Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 B.C. to A.D. 700 0801852919, 9780801852916

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K E N N E T H W. H A R L

Coinagein the Roman Economy 300 B .C. to A .D . 700

Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300

B.c.

to

A.D.

700

Ancient Society and History

Coinagein the

K E N N E T H W.

H A R L

RomanEconomy, 300 B.C. to A.D. 700

The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore and London

© 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 1996 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 54 32 1

The Johns Hopkms University Press 2 715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4319 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress C:atalog1ng-1n-Puh\ica11on Data Harl, Kenneth W C:mmge in the Roman economy. 100 BC to i\.D 700 / Kenneth W llarl p cm Includes b1hliograph1cal rclcrences (p ) and index !SB\: 0-80l8-'i2lJl-lJ (alk paper) 1 Coins, Roman. 2 C:01nage-Romc-ll1s1ory 1 Romc-EconomJC cond1t1ons I ·1nk Cj841 lil'i 19% 717 4917-d,20 9'i-'i0041

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

One Coins, the Money of the Roman Economy Two Monetization of Roman Italy, 500-200

1

21

B.C:.

Three The Denarius and Overseas Expansion, 200-30

B.c.

Four The Augustan Coinage, 30

73

B,

235

-AD

Five Currencies of the Roman East, 30

fl.c .-A.D.

Six The Great Debasement and Reform, Seven Imperial Regulation and Reform,

A.D

Eight The Loss of Roman Monetary Ways,

A.D.

200

193-305

305-498

A.D.

400-700

38

97

125

158

181 VII

Contents

Nine Government's Aims and Needs

207

Ten Coins in the Cities and Markets of the Roman World Eleven Coins, Prices, and Wages

270

Twelve Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers Appendix: Weights and Measures in the Roman World 315 Plates

319

Abbreviations Notes Glossary

383 387 473

Select Bibliography Index

viii

515

485

290

250

Acknowledgments

n writing this book, I have enJoyed encouragement and assistance of many friends and scholars. I foremost thank Eric Halpern for approaching me with the idea of writing this work. I must single out the friendship and sage advice of Keith Hopkins, J Edward Lendon, Ramsay MacMullen, Thomas Martin, Elizabeth Meyer, Jonathan Roth, and William E. Metcalf. I thank especially Roger S. Bagnall for his indispensible assistance on Roman Egypt and papyri and Bruce frier for his expertise on Roman law and his kindness m sharing his unpublished work on prices m legal documents. My dear friends Frank Campbell and Carla Lukas are deservmg of far more than this bnef speual thanks for their tmls on my behalf. I am, as ever, in debt to the staff of the American Num1smatic Society as well as curator;, of crnn cabinets and scholars workmg on both sides of the Atlantic Space permits me only brief thanks for their many vaned scrnces Michel Amandry, Melih Asian, MJChacl Bates, Andrew Burnett, Eugene Borza, Kevm Butcher, Mmbclle Corb1cr, Cunther Dcmhsk1, Cieorges Depeyrot, Peter R. Franke, Christopher Howgego, Ursula Kampmann, Wolfgang Leschhorn, Johannes Nolk, Bernh;ml O\'crheck. Joseph Scholten, ;\Ian Stahl,

IX

Acknowledgments

John Vanderspoel, Colin Wells, Peter Weiss, Richard Weigal, and Ruprecht Ziegler. My home university, Tulane, has provided me with invaluable support throughout this project, and it is a privilege to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to my colleagues in the Department of History, and to my students Vasilios Manthos and Jaclyn Maxwell for their editorial comments and David Endler for his expert aid in computer programing. Finally, I must thank my parents for their constant support and faith in me, inasmuch as they were the inspiration in seeing this project to completion, and it is to my nieces, Melissa and Jessica, I dedicate this book

X

One

Coins, the Money of the Roman Economy

T

he objective of this hook is an examination of how the Romans used coined money-its role in payrolls, tax collection, trade, and daily transactions-over the course of a millennium,

