This new Lydian method of minting moved the responsibility for checking the purity and weight of the coins from the businessman to the ruler – a switch that made the city of Sardis an easy, swift and extremely attractive place to do business in. Because people could trust Croesus’s coins, they used them far beyond the boundaries of Lydia itself, giving him a new kind of influence – financial power.

Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 1…, loc. 426