, 121.2, 141-3; 2.13.2-3. Cf. e.g. [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 3.3; [Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 27.3.

¹⁵ A good recent overview of the problems of the early development of Greek coinage is by Howgego, C., Ancient History from Coins (London 1995) 1-7, 12–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Knights 797-8; Wasps 787-93; Clouds 247-9; Peace 1201-2; Birds 301, 1105-8; Frogs 139-41, 718-33; Eccl. 601-2, 815-22.

¹⁷ e.g. Eur. Su. 239 the useless wealthy are ‘always passionate for more’, πλειόνων τ' έρῶσ' άεί.

¹⁸ Hdt. 3.123-5. See §III.

¹⁹ 775 χρνσόν ήράσθη λαβεῖν, 1002-14, 1146-8, 1206-7.

²⁰ It is not in Sappho fr. 16 Lobel-Page; Xenophanes fr. 2 West.

²¹ PMG 890; also Archil, fr. 19 West (‘I don't care about the wealth of Gyges etc’. continued presumably by specifying what is more important than wealth); Theogn. 699-718; PMG 988; Eur. Med. 542-44, fr. 659.

²² With the notable exception of the passage (discussed below in §III) of Iliad 9 in which Achilles compares numerous gifts with his life. We have, of course, to allow the possibility that the creator(s) of Homeric epic were not unfamiliar with money, but tended to exclude it from their heroic vision. Poetry that is not very much later than Homer, such as Sappho and Alkaios, shows the influence of money (though not of coinage).

²³ EN 4.1.2 χρήματα λέγομεν πάντα ὅσων άξία νομίσματι μετρεῖται.

²⁴ It should be noted that the frequency of money in the fragments is due to the interest in money of the writers who preserved them, especially the anthologer Stobaeus. I refer to the fragments of Euripides in the edition of Nauck, and to all other tragic fragments in Tragicorum Fragmenta Graecorum (Göttingen 1971-)Google Scholar.

²⁵ Eur. fr. 142.

²⁶ Eur. fr. 327; cf. also HF 669-720.

²⁷ Eur. Med. 965.

²⁸ Eur. fr. 324.

²⁹ Fr. adesp. 181.

³⁰ Eur. fr. 22; also fr. 95.

³¹ Eur. El. 38; cf. on the other hand Eur. fr. 1066 (χρήματα depart but εύγένεια remains).

³² Soph. fr. 354.

³³ See 87 and 105 below. Cf. also Soph. OT 542 (tyranny caught by χρήματα, cf. Aesch. Ag. 1638-9), Eur. Hek. 818 (payment for rhetoric lessons, which bestow power), El. 428-9 (χρήματα permits hospitality [but cf. 394-5] and saves from disease).

³⁴ Eur. Phoen. 439-40; also HF 774-6, fr. 325; Fr. adesp. 294.

³⁵ Eur. fr. 580.

³⁶ Eur. Hek. 865, Su. 875-6; cf. fr. 1092.

³¹ Eur. fr. 341; cf. Ion 629.

³⁸ Eur. fr. 252, Or. 644-5; cf. also Aesch. Cho. 372; Eur. Hek. 1229, Tro. 432-3.

³⁹ Eur. Su. 178, 239, Hek. 775. Conceivably the word may have lost erotic associations, however, in such passages.

⁴⁰ Fr. adesp. 129.

⁴¹ Eur. frr. 163, 542.

⁴² Eur. fr. 1066.

⁴³ Aesch. Su. 935.

⁴⁴ Aesch. Pers. 842; Eur. Alc. 56-9.

⁴⁵ Eur. Ion 629-31, Med. 598-9, Phoen. 552-4.

⁴⁶ Eur. fr. 543.4-5 (the only thing preferable to wealth).

⁴⁷ Eur. Or. 1155-6.

⁴⁸ Eur. fr. 1046.

⁴⁹ Fr. adesp. 130.

⁵⁰ Eur. El. 941.

⁵¹ Eur. fr. 405.

⁵² Eur. fr. 934.

⁵³ Eur. Or. 1156-7.

⁵⁴ Eur. HF 643-8.

⁵⁵ Eur. fr. 527; cf. El. 253, 372.

