This is the first great trading coin in the world. The "owls", as they were called on account of the device, which always remained the same, were minted from 510 BC to 38 BC. The owl was the attribute of the city goddess Athene, the goddess of wisdom.
By far the largest number of these coins were minted around the middle of the 5th century, when the Greek cities in the Delian League had to send tribute payments of 5000 talents to Athens.
These tribute payments were used in the main for building the Pantheon and other large buildings. In the short space of 20 years, under Pericles, Athens flourished, and this time is still referred to as the "Golden Age". Perhaps it was this coin that was used to pay for the Acropolis. The broad dissemination of this coin is also due to the silver deposits in the mines of Laurion, outside Athens. The Peloponnesian War was originally a kind of tax protest against this hegemony of Athens and developed into a struggle for ascendancy in Greece, in which in the end Athens was defeated by Sparta in 404 BC. With the fall of Athens minting and experimenting with coins could now spread unhampered.