1000 talents is how many euro's?

Answer 1

Here's more than enough of an answer:

Presuming you are asking because 1000 talents was used as the bet on the most famous race, Judah Ben Hur's chariot race. The simple answer is that the wager was made between an extremely wealthy sheik and a Roman leader, in a race watched by all of the richest, most powerful men in the world. You don't really need to use your imagination to picture the scope of the bet. It would be like the queen of England betting against Bill Gates at his wealthiest. In the movie remember too, that there were odds of 4-1 as well. Ceasar was there at the race.

If we approximated 1000 talents of silver and gold (half and half by volume as pictured in the movie) we'll say half and half at 500 talents each. That would be about 50000 pounds of each silver and gold, which today would be worth as an approximation 25 million in silver and 175 million euros in gold, in today's value. Thus, 1000 talents of silver and gold would be worth somewhere around 200 million euros. That little chest in the movie would only have been a small, representative gesturing symbol of the 3 cubic yard bin that would be needed to hold that many gold and silver coins. Sheiks did not know how to drive tandem dump trucks in those days.

It could be easily argued that this approximation could be inaccurate, incorrect, even impossible as a wager. The point is -and as proven by my example of wagerers today- this would be both a significant and worthwhile bet for "the Queen of England Vs. Bill Gates", and therefore an accurrate and believable wager for the script of this movie.

There are extremely wealthy people alive today that make such wagers, usually (and as in the case of the movie) with other peoples money/proceeds of cheating systems/governments.

So whether or not my approximation is the best, the answer is around 200 million euros, or more simply put, a HELL of a lot of money, 1000 times more than you would ever need to enjoy your life. Good question. In the book, it was only 20 talents by the way, and in tose days, nothing cost a talent, it was more a measure of weight for simple crude elements, like we use the ton or tonne today. No one would bet you a thousand tons of commemorative gold coins that they could beat you down the hill on their bicycle. The bet would more likely have been made in a showy form like "3 000 000 Shekkels", especially for the reason of giving the Sheik the ability to combat the Roman's racist insults in the scene by diminishing common measurement of the region.

Answer 2

My wife finished school with a Ph.d in Ancient History, and Greek and Roman law. She guessed it to be an outrageous sum- equal roughly to the funds required to finance the entire Roman Navy for a year.