Greece P195 50 Drachmas 1964 FVF–Nymph Arethusa—Iliad-style Ancient Galley Ship

A beautifully engraved mid-century Greek banknote celebrating the mythological nymph Arethusa and Greece's proud maritime heritage — issued during the brief reign of King Constantine II and demonetized after nearly four decades of circulation.

Front

• Color: Blue on multicolor
• Arethusa: Head of the nymph Arethusa at left
• Galley: Ancient Greek galley at bottom right
• Signatures: Xenophon Zolotas (Gov., Bank of Greece); Manager signature unknown
• Engraver: Lambros Orfanos
• Designer: Yannis Stinis

Back

• Color: Blue on multicolor
• Shipyard composition: Artistic composition of an old and a modern shipyard side by side
• Engraver: Lambros Orfanos
• Designer: Yannis Stinis

Other Characteristics

• Catalog numbers: P-195a; Numista N#208042
• Watermark: Head of the Antikythera Ephebe — a bronze statue of a youth recovered from an ancient shipwreck
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 142 × 64 mm
• Issuing entity: Bank of Greece (Τράπεζα της Ελλάδος)
• Printer: Banknote and Currency Printing Office (Ίδρυμα Εκτυπώσεως Τραπεζογραμματίων και Αξιών), Greece (1947–date)
• Demonetized: Yes
• Signatures: Xenophon Zolotas (Gov.); Manager unknown
• Currency: Third modern drachma (1954–2001)

Arethusa: The Nymph Who Became a Spring

The figure on this note is no ordinary portrait — she is Arethusa, a naiad nymph from Greek mythology whose story is one of the most dramatic in the ancient canon. Pursued by the river god Alpheus across land and sea, Arethusa called upon the goddess Artemis for help. Artemis transformed her into an underground stream that flowed beneath the sea from the Peloponnese all the way to Sicily, where she emerged as the famous freshwater spring on the island of Ortygia in Syracuse. The spring still flows today. Ancient Greeks believed that objects thrown into the Alpheus River in the Peloponnese would resurface at Arethusa's spring in Sicily — a myth so vivid that even Cicero and Pindar wrote of it. Her image on this note connects everyday commerce to one of antiquity's most enduring love-and-transformation stories.

Old Ships and New Ships: Greece's Maritime Soul

The reverse composition — an old and a modern shipyard side by side — is no accident. Greece has been a seafaring civilization for 3,000+ years, from the triremes of the Battle of Salamis (480 BC) to the massive merchant fleet that, by the 1960s, was among the largest in the world. By the time this note was issued in 1965, Greek shipowners like Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos were global titans. The juxtaposition of ancient galley and modern shipyard on a 50-drachma note was a deliberate statement: Greece's identity is inseparable from the sea, across every era.

About Greece

• Origin of name: "Greece" derives from Latin Graecia, the Roman name for the region; Greeks call their country Hellas (Ελλάς), from Hellen, the mythological ancestor of the Greek people
• Capital: Athens — city pop. ~664,000; metro pop. ~3.6 million
  • Origin of name: Named after the goddess Athena, patron deity of the city; the origin of Athena's own name remains debated — possibly pre-Greek
• Population: ~10.4 million (UN 2023) — similar to Michigan or Portugal
• Area: 131,957 km² (50,949 mi²) — similar to Alabama or England
• GDP per capita (PPP): ~$40,000 (IMF 2024)
• Main exports: Petroleum products, aluminum, pharmaceuticals, olive oil, cotton, tobacco, fruits
• Borders: Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria (north); Turkey (northeast); surrounded by Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean seas
• Official/spoken languages: Greek (official); minority languages include Turkish, Macedonian, Albanian
• Ethnicities: Greeks (~91%); Albanians, Bulgarians, Roma, and others
• Memberships: United Nations (founding member, 1945); NATO (1952); European Union (1981, first enlargement); Eurozone (2001, replacing the drachma)
• Sovereignty: Independence from the Ottoman Empire declared 1821; recognized 1830; modern republic established 1974 after the fall of the military junta

Greece Unfiltered

• Debt crisis: Greece triggered the worst sovereign debt crisis in EU history (2010–2018), receiving three international bailouts totaling over €289 billion — the largest in history at the time
• Ancient democracy: Athens invented democracy around 508 BC — and then lost it repeatedly to oligarchs, tyrants, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans for the next 2,400 years
• Shipping dominance: Greek shipowners control roughly 20% of global shipping tonnage — more than any other nation — despite Greece having only 0.13% of the world's population
• Military junta: From 1967 to 1974, Greece was ruled by a military dictatorship (the "Regime of the Colonels") — this note was issued just before the junta took power
• Antikythera mechanism: The watermark on this note references the Antikythera Ephebe, a bronze statue of a youth recovered from the same shipwreck that yielded the Antikythera mechanism — a 2,000-year-old analog computer that calculated astronomical positions
• Oldest city in Europe: Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 7,000 years, making it one of the oldest cities in the world
• Cat island nation: Greece has one of the highest cat-per-capita ratios in Europe; cats are a protected cultural fixture, especially on the islands

Own this note and hold a piece of ancient myth in your hands — Arethusa's face, a shipyard's ambition, and the watermark of a bronze god pulled from the deep. A 50-drachma note that punches far above its face value.