at the height of Classical Greece, when there were hundreds of city-states producing different currencies according to a number of different systems of weights and denominations, merchants often did carry scales and treat coins—particularly foreign coins—like so many chunks of silver, just as Indian merchants seem to have treated Roman coins; but within a city, that city’s currency had a special status, since it was always acceptable at face value when used to pay taxes, public fees, or legal penalties. This is, incidentally, why ancient governments were so often able to introduce base metal
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