Money and economic crises in ancient Athens
Coinage and Athenian hegemony were inextricably linked. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that silver coins made possible the rise of Athens as a maritime power and therefore as a hegemony, ruling over more than 200 cities. But how simple were things in relation to the Athenian economy? How innocent?
Ayati Benardou talks with Panagiotis Iosif about the economy and money in ancient Athens. Mr. Iosif is an archaeologist, art historian and numismatist specializing in the Hellenistic East. After completing his undergraduate studies in archaeology, he went on to graduate and doctoral studies at the University of Liège in Belgium, followed by fellowships in New York, Oxford, Princeton and Berlin. He was a visiting professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, served for 16 years as deputy director of the Belgian School of Archeology in Athens, and in 2017 was elected professor of ancient and medieval numismatics at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. From January 2022 he is curator of Classical Antiquities at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.