Currencies of the Classical World
The list of currencies represented at the MoneyMuseum doesn’t quite reach from A to Z, but almost from antoninianus to uncia. The coins of the Roman emperor Antoninus Augustus are only museum pieces now, but the uncia is still with us, as the ounce, which is now being replaced by new metric units in Britain, but is alive and kicking in the United States. Nowadays, though, it isn’t a currency any more, only a unit of weight. But there are other currencies that have definitely died out, whose very names sound exotic, such as the hecte or the obol. Two currencies from ancient times have survived into our own day, the Hebrew shekel and the Greek drachm – although the curtain came down on the drachm in February 2002 ...