I was born in Sadis, the 5th ruler of Lydia which was a city that smelled of sandalwood, fresh figs and the faint hint of future gold and the founder of the world’s first minted money.
My father, King Sadyattes, was a stern man who believed in a strict bedtime and an even stricter treasury in a time when the Lydians had built their empire with swords, but we kept it with money.
In my 20th year I inherited the throne and a mountain of debt. The Lydian economy was a mess of barley-bundles, cattle-cattle, and the occasional promise of goat-skins.
Before money, people had bought things with cows and pigs, which were not very efficient for the purpose because you had to feed them and keep them safe all the time and sometimes they died.
My advisors kept suggesting 'tribute' to offset our debts but the peasants just grumbled and one day i wondered what if we could give people something that isn’t perishable, like these gold rocks we keep finding laying around and i called my Chiefs and said let’s turn this precious metal into something everyone can count.
Thus, the Lydian Lion was born, a gold coin stamped with a roaring lion, a symbol of our kingdom’s strength. I held a grand ceremony, tossed a handful of the new metal into the crowd, and shouted that now they could buy a goat and the crowd went wild and all the goats were sold out in an hour.
Suddenly the Lydians had this money stuff, which was small and easy to keep and you could hide it in a sock under the mattress, which hardly ever worked with cows and pigs. Also, it had little pictures on it, which were interesting to look at. At least, more interesting than cows and pigs anyway.
Money was so easy and convenient and didn’t moo all night, you started saving up for things, and selling things in the nearest market town, and settling down, and not hitting neighboring tribes as often as you used to.
Oh they went on about how much better life was in the old days, before there was all this money and peacefulness around, and how much more enjoyable things were when people used to get heavily armed in the evenings and go out and make their own entertainment but no one was anxious actually to go back there.
So there you have it, I invented money because I was tired of bartering goats for barley and needed a way to keep my treasury from smelling like livestock.
In my 24th year, the Cimmerians, those nomadic warriors who thought sweeping the plains meant stealing your treasury, decided to raid Lydia. My generals suggested a full-scale war, but I opted for a more creative solution. I invited the Cimmerian chieftain to a banquet and told him a story about a king who could turn any enemy into a friend by giving them a shiny coin.
The chieftain, slightly intoxicated, laughed, clapped his hands, and asked for a coin as a souvenir. I gave him a Lion, and he left with a promise never to raid again plus a hangover that made him swear never to cross a Lydian border again.
After the Lion stamped its first round in Lydia, the rest of the ancient world went crazy and the Persians tried to copy our metal but ended up with blunt, square discs that looked more like doorstops than currency and in an effort to keep up with demand, I hired a team of artisans to create different denominations such as a gold Lion for the big-time deals, a silver Electrum for everyday purchases and a bronze spade for peasants buying seeds.
Every great empire has its oops moment. Mine involved a sudden influx of counterfeit coins. A rival city-state, jealous of our mint, started stamping their own versions of the Lion, only theirs looked more like a sleepy cat. The peasants were confused, the merchants got angry, and I, being the diplomatic king I was, hosted a Coin-Swap Festival where everyone could bring in their suspect coins.
Moral of the story is if you can’t beat them, invite them to a party and give them a shiny bit of metal as my little metallic circles changed the world. We’ve gone from barter to coins, from coins to paper, and now people are using bits that you can’t even hold.
My name appears in textbooks as the man who invented money which is flattering and humbling but I never actually invented the idea of exchange, I just made it much more shinier.
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