Posts by: Dominic Frisby

Today we consider the coins of Anglo-Saxon Britain.

The winter of 406-7 was cold, very cold in Europe; the Rhine froze over. Hoards of Alans, Vandals, and Suebi made their way across and into the Roman empire, no doubt violent with hunger from the cold, and greedy for what they had admired for so long on the other side. But the devastation they wrought met with no effective response from Rome.

In Britain, Rome had already lost the north and west to warlords. The Roman armies in Britain, who had probably not been paid, now feared these Germanic tribes would next cross into Britain. So, led by Constantine III, who would declare himself Western Roman Emperor, they made their way across the Channel into Gaul, leaving ‘Britannia’ to fend for itself. We do not really know if it was Rome that gave up Britain, or Britain that gave up Rome, but, either way, the Dark Ages had well and truly begun.

Gold, silver and bronze coins had found widespread use under the Romans. They were used to pay taxes, and often re-minted to pay the army and the civil service. With Constantine’s departure, there was almost no new minting and very little importation of new coins. Judging by the numerous hoards found from the period, many buried their money – presumably to keep it safe in this unruly new environment of no military protection and merciless invasion from Angles, Saxons and other tribes from the continent. With the lack of new supply, existing coins were re-used. Clipping became widespread. The previously vigorous late Roman monetary system lay in tatters. Minting did not properly start up again for at least another 200 years.

The Anglo-Saxon invaders, at first, did not use gold coins so much as money but for decoration. King Eadbald of Kent was the first Anglo-Saxon to mint coins around AD 625 – small, gold coins called scillingas (shillings), modelled on coins from France. Numismatists now call them thrymsas.

As the century progressed, these coins grew increasingly pale, until there was very little gold in them at all. From about 675, small, thick, silver coins known as sceattas came into use in all the countries around the North Sea, and the gold shilling was superseded by the silver penning, or penny. Gold fell out of use almost altogether, though silver had something of a boom.

It’s thought the word ‘penny’, like the German ‘Pfennig’ might come from the pans into which the molten metal for making was poured. ‘Pfanne’ is the German for ‘pan’.

The Mercian king Offa – he of dyke fame – reigned for almost 40 years from 757 to 796. He must be seen as one of the greatest Anglo-Saxon kings, certainly the greatest of the 8th century. As well as his dyke, which protected his kingdom from Welsh invaders, he is credited for the widespread adoption of the silver penny and the pound as a unit of account. His coins, with portraits and intricate designs, were as accomplished as anywhere in Europe at the time.

His system, though probably imported from the Franks, for reasons which will become clear, almost certainly dates back to the Romans. 12 silver pence equalled a shilling. 20 shillings equalled a pound weight of silver. Thus 240 silver pennies, weighing about 1.4g each (sorry for mixing imperial and metric) was equivalent to one pound weight of silver. Thus was the pound a pound of sterling silver.

The Latin word for a ‘pound’ is libra and the pound sign, £, is a stylised writing of the letter L. The d meanwhile used for pence comes from the Latin denarius. Thus the roots of the system were almost certainly Roman.

Offa’s system remained standard until the 16th century and, in many ways, until decimalisation in 1971. You had to add up each unit of currency separately in this format: £3.9.4, which would be spoken “three pounds, nine shillings and four pence”, or “three-pounds, nine and four”. To add, you would calculate each unit separately, then convert pence to shilling, leaving leftover pence in the right column, then convert the shillings to pounds (with leftover shillings in the middle column), and then add up the total pounds.

Offa’s systems were gradually consolidated over the subsequent centuries, especially as the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Britain began to merge. In the 860s, for example, the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex formed an alliance by which coinage of a common design could circulate through both of their lands.

The Viking invaders over this period found coinage systems far more sophisticated than their own and the Danegeld, with which they were bought off, was paid in silver pennies. I had always thought the “geld” in Danegeld meant “gold” but in fact it means yield, and the Viking invaders demanded this tribute wherever in Europe they ravaged.

The system was quite efficient – on both sides. For the invaders, they were often paid more than they could raise by looting, without having to fight. For the locals, the ravaging was avoided, although, as Rudyard Kipling noted in his poem on the subject, “if once you have paid him the Dane-geld, You never get rid of the Dane”.

