Question

Passage A
The widespread adoption of coined money in the ancient Mediterranean during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. is frequently romanticized as a natural evolution of market economics, replacing the cumbersome barter system with a universally recognized medium of exchange. However, this interpretation anachronistically projects modern capitalist paradigms onto ancient societies that operated under fundamentally different principles. The archaeological and textual evidence strongly suggests that the earliest states to mint coins, such as the kingdom of Lydia and the various Greek poleis, were not motivated by a benevolent desire to facilitate local trade for their citizens. Rather, coinage was instituted strictly as an instrument of state administration and geopolitical power. The primary utility of uniform, state-stamped electrum and silver was to standardize the payment of mercenary armies—which were increasingly necessary for regional dominance—and to enforce a rigid, predictable system of taxation. By issuing a fiat currency, the state could demand that taxes be paid in the very coins it issued, thereby creating a closed-loop artificial demand for its money and consolidating fiscal control over its populace. The facilitation of everyday commerce in the agora was, at best, a secondary byproduct of a system designed comprehensively to serve the logistical, administrative, and military imperatives of the ruling elite. To view the ancient coin as the ancestor of the modern dollar is to fundamentally misunderstand the political economy of antiquity, where the state's survival, not the merchant's profit, dictated innovation.

Passage B
Numismatic historians have increasingly adopted a top-down view of ancient coinage, asserting that the first mints were established almost exclusively to satisfy the fiscal requirements of the state, particularly the funding of incessant warfare. While it is undeniable that early Greek city-states utilized coins for massive public expenditures, reducing the monumental phenomenon of Mediterranean monetization to mere statecraft ignores the profound economic transformation occurring concurrently. The explosion of coinage across the Mediterranean perfectly coincided with a dramatic expansion of maritime trade networks and the unprecedented rise of a new, influential mercantile class. These merchants urgently required a medium of exchange more reliable and efficient than weighing unminted bullion, which was inherently susceptible to debasement, fraud, and time-consuming verification at every transaction. The rapid standardization of weight standards across disparate, independent regions—often occurring completely independently of any single political or imperial authority—demonstrates unequivocally that the proliferation of coins was fundamentally driven by the organic demands of inter-regional commerce. Even if the state's initial impulse for minting was administrative convenience, the runaway historical success of coined money was propelled by its indispensable utility in the marketplace, ultimately transforming the fractured Mediterranean into an integrated, complex economic zone. The state may have struck the first coin, but it was the independent trader who carried it across the sea, ensuring its survival as a permanent institution.

Read the dual passages regarding the origins of ancient coinage. Then, match each analytical claim to its correct classification based on whether it is supported by Passage A only, Passage B only, both passages, or neither passage.