------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW -------------- 
Published by EH.NET (March 2005) 
 
Richard Seaford, _Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy,  
Tragedy_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xii + 370 pp.  
$80 (cloth), ISBN: 0-521-83228-4; $29.95 (paperback), ISBN:  
0-521-53992-7. 
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by David Tandy, Professor of Classics, University  
of Tennessee, Knoxville. 
 
 
Richard Seaford, Professor of Greek Literature at the University of  
Exeter and author of the very important _Reciprocity and Ritual:  
Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State_ (Oxford 1994), has  
given us a powerful and valuable set of observations on the impact of  
the introduction of coinage on the early Greek world. Part One, The  
Genesis of Coined Money, will be of interest especially to economists  
and economic historians. Part Two, The Making of Metaphysics, which  
makes fascinating arguments about the role of coinage in the  
invention and development of philosophy and abstract thought in  
general, will be of interest especially to classicists. This reviewer  
found the book exceptionally difficult and supposes that the best  
review would be a largely descriptive one. 
 
In his introduction, Seaford offers some necessary preliminaries by  
discussing the differences between "primitive" and modern money -- he  
situates Greek coinage "between commodity and sign, between  
'primitive' and modern money" (6). Building on his _Reciprocity and  
Ritual_, Seaford insists that we ask the question, why do people  
_begin_ to trust money? Part of his answer is that coinage has a  
strong connection with ritual, especially civic ritual. He promises a  
very humanistic and nuanced analysis of coinage in Part One. He  
further predicts that in Part Two readers will learn that money led  
to metaphysics, which led to tragedy. He concludes his introduction  
with a list of seven characteristics of money that stand as an answer  
to the question, what is (modern) money? He offers the  
"characteristics the possession of which by something (x) inclines us  
to call x money" (16; all the following italics are original): 
 
1. x has the "_power to meet social obligations" 
2. It "tends to be _quantified_" 
3. It "may provide a _measure of value_" 
4. _General acceptability_ 
5. _Exclusive acceptability_ 
6. _Fiduciarity_ 
7. "The _state_ may be involved in issuing money, controlling it,  
guaranteeing it, enforcing its acceptability, and so on." 
 
Chapter two looks at economic transactions in Homer (eighth century  
BC), observing the marginalization of trade in Homer as well as the  
absence of money. Homer's world has plenty of gold and silver and  
there is no shortage of exchange (although markets are for the most  
part absent). One of the more common exchanges in the _Iliad_ and  
_Odyssey_ is the distribution of booty and of sacrificial meat. But  
there is no money. 
 
Chapter three focuses on Homeric sacrifice and durable wealth. He  
concludes that Homer idealizes gift-exchange and undervalues  
commodity-exchange. 
 
In moving to the Near East in chapter four, Seaford offers valuable  
comparisons between Greek epic and Mesopotamian epic, as well as  
similarities between Mesopotamian and Homeric sacrificial offerings.  
Much of this will be pretty heavy slogging for non-classicists.  
Seaford argues that the similarities between second-millennium Greece  
and Mesopotamia help us to recognize the changes that have occurred  
later as the _polis_ comes into being. What is most striking is how  
the Greek cults, the religious centers of the Greek world, depended  
on money for their operations, and how for the Greeks, in contrast to  
their eastern neighbors, "The role of the god is not to demand food  
for the centre, for himself and his household, but rather to require  
a human feast, whose vital political importance is a symbolic  
expression of communality, participation, _koinonia_ (87)." The  
indirectness of civic feasting leads participants "towards the  
symbolic." 
 
In chapter five, Seaford reviews the literary references to money.  
Archilochus (ca. 650 BC) may refer to money and Alcaeus (ca. 600)  
certainly does. It is clear that by the fifth century in Athens money  
possessed all seven of the characteristics identified in the  
introduction. 
 
