Talk:Obol (coin)

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 March 2021 and 11 June 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Areleah. Peer reviewers: Floccinaucinihilipilification1, Daboom148.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:32, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
Article merged: See old talk-page here. - Fuzzygenius (talk) 22:24, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments
Three months after it was suggested that the article be split, there was no discussion. I don't think the article should be split, since it is short and since all the topics it covers are closely related. Accoringly, I have deleted the template. -- Dominus 14:34, 20 July 2005 (UTC) The Labyrinth isn't nearly relevant enough to be mentioned unqualified in the text. Even as 'references in popular culture" it would be dubious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rettkent (talk • contribs) 20:31, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Mythology
This article said that people buried without an obolus were doomed to walk eternally, but the Charon article says they have to walk for 100 years. I changed this article to correct the disparity, but it would be nice if someone could verify. --Sbrools ( talk .  contribs ) 02:29, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I dont know anything of this, but I have read many confilicting and contradictory ancient writings on religion, so maybe they both are correct but by different author's. Enlil Ninlil 05:02, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I have read a modern source, The times world mythology, Flame tree publishing, 2002, p.102 and it states that they would walk for 100 years.


 * It probably depends greatly on who you talk to. The Greek mythology was not exactly self-consistent. --Carnildo 03:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

please clarify

 * ... In ancient Greece it was defined as one sixth of a drachma, or about 0.5 gram. ... Below the drachm was the dupondius (1/5) to the quartuncia (1/480). In modern Greece it is equivalent to one decigram, or 0.1 gram.

Was a dupondius 1/5 of a drachm or 1/5 of an obol, or something else? What is equivalent to a decigram, the obol or the drachm?


 * ... for the price of an obol, one could obtain a kantharos with a chous of wine, equivalent to about six ounces (three liters).

Two ounces to a liter?! If these were ancient measurements by those names, that ought to be specified. —Tamfang (talk) 16:24, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Tamfang beat me to the comment -- six ounces is not the same as three liters. The text is unclear, but I can't correct the text because I don't know how much a "chous" of wine is. --Spunkybart (talk) 13:11, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I've corrected the wonky units after looking at the original source. This unfortunately also called into question the attribution of the information; I've put a full writeup in the section below. Ourai  тʃс 19:29, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Spartan Reference

 * ''...Sparta chose to retain the use of the cumbersome, impractical "oboloi" rather than coins proper, so as to discourage the pursuit of wealth."

Is there any sort of citation for this claim? Though interesting, it seems to be uncited and frankly misplaced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.63.20.48 (talk) 14:53, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Cost of a Chous
Apparently, I was the one who added the reference to an obol buying a chous of wine. Ammodramus brought this to my attention, and it seems a bit weird, since I can't remember making the edit... oh well. Did some digging; this is largely a crosspost of my reply to him.

After some looking, I found a copy of the cited text on Google Books. (Thank you, Judge Chin!) I've transcribed the relevant paragraph below:


 * . . . According to the rhetorical sources, the taverns are places where you could meet a member of the Aeropagus, or Aeschines the Socratic, or Euphiletus and his friends, picking up torches on their way to kill Eratosthenes. In comedy they are places well known to men like Blepyrus in Wealth or slaves in Lysistrata, and to women of all levels of society, the citizen women of the Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae and the Ecclesiazusae as well as a nurse in Eubulus' Pamphilus. In the tavern as in the andrōn, wine was drunk mixed, but without all the ritual and regulation of the well-ordered symposium: 'As for me — for there happened to be a large new kapēleion across the road from the house — I was keeping my eye on the girl's nurse, for I had ordered the barman to mix me a chous [six pints] for an obol and to accompany it with the biggest kantharos he had.' Wine in the tavern was mixed for the individual in an individual vessel, with an individual cup to drink it out of. . ..
 * James N. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens 59 (1998) (emphasis added).

A closer reading shows indeed that the units are pints. Which makes sense, since ounces doesn't. Perhaps more importantly, though, the information comes in an unattributed quotation. The entire page is a single paragraph with a lone endnote at its end (34, if anyone's interested). Google Books doesn't provide the endnotes themselves, so it's unclear who the quotation is actually attributed to. Certainly it would be improper to attribute it to a "nurse in Eubulus' Pamphilus;" though the nurse appears on the same page, she's not the source of that information.

I've corrected the article appropriately, both fixing the units and removing the nurse attribution, since it clearly doesn't make sense in context. I'm going to try to get a copy of the book, maybe through PEGASUS or something, to check the reference. That'll probably take a bit of time, but the previous error remained for four years; there doesn't seem to be much rush. Ourai тʃс 19:27, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Possible source
For bar type obol:

http://maajournal.com/Issues/2003/Vol03-1/Full6.pdf

©Geni (talk) 06:59, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

relation to shekel?
A tiny ancient silver coin showing a standing king/hero lifting an attacking lion by the mane and ready to stab with the other hand (numismatic refs: Elayi 851-1218; Cf. Meshorer- Qedar 22, 199-201) has been authoritatively called both an obol and a 1/16 shekel. Was the ancient obol considered worth 1/16 (or other fraction) of a shekel? Anyone know? Maybe add it to the article? 2601:5CE:200:D330:35BE:DB70:B026:DD66 (talk) 17:36, 4 March 2023 (UTC)