In: Categories » Legal and finance » Historical facts » Croesean Reform
|
Croesus, king of Lydia from 570 to 546 b.c., reformed the Lydian currency by suspending the coinage of electrum and introducing the rudiments of a bimetallic system based upon gold and silver. Lydia is credited with inventing coinage between 640 and 630 b.c. These first coins were struck from electrum, a naturally occurring mixture of gold and silver, sometimes called white gold. Lydia owned vast deposits of electrum and the export of electrum, often in the form of coinage, was a major industry. By mid-sixth century other cities along the coast of Asia Minor were striking gold coins that competed with Lydia’s electrum coinage. King Alyattes, Croesus’s father, had sent Croesus on military expeditions in areas where these gold coins were popular, and he returned convinced of the importance of gold coinage. By then Lydian metallurgy had progressed sufficiently to enable the separation of the gold and silver in electrum. King Alyattes continued the coinage of electrum but did begin the coinage of gold. Croesus, succeeding his father as king, undertook a major reform of the Lydian currency. He abandoned the coinage of electrum, which ceased to circulate as coinage in Asia Minor, and he established a currency system of gold and silver that would later supply the model for the currency of the Persian Empire. The gold unit was called a stater, and the Greeks called the gold stater the Croesean stater. It bore the images of a bull and a lion, thought to have been introduced by Croesus. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Croesus sent two gold staters to each of the citizens of the Greek city of Delphi because of a prophesy that he—mistakenly, as he learned later—took as favorable for his prospects in a war against the Persians. Herodotus also recounts in detail many gifts of gold and silver objects that Croesus gave to the oracle of Delphi, many of which were still extant when Herodotus wrote in the fifth century. According to Herodotus, Solon, the famous lawgiver who reformed the monetary system of Athens, visited Croesus, who displayed to him his vast treasures, and hinted that Solon must regard him as the happiest man alive because of his wealth. Solon demurred, citing the many hazards that any living person faced, and after Croesus was overcome by Persia, he expressed admiration for Solon’s wisdom. The gold stater was made of 130 grains of pure gold, and smaller coins equaled one-third, one-sixth, and one-twelfth of the full-size coin. A silver stater was made of 220 grains of pure silver. The silver stater equaled one-tenth the value of the gold stater. Smaller silver coins equal to one-half, one-third, and one-twelfth of the value of the silver stater were also struck. The smallest silver coin equaled one-twentieth of the gold stater, providing a range of coins to handle transactions of varying sizes. All the coins were full bodied, making no use of cheaper alloys. Relationships between coins of the same metal were based upon the duodecimal system, while relationships between coins of different metals were based upon the decimal system. The duodecimal system uses 12 as the base number, as opposed to the decimal system, which uses 10. Croesus is credited with introducing the world’s first bimetallic monetary system. He did not invent either gold coinage or silver coinage, but perhaps because Lydia’s electrum deposits held both gold and silver, he furnished the world with the first coinage system based upon both metals. A bimetallic monetary system was the prime rival to the gold standard in Europe during the late nineteenth century.
|
legal disclaimer
1) Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article as well for any and all copyright infringements by authors and writers. E-articles is a free information resource. If you suspect this article for any copyright infringements, please read the Terms of service and contact us to investigate the problem.
2) The E-articles directory team is not responsible for inaccuracies, falsehoods, or any other types of misinformation this tutorial may contain and will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by a user through the user's reliance on the information gained here. Please read the Terms of service
Useful tools and features
If you like this article (tutorial), please link to it from your web page using the information above. Linking to this page, this is the only way to help us improve our service, the same time providing your visitors with a way to improve their online experience.
related articles
With the establishment of the first English colonies in America, accounting or bookkeeping, as the discipline was referred to then, quickly assumed an important role in the development of American commerce. Two hundred years, however, would pass before accounting would separate from bookkeeping, and nearly three hundred years would pass before the profession of accounting, as it is now practiced, would emerge. For individuals and businesses, accounting records in Colonial America often were very eleme...
2. Discussion about The Federal Reserve System
The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system for the United States, established by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Most countries have only one central bank, such as the Bank of England, or Germany’s Bundesbank. The Federal Reserve System makes up a system of 12 regional central banks. Central banks are bankers’ banks, holding deposits of commercial banks, making loans to commercial banks, and serving as lenders of last resort to commercial banks in an economic downturn. The Federal Reserve System also ac...
3. Suffolk System
The Suffolk System was the first effort to regulate private banking in the United States. Although banking regulation later became a government activity, the Suffolk System was born of a private initiative that saw a need to regulate country banks. The Suffolk Bank of Boston first established the Suffolk System in 1819 and in 1824 six other Boston banks joined the system. The Suffolk System required country banks around Boston to deposit reserve balances totaling $5,000 in one or more of the seven Boston banks participati...
4. What represent the Treasury Notes
Treasury notes were interest-bearing treasury bonds that circulated as money in the pre–Civil War era in the United States. The notes were not legal tender but were accepted for payments owed the federal government, including tax obligations. For the first two decades of its existence the new government of the United States steered clear of the issuance of government notes that circulated as money. The hyperinflation of the American Revolution remained a thought-provoking memory of the dangers of paper money, and Al...
Augustus, Roman emperor from 30 b.c. to a.d. 14—the first emperor after the fall of the Roman Republic, established a monetary system that provided a degree of monetary order to the Romans for two centuries. The system gradually gave ground to currency debasement and inflation, which grew to unbearable proportions during the third century a.d., when the emperors Aurelian, Diocletian, and Constantine instituted major reforms of the Roman currency. The early Roman Republic adopted a bronze monetary standard, but wars ...
6. Gold Standard
Under a gold standard, the value of a unit of currency, such as a dollar, is defined in terms of a fixed weight of gold and bank notes or other paper money are convertible into gold accordingly. Although the monetary systems of individual countries have been based on the gold standard at times, all the economically advanced countries of the world were on the gold standard for a relatively brief time—roughly from 1870 to 1914, sometimes called the period of the classic gold standard. The coinage of gold dates back to 7...
7. Postage Stamps
Postage stamps have served as money in areas as diverse as America, Europe, and the Far East. During the American Civil War merchants, struggling with a shortage of small coins, began the practice of making small change with postage stamps. Daily purchases of stamps increased fivefold in New York City alone, and individual stamps circulated until they became too dirty and tattered for recognition. John Gault, a Boston sewing-machine salesman, proposed the encasement of stamps in circular metal discs with transparent mica on one...
8. What were The Lombard Banks
Lombard banks were banks that accepted deposits of goods and issued credits on account. These credits could pass from one person’s account to another’s as a medium of exchange. The term Lombard probably came from the importance of Italian bankers in the early history of the London financial market, sometimes referred to as Lombard Street, just as Wall Street signifies the financial center of New York. In early English history, Lombard was another name for “Italian.” According to Webster&rsquo...