The Danegeld probably also motivated improvements to Anglo-Saxon coinage. To pay his own soldiers, to build forts and ships and to pay Dangeld, Alfred the Great increased the number of mints to at least eight. His successor Athelstan had 30 and, to keep order, passed a law in 928 stating that England should have just one currency. Ever since there has been just one. This was many centuries before standardisation in France, Germany or Italy.

When William Duke of Normandy invaded England in 1066, he succeeded where his Viking ancestors had failed for 270 years: he managed to conquer England. It meant he could take control of English coinage, which was far superior to that which he possessed in his homeland. William’s coins struck back in Normandy are remarkable for how poor they are, compared to their English counterparts. He had at least seven types of English pennies struck with his name on. It meant he was able to achieve the rebranding that was so important to him. No longer was he William the Bastard, as he was then known. Now he was William the Conqueror. He let the world know through his coins. And that’s how we know him today.

* Dominic Frisby, author of Daylight Robbery – How Tax Shaped The Past And Will Change The Future, out now in paperback at Amazon and all good bookstores with the audiobook, read by Dominic, on Audible and elsewhere.

Ancient Rome is probably more famous for debasing its money than for its money itself. But for its debasement to have been so effective and so prolonged, it needed an established and widely- recognised, credible money as a starting point. The geology of central Italy is not particularly abundant in gold and silver, and it was only really after Rome began expanding beyond central Italy in the third century BCE that it started using gold and silver. Commodity money tends to be determined by the resources available. Bronze (copper and tin) is abundant in the area, and bronze, in the form of weights – aes rude or ‘rugged bronze’ – often as heavy as 300 grams (11oz), was the early currency of choice.

But as the Republic expanded, so did access to gold and silver – either from loot, tributes or mine supply – and so these precious metals made their way into Roman money.

The first silver denarius was minted in 211BCE. Within 50 or 60 years Roman coinage was widespread across Italy. Much of the silver to mint the coins came from mines in Macedonia, which Rome now controlled. For the next 500 years this silver coin, containing about 4 grams (0.12oz) of silver – a little bit more than the weight of a 1p coin – would be the backbone currency of Rome. One denarius was exchangeable for ten pounds of bronze – hence its name, which means “containing ten”.

The purchasing power of a denarius would be more than the underlying metal value – ranging between 1.5 and 3 times the value. That’s seigniorage for you

The denarius lives on today, especially in many Latin languages. The Italian word for money is “denaro”, “dinero” is Spanish, “dinheiro” is Portugese, “denar” is Slovenian. In several Arab nations, the currency is the dinar.

When the denarius was introduced it was 95-98% pure silver. To give you some kind of benchmark, sterling silver is only 92.5% pure. The infamous debasement began shortly after the Republic became Empire, and control of money passed from the Senate to the Emperor. It lasted several hundred years. Heads of emperors began to appear on coins, and so, as a result, did their use as imperial propaganda. The more coins circulating around the ever-growing empire, spreading the message of Roman imperial might, the better.

By the first century AD, taxation and tribute only covered around 80% of the imperial budget, however. The shortfall was met by mining and the loot of newly conquered nations. But mining is a fickle business at the best of times, and the empire was no longer expanding at the same rate, so this was a risky strategy that could lead to shortfalls, especially under extravagant emperors. The solution to excess spending, as today, was not to rein it in, but to debase the currency. In AD 64, the Emperor Nero reduced both the amount of silver in a denarius (to 3.5grams) as well as the purity of the metal itself (to 93.5%).

A few decades later, the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent, under Trajan. From that point on, it receded. That meant the supply of loot from newly conquered territories also shrank.

By lowering the amount of silver in its coins, Rome could produce more coins and ‘stretch’ its budget. Successive emperors followed Nero’s strategy. As with boiling frogs and the debasement of currency today, the process was gradual. 100 years after Nero, around 150 AD, the purity of silver had been reduced to 83%. By 250 AD the silver purity was 50%. By 275 AD it was just 5%. As time progressed, the sleight of hand was exposed. By the time of Diocletian, who was emperor from 284 to 305 AD, there was so little precious metal in the money the emperor had to resort to price controls. It was under Diocletian that the last denarii were minted.

By the way, you can pick up genuine denarii on eBay for less than fifty quid, sometimes even under a tenner – surprisingly cheap given the underlying history, I’d say.

The most important gold coin of Ancient Rome was the aureus, similar in size to the denarius, but containing roughly twice the weight of precious metal – 8 grams, or ¼ ounce of gold (gold is denser than silver). It would be roughly the same weight as a 2p today. 25 denarii would get you an aureus, so the gold-silver ratio would have been about 1:12, the historical norm.

