Parthenon Fact #2
by admin on March 07, 2010

469 silver talents. That’s what it cost to build the Parthenon way back when. So, what exactly is a talent and how much would it be worth today?

A talent is an ancient unit of mass and corresponds roughly to the mass of water needed to fill an amphora. Now, in Rome, an amphora was around 26 liters while in Greece it could vary from 18.5 liters up to 36 liters. This obvious lack of standardization made the worth of your silver talent dependent on which empire (not to mention time period) you happen to be residing in at the time. The Babylonian talent came in at around 30.3kg while the Egyptian talent cut your net worth by 3.3kg, coming in at 27kg. You would have gotten richer faster working for the Romans as their talent worked out at 32.3kg compared to the Greek or Attic talent which low-balled in at a measly 26kg. The ancient Israelites, over-achievers from the get-go, blew everyone out of the water with a talent weighing in at a whopping 58.9kg.

Now you need to jump in your sleek little time machine, zip back to 448 BC, snatch those 469 silver talents and zip back to today. Careful, that silver’s going to be pretty heavy.

So, now that you’ve got them back, how much will all that effort net you?

Well, 469 Greek or Attic silver talents, at 26kg per talent, weighs in at 12,663kg. The per kilogram price of silver as of the date of this post is $557.98 USD/409.64 EUR. so, your little trip back in time would net you 7,065,700.74 USD/5,187,271.32 EUR.

Considering inflation, I doubt that much would be enough to build the Porch of the Maidens today.