Why did coinage, tyranny, and philosophy develop in the same time and place? Marc Shell explores how both money and language give worth by providing a medium of exchange, how the development of money led to a revolution in philosophical thought and language, and how words transform mere commodities into symbols at once aesthetic and practical. Offering carefully documented interpretations of texts from Heraclitus, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle,...