Nero then reduced the gold content to 7.3g, which perhaps coincidentally, was the same weight as the sovereign of the British Empire. By 210 AD the gold content had fallen to 6.3g. However, unlike the silver denarius, the aureus kept its near-100%, 24-carat purity.

By the fourth century, the idea of obtaining an aureus for 25 denarii was long gone. In 301, one gold aureus was worth 833 denarii; barely a decade later, that same aureus was worth 4,350 denarii.

In 337, Constantine replaced the aureus with the solidus – about 4.5 grams of 24-carat gold. Initially, one solidus was worth 275,000 denarii, but by 356, one solidus was worth 4,600,000 denarii. The good money had chased out the bad. Talk about inflation!

In a breath-taking blow of hypocrisy, that even leaders today would struggle to pull off, the Roman authorities, despite the declining quality of the metal content of their denarius, refused to accept anything other than gold and silver in payment of taxes.

By the way, you can’t pick up aureus in eBay for anything like as cheap as you can a denarius. Pure money keeps its purchasing power. In fact, the solidus outlasted the Roman Empire itself. I’ve got one minted by the Byzantine emperor Justinian. I got it for little more than the value of the underlying metal. Seigniorage doesn’t always last!

Of course, one key reason for the relentless debasement was a bloated Roman state that was incapable of living within its means. But another reason must be lack of raw material. As we have already noted, central Italy had little mine supply so the metal had to be obtained elsewhere. Much of it came in the form of war booty from newly defeated territories, and the subsequent tributes and taxes levied. The problem with this model is that it relied on constant expansion. When the expansion ceased, Rome had to rely on new mine supply alone to expand its money supply. So instead it turned to debasement.

No wonder Rome was constantly at war. That was its business model. But with the expense of continual wars, without the corresponding payback of loot from the newly conquered, the model was unsustainable. It’s not unlike the two world wars of the 20th century for the British Empire. The wars of previous centuries had more than paid for themselves, but for their efforts in the Second World War, as far as the loot of a newly conquered nation is concerned, the British got very little.

One final titbit. Consider the Roman aureus of Hadrian from 117AD, when he became emperor, and when the Roman empire was at its most extensive. On the reverse, Trajan, the previous emperor passes a globe – the empire – to Hadrian who accepts it. It seems the Romans knew then that the world was round.

* Dominic Frisby, author of Daylight Robbery – How Tax Shaped The Past And Will Change The Future, out now in paperback at Amazon and all good bookstores with the audiobook, read by Dominic, on Audible and elsewhere.

Rome was founded by refugees fleeing the Trojan war. The poet Virgil tells the story of prince Aeneas and his band who fled Troy by boat as it fell to the Greeks. After many months and rough seas, they landed on the banks of the river Tiber. The men wanted to go back to sea, but the women persuaded them to stay. The women got their way. Given what Rome achieved later, it was probably a good decision – easy to say with hindsight, of course – although Virgil says it was not so much a conscious decision, as destined by the gods.

Another Roman founding story gives us the precise date on which the city was founded – 21st April 753 BC. The background is this. There was one King Amulius who deposed his brother to take the throne of Alba Longa. His brother’s daughter, Rhea Silva, meanwhile was raped by Mars, the god of war, and gave birth to twins, Romulus and Remus – demi-gods, no less, and also descendants of Aeneas. Fearing for his kingdom, King Amulius ordered they be drowned, but a she-wolf saved them and went on to rear them. When the twins were old enough, they came and dealt with the treacherous Amulius, restored their grand-father to the throne and founded the city of Rome.

Rome began as a kind of sanctuary for estranged young men, exiles and the unwanted. To bolster its population they took to kidnapping maidens from nearby kingdoms.

At this point in the story of Rome, coins barely existed in Italy or anywhere else. It was across the Mediterranean in Lydia (today’s Turkey), that the technology of coinage was first employed around 600BC, some 150 years after Romulus and Remus ‘founded’ Rome. Over the next few centuries coins would gradually spread across the Mediterranean. In Italy, the Etruscans were using coins before the Romans.

Rome ‘transitioned’, to use an awful modern word, from monarchy to republic in 509BC. The next five hundred years would see the Roman Republic fight a seemingly never-ending series of wars as its empire gradually expanded. Their enemies were Latins, Etruscans, Celts, Gauls, Samnites, eventually Carthaginians, Iberians, and Macedonians. First they took control of central Italy, then the south and into Sicily. From Northern Italy they took control of Provence. They expanded into Greece, Spain and North Africa. By 52BC, seven centuries after Romulus and Remus, the Romans had taken Britain.