⁵⁶ Jones, John, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London 1962) 82–93 (citation from 88)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Goldhill, S., Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1986) 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁸ The distinction between wealth and money is important. Although money is wealth, and wealth may take the form of money, with the result that the same word (e.g. χρήματα) may refer to both, nevertheless they are crucially distinct categories. Wealth and its dangers are themes of the Agamemnon (e.g. 773-81, 1574-6); but apart from the lines discussed below (949, 959, 437), money occurs only in the allusion to (false) coinage at 780.

⁵⁹ This is a passage in Sitta von Reden's discussion of the scene in terms of how ‘commercial images convey meanings of social disruption in a complex sense’ (in her Exchange in Ancient Greece [London 1995] 161–4Google Scholar). Because the passage is hard to summarise, I give it in full. ‘… it remains remarkable that the value of a symbol of power is described in monetary terms. The purple tapestry was certainly not bought with money. Given that the text has just raised the question how objects change their value in different contexts of exchange, the attribute άγρνρώνητος seems to withdraw the tapestry from the sphere of sacred values circulating between men and gods and to transfer it instead into a human sphere of exchange. Moreover, if there is a metaphysical relationship between the colourful carpet and Clytemnestra's crafty web of words the redefinition of the carpet as a value in the monetary economy of humans carries over to Clytemnestra's speech.’ I do not know why she claims that ‘the purple tapestry was certainly not bought with money’ (her endnote does not help). Her general approach to the scene is influenced by Goldhill's reading of it in terms of the manipulation (and openness) of signification in Language, Sexuality, Narrative: the Oresteia (Cambridge 1984) 66–79.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Commentators compare Theopompus FGrHist fr. 117 ίσοστάσιος γὰρ ήν ή πορϕύρα πρὸς ἅργυρον έξεταζομένη (at Colophon), ‘for the purple was being valued as equal in weight against silver’ (i.e. as worth its weight in silver).

⁶¹ It is interesting that the (potentially alarming and relatively novel) man-made inexhaustibility of money is envisaged in terms of the natural inexhaustibility of the sea—whether through reticence or anxiety or the need for a concrete analogue for a difficult abstraction. Cf. e.g. Soph. Ant. 1077 κατηργυρωμένος meaning bribed with silver.

⁶² Eur. El. 699-746 with Cropp ad loc, IT 196, Or. 812-13, 995-1000.

⁶³ Il. 2.101-8.

⁶⁴ The description is from L. Gernet's discussion of such objects in Greek myth (The Anthropology of Ancient Greece, transl. by Hamilton, J. and Nagy, B. [Baltimore 1981]) 73–111Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Ag. 1095-7, 1193, 1217-22, 1242-3, 1583-602.

⁶⁶ Ag. 1638-9 ὲκ τῶν δὲ τοῦδε χρημάτων…

⁶⁷ Cho. 135, 250, 301; Eum. 757-8.

⁶⁸ e.g. at 9.93-4, the story of Euenios, who after having failed in his duty to guard some sacred sheep thought to buy some more to replace them (άντικαταστήσειν ἄλλα πριάμενος). But he is found out and blinded. In return, the people are required by an oracle to make him whatever compensation he chooses for being blinded. He is asked, before he knows about the oracle, what compensation he would choose, and specifies certain pieces of property. But when the oracle is revealed to him, he is angry at the deception, even though the people buy the property from its owners and give it to him. His anger is presumably at having been tricked into confining his choice to something specific. Neither the specific sheep nor the specific property are replaceable by (the potentially unlimited power of) money.

⁶⁹ e.g. in Eur. El. (§V below) or, in Sophocles’ Philoctetes, the persistent contrast between the bow (talismanic object, and gift) and the commercial ethos associated with the trickery of Odysseus (303, 578-9, 668-73, 978, etc).

⁷⁰ Burkert, W., The Creation of the Sacred (Cambridge, Mass. 1996)Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Hdt. 3.122 εἵνεκέν τε χρημάτων ἅρξεις τῆς άπάσης 'Eλλάδος.

