When our fingers touch an old coin, we inevitably wonder about its purchasing power during its period of circulation…
The coin shown is an obol, a Roman-Egyptian coin minted in Alexandria around 2,000 years ago, in the first century AD, during the reign of Emperor Claudius. The obol was a coin introduced by the Greeks and retained by the Romans. Six obols were equivalent to one drachma. It was always made of bronze and weighed between 8 and 12 grams (depending on the minting period), with a diameter of approximately 2.5 cm. The ancient Alexandrians minted coins in denominations of one, two (called diopole), and three (called tetrapoles), in addition to the drachma.
In the first century AD, the wage of a laborer, or manual worker, was generally 3 opoles per day, equivalent to half a drachma. With inflation in the second century, this wage sometimes reached 7 or 10 opoles. A loaf of bread (a huge loaf, let alone today's loaves!) sold for one opole in the first century and reached 4 opoles at once in the second century. The cost of renting a donkey for a day was 10 opoles (ironically, the rental price of a donkey was equivalent to the wages of more than three laborers!), while the price of buying a donkey exceeded 200 drachmas. However, prices in Egypt were still much cheaper than in the rest of the Roman Empire.
Moheb Rizkalla