By then Roman coinage was widespread and established. But the process was slow and gradual.

Salt was an essential commodity and reasonably fungible, so it also found use as money. In ancient Greece salt was traded for slaves. It’s thought the expression ‘not worth his salt’ – unworthy of his pay – has its roots here. Soldiers of the early Roman Republic in the fourth and probably fifth centuries BC would receive a handful of salt as pay – from where we derive the word, ‘Salary’.

This prized commodity, over which wars were fought, was part of the reason the Romans began building their great roads. The salt trade was both lucrative and essential, and they needed to get salt back to Rome to support its growing population. The Via Salaria was built to move salt from the pans at the mouth of the Tiber inland to Rome itself.

Sheep were also used as money, it seems, and the Latin word for money (pecunia) is thought to derive from the word for sheep (pecus). Irregularly shaped pieces of rough bronze, which needed to be weighed with each transaction, were also used, and this same bronze would make Rome’s first standardised coins.

The Republic started minting its own coins from about the third century. Rome seems to have been rather slow adapting coins compared to the rest of the Mediterranean, especially Greece and Asia Minor. The Romans were limited by the natural resources they had available. Silver and gold were scarce, though the bronze that made its first coins was abundant in central Italy. It seems silver coins were gradually devised for trade with the Greeks in Southern Italy.

As the Republic expanded, and access to silver grew, the silver denarius evolved and the denomination remained in circulation for 450 years. They were produced by ‘mint magistrates’, junior officials who choose the designs and legends, often advertising the officials’ families for political purposes.

But eventually Roman currency would be widely used throughout Europe, western Asia and northern Africa right into the Middle Ages. It would become the model for later currencies – the currencies of the Islamic and the European states during the Middle Ages and the Modern Era. Their names too derive from Rome. The Arabic dinar, for example, comes from the denarius. The British pound, the Italian lira, the French livre and Hispanic peso are all translations of the Roman libr.

* Dominic Frisby, author of Daylight Robbery – How Tax Shaped The Past And Will Change The Future, out now in paperback at Amazon and all good bookstores with the audiobook, read by Dominic, on Audible and elsewhere.

As he conquered, Alexander brought his money with him. His coins did not just serve as a medium of exchange and store of wealth, but also as an important tool of propaganda. Early coins were minted from mines in Macedonia and Thrace, but, as he conquered, he plundered and then minted coins from the huge bullion stocks he captured, especially in Persia. The Persians were ancient rivals. Alexander took their gold and silver, melted it down and then struck new coins emblazoned with the Greek goddesses Athena and Victory (Nike), and the gods of strength (Herakles) and power (Zeus). It must have been somewhat demoralising for the conquered Persians to see their own myth, legend and history, literally, struck off.

Alexander established 26 mints across his vast empire – seven in Europe, 18 in Asia and one in Africa. He had coins minted everywhere, and the instruction was that his coins should all look the same. He wanted people across his empire using the same coin. He was standardising money and creating an internationally recognised currency.

Nor did he skimp on the job. There was no coin clipping here. Alexander’s money was true.

His Stater, one of the highest denomination coins, has a gold purity of around 98%, among the purest found in ancient coins. (It beats the old English sovereigns, which are closer to 90%).

His silver Tetradrachms were similarly pure. These became the most widely used coins of al;, international, imperial money used in state transactions, to pay his armies, and to pay off Celtic invaders from the North.

The stature and value of his coins were such that his successors continued to mint coins with the same design for the next 250 years.

The gold Stater weighed about 8.67 grams, just over a ¼ ounce – a fraction larger than an English sovereign. On the front was the helmeted head of Athena, goddess of wisdom, and on the reverse the standing figure of Nike, goddess of victory. Nike holds out a wreath in one hand and a naval standard in the other. Behind her we read the word “Alexandrou” (of Alexander).

Drachma became the name of modern Greek currency, before Greece joined the euro. But a drachma meant a handful: a handful – a measure in other words – of Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, one of the most successful military commanders in history. He lived in the 4th century BC, and was just 33 when he died, having spent most of his adult life it seems, on military campaigns in Asia and northeast Africa.

