STATER (crzanip; stater ; A. V. 'a piece of money,' margin stater').
The word stater, from i'arni.4e, means a coin of a certain weight, and hence a standard, and was a term applied by the Greeks to coins of gold, elec trum, and silver. The principal earlier gold stateis were those of Croesus (KpoiaeLoL), the Persian darics (crrazfjpes Aapatcoi. Aapeu
in Boot. p. to19); of Corinth (Pollux, iv. 174 ; ix. So) ; and those of Philip of Macedon and Alex ander the Great, who issued them of the weight of Attic didrachrns. The stater is tbus always a didrachm. The name, however, was in later times applied to the tetradrachm of Athens (Phot. s. v. crrarhp ; Hesych. s. v. ^AcCixes Aavpicorocai), and attempts have been made to prove that even in the time of Thucydides the tetradrachm bore the name of stater (Thucyd. iii. 7o, Dr. Arnold's note). The term stater was also applied to the gold tetra drachms (commonly called octodrachms) of the Ptolemies. There seems then to be BO doubt that the name stater was first applied to the didrachm and then to the tetradrachm, as a standard coin of both metals.
The word stater is only once mentioned in the N. T., in the account of the miracle of the tribute money. On our Lord's arrival at Capernaum, they vvho received the didrachms (01 ?a 31,5paxi.m Xap.fldvov-res) asked St. Peter if his master paid the tribute (didrachms, 3L5ciaxaXos bikav reXci' Tat 3f3paxt.ca ; Matt. xvii. 24-27)• Many commen tators, both ancient and modern—and among them Augustine, Origen, and Jerome—have entirely missed the meaning of this miracle, by interpreting, the payment as a czz/i/ one, which it certainly was not (Alford, in /oe.) The didrachm refers to the sum paid annually by the Jews of twenty years old and upwards to the temple at Jerusalem (Exod. xxx. 13). This was half a shekel, called by the LXX. To 1PALOT TOD 3e5pdxjaciu [DIDRAcHm ;