⁷² Hdt. 3.56; Kraay, C., Archaic and Classical Greek Coins (London 1976) 30, 36.Google Scholar

⁷³ Macdonald, G., Coin Types, Their Origin and Development (Glasgow 1905) 44–52Google Scholar; Steiner, D., The Tyrant's Writ (Princeton 1994) 159–63.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ For the ‘thalassocracy’ of Polykrates see Hdt. 3.122; Thuc. 1.13; 3.104; also Hdt. 3.39,44-5.

⁷⁵ as does, in a different way, the story of Gyges and his seal-ring: Seaford, R., Reciprocity and Ritual (Oxford 1994) 224–5Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ By far the closest is Od. 14.324-6 (=19.293-5), in which it is said that the ‘bronze and gold and much-worked iron’ gathered by Odysseus as he travelled in search of gain ‘would feed one man after another to the tenth generation’. Cf. also Od. 3.301.

⁷⁷ As if to preclude the kind of dissent created between Ajax and Odysseus by the arms of Achilles, Dolon immediately consoles Hektor for the loss of the item of unique quality (‘the finest—κάλλιστον—gift of the Trojans’) by invoking quantity: Hektor should not be envious, for there are innumerable other things for him to enjoy (191-4).

⁷⁸ This does not mean that gold is not used in payment in Homer. In fact, the least weak suggestions of money in the epics are some instances of gold by itself as substance (i.e. not in an artefact) given in payment (though it may be called a ‘gift’): Il. 11.123-5, 18.507, 22.331-2; Od. 4.525-6, 11.327 (cf. 15.527), 14.448. But it is interesting that these transactions are either peripheral to the main narrative (e.g. on the decidedly non-heroic trial scene on the shield of Achilles) or negative in some way (e.g. Aigisthos'payment to his watchman) or (in most cases) both. Because gold-as-payment is in each case not the only unusual feature of the passage, no circularity is involved in suggesting that they are non-heroic intrusions from the incipient world of money.

⁷⁹ Denniston and Page in their commentary write ‘τοι (in 1015) is odd here, for this (i.e. the sentence about agriculture) is simply a further illustration of the same theme’, failing to see the contrast, which makes τοι appropriate. Cf. e.g. Theogn. 197-202.

⁸⁰ Gold-changer’ is χρνσαμοιβός, which occurs only here (and in Hsch.). Cf. άργυραμοιβός, a name given by Plato (Pol. 289e) to those free men who trade ‘in the market-place or by travelling from city to city by sea or by land, exchanging currency (χρνσαμοιβός) for other things or currency for currency’. άργυραμοιβός is more appropriate than άργυραμοιβός to the heroic age and to a god.

⁸¹ The ms. εύθέτου (of the ash) has been emended to εύθέτους (of the urns), unnecessarily. And the corruption would be much more likely the other way (Denniston-Page ad loc).

⁸² Phryn. Praep. Soph. 71.9 εύθετεῑν νεκρόν· τὸ εύ κοσμεῖν έν τάϕοις νεκρόν; D.C. 40.49; SEG 1.449. Fraenkel's comment that this sense ‘is irrelevant here, for the bodies have been cremated’ misses the exquisitely bitter combination in a single word of opposites—impersonal commercial convenience and the ritualised love for a dead family member.

⁸³ I will argue this in detail elsewhere.

⁸⁴ See also Med. 968; Hipp. 964-5; cf. Soph. OT 30.

⁸⁵ …χρημάτων δ' είσὶν πόροι—a regular phrase for raising money: LSJ s. πόρος II 3.

⁸⁶ because holding the balance (439), like Zeus at Il. 8.69, 16.658, 19.223-4, 22.209.

⁸⁷ or, in the words of Soph. fr. 88, money can acquire ‘the seat of highest tyranny that is nearest to the gods’ (adopting Conington's θεοῖσιν for the nonsensical ἅκουσιν or τ’ ἅγουσιν of the mss).

⁸⁸ LSJ s. τέλος V.

⁸⁹ See e.g. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (London 1994; first pub. 1966) 70Google Scholar: ‘money is only an extreme and specialised type of ritual’.

⁹⁰ e.g by Taplin, O., Greek Tragedy in Action (London 1978) 79–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹¹ είμα at Ag. 921, 960, 963, 1383; ποικιλ- at Ag. 923, 926, 936, Cho. 1013, Eum. 460.