300 EH to A.D. 700. Although there are many hooks about Roman coins, they are, for the most part, numismatic works devoted to the study of the coins as objects rather than as evidence for the economic and social life of the Roman world. This is an attempt to redress the imbalance by dealing with coins both as fiscal instruments of the Roman state and as the medium of exchange employed by the Roman public This focus, however, requires generalizatwn coms by their very nature offer terse evidence subject to several plausible mtcrpretat10ns. Whenever my interpretations have departed from those oflcadmg nurrnsmatic authorities, alternate opm!Llns can he found in the notes. Since this 1s a history of the currency of the Roman world, its geographic expanse widens wllh the growth of Roman power, and ll includes the ci\'lc and prn\lncial coinages that formed a large part of the money used for the five centuries from 200 1u to A.11. 3lXl Although this vast lLJCalcrnnagc cries out for further study, enough is known to write not only of the roles such coins played m provm-

Coinagein the Roman Economy

cial taxation and local markets but also of the lessons Romans gained from these coinages and applied to their own. This is nowhere more true than for the coinage of Roman Egypt, which has been viewed, and neglected, as an unusual currency in a closed economy. Yet, in Egypt the Romans created the world's first successful fiduciary currency. Minted from billon, an alloy of less than 25 percent silver, it earned the trust of the Egyptians, who constituted 10 to 15 percent of the empire's population, for more than two centuries. The Egyptian experience gave the imperial government a model for its own billon currencies in the third and fourth centuries. Private accounts and tax registers reveal that, when it came to paying taxes and using coins, Egyptians had far more in common with inhabitants of the rest of the Roman world than has heretofore been recognized Several issues and questions must be faced in any study of Roman currency, among them, the extent to which Romans used and were accustomed to coins; what forces drove debasements and reforms that affected currency, state revenues, and prices; and what inferences may be drawn from that evidence underlying current opinions about the size and composition of the Roman currency. Precisely how Romans employed coins is a question central to any assessment of the success of the Roman economy, indeed of imperial civilization itself. Classical numismatists and historians, with the notable exception of Sture Bolin, have seldom ventured to explain the precise role of corns. Bolin's work, State and Currcncy in the Roman Empire, has drawn sharp cnticism because of its reliance on theoretical mathematics and the premise, demonstrably false, that gold and silver coms of the Roman Empire were tanffed farm excess of their intrinsic or metallic value I An understanding of the place of corns in the Roman economy can he enhanced by companson to the role of coms m medic\·al and early modern European economies. The more numerous documents and coins available for these penods have enabled histonans to exam me in detail the commercial and fiscal roles of coins. Since these later coinages were rooted in a Roman past, they reflect many of the features that existed m the Roman age The use and unportancc of Roman coins arc often discounted on 2

Coins, the Money of the Roman Economy

the grounds of their limited numbers, but this view springs from the assumption that because mints in the ancient world seldom struck on an annual basis coins were in short supply. On the other hand, down to the nineteenth century most states struck coinage intermittently, so the fact that Rome produced coins on an intermittent basis hardly supports Finley's sweeping assertion for the whole of ancient history that "shortage of coins was chronic, both in total numbers and in the availability of preferred types or denominations." 2 References cited in support of this claim date from 66 ll.C. to A.D. 33, when Roman aristocrats ran short of hard cash in their eagerness to acquire the vast amounts of Italian land available in the wake of civil war. Notices of brief shortages are matched by those of abundance, and neither set of circumstances can be pressed as evidence to what was the "typical" volume of money in circulation ' The important point so often missed is that coins could remain in use for over a century. Finley penned his words JUSt as numismatists were beginning to apply statistical methods to the study of hoards and dies to estimate output. While they are far from agreement on the methods and the meaning of their analyses, numismatists agree that ancient mints could strike on short notice coinages as great as the largest coinages on record for medieval European mints from the thirteenth century on. 4 The combined coinages of imperial Rome constitute perhaps the largest in history; Diocletian (A o 284-305) alone directed a recoinage on a scale that dwarfed all coinages until this century. Roman coins, even when their great numbers and diversity are acknowledged, arc mmim1zed on two other grounds First, since the Roman world was tied to the soil, coins, it 1s argued, played a limned role m what 1s dubbed an "underdeveloped" economy. A second cnticism often advanced 1s that coins were invented for fiscal purposes alone and their use m commerce was only incidental because throughout Roman history state demands took precedence owr public needs and economic growth Most scholars who minimize the role of corns-and some have gone so far as to deny the existence of market forces in most Roman commerce-write primanly on agriculture and the peasantry. The comparatively few coins recovered from rural slles have fostered a percepuon that

