Life & Wisdom Quote by Euripides

Money may travel, but Euripides is betting on a deeper currency: character. In a Greece obsessed with exchange - tribute, dowries, war spoils, political favors - “coin” is more than metaphor. It’s the operating system of public life. By insisting that “virtue too passes current all over the world,” he borrows the language of markets to make a moral argument feel practical, even inevitable. Virtue isn’t positioned as a holy ideal; it’s framed as something spendable, recognizable, and convertible across borders.

The intent has a quiet edge. Euripides, the great skeptic of heroic posturing, often exposed how easily power dresses itself up as righteousness. Here, he’s not naïvely claiming goodness always wins. He’s suggesting that reputation for virtue functions like hard currency: it buys trust, secures alliances, opens doors in unfamiliar cities. Subtext: if you want influence that outlasts a payday, cultivate the kind people can “accept” without inspecting for fraud.

Context matters because the late fifth century BCE is a period when Athens’ confidence is fraying - war, demagoguery, civic paranoia. In that atmosphere, silver and gold can be seized, inflated, or stolen; they’re contingent. Virtue, as Euripides pitches it, is the portable asset: the one form of wealth that isn’t tied to a treasury, a regime, or a ship’s cargo hold.

The line works because it flatters morality while also disciplining it. Virtue isn’t just admirable; it’s legible. It has to “pass current,” meaning it must circulate socially, prove itself in public, and survive scrutiny like a coin in the hand.