Obolus

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Obolus

The obolus (ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
: ?ß???? "obolós", plural: ?ß???? "obolí") is a Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
silver coin

Coin

A coin is a piece of hard material, usually metal or a metallic material, usually in the shape of a Disk , and most often issued by a government....
worth a sixth of a drachma.

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The obolus (ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Greece

Coin

A coin is a piece of hard material, usually metal or a metallic material, usually in the shape of a Disk , and most often issued by a government....
worth a sixth of a drachma. In Classical Athens

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
it was subdivided into eight chalkoi ("copper pieces"). Two obols made a diobol

Diobol

The diobol was a denomination of Seleucid coinage . It typically weighed about 1.41-1.43 grams of silver....
. Triobols were also in use.

According to Plutarch

Plutarch

Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 ? 120 ? commonly known in English as Plutarch ? was a Ancient Rome historian , biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonism....
, the Sparta

Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
ns had an iron obolus of four chalkoi. The obolus is also a measurement of weight

Weight

In the physical sciences, weight is a measurement of the gravitational force acting on an object. Near the surface of the Earth, the Earth's gravity is approximately constant; this means that an object's weight is roughly proportional to its mass....
. In ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
it was defined as one sixth of a drachma, or about 0.5 gram

Gram

The gram , ; symbol g, is a Physical unit of mass.Originally defined as "the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of a metre, and at the temperature of melting ice" , a gram is now defined as one one-thousandth of the SI base unit, the kilogram, or Scientific notation kg, which itself is...
. In ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
it was defined as 1/48 of a Roman ounce

Ounce

This article is about the unit of mass. For the unit of force, see Pound-force. For the unit of volume, see Fluid ounce. For all other uses, see Ounce ....
, or about 0.57 gram, but was never issued as a coin as part of the early republican coinage

Roman Republican coinage

Coinage came late to the Roman Republic compared with the rest of the Mediterranean, especially Ancient Greek coinage where coins were invented in the 7th century BC....
system. Below the drachm was the dupondius

Dupondius

The dupondius was a brass coin used during the Roman Empire and Roman Republic valued at 2 as .The dupondius was introduced during the Roman Republic as a large casting coin, although even at introduction it weighed less than 2 pounds....
(1/5) to the quartuncia (1/480). In modern Greece it is equivalent to one decigram, or 0.1 gram.

The word "obolos" or "obelos" (plural: oboloi, obeloi) means a long thin metal rod, such as a spit. "Oboloi" came to be used as currency because they represented ingots of copper or bronze, and were traded as such. Sparta chose to retain the use of the cumbersome, impractical "oboloi" rather than coins proper, so as to discourage the pursuit of wealth.

A coin for Charon

Main article: Charon's obol
Charon's obol

Charon's obol is an Allusion term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial. The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and ancient Rome, but examples are found earlier in the Near East, and later in Western Europe#Classical antiquity and medieval origins, particularly in the regions inhabited by...
.

The deceased were buried with an obolus, placed in the mouth of the corpse, in order that, once a dead person's shade reached the underworld of Hades

Hades

Hades refers both to the ancient Greek underworld, the abode of Hades, and to the god of the underworld. Hades in Homer referred just to the god; the genitive case , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades"....
, it would be able to pay Charon

Charon (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon was the ferryman of Hades who carried souls of the newly deceased across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead....
for passage across the river Acheron

Acheron

The Acheron is a river located in the Epirus region of northwest Greece. It flows into the Ionian Sea in Ammoudia, Preveza, near Parga....
. Those without enough wealth, or whose friends refused to follow proper burial rites, were forced to wander the banks of the Acheron for one hundred years.