Having been tutored by Aristotle as a child, he became king at the age 20, and by the time he was 30 had created one of the largest empires ever known, stretching from Greece all the way through Persia and Pakistan to north-western India. Despite often being outnumbered, he never lost a battle. His 13 years of rule really did change the face of the world.

Though better known for his military exploits, his contribution to the evolution of money and coinage should not be underestimated.

His coins replaced the metal rods formerly used as money in earlier centuries, and by the time of Alexander the Tetradrachm was one of the most widespread coins in the eastern Mediterranean. A drachma would amount to about a day’s wages for a common labourer – a Tetradrachm would thus be about four days’ wages. They weighed around 17grams (a bit over ½ an ounce) of silver. The Athenian owl Tetradrachm was common, but Alexander’s innovation was to strike his coins everywhere he went. As a result these Tetradrachms coins are seen as the world’s first global currency. Judas, later, was almost certainly paid in Tetradrachms to betray Jesus.

Alexander’s silver Tetradrachm was his standard denomination and so many were minted that thousands still exist today, many in excellent condition and not trading at as great a premium as you would expect to the spot value of the underlying metal. More were minted than any other ancient coin – and they were minted for over 300 years. On the front they had the head of Heracles, founder of Macedonia, wearing a lion skin. On the back they had Zeus seated on a throne, holding a sceptre in one hand and an eagle in the other. As with the Stater, behind Zeus we read that word again, “Alexandrou” – of Alexander.

Another innovation of Alexander was that the depiction of Heracles – usually beardless and young – showed a remarkable likeness to his own self. Thereby did he open the door to the custom of imprinting coins with the heads of rulers, rather than gods.

The lowest denomination coins, and the ones that had the most variation in both denomination and design, were his bronze coins, made from tin and copper. The most common bronze Alexanders feature the head of Heracles, again depicted in likeness to Alexander, on the front, and a quiver and club on the back.

Alexander’s empire, in terms of land mass, was one of the greatest the world has ever seen; only the Mongol, British and Soviet empires were definitely larger. He might have conquered with armies, but he consolidated with his currency – and his coins became the world’s first international currency, used for over 300 years.

* Dominic Frisby, author of Daylight Robbery – How Tax Shaped The Past And Will Change The Future, out now in paperback at Amazon and all good bookstores with the audiobook, read by Dominic, on Audible and elsewhere.

The story of Jason, the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece is one of the earlier Greek legends. It happened about a generation before the Trojan War.

Jason father’s, Aeson, was the rightful king of Iolcos, but Pelias, Aeson’s brother, had usurped him and taken the throne. He then had all Aeson’s descendants killed. Jason, however, survived. His mother ordered her servants to cry when he was born, to fool Pelias that he was still-born. She then smuggled Jason away to be reared by Chiron, “the wisest and justest of all the centaurs”, according to Homer. Chiron was the son of Cronos and counted among his acolytes such high achievers as Achilles, Odysseus, Hercules, Theseus and Perseus. And so Jason’s education began. An oracle, meanwhile, warned Pelias to fear the man with one sandal. No doubt feeling guilty about his ill-gotten kingship, he lived in dread of that prophecy.

When Jason was fully grown, he set off to Iolcos to claim his throne. On his way, he chanced upon an old lady trying to cross a river and helped her across. In doing so he lost his sandal. Little did he know that old lady was Hera; she would become his ally.

Jason arrived in Iolcos, and was announced as a man in one sandal. Coming before King Pelias, Jason revealed who he was and claimed the kingdom. Pelias agreed to cede it, but only on one condition: that Jason brought him the fleece of the golden ram. He had set Jason an impossible task, a task that would take him beyond the known world (which at this point was about as far as the Black Sea), to the barbarian kingdom of Colchis, but Jason agreed. The fleece was that of a magical ram that had once belonged to Zeus, so the story went. It hung from a tree in a sacred grove, guarded by bulls with hoofs of brass and breath of fire, and a dragon that never slept, whose teeth became soldiers when planted in the ground. The fleece belonged to Aietes, King of Colchis, son of the sun god Helios no less, and another oracle had foretold that Aietes would lose his kingdom if he lost his fleece. No wonder Aietes put up such a formidable guard.I love how legends and myths are born out of truths and here is a case in point. Sheepskins were used to pan gold from rivers, a practice thought to have begun to the east of the Black Sea in what today is Georgia. The fleeces were stretched over a wooden frame and then submerged in the river, where the tight curls of the sheep’s coat would catch nuggets and specks of gold carried down in the rushing water from placer deposits upstream. The fleeces were then hung in trees to dry, after which the gold was combed out. If you have a wet fleece full of alluvial gold hanging to dry in a tree, you are going to make sure it is well guarded – by bulls and dragons, if necessary. It’s quite easy to see how this myth of a golden fleece had spread east from Asia.

