Greek lepton pay 'to the very last mite' before being released from prison. In the Hasmonean Kingdom the lepton was first minted under Alexander Jannaeus prior to 76 B.C.E. In modern Greece, "lepton" (modern form: "lepto", λεπτό) is the name of the 1/100 denomination of all the official currencies of the Greek state: the phoenix (1827–1832), the drachma (1832–2001) and the euro (2002–current) – the name is the Greek form of "euro cent". Its unofficial currency sign is Λ (lambda). Since the late 1870s, and until the introduction of the euro in 2001, no Greek coin had been minted with a denomination
Language and the euro 1999 with the motivation that "euro is a masculine noun". But the issue was then re-examined many times. Finally, in 2001 the consensus of the Accademia coalesced in favour of invariability. The rationale was based on the fact that abbreviated words originating from a longer word (for example "auto" from "automobile" (car) or "moto" from "motocicletta" (motorbike)) do not have a plural form, as well as the fact that the word "euro" is considered an abbreviation of the word "Eurovaluta" (European currency) . In 2002 an amendment to the financial act was proposed to adopt "euri" as the plural form