Money and the Early Greek Mind (review)

This ambitious study offers a sophisticated treatment of the cultural, psychological, and philosophical ramifications of monetization in archaic Greece. Most assuredly, it deserves to be read alongside two recent, significant explorations of the same material. One is the brilliantly provocative (but ultimately flawed) study of the symbolism and ideology of coining, published in 1999 by Leslie Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold (Princeton), for which see my comments in AJP 122 (2001) 642–46. The second is the more conventional investigation from an economic historical perspective of David Schaps, The Invention of Coinage and the Monetization of Ancient Greece (Ann Arbor 2003), which, nonetheless, has a fine grasp of patterns of actual behavior and the institutionalization of the use of coined money. Despite my admiration for the thoroughness of Seaford's arguments, his mastery of the bibliography, his theoretical vigor, and his extraordinary familiarity with the literary texts, I have systematic disagreements with the conclusions of this work which constraints of space forbid presenting here. My reconstruction of the economic and social history of the second half of the sixth century, the earliest context in which monetization can even be broached as a factor, is very different. To a certain extent, the author has engaged my Power of Money (Philadelphia 1998), but appears unfamiliar with my remaining works on ancient money, chiefly Aegina (New York 1981) 65–165; Excursions in Epichoric History (Lanham, Md., 1993) 61–86; and Sparta: Beyond the Mirage (London and Swansea, 2002) 137–70, all of which may be consulted for my views.

After carefully defining money, Seaford, in the first part, discusses "the genesis of coined money." The pre-monetary period is typified by Homeric transactions and early archaic reciprocity. Here the role of sacrifice and sacrificial meals as mechanisms for communal redistribution is stressed. Strikingly, an effort is made to rehabilitate the contribution of Bernhard Laum on sacrifice and money (Heiliges Geld [Tübingen 1924]). Points of comparison and contrast between the Near East and Greece are explored. The author is properly skeptical about the use of money by the Greeks' Asian neighbors, contrasting the emergence of Greek monetization of sacrificial offerings. He returns to this subject in an appendix, where a context-by-context review of Near Eastern candidates for money usage yields negative results and an affirmation of the radical nature of the Greek divergence in this social realm. For Seaford, Greek money controversially preceded Greek coinage, and he carefully treats the forms of money like spits and weights of silver that emerged first. Then he explores the preconditions for coinage (e.g., familiarity with seals) and the origins of coining itself. The final chapter of the first part lays out eight features of Greek money (such as homogeneity and impersonality), which are coupled with an interesting analysis of Aeschylus' treatment of Agamemnon's soiling of the textiles set before him by Klytemnestra.

Seaford's second part, "The Making of Metaphysics," boldly argues that a mentality conditioned by the usage of coins and by monetary calculations shaped major insights of archaic metaphysics. A start is made with Anaximander and Xenophanes, which leads into other explanations for philosophical monism in suppositions about myth, politics, and psychoanalysis (for which Seaford appears to have the most affinity, integrating the evolution of mystery cult). For the author, the contrasting approaches of Heraclitus ("reciprocal hostility" reconciled by logos) and Parmenides ("abstract being," "abstract external sphere") are both paradoxically conditioned by the monetary mindset. Next is a reconstruction of the impact of money on the Pythagoreans and, more briefly, on Protagoras, with a focus on the issue of the underpinnings for the formulation "for all things, the measure (metron) is humankind." The final chapter deals with "individualism," juxtaposing it with communality and incommensurability and incorporating insights on "tragic individualism." The whole section provides an extended exercise in economic aetiology that endeavors to resist economic determinism. Both flanks of the argument here will...