Jason had a ship – the Argo – built. He assembled a crew- the Argonauts – a band of heroes which included such luminaries as Hercules, the twins Castor and Pollux, Peleus (father of Achilles), Orpheus (the musician) and Atlanta (the virgin huntress who would never marry). They then set off on what is seen by some as the first long-distance voyage ever undertaken. Perhaps this was the first time a Greek had successfully navigated the hostile currents of the Bosphorus, but in doing so it probably marks the point at which the Black Sea opened up to the Greeks. The story is certainly an origin myth for many of the towns and cities there. Along the way, the Argonauts stopped on the Isle of Lemnos, inhabited by a band of women who had killed their husbands. The Argonauts stepped in where the dead husbands had left off and a new race, the Minyae, was born. Jason himself fathered twins with the queen, Hypsipyle. When they went off to search for supplies at their next stop, their ship was attacked by giants, with six arms, in leather loincloths. Hercules fought them off.

At their next stop in Thrace, they killed the harpies that, sent by Zeus, had emaciated the king, Phineus, by eating his food every day. In gratitude, Phineus explained how to navigate the clashing rocks of the Bosphorus, and thus did the Black Sea open up to the Greeks. So did Jason arrive in Colchis (modern-day Georgia). Like Pelias before, King Aietes set Jason an impossible task – actually three – if he wanted to claim the fleece as his own. He had to harness fire-breathing oxen and plough a field with them. He had to sow a field with dragon’s teeth and fight the army of phantom soldiers that resulted. And finally, he had to overcome the dragon.

Needless to say, Jason was discouraged, but Hera, Jason’s ally, leant on Aphrodite, goddess of love, to lend a hand. She sent her son, Eros, to shoot one of his arrows and it struck Aietes’ daughter, Medea, who fell in love with Jason. Medea would prove a useful ally. She gave him an ointment to protect him from the oxen’s fire. She showed him how to defeat the phantom soldiers with a rock that would confuse them into fighting each other. And she gave him a potion with which to send the dragon to sleep, so that he could take the fleece. As they fled Colchis, Medea then killed her brother and threw pieces of his body into the sea. Grief-stricken, Aietes stopped to collect them allowing Jason, Medea and the Argonauts to escape.

There were as many adventures on the way home. They passed the infamous Sirens, whose songs enticed sailors, only for their ships to wreck on the rocks. But Orpheus played his lyre and drowned their songs with music that was more beautiful. They could not pass Crete, due to the rocks that the bronze man Talos threw at them, but again they were saved by Medea, who cast a spell on Talos and then killed him.

Back at Iolcos, Jason’s father, Aeson, was too old to participate in the celebrations, but Medea used her witchcraft to rejuvenate him. Pelias’ daughters asked her to do the same for the aging Pelias. Medea told them to chop him up and put him in a cauldron to boil, which they did. It was a trick, of course, and Pelias was no more. But Jason and Medea were exiled for the murder and they fled to Corinth. There Jason betrayed Medea by marrying the king’s daughter. Medea confronted Jason, heartbroken, but Jason blamed Aphrodite for having made Medea fall in love with him. Medea would have her revenge, a revenge which has become the subject of many a drama since. Medea gave Jason’s betrothed a dress that stuck to her body and burned her to death. Her father died with her as he tried to save her. Then Medea killed her own two sons, born by Jason, and fled to Athens in a chariot of dragons sent by her grandfather, the sun-god Helios. Jason returned to Iolcus to claim his kingdom, but as a result of breaking his vow to love Medea forever, he lost the favour of Hera, and he died lonely and unhappy, asleep on the rotting Argo. It’s a buccaneering adventure story with a typically Greek tragic end. The formula of hero, dark power and female helper has become the backbone of numerous plots since, not least in Hollywood. The premise, a young man setting off in search of his fortune, made of gold, is the premise of every youngster setting off on his or her life’s adventure.

* Dominic Frisby, author of Daylight Robbery – How Tax Shaped The Past And Will Change The Future, out now in paperback at Amazon and all good bookstores with the audiobook, read by Dominic, on Audible and elsewhere.