Coinagein the Roman Economy

coins were not widely used, but the record is defective, reflecting accidents of survival rather than the absence of markets and a negligible use of coins. The extent of circulation of coins in the countryside is best understood by an analogy to medieval Europe, which was at least as rural as much of the Roman Empire. Documents from A.D. 1000-1350 reveal that great numbers of "black money," low-grade silver deniers, circulated between countryside and city every year in a seasonal cycle; so too denarii and bronze coins of the Principate or billon nummi of the Dominate must have traveled for centuries. 5 There was nothing inherently backward in the structure of the Roman economy that limited such a pattern of circulation. The Roman world, like other civilized societies prior to the industrial age, drew its wealth from the land, but seaborne trade stimulated growth so that Rome approached the economic diversity of late medieval and early modern Europe_ The classical city was not just a political center that drained wealth from the countryside in taxes and rents. As a settlement boasting only a few thousand souls it was intimately tied to the villages of a spreading countryside Such small cities had the same commercial, religious, and social bonds that drew together late medieval towns and their hinterlands. The second criticism, if valid, is more potent. If coins are classified solely as fiscal instruments, then they may be removed from serious discussion of economic life. Scholars such as Crawford and Hendy have advocated this view primarily as a reaction to suggestions that the Roman state issued coins to meet the needs of the marketplace 6 These crillcisms have some validity, for coins usually entered circulation in government payrolls or payments to contractors. But the distinction is more apparent than real, because fiscal and commercial activities have been and still are two sides of a single economy. While fiscal in origin, coins had long proved their convenience in commerce and this role continued even in the world that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. The success of token bronze coins and the creallon of fiduciary billon coins in the third century A.D. were possible only because a Roman public dealt and reckoned in coined money. The total coins recovered from scores of sites in Western Europe and Italy, when plotted on a graph, document vividly how demand for Roman coins rose steadily from 4

Coins, the Money of the Roman Economy

50 B.c. to A.D. 400. Romans employed coins in great numbers, whether or not the imperial government pursued a formal monetary policy. This fact alone vitiates claims that the minting of coins was little more than an act of political sovereignty that impeded rather than promoted trade_ 7 It is thus proper to speak of Roman monetary habits, because for nearly a thousand years Romans reckoned and settled private and public obligations m coin. Although commodities such as grain and oil were never displaced as staples in Mediterranean trade, Roman coins became the preferred medium of exchange and the preferred store of value, because they were portable, nonperishable, and easily negotiated into any other commodity. Finally, while it 1s necessary to guard against investing modern notions of money in coins of the ancient world, coins are often emptied of their economic significance by comparisons to the use of money m what Polanyi and his disciples have termed an "embedded society." Coins, m anthropological schemes, are interpreted as gifts exchanged to cement social bonds or common kinship rather than to facilitate commerce. The evidence, however, does not warrant any such conclusion Strabo and Posidonius, reporting what is mterpreted as a "gift exchange," note only that the Gallic chieftan Lunus scattered from his chariot gold and silver coms among his countrymen. The scene is more aptly viewed as a Celtic version of a later, more elaborate Roman ceremony when emperors of the fourth century scattered gold solidi to buy the loyalty of their subJects_K Large numbers of denarii survive m Scandinavia not because the northernmost Teutonic peoples pnzed them for "gift exchanges," but because Roman merchants carried them directly by sea to pay for amber and other commod!l1es_'l The pre-Roman rnmagcs of Western and Central Europe were denved from those of the Mcdllcrrancan world, and they arc best understood by reference to roles coins performed in the Roman economy. Celt1bcnans and Cauls minted silver denarii or oho/, to hlfe mercenancs, to pay wages of their men servmg under Roman eagles, or to render tnbute to Rome. They also quickly learned the value of silver and base metal lractions 111 markets where traders ol the Mediterranean world offered many fine wares or in the collec-

