Daric: The Gold Coin of the Achaemenid Persian Empire

The daric was the gold coin of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, introduced around 515 BC under Darius I. Made of almost pure gold and stamped with the image of a royal archer, it became one of the most trusted coins of the ancient world. For nearly two centuries Persian kings and governors used darics to pay soldiers and to buy influence among the Greek city-states.

Background: from Lydia to Persia

Coinage was invented in the kingdom of Lydia, in western Anatolia, in the 7th century BC. Its last king, Croesus, struck the first coins of pure gold and pure silver. When Cyrus the Great captured the Lydian capital Sardis around 547 BC, the Persians inherited this minting tradition. For the background see Lydian coins and the invention of coinage.

At first the Persians appear to have continued striking Croesus-style coins at Sardis. Under Darius I, who reorganised the empire’s taxes and administration after seizing power in 522 BC, a new royal coinage was created: the gold daric and the silver siglos (plural sigloi). Most scholars date its introduction to around 515-510 BC, though some place it closer to 500 BC.

Design and standard

The daric weighed about 8.4 grams and was made of very pure gold, usually above 95 per cent. Herodotus says that Darius refined gold to the highest possible purity for his coins, and he tells how the governor of Egypt, Aryandes, was put to death after issuing silver coinage that rivalled the king’s.

The obverse (front) shows a crowned figure in a long Persian robe, generally identified as the king or a royal hero. Numismatists divide the designs into several types: a half-length figure drawing a bow (known only on the earliest silver coins), a kneeling or running archer drawing a bow, a running figure holding a spear and bow, and a figure holding a bow and dagger. The reverse carries only an irregular rectangular punch mark, with no inscription.

The silver siglos showed the same royal images and weighed about 5.4 to 5.6 grams. Twenty sigloi equalled one daric, a ratio between gold and silver of roughly 13 to 1.

Where darics were used

Darics and sigloi were struck mainly at Sardis and circulated chiefly in Anatolia and the eastern Aegean. In the Persian heartland, as the Persepolis tablets show, payments were usually made in goods or in silver measured by weight rather than in coins. The daric was therefore less an everyday currency than a royal coin used for large payments, gifts and military wages.

Greek sources mention darics often. In the Anabasis, Xenophon records that the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger paid his Greek mercenaries in darics and rewarded a soothsayer with 3,000 darics before the Battle of Cunaxa in 401 BC. Some later biblical books also mention gold coins, rendered “darics” in many modern translations.

Persian gold and Greek politics

The daric gave Persia a powerful weapon in Greek affairs. During the later Peloponnesian War, Persian subsidies helped Sparta build the fleet that defeated Athens in 404 BC. In the 390s BC, Persian money encouraged Athens, Thebes, Corinth and Argos to fight Sparta in the Corinthian War.

According to Plutarch, the Spartan king Agesilaus II, recalled from his campaign in Asia Minor in 394 BC, joked that he had been driven out of Asia by the king’s “archers”, meaning the gold coins with which Persia had stirred up war against Sparta in Greece. The story may be embellished, but it shows how closely the coin’s image was linked with Persian influence.

Timeline

• c. 547 BC: Cyrus the Great captures Sardis and takes over the Lydian mint.
• c. 515-510 BC: Darius I introduces the gold daric and silver siglos.
• c. 412-404 BC: Persian subsidies help Sparta win the Peloponnesian War.
• 401 BC: Cyrus the Younger pays Greek mercenaries in darics for his campaign against Artaxerxes II.
• 394 BC: Agesilaus II is recalled from Asia as Persian-funded war breaks out in Greece.
• 330s BC: Alexander the Great’s conquests end the Achaemenid Empire and its royal coinage.

Legacy

After Alexander’s conquest, darics were gradually melted down or replaced by Macedonian coins, including Alexander’s own gold staters. Yet the name survived for centuries in Greek as a byword for gold coins, and darics are found in hoards across Anatolia, the Aegean and beyond. Today they are valued by collectors and studied by historians as evidence of how the Persian Empire paid for power. The empire’s best-known road and courier network, the Royal Road of Persia, carried officials and messages across the same lands.

Why it matters

The daric was one of the first coins issued by a world empire and one of the most stable gold coins of antiquity. It shows how Persia adapted a Lydian invention to its own needs, and how gold, more than armies, often decided the balance of power between Persia and the Greeks.