⁹² Ag. 910, 957.

⁹³ At Ach. Tat. 2.11.5-6 the dye πορϕύρα is mistaken for blood; Il. 17.361; A.R.4.668; Bion Epitaph. 27; etc.

⁹⁴ Seaford, R., ‘The last bath of Agamemnon’, CQ 34 (1984) 247–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹⁵ See esp. Eur. Tro. 377-8: ού δάμαρτος έν χεροῖν πέπλοις συνεστάλησαν (and 390). On the link between ϕιλία and the handling (washing and dressing) of the corpse see esp. Soph. Ant. 897-902.

⁹⁶ Il. 22.510-11.

⁹⁷ In the Odyssey Penelope does so for the widower Laertes.

⁹⁸ expressed e.g. in the word εὕθετος: see n.82 above.

⁹⁹ It is also relevant to our theme to note that Klytaimestra's ‘gifts’ to her murdered husband are ‘less than the offence. For someone to pour out everything in exchange for one blood (i.e. life) is labour in vain’ (Cho. 519-21). Although both blood and offerings can be ‘poured out’, once again it is said that life is more valuable than all wealth. ούκ ἕχοιμ' ἅν εί κάσαι τάδε τὰ δῶρα· (a better reading than τόδε· …) in the previous line has never been properly understood (e.g. Lloyd-Jones translates ‘I do not know to what to liken these her gifts’). In fact it refers to the lack of equivalence between the offerings and what they are an attempt to compensate for. The phrase ονκ ἕχω (προσ)εικάζειν occurs elsewhere in Aeschylus only at Ag. 163, where its meaning is interestingly similar (in the image of a balance).

¹⁰⁰ Seaford (n.75), ch.3.

¹⁰¹ Seaford (n.4).

¹⁰² Cf. e.g. Eur. Su. 123, 520-63 (Theseus on the unburied dead at Thebes); Phylarchus FGrHist 81 F 45 ap. Athen. 52Id.

¹⁰³ That is why, as we saw (§111) at Aesch. Ag. 1008-14, it may be advisable to jettison the cargo.

¹⁰⁴ e.g. Soph. OT 380, fr. 88; Eur. Su. 450-1, Ion 626-30, Or. 1156, fr. 420. Note the τνραννικὴ ούσία of Kimon ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 27.3).

¹⁰⁵ See also Hdt. 1.61, 64; PI. Rep. 338ab, 567d, 568d. The sentiment in OT must have been strongly felt, for it applies in fact to the career neither of Oedipus nor of Kreon.

¹⁰⁶ Literally χρήματα ‘finds’ for people friends, honours and the seat of highest tyranny, nearest to the gods (see n.87 above). The fr. was mentioned in §11.

¹⁰⁷ Similarly Eur. Held. 678; Rhes. 405; PI. Crito 45d, 50b2, 54c8, Ep. 328e1.

¹⁰⁸ In a more complex construction (with πλήν) the daughters of Oedipus would be destitute or not destitute.

¹⁰⁹ Even if δοκῶ means ‘I think’, this would give much the same meaning, with δοκῶ sarcastic.

¹¹⁰ The mss. θεῶν is suspect, and I have omitted it from my translation (this does not affect my argument).

¹¹¹ LSJ cite, under the meaning ‘because’, this line of Ant. and Ar. Plut. 433-4, which however means ‘you will pay the penalty in return for your attempt to banish me’. Under the meaning ‘wherefore’ LSJ cite PV 31, Soph. OT 264, Thuc. 6.83, Ev. Luc. 12.3, and Jebb cites Soph. OC 1295; but in all these cases too (except the much later Ev. Luc.) it is a matter of exchange.

¹¹² Thus Brown, and similarly other translators. Translations of Greek tragedy regularly eliminate what seems awkward or unfamiliar, and thereby fail to reproduce precisely what is interesting.

¹¹³ Her location of value in Hades is sufficient to shed doubt on certain values in this world (521).

¹¹⁴ What may seem to some paradoxical, that this value produces an overall gain despite being non-monetary, is brought out by the word κέρδος.