Coinage in the Roman Economy

lion of lucrative tolls on transit trade. Coinage in these lands reflected a high level of economic development and prepared the way for rapid monetization under Roman rule. ln northern and western Europe, the Romans conquered and assimilated provinces where native peoples dwelled in towns and handled coins. Likewise, in the sixth century A.D., Justinian's armies recovered provinces where town life and coinage had survived the collapse of the Western Empire. The Romans owed coinage to the Greeks and found native currencies in their provinces, but they carried the use of coins to unparalleled heights. They spread their coins across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East and transmitted their notions of money as one of many legacies to the peoples of medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Islam. The success of Roman currency rested upon its silver coins, which over the centuries often suffered recoinage, debasement, and revaluation that directly affected the supply and use of coins, and thus state expenses, taxes, and prices in the marketplace. Romans employed as their principal coin a modest-sized silver denomination, the denarius (measuring 22-20 mm in diameter), for nearly five centuries (264 B.C.-A.D. 238); bronze and gold coins served as its subsidiary fractions and multiples. Various billon coins, reckoned in notational denarii (denariicommunes or d.c.), followed for a century (A.D. 251-367), but they yielded primacy again to fine silver coins that recalled the denarius and inspired the pennies and deniers of medieval Europe and the dirhems of the Caliphate The Roman state often manipulated the silver currency to keep pace with inflation or to expand the supply of money m an emergency, but even during periods of prosperity and stable prices, currency had to be replenished penodically because of its deterioration in circulation. Duncan-Jones estimates the loss from wear suffered by the principal denommations of the High Roman Empire was as follows: the gold aureus lost ¼110 or 0.0225 percent of its weight each year; the silver denarius, 1/ion or 0.0598 percent; and the brass seslertius, 1/c.H 1 or 0 1715 percent The loss of the sestert1us was 7.6 times, and that of the denarius 2.65 times, the loss suffered by the aureus reflecting the higher velocity of the less valuable corns. 10 Annual rates of wear, however, usually were the least im-

Coins, the Money of the Roman Economy

portant loss suffered by Roman currency. Silver and gold coins fell prey to abuses such as clipping and "sweating," and many coins left the mint below full standard. Wear reduced the stock of coined silver by 2 to 2. 5 percent each decade or about 10 to 12 percent every half-century, but stocks often dwindled much more rapidly due to export of silver in trade, war, and diplomacy. 11 Coins retained their exchange value as long as they were of proper weight, but heavy, purer pieces ordinarily disappeared into savings or melting pots, while baser, lighter specimens were discounted at the tables of moneychangers. Even under the best of circumstances there was a deterioration of the currency that in time affected values assigned to denominations, often driving up prices. The state could react in one of three ways. i 2 First, it could demonetize, melt down, and restrike old coins, but the task required additional moneyers or mints, and the state lost money whenever a significant proportion of recalled coins were base, underweight, or counterfeit. During the two centuries when the Romans established the denarius as the currency of the Mednerranean world (187 ll.C.A. D 64), they en_1oyed an ample supply of silver from overseas revenues and mines Since imported silver far exceeded losses due to wear and export, Rome never resorted to comprehensive recoinage to maintain the standard of the denarius The Roman denanus stands in sharp contrast to its closest counterpart from medieval Europe, the Enghsh penny; English monarchs in 1100-1300 had to conduct seven recomages to maintain the penny at the sterling standard (92 5 percent). As a second option, the state could revalue the circulating com, most often by lowermg its official tariffing against new coins. This move, called in the parlance of medieval England "crying down" the money, outraged saving classes and risked triggering panicked hoardmg Finally, the state could issm· new coins with the same silver content as the worn pieces m circulation so that new and old circulated at par The standard was adiusted either by lowering the weight of new coins or by alloymg new coms so that they were of traditional weight but contained less silver As an example of the first method, the Roman Republic, to account for wear sustamed by ns earliest coms, lowered slightly the weight of subsequent issues (ea 3 I 0-268 H c .) An 7

