The obol (, obolos, also ( obelós), ( obellós), ( odelós). "nail, metal spit";[.] ) was a form of ancient Greek currency and weight.
Currency
Obols were used from early times. According to
Plutarch they were originally spits of
copper or
bronze traded by weight, while six obols make a
Ancient drachma or a handful, since that was as many as the hand could grasp.
[Plutarch, Parallel Lives, The Life of Lysander, para. 17] Heraklides of Pontus (died 310 BC) is cited as having mentioned the obols of Heraion and also gives the etymology of
obolos (the name of the coin) from
obelos (the word for "spit, spike, nail"). Similarly, the historian
Ephorus in his equally lost work
On Inventions (mid 4th century BC) is said to have mentioned the obols of Heraion.
Excavations at
Ancient Argos discovered several dozen of these early obols, dated well before 800 BC; they are now displayed at the Numismatic Museum of Athens. Archaeologists today describe the iron spits as "utensil-money" since excavated hoards indicate that during the
Geometric art period they were exchanged in handfuls (drachmae) of six spits;
[Biba Teržan, "L'aristocrazia femminile nella prima età del Ferro"] they were not used for manufacturing artifacts as metallurgical analyses suggest, but they were most likely used as token-money.
[ The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age by Harry Fokkens & Anthony Harding]
In Classical Athens, obols were traded as silver coins. Six obols made up the drachma. There were also coins worth two obols ("diobol") and three obols ("triobol"). By the 5th century BC, variations on obols expanded to include coins worth one and one-half ("trihemiobol") obols and half obols ("hemiobol"). The 4th century BC diversified further with some minted obols worth as little as one-eighth obol, equivalent to a single copper.
Funerary use
The deceased were buried with an obol placed in the mouth of the corpse, so that—once a deceased's shade reached
Hades—they would be able to pay Charon for passage across the river
Acheron or
Styx. Legend had it that those without enough wealth or whose friends refused to follow proper burial rites were forced to wander the banks of the river for one hundred years until they were allowed to cross it.
[Virgil, Aeneid 6, 324–330.]
Weight
The
obol[ Oxford English Dictionary. "obol, n."] or
obolus[ Oxford English Dictionary. "obolus, n."] was also a measurement of
Greek units,
Roman units, and apothecaries'
weight.
In ancient Greece, it was generally reckoned as drachma ( ).[British Museum Catalogue 11 – Attica Megaris Aegina][Weight Standards and Denominations, Tulane University ] Under Roman rule, it was defined as Roman ounce or about .
Literary use
The obolus, along with the mirror, was a symbol of new schismatic heretics in the short stories "
The Zahir"
[Labyrinths page 158] and "
The Theologians" by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.
In the story's discussion of the circularity of time, eternity, and the transmigration of the soul through several bodies the author uses a quotation of Luke 12:59, mistranslated as "no one will be released from prison until he has paid the last obolus"
since Luke calls the coin a
Greek lepton (a somewhat smaller denomination) rather than an obolus.
See also
-
The currency of the United States of the Ionian Islands, called the Ionian obol
-
The British halfpenny, also formerly known as the obol
[Albert Peel, Seconde parte of a register: being a calendar of manuscripts under that title (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 175, note.]
-
(ὀβελίσκοι, obelískoi), which also derived from the bars or the critical mark
-
2. Vol. I of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 9
External links
