Ancient Greek Coins

What were Ancient Greek Coins Called?

The coins of Ancient Greece, as well as modern-day Greece pre-euro, were called Drachma. The denominations used in the old city-states of Greece, differ from city-state to city-state (polis) and derive from the weights for gold and silver merchants used to trade goods. To make matters worse, the weights used also differed from era to era. And as you may know, their coinage went through 4 different periods: the Archaic, the Classical, the Hellenistic, and the Roman. So here too, there are substantial differences coin collectors need to be aware of.

So in the name of keeping things simple for newbie coin collectors, we are going to use the Attic standard to answer this question. As it was the most popular weight standard in the Greek world, due to the power and influence of Athens across the ancient world.  In this standard, the Drachm is the base, divided by obols with a sixth of the value.

Starting from largest to smallest, the denominations of Greek coins were as follows:

• Dekadrachm – ratio of 10
• Tetradrachm – ratio of 4
• the Drachm – ratio 1
• Tetrobol – ratio of 2/3
• Triobol/Hemidrachm – ratio of 1/2
• Diobol – ratio of 1/3
• Trihemiobol – ratio of 1/4
• Obol – ratio of 1/6
• Tritartemorion  – ratio of 1/8
• Hemiobol – ratio of 1/12
• Trihemitartemorion – ratio of 1/16
• Tetartemorion –  ratio of 1/24

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