Coinagein the Roman Economy

example of the second may have occurred when Antoninus Pius alloyed the denarius slightly in A.D. 148. The Roman state seldom implemented recoinage or revaluation just to replenish the worn stock of coins in circulation. Instead, it employed one or both measures in tandem with a debasement or reform. In crisis Rome invariably debased the silver currency to cover costs, and then, once the emergency passed, often reformed the currency to its previous level. The Republic in 213-212 11.c. thus revalued its heavy denarius, or quadrigatus,and began recoining quadrigati into lighter denarii at two-thirds the old weight. Nero revived the device of recoinage on a grand scale, and emperors in the next three centuries were driven to pay off bills by reminting silver or billon coins into more numerous, baser ones. Sometimes improvement of standards followed debasements-Domitian (AD. 81-96), Pertinax (A.D. 193), and Macrinus (Ao 217-18) each restored the fineness of the denarius. The Roman state sometimes revalued older coins to save the costs of a recoinage. ln 141 B.C. the Republic retariffed the denarius from ten to sixteen asses,probably because aged bronze coins were so worn that sixteen passed as the equivalent of ten minted to the uncial standard under which one as weighed a full ounce. More often revaluation accompanied at least a partial recoinage in a major reform or debasement Spiraling inflation in the late third and fourth centuries A.D. made such recoinages and revaluations commonplace In A.O. 293 Diocletian cut by 60 percent the tariffing of radiate billon coins in circulation when he introduced a silverwashed nummus as their replacement. His "crying down" the money sparked speculation, hoarding, and price increases so that twice within eight years he had to revalue upward the nummus to five times its original notational value The forces driving debasement and reform affected the numbers and kmds of coins in circulation, but conversely the size and structure of the currency dictated to large exterit decisions the Roman state took to secure revenues, meet payrolls, or stabilize prices Literary and documentary sources offer brief glimpses of coins in use at different periods, giving a series of disjointed scenes rather than a panoramic view of the history of Roman currency In the 8

Coins, the Money of the Roman Economy

absence of better records, it is necessary to allow the coins themselves to reveal how many and what kinds of coins the Roman government and public employed. Current scholarship m numismatics bristles with detailed analyses of hoards, reports of stray finds from archaeological sites, catalogues of maJor collections, and die studies. Specialists have devised a battery of tests to deduce the size and composition of the Roman currency, tests that contribute to our understanding of the metrology, output, and circulation of Roman coins. Modern spectral analysis can give us accurate information about the source of the metal in Roman coins. These metro logical analyses reveal that much of the coinage of the ancient world was re minted from older coins. For example, Shah Shapur of Persia (A.D 24070) struck base dirhems from captured Roman antoniniani and the Dacians manufactured silver coins and iewelry from Republican denarii. On the other hand, we know that Axumite emperors of Ethiopia minted their fractional gold pieces from East African gold rather than late Roman solidi Metrological analyses of gold and silver coins of the Roman Empire provide virtually the only information concerning their rates of debasement. Estimates of output, composition, and circulation offer more controversial results. The obJectJve of analyses of hoards and stray coins lost casually is to determine the place of origm, region of circulation, and use of coins in trade as well as the size and structure of the overall currency. The analyses are stat1st1cal, and so accuracy hmges upon large samples of representative coms. C1ven this critical limllallon, It 1s best to rcV!ew what these methods can offer on output, composition, and circulation. Romans struck their coms from engraved dies, except m the early Republic when they cast bronze ingots and coms from molds Since each die was cut separately, even dies of the most routine design betray peculianties so that a tramed eye can detect the different dies used to rrnnt a surv1vmg population of coms. The method used to manu!acturc ancient and medieval coins facilitates a calculation of the m1111rnumnumber of coms that mrght have been struck from a dre 11 Simply stated, a prepared com blank, or "flan." was posll 1oned by a man usrng tongs (called a suppo'>torat the l)