¹¹⁵ Further, the replaceability of the spouse (or betrothed)—stressed by both Kreon (526) and Antigone (909)—is analogous to the replaceability of goods by means of money, whereas the natural tie of blood-kin may be, Antigone maintains (911-2), irreplaceable: see Murnaghan, S. in AJP 107 (1986) 199Google Scholar; Seaford (n.75) 216-8. Similarly Klytaimestra, who implies the unlimited power of money to replace goods (§111), has already replaced her spouse, while ironically praising his uniqueness (895-901—in images associated with death ritual: Seaford [n.94] 254), having just used (888) the same verb (κατασβέννυμι) of her tears for him having dried up as she later uses to express the inexhaustibility of the sea (as a metaphor, we have seen, for the unlimited power of money). I owe much in this note to Betty Belfiore.

¹¹⁶ See esp. Aristot. Pol. 1257b, EN 1133a. Inscribed laws have survived enforcing the acceptability and use of local currency: the Attic inscription referred to below (n.l 18); also SIG ³ 218, 525.

¹¹⁷ That the ruler is meant is clear from 177 άρχαῖς and 178.

¹¹⁸ See e.g. the inscribed Attic law published by Stroud, R.S. in Hesperia 43 (1974) 157–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar: inter alia the public tester is to neutralise silver coins which are bronze or lead underneath.

¹¹⁹ From many other instances w e may cite the tradition that Polykrates (cf. §III n.72) manipulated the Samian coinage.

¹²⁰ Kraay (n.72) 58-9.

¹²¹ Ps.Aristot. Oeconomica (fourth century BC) 1347a.

¹²² We may even be reminded of the tyrant described by Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic, whose massive thefts and enslavement of the citizen body are sanctioned by the justice that he himself creates (justice being ‘the interest of the stronger’): Rep. 38e, 344a-c.

¹²³ Nussbaum, M., The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge 1986) 58Google Scholar writes ‘By making all values commensurable in terms of a single coin—he is preoccupied with the image of coinage and profit in ethical matters—Creon achieves singleness, straightness, and an apparent stability’. This is perceptive, but money in the play does I believe far more than provide ethical imagery that is analogous to Kreon's habit of mind.

¹²⁴ See e.g. Rycroft, C., A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London 1968) 29–30, 125-6Google Scholar; Laplanche, J. and Portalis, J.B., The Language of Psychoanalysis (London 1980) 349–60Google Scholar.

¹²⁵ notably in Pentheus in Eur. Ba., as shown by Parsons, M. in BICS 35 (1988) 1–14Google Scholar, who also offers an excellent general defence of the application of psychoanalytic insights to tragedy.

¹²⁶ The procession to the ‘tomb’ clearly evokes a funeral procession (806-16, 891-4).

¹²⁷ That is so whether the type is merely remembered or to hand in a coin known to be genuine.

¹²⁸ IG V 1390.47-8; Phryn. Praep. Soph. 30.10 (de Borries).

¹²⁹ Ps.Plat. De Virt. 378e.

¹³⁰ Falsely stamped coin is a moral image already at Aesch. Ag 780.

¹³¹ Od. 19.390-475; 21.217-223. Odysseus’ scar was acquired in a hunt. So too was Orestes’, but as he was a small child, the hunt becomes a playful chase of a fawn inside the house (or courtyard).

¹³² On the resemblance of the shield-devices in Aesch. Sept. to coin-marks see Steiner (n.73) 53-9.

¹³³ At Eur. IT 813-5 this golden lamb is actually depicted among the scenes woven on the cloth by which Orestes proves to his sister his identity.

¹³⁴ 184-92 (her tears are also a reason for not participating), 404-5.

¹³⁵ 253, 371-2, 394-5.

¹³⁶ Soph. OT 541-2; cf. e.g. Eur. Phoen. 402-5, which makes it clear that, for keeping friends, money is more important than noble birth.

¹³⁷ Note esp. 994-5, 998-1001, 1006-7, 1107-8, 1139-40.

¹³⁸ I am grateful to Betty Belfiore, Chris Gill, and the anonymous JHS referees for their improvement of this paper.