For our and your convenience, we have decided to propose the Talent (proposed currency code: RMT) as the national currency of the Humanist Republic of Mordan. On this we have discussed monetary issues, but we never went so far as to give the currency a name. We have noticed that this has led to uneasy situations when we wrote about topics involving monetary examples.
One Mordan Talent will be subdivided into thousand Sestertii (singular: Sestertius). Though most transactions in Mordan [or in other space settlements] will involve electronic payments (such as debit cards, internet banking and stored value cards), coins and notes will still be used. Our proposal is to have coins of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 Sestertii and of 1, 2 and 5 Talents; further they will be notes of 10, 20 and 50 Talents.
See here of the proposed currency sign.
Great name!
It is named after the ancient Greek coin.
Even better.
Though the Sestertius was a Roman coin.
what he said!
We are aware of your fascination for classic antiquity.
I’ve always wondered how much the “thousand talents” chariot race bet in the 1959 film Ben-Hur would be worth in today’s currency.
Well, the ancient talent represented a certain amount of gold. Last time I checked the gold price (last week) it was just below 1,300 USD/oz.
Then, the fictional bet could have been in the millions of dollars (US)?
That would be my guess, yes.
I have checked wikipedia. The talent was an amount of silver, but then still a 1,000 talents would be about 26 million USD [2012 values].
Yikes, that was a big bet!
Indeed, especially if you realize that most people did not earn more than one talent a year those days.