Coinagein the Roman Economy imperial mmt) between two engraved dies and a second man (the malleator at Rome) delivered a blow wllh a mallet to stamp the designs on the coin blank. Since more pressure was placed on the moveable or punch die on which the reverse was engraved, 1t wore out more quickly than the obverse die, which was firmly set in an anvil. Dies had relatively short life spans, and whenever an obverse die was matched with three or four reverse dies, it was likely that mint workers used that die to full capacity A count of obverse dies that were worked to capacity permits an estimate of the minimum size of a coinage The crux of the problem is twofold. How many corns were produced from an obverse die, and how representative of the total are the dies detected from the existing speumens? As to the first question, Greeks and Romans have been credited with minting between ten and twenty thousand coins per obverse die, but the estimate 1s based on experiments conducted by Sellwood m the early 1960s wllh modern tools that only approximated ancient conditions. In a recent restudy of the Amphictyonic financial accounts and coins of Delphi, Kinns argues for a range of thirty to forty thousand coins. This figure 1s of the same order as hammered silver coinages of England and Venice m the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that can be verified by surviving mint records. 1-1 Although medieval coins were engraved in lower relief which might have facilitated striking, the hand technology m manufacturing corns had not improved s1grnficantly by the fourteenth century. Thus, throughout this hook the figure of forty thousand corns per obverse die has been employed, with the warnmg that this 1s only an estimate Calculation of the number of dies ongmally employed to mmt any anuent coinage 1s even less certain, because sunwal of large numbers of corns depends upon their recovery from hoards. Since the largest c01nages that have survived from the ancient world defy catalogurng every die, thL' total dies arc often estimated by one of several probability formulas applied to a sample of dies counted rn a large hoard 1' The approach is based upon the prerrnse that every com ma hoard had an eyual chance of sunwal

and that the hoard

preserves a rcpresentatrve sample of a comagc Neither assumptllm Ill

Coins, the Money of the Roman Economy

is well founded. Figures of output calculated from estimates of total obverse dies can only suggest a minimum for the order of magnitude of a series or the relative size of different coinages, and, consequently, they are to be treated with extreme caution. The limits of these statistics lead us to consider the characteristics of their basis, hoards. Hoards of coins underpin much of what is written about the size and use of ancient and medieval coinages, but hoards distort rather than mirror the image of the money in circulation at the time of their concealment. Owners invariably preferred higher value and more portable denominations in gold or silver over fractional coins, and they also chose heavier or purer coins over lighter, more circulated specimens. As a consequence, most hoards preserve only the most valuable coins on hand. This is true whether a hoard represents a gradual accumulation of savings or a cache of coins suddenly drawn out of orculation dunng troubled limes. Those who could afford to put aside large caches of corns m emergencies could also convert many low-value or base metal denominations mto portable high-value gold or silver pieces on short notice. Samuel Pepys, when he fled seventeenth-century London on rumor of an approaching Dutch fleet, converted his savings into portable gold guineas and silver crowns for transport and concealment at his country estate. 10 In a similar vein, Josephus reports that dunng the siege of Jerusalem (A I) 66- 70), Jews planning to escape the doomed city or at least to conceal their wealth had sought out gold aurei and scorned silver denan1 17 Hoards from the Roman world usually do not reflect the relative numbers of the vanous denrnrnnations in circulation. Smee ratios o! the n:lat1ve numbers lli dent)minations deduced from Roman hoards cannot he checked agamst mmt records, companson to Swedish hoards deposited 1111700- I 72 I can serve as a warn mg of the distorting mirmr ol hoards IK The thirty-one published Swedish hoards !rom this pcrwd arc LOmposed overwhelmingly

of silver

cwolin dcnorrnnatwns.

the purest coms available for hoardmg (the limited issues of gold clutUtand silver rihsdalcrand christen were for export) Yet. mmt rcnlfds ,)11664-1721 record that carol111coms totaled m face value less than tme-half the value of the hea\·y bronze 11