Chapters six and seven should be of great interest to economists  
because, finally, Seaford takes up the preconditions of coinage and  
the earliest coinage. Chapter six reviews the long understood  
transition from spit (_obelos_) to coin (_obolos_), adding the  
careful observation that while spits (_obeloi_) were regularly left  
as dedications, there remains the mystery of why a statue would be  
called an _obelos_ (108), unless one offers the rather easy  
explanation of the presence of substitutability, a key to the  
development of fiduciarity. 
 
Chapter seven, "The Earliest Coinage," contains at first glance  
nothing new, but Seaford is able to sift through the standard  
evidence and get a new twist accommodating his social and ritual  
approach. The Lydians (inland western Anatolia) _developed_ coinage  
from an existing system of weights, as Seaford properly follows  
Miriam Balmuth in talking about coinage as a development rather than  
an invention. What about _when_? It is difficult to push the first  
coins to earlier than 600 BC and most Greek states waited at least  
fifty years and in many cases nearly one hundred to adopt this  
innovation. 
 
In chapter eight, Seaford describes "several salient _features_ of  
Greek money that are also features of modern money": 1. Money is  
homogeneous; 2. Money is impersonal; 3. Money is a universal aim; 4.  
Money is a universal means; 5. Money is unlimited; 6. Money is both  
concrete and abstract; and 7. Money is distinct from all else. 
 
Part Two of the book will either not interest most readers of this  
review or especially interest them since it is not particularly  
"economic." What Seaford does in this part is argue and speculate  
about the role of coinage in the invention of aspects of Greek  
culture. In chapter nine, Seaford wonders about how coinage affected  
public space and the earliest philosophical thought in Miletus in  
Ionia. Miletus in the early sixth century was easily the most  
monetized city-state in the Greek world. Chapter ten addresses the  
work of Anaximander (of Miletus, ca. 610-546) and Xenophanes (of  
Colophon [near Miletus in Ionia], ca. 570-ca. 480). 
 
The remaining chapters will interest classical philologists and  
philosophers, as Seaford takes up money and religion and mystery  
cult, Heraclitus and Parmenides and the development of "abstract  
being," and Pythagoreanism and Protagoras. 
 
His concluding chapter takes up some final points about some uses of  
the language of monetization (e.g., incommensurabilities,  
equivalencies, self-sufficiency) in tragedy. His explanation for why  
modern westerners feel a kinship with the classical Greeks that we  
don't for the civilization of the ancient Near East is exceptionally  
provocative: "However fascinating for us is the culture of  
premonetary Egypt and Mesopotamia, it remains irreducibly alien. The  
earliest Greek poetry and wisdom, we citizens of a thoroughly  
monetised society recognise as alien and yet somehow more akin to us  
than anything from those earlier civilisations. This is, I suggest,  
in part because Greek poetry and wisdom sprang from a society that  
was about to be -- or was already - monetized" (316). 
 
In conclusion let me emphasize yet again that this is not the book to  
open if one wants to find out what we think we know about the  
earliest money because that is not what it is about, as even the  
title makes manifestly clear. Readers interested in the specific  
matter of early coinage should go to David M. Schaps's excellent _The  
Invention of Coinage and the Monetization of Ancient Greece_ (2003)  
(reviewed by Morris Silver for EH.Net), which focuses primarily on  
the introduction of coinage and the function of coinage in early  
Greek society. Not all agree with Schaps, and the contributions by  
Schaps and Jack Kroll to Miriam Balmuth's edited _From Hacksilber to  
Coinage: New Insights into the Monetary History of the Near East and  
Greece_ (2001) illustrate the absence of unanimity regarding the  
details of the earliest coinage. 
 
 
David Tandy's current project is _Sappho's Brother_, a study of Greek  
economic development ca. 700-575 BC. His most recent publication  
related to the project is "Trade and Commerce in Archilochos, Sappho,  
and Alkaios," in _MELAMMU V_, edited by Robert Rollinger and  
Christoph Ulf, 183-194. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004. 
 
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