Obol

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The obol (Greek: ὀβολός, obolos, also ὀβελός (obelós), ὀβελλός (obellós), ὀδελός (odelós). lit. 'nail, metal spit';^[1]Latin: obolus) was a form of ancient Greek currency and weight.

Currency[edit]

Obols were used from early times. According to Plutarch they were originally spits of copper or bronze traded by weight, while six obols make a drachma or a handful, since that was as many as the hand could grasp.^[2]Heraklides of Pontus in his work on 'Etymologies' mentions the obols of Heraion and derives the origin of obolos from obelos. This is confirmed by the historian Ephorus on his work On Inventions. Excavations at Argos discovered several dozen of these early obols, dated well before 800 BC; they are now displayed at the Numismatic Museum of Athens. Archaeologists today describe the iron spits as 'utensil-money' since excavated hoards indicate that during the Late Geometric period they were exchanged in handfuls (drachmae) of six spits,^[3] they were not used for manufacturing artifacts as metallurgical analyses suggest, but they were most likely used as token-money.^[4]Plutarch states the Spartans had an iron obol of four coppers. They retained the cumbersome and impractical bars rather than proper coins to discourage the pursuit of wealth.^[5]

In Classical Athens, obols were traded as silvercoins. Six obols made up the drachma. There were also coins worth two obols ('diobol') and three obols ('triobol'). Each obol was divisible into eight 'coppers' (χαλκοί, khalkoí). During this era, an obol purchased a kantharos and chous (3 liters or 6 pints) of wine.^[6] Three obols was a standard rate for prostitutes.

Funerary use[edit]

The deceased were buried with an obol placed in the mouth of the corpse, so that—once a deceased's shade reached Hades—they would be able to pay Charon for passage across the river Acheron or Styx. Legend had it that those without enough wealth or whose friends refused to follow proper burial rites were forced to wander the banks of the river for one hundred years until they were allowed to cross it.^[7]

Weight[edit]

The obol^[8] or obolus^[9] was also a measurement of Greek, Roman, and apothecaries'weight.

In ancient Greece, it was generally reckoned as ​¹⁄₆ drachma (c. 0.72 grams (0.025 oz)).^[10][11] Under Roman rule, it was defined as ​¹⁄₄₈ of a Roman ounce or about 0.57 grams (0.020 oz).^[12] The apothecaries' system also reckoned the obol or obolus as ​¹⁄₄₈ounce or ​¹⁄₂scruple.

Literary use[edit]

The obolus, along with the mirror, was a symbol of new schismatic heretics in the short story 'The Theologians' by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.^[13] In the story's discussion of the circularity of time, eternity, and the transmigration of the soul through several bodies the author uses a quotation of Luke 12:59, mistranslated as 'no one will be released from prison until he has paid the last obolus'^[13] since Luke calls the coin a lepton (a somewhat smaller denomination) rather than an obolus.

See also[edit]

• The currency of the United States of the Ionian Islands was called the Obol
• The British halfpenny, also formerly known as the obol^[14]
• Obelisks (ὀβελίσκοι, obelískoi), which also derived from the bars or the critical mark

References[edit]

1. ^ὀβολός. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
2. ^Plutarch, Parallel Lives, The Life of Lysander, para. 17
3. ^Biba Teržan 'L'aristocrazia femminile nella prima età del Ferro'
4. ^'The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age' by Harry Fokkens & Anthony Harding
5. ^Plutarch, Lycurgus 9
6. ^Davidson, James (1998). Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens. London: Fontana Press. p. 59. ISBN0-00-686343-4.
7. ^Virgil, Aeneid 6, 324–330.
8. ^Oxford English Dictionary. 'obol, n.'
9. ^Oxford English Dictionary. 'obolus, n.'
10. ^British Museum Catalogue 11 – Attica Megaris Aegina
11. ^Weight Standards and Denominations, Tulane UniversityArchived 2015-05-04 at the Wayback Machine
12. ^Sayles, Wayne G. (1997). Ancient coin collecting 3. Iola: Krause Publications. p. 19. ISBN0-87341-533-7.
13. ^ ^abBorges, Jorge Luis (1962). Labyrinths. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation. pp. 122–24. ISBN978-0-8112-0012-7.
14. ^Albert Peel, Seconde parte of a register: being a calendar of manuscripts under that title (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 175, note.

• 2. Vol. I of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 9

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Obol.

• A History of Measures The Use of Obeliskoi

A Security Protocol Programming Language (and Runtime)

Obol is part of a project to investigate properties of securityprotocols, what they are, how they behave, how they interact, how to dealwith them. The Obol language grew out of a desire to escape thedistractions of low-level implementation efforts, and the need to experimentand express security protocols as independent programs, closer to the levelon which security protocols are analysed.

NB! Other Obols: If you are looking for the object-oriented language that was originally designed to introduce the conceptual foundations of object-oriented programming with minimal fuss, named Obol, you unfortunately come to the wrong Obol. Please follow this link instead. There is also 'Obol, A Language for Open Bio-Ontologies'.

What's it all about?
Obol is a specialized high-level programming language for securityprotocols. The idea is to program closer to the abstractions used todescribe and analyze security protocols, and leave all the nasty details tothe runtime.The runtime will then handle 'mundane' issues such as messagerepresentation, communication, cryptographic transformations and so on.

