Download or read book The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans written by W. V. Harris and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-04-29 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people have some idea what Greeks and Romans coins looked like, but few know how complex Greek and Roman monetary systems eventually became. The contributors to this volume are numismatists, ancient historians, and economists intent on investigating how these systems worked and how they both did and did not resemble a modern monetary system. Why did people first start using coins? How did Greeks and Romans make payments, large or small? What does money mean in Greek tragedy? Was the Roman Empire an integrated economic system? This volume can serve as an introduction to such questions, but it also offers the specialist the results of original research.