Ilse and Leo Mildenberg Memorial Lecture: Coins on the Agora—A Visual Approach on Coin Exchange in Classical Athens

In this lecture, Frédérique Duyrat, keeper of the Heberden Coin Room at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, will look at how coins were used in daily transactions on the Athenian agora during the 5th century BCE.

Drawing on material culture, iconography, and textual evidence to reconstruct daily monetary practices in classical Athens, Duyrat will provide insights into the social and economic aspects of coin use in the agora and other contexts. She will describe the ways people transported money to the market; examine visual representations of coin exchanges on a selection of Attic vases from the first half of the 5th century BCE; and analyze a gesture associated with payment. Her lecture will also touch upon the changing perceptions of monetary exchanges in personal relationships over the course of the 5th century.