Measurements and Currency Of Ancient Greece

Measurements and Currency Of Ancient Greece:

Length and Distance:
finger: c. 1.9 cm (a finger’s breadth, not the length of a finger)
palm: 4 fingers, c. 7.6 cm
hand: 5 fingers, c. 9.5 cm
foot: 16 fingers, c. 32 cm (this is the Olympic foot, supposedly based on the length of Heracles’ foot; the Attic foot was c. 30 cm)
pygon: 20 fingers, c. 38 cm
cubit: 24 fingers, c. 46 cm
royal cubit: 27 fingers, c. 52 cm
fathom: 6 feet, c. 1.9 m
plethron: 100 feet, c. 30 m
stade: 600 feet, c. 192 m
parasang: (Persian) equivalent to 30 stades, c. 5.5 km
schoenus: (Egyptian) variously equivalent to 30, 60 or 120 stades in Egypt; outside Egypt it was most commonly equivalent to 30 stades

Volume:
cotyle: varies between 210 and 330 ml
choenix: 4 cotylae; in Athens, it measured a single man’s daily ration of grain
medimnus: 48 choenixes
amphora: (of liquid) equivalent to 144 cotylae
Laconian quart: (of liquid) estimated at anything between 9 and 25 litres

Currency:
drachma: a silver coin roughly equivalent to the daily wage for a skilled worker
stater: a silver coin worth variously 2 or 4 drachmas”
Daric stater: a Persian gold coin, worth roughly ten times its silver equivalent
mina: (originally a Near Eastern unit of weight) equivalent in Greece to 100 drachmas
talent: a bar of silver, the value of which depended on the locality issuing it; it also served as a measurement of mass
The Euboïc talent was worth 6,000 drachmas and weighed 26 kg; its Babylonian equivalent weighed in at 30 kg. Herodotus himself gives an exchange rate for the Euboic and Babylonian talents.