Functionally no one used gold in any amount in every-day transactions in the ancient or medieval Mediterranean (or most other places!), because a gold coin at almost any size was such an enormous monetary unit as to be unsuited to most transactions. That in turn conceals some of the sharpness of wealth and class distinctions in pre-modern society in ways that flatten and frankly ‘modernize’ these societies. And it also misunderstands the economic systems of these societies, because it doesn’t understand what sort of transactions people would even want to use money for, which further flattens and modernizes these societies.