What's the point of that?
By focusing on the security aspects of the protocol being implemented,one avoid the typical entanglement of security protocol code, low-levelcryptographic functions, and application logic.Obol keeps these three aspects separate, resulting in a clean, highlymodular and very flexible security protocol framework.

Think of it as trying to do for security protocols what SQL did for databases.

What's it implemented in?
The most mature (and actively developed) runtime version is implementedin Java, using ANTLR for the parsing.Earlier prototypes were implemented in Common Lisp and Python.

What can it be used for?
Security protocols, or any protocol structure that involve composition andtransformation.Obol is interpreted, and protocols can very easily be upgraded.The runtime's modular structure allows for new message representationformats, cryptographic primitives, communication technology and so on, to beadded dynamically.

What does it look like?
As an example, consider the typical way a message in a securityprotocol is described:

A → B: A, B, {A, B, Na}_Kab

The above means that A sends B a message consisting of thesender's name, the intended recipient's name, and then encrypts a repetitionof the names along with a nonce Na(random value) using the shared-keyKab.We have not made the assumption that Obol must run on both protocolendpoints, so we must implement both sides (both A andB):

A side	(send B A B (encrypt Kab A B Na)
B side	(receive A A B (decrypt Kab A B *Na))

In the above example we assume that A and

Obol Birding

B know about eachother, and that they share the key Kab.However, the nonce Na is unknown to B, so B cannot recognize it, but canassign the unknown datum to a symbol, which is what the *Na constructdoes.

How can Obol be used?
Two ways:

1. An application must connect to the Obol runtime and request that it starts an Obol protocol, or script. The application receives a handle which it can use to communicate with the script instance, i.e. starting and stopping the protocol execution, setting and retrieving values the script requires and provides.
2. For experimenting with the language, there's a very simple command-line interface (· la python or lisp). In your shell, just invoke
   % java -jar Obol.jar
   or
   % java -jar Obol.jar testParser
   Using a readline wrapper (eg rlwrap) is strongly recommended.

Where can I get Obol?
Obol just moved here to friendly SourceForge, and a zip-file can be downloaded via theproject's download page.This zip-file contains these files:

File	Purpose
Obol.jar	Jar file containing the Obol classes and packages.
API.java	Interface describing the Obol runtime.
ScriptHandle.java	Interface describing a script instance handle.
ReturnValue.java	Interface describing symbols and values returned via the ScriptHandle interface.
testScript.java	Example application that invokes any Obol script.
selftest.obol	Obol interpreter selftest script.

You will also need the following in your $CLASSPATH:

• ANTLR Jar file (antlr-2.7.5.jar)
• (Optional) Log4J is required if you use a pre-2007 version. Newer versions provide a built-in fallback if log4j turns out to be unavailable at runtime.
• (Optional) Java's default cryptographic abilities might be adaquate for your use, but for more options please use a decent crypto provider such as Bouncy Castle, or the good old Cryptix. Others might work too (caveat emptor).

To enable and play with the experimental generate-eval callout, you mustplace one or more of these interpreters in your classpath:

Oboli

• Armed Bear Common Lisp (ABCL), a very nice and complete CL. Installation can be a little messy, but is well worth it. Alternatively, use the ABCL embedded in the J-editor, by putting j.jar (found in the binary distribution of J) in your classpath.
• Jatha, a common lisp library. Easy install, hard to use (incomplete subset CL).
• Jython, a.k.a. Python in Java.

With one of the above, you can do things like

(believe x 2048)
(generate y eval lisp '(expt 2 x)' x)
(generate z eval python '2**x' x)

in your favourite language!

Where is the source code?
Browse the source code in theSourceForge svn repository, or use svncheckout:

Documentation?
For a quick tutorial or overview, please see the Dr.Dobbs article in the list of Publications below.

There's a detailed technical report in the pipeline, which will be available here Real Soon Now^tm.The very impatient can get a copy of the rather rough work-in-progressdocument by sending me an email.

There's also an informal howto/FAQ available.

Obol-related Publications

• Gaining Flexibility by Security Protocol Transfer, P.H. Myrvang, T. Stabell-Kulø, The Twelfth IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, Aveiro, Portugal, July 2007.
• Parameterized Communication, P.H. Myrvang, Dr.Dobbs Journal, September 2006.
• The Role of Reflective Middleware in Supporting Flexible Security Policies, Na Xu, G.S. Blair, P.H. Myrvang, T. Stabell-Kulø, P. Grace. To appear in proceedings of Node2006, Erfurt, Germany, September 2006.
• The Obol Protocol Language, P.H. Myrvang, T. Stabell-Kulø, 14th International Workshop on Security Protocols, Cambridge, UK. To appear in Springer LNCS
• Security and Middleware, A. Andersen, G. Blair, P.H. Myrvang, T. Stabell-Kulø, WORDS 2003, Guadalajara, Mexico, January 2003
• Reflective Middleware and Security: OOPP Meets Obol., A. Andersen, G. Blair, P.H. Myrvang, T. Stabell-Kulø, A. Bottoni, and T.A. Nilsen Røst, The 2nd International Workshop on Reflective and Adaptive Middleware, Middleware 2003, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 2003.

There's also an early technical report from the work done on the Lisp-basedprototype (there's been lots of syntax and semantics changes since then):

• The design and implementation of Obol, T. Stabell-Kulø, T. S. Skogan and P. H. Myrvang, Computer Science Technical Report, University of Tromsø, 2004.

See also the Pasta Project.