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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Law on approvers (dokimastai) of silver coinage, 375/4 BC (Nikophon's law on silver coinage, English translation)

Attic Inscriptions Online (trans. Stephen Lambert, P. J. Rhodes)

Claims Supported by This Source

  1. 375/4 BC (archonship of Hippodamas), proposal of Nikophon. Attic silver coins are to be accepted if they are determined to be silver and bear the public stamp.
  2. The public tester (dokimastes) shall sit between the bankers' tables and test coins daily. On days when public money is paid in, he shall test it in the Council House.
  3. Foreign silver coins of the same type as Attic coins are to be returned to the person who brought them (it is uncertain whether they are to be cut for testing '(?)'). Those with a core of bronze or lead, or of inferior quality, are to be cut on the spot and handed over to the Council as sacred property of the Mother of the Gods.
  4. If the tester does not sit or does not test according to the law, the summoners of the Assembly shall inflict 50 lashes.
  5. Anyone who does not accept a silver coin approved by the tester shall have the goods they are selling that day confiscated. Complaints are to be brought to: the grain supervisors in the grain market; the summoners of the Assembly in the Agora and the city; the supervisors of the emporion in the emporion and the Peiraieus. For amounts of 10 drachmas or less, the officials shall decide; cases exceeding this go to court. The accuser, if successful, shall receive half. If the seller is a slave, 50 lashes.
  6. A tester for ship-owners and merchants shall also be appointed in the Peiraieus. The Council shall select him from the public slaves, or purchase one if none is available. He shall sit by the stele of Poseidon.
  7. This law is to be inscribed on a stone stele and set up between the bankers' tables in the city and in front of the stele of Poseidon in the Peiraieus. The stele was found in the Great Drain of the Agora (Ag. I 7180).

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