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In small societies, there isn't really a great need for money, because you can generally trust your friends and neighbours to return any labour, food or goods in kind.
小型社会并无货币需求。人们通常可以信任自己的朋友或邻居，相信他们会用劳动、食物或其他物品作为交换或回报。
The need for money, as we understand it, grows when you are dealing with strangers you may never see again and can't necessarily trust-that is, when you're trading in a cosmopolitan city like Sardis.
我们很容易了解，对货币的需要是在人们与不太信任、有可能不会再见面的陌生人进行交易时出现的，而在像萨迪斯这样的国际都市就常会出现这种贸易。
Before the first Lydian coins, payments were made mostly in precious metal - effectively just lumps of gold and silver.
在货币出现之前，吕底亚的支付媒介是贵金属，主要是金块或银块。
It didn't really matter what shape the metal was, just how much it weighed and how pure it was.
形状并不要紧，重要的是重量和纯度。
But there's a difficulty;in their natural state, gold and silver were often found mixed with each other and, indeed, mixed with other metals.
但问题是，自然状态下的金矿和 银矿常混杂在一起，甚至掺杂其他价值不高的金属。
Checking a metal's purity was a tedious task - likely to hold up every business transaction, and even when the Lydians and their neighbours invented coinage, about a hundred years before Croesus, this problem still remained.
检验金属的纯度是项无聊的工作，几乎每次都得耽误贸易的进行。在克罗伊斯王登基前一百年左右，吕底亚人已发明了货币，但纯度问题仍无法解决。
They used the naturally occurring mixture of gold and silver, not the pure forms of the metals.
他们使 用的是自然状态的金银混合物，而非某种纯金属。
The Lydians eventually solved this problem, speeded up the market and, in the process, became hugely rich.
吕底亚人最终找到了解决问题的方法，从而加速了市场交易，并在此过程中积累了巨额财富。
They realised that the answer was for the state to mint coins of pure gold and pure silver, of consistent weights that would have absolutely reliable value.
他们的方案是让国家来铸造固定重量、价值 绝对值得信赖的纯金与纯银货币。
It was the currency that you could trust in completely and, without any checking, spend, spend, spend!
如果有国家做担保，金币和银币便成为可以完全信任的货币，不再需要任何检查程序即能放心使用。
How did the Lydians manage to pull this off?
而他们 到底是如何做到这一点的呢？
Paul Craddock, expert in historical metals, explains:
古代金属专家保罗?克拉多克解释道：
"The Lydians hit on the idea of the state, or the king, issuing standard weights and standard purity.
吕底亚人选择让国家或国王来确定重量与纯度标准。
The stamps on them are the guarantee of the weight and the purity.
货币上的印记便是重量及纯度的保证。
And of course if you're guaranteeing the purity, then it is absolutely necessary that you have the ability not just to add elements to the gold but also to take them out.
但如果要保证纯度，则必须具备从金矿中加入或析出一些元素的能力。
