argýrion

Argýrion is an ancient Greek noun (αργύριον) meaning money or a coin. It derives from argyros, meaning silver, reflecting the metal’s role in early coinage. In Classical Greek, argýrion was a general term for money or a coin, used in legal, economic, and literary contexts to denote value, payment, or a sum of money. The term appears in various inscriptions and texts from the Classical through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, often serving as a unit of value or as a generic reference to coinage rather than to a specific denomination.

As monetary systems evolved, more precise terms such as nomisma (coin) and talanton (a monetary unit) gained prominence, and argýrion gradually lost precision as an everyday term in later Greek. By the Byzantine and post-classical periods, the word survived primarily in learned language or as a reference to money in general.

In Modern Greek, argýrio (αργύριο) is the common word for money or cash, and argýria (αργύρια) refers to coins or pieces of money. The historical term argýrion thus provides a glimpse into the linguistic history of Greek money and coinage, linking silver as a material to the concept of currency.

References: Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon; standard linguistic sources.