Currency Bar Spit

Iron spit currency — obeloi in Greek — predates coinage in the Peloponnese and persisted long after silver coins became standard, particularly in conservative Spartan economic practice. Sparta famously resisted coined money as a matter of deliberate policy, with iron spits remaining the sanctioned exchange medium well into the classical period. Aristotle references the bundled spit as a precursor to the obol, the smallest silver denomination, whose name derives directly from obelos.

By the second century BC, these bars functioned more as ritual or institutional objects than active trade currency. A hoard of iron spits dedicated at the Heraion of Argos — recorded by excavators at the sanctuary — confirms their continued votive use centuries after silver had displaced them commercially.