Accounting for money: The legal presuppositions of money and accounting in ancient Greece

Mark S. Peacock

Business History, 2013, vol. 55, issue 2, 280-301

Abstract: This paper aims to extend the purview of Business History to the ancient world by exploring the hypothesis that the development of money was stimulated by legal institutions which regulated payment of compensation for torts. The hypothesis was propounded by Philip Grierson who argued that the Germanic institution of wergeld established the earliest concept of value which underlies money's function as a unit of account. It considers Grierson's thesis in the context of archaic Greece. Although archaic Greek law developed differently from the Germanic wergeld , the legal-political sphere in Greece provides decisive impetus to the development of money and accounting. The article examines the role of commerce in archaic Greece and its relationship to monetisation.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2012.704513

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