Greece P198 1000 Drachmas 1970 FVF—Zeus—Amphitheater—Woman—Hydra Port

Greece's highest denomination of the 1964–1970 series brings together three of the ancient world's most iconic images: the Artemision Bronze — possibly the greatest surviving Greek sculpture — the Theatre of Epidaurus, and the timeless port of Hydra Island. Issued under the Regime of the Colonels and notable for having two different watermarks depending on which paper stock was used.

Front

• Color: Brown on multicolor
• Zeus (Artemision Bronze): Statue of Zeus (the Artemision Bronze, National Archaeological Museum, Athens) at left
• Epidaurus: Amphitheatre of Epidaurus at lower center
• Watermark window: Blank area at right
• Signatures: Dimitrios Galanis (Gov., Bank of Greece); Manager signature unknown
• Engraver: Lambros Orfanos
• Designer: Yannis Stinis

Back

• Color: Brown on multicolor
• Hydra: View of the port of Hydra Island at center-right
• Woman in local costume: At left
• Engraver: Georgios Angelopoulos
• Designer: Yannis Stinis

Other Characteristics

• Varieties: You may receive any variety:
  • P-198a — Watermark: head of Aphrodite (hair in a knot at top); prefix 01 only, serial numbers up to 860,000; ~12.9 million printed
  • P-198b — Watermark: head of the Antikythera Ephebe (no hair knot); prefix 01 serial numbers above 860,000, and all prefixes 02+; ~1.07 billion printed
  • P-198as — Specimen (overprint SPECIMEN, serial 05Χ 000000) — not this listing
• Catalog numbers: P-198a / P-198b; Numista N#206926
• Watermark: Head of Aphrodite (P-198a) or head of the Antikythera Ephebe (P-198b) — a bronze statue of a youth recovered from an ancient shipwreck. To tell them apart: Aphrodite has her hair in a knot at the top of her head; the Ephebe does not.
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 158 × 80 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: Dimitrios Galanis (Gov.); Manager unknown
• Currency: Third modern drachma (1954–2001)

The Artemision Bronze: The Greatest Statue That Almost Wasn’t

The figure on the obverse is the Artemision Bronze, a larger-than-life-size cast bronze statue recovered from the sea off Cape Artemision in 1926 and now one of the crown jewels of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Dating to around 460 BC, it depicts a god — almost certainly Zeus — in the act of hurling a thunderbolt, his arms outstretched in perfect balance, his body a masterclass in Classical Greek idealism. The statue lay on the seabed for over 2,000 years after the ship carrying it sank. It is one of the very few original Greek bronzes to survive antiquity; almost all others were melted down during the Roman and Byzantine periods. That it ended up on the 1,000-drachma note — the highest denomination in circulation — was entirely fitting: this is Greece's most powerful image of divine authority.

Epidaurus: The Theatre That Still Works

The Theatre of Epidaurus, shown at the lower center of the obverse, was built around 340 BC by the architect Polykleitos the Younger and is the best-preserved ancient theatre in the world. It seats 14,000 people and is still used for performances today — its acoustics so perfect that a coin dropped at center stage can be heard from the back row. It was part of the sanctuary of Asclepius, the god of medicine, where the sick came to be healed. The combination of theatre and healing was intentional: the Greeks believed that drama — tragedy and comedy — was itself a form of medicine for the soul. Epidaurus was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.

Hydra: The Island That Banned Cars

The reverse shows the port of Hydra, one of the most distinctive islands in Greece. Hydra has no cars, no motorcycles, and no motorized vehicles of any kind — transport is by donkey, boat, or foot, as it has been for centuries. The island's stone harbor town, built by wealthy 18th-century sea captains, looks almost exactly as it did 200 years ago. In the 1950s and 1960s, Hydra became a magnet for artists and intellectuals — Leonard Cohen lived there for years and wrote some of his most famous songs on the island. The woman in local costume at left represents the living folk tradition that Hydra has preserved more completely than almost anywhere else in Greece.

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

• Two watermarks: This note exists with two different watermarks because the Bank of Greece used up leftover paper stock from the 1956 1,000-drachma note (P-194) before switching to new stock — making the Aphrodite watermark variety (P-198a) significantly rarer at only ~12.9 million printed vs. over a billion for P-198b
• Junta note: Issued in 1971 under the Regime of the Colonels; the junta chose Zeus — king of the gods — for its highest denomination
• Leonard Cohen on Hydra: The island on the reverse was home to Leonard Cohen in the early 1960s, where he wrote Beautiful Losers and began his musical career
• Debt crisis: Greece triggered the worst sovereign debt crisis in EU history (2010–2018), receiving three international bailouts totaling over €289 billion
• 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
• Oldest city in Europe: Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 7,000 years

Own this note and hold Zeus in your hands — the god of thunder cast in bronze, the world's most perfect theatre, and an island that chose donkeys over cars. The 1,000-drachma note is the crown of the 1964–1970 Greek series, and one of the most compelling banknotes ever issued.