Coinage in the Roman Economy

plate money and only 2 5 percent more than the total value oft he bill on and bronze fractional coins that are scarcely represented in hoards Hoards have JUst as many pitfalls as evidence for the size of different coinages in the Roman world. For example, Crawford based his estimates of obverse dies, and hence output, of denarii of ea. 160-30 B.C. on hoards that totaled nearly 27,000 denarii, but this is less than I O percent of the 275,000 coins found in Swedish hoards for 1664-1721 that provide the statistical basis for devising probability formulas. 19 Hoards of the Roman Republic preserve a paltry fraction of the original coinage and the surviving denari1 will never be sufficiently representative for meaningful estimates of the relative size of most series. In interpreting hoards, then, it is JUSt as important to determine not only when they were deposited but also why owners failed to retrieve them. Hoards survive in clusters from periods of natural calamity or war when death or enslavement prevented many owners from recovering their savings. The record of coin hoards in Italy from 218 B.c. to /\.D. l peaks dunng the Second Punic War and the Civil Wars in 90- 71 and 49-31 BC, while it shows more modest rises that might represent the failure of soldiers to return from the Celtiberian Wars in the 150s B.c. and the Jugurthine and Cimbric Wars in 116-100 B.c. (Figure l 1) What is noteworthy is that even a cluster of hoards gives us only a fraction of the total coins issued during any particular penod Hoarding in both tranquil and troubled times was and sull 1s a common practice in societies without deposit banking, but the vast maJonty of coins secreted in antiquity were recovered and returned to circulation. Classical authors casually refer to what must have been a continual cycle of concealing and finding treasures, and they saw discovery of a pot of coins as the best way to reverse a man's fortune Artemidorus of Daldis, the dream analyst of the sernnd century A.I)., considered dreams of recovenng buried treasures ~o common as to warrant several different 1nterpretations 20 Pompey had to mdulge his soldiers for two weeks tn 81 1u _ as they wandered the ruins of Carthage (sacked in 146 B< . ) looking for t reasurcs. 21 When Roman soldiers burst into Rhodes and Lyc1an cilles m 4 3 1u , they forced residents to give up treasures in wells, under entry ways, and in dozens of other well-known places ol conceal12

218-216 215-211 210-206 205.201 200-196 195-191 190-186 185-181 180 176 175 171 170-166 165-161 160-156 155-151 150-146 145-141 140.136 135-131 130-126 125-121 120-116 115 111 110-106 105-101 100-96 95-91 90-86 85 81 00..76 75-71 70--66 65- 61 6Q..56 55-51 50--46 45-41 40--36 15 11 30-2& 25 21 20 lb 15 11 10 6

Second } Punic War

Social War Civil War } Spartacus Revolt

} Civil Wars

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8 10 12 14

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18 20 22 24 26 28

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\forna11 Rq1uhl1u11 l ,,111\ \,1,mb. 2 I K 1,, , H,

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11 ( L1,vll)rd.

Coinagein the Roman Economy

ment. 22 On a far more humble note, a certain Orseniouphis in A.O. 28/9 filed a police report at Hermopolis charging a mason with absconding with the family fortune of four pieces of jewelry and twenty tetradrachmae.23 Since most coin hoards were recovered and returned to circulation, they reentered the cycle of being melted down and reminted. Coins surviving in hoards thus beat the odds of reminting. What the record of hoards presents is a set of snapshots of the coins that were set aside and not recovered rather than a coherent picture of the money in circulation. This fact must temper any conclusions drawn from the failure of certain coins to surface in hoards. It is inevitable that the denarii of 200-160 B.c. are poorly represented because most hoards were recovered and dispersed during the comparative tranquility of this period. It is, therefore, unwarranted to postulate a "gap" in the production and infer that the Roman state suffered chronic shortages of hard cash during the years 200-157 B.c. when literary sources report the opposite. 24 Carradice has calculated the output of denarii under Domitian (A.O. 81-96) by reference to the number of obverse dies as estimated from hoards (Figure 1.2). 25 The low mintage shown for 8287 most likely is not a true reflection of the relative size of the output for these years. In 82-85 Domitian improved the silver standard, and older coins, averaging 88 to 92 percent silver, were reminted into purer denarii (98 percent fine). These purer coins had scarcely entered the marketplace when Domitian in mid-85, pressed for money to pay off war hills, again changed the standard, reducing it to 93 percent fine Much of the silver for these new coins undoubtedly was obtained by melting down their purer predecessors, so the maJority of the fine denarii of 82-85 ended up in the melting pot rather than in hoards. What the graph shows as peak years reflects not so much an increase in relative output as the thoroughness of recalling and reminting of the purer coins mmted in 82-85. The graph, thus, distorts rather than mirrors the comage and finances of Dom1t1an. The lack of minting records and budgets for the Roman state are irretrievable losses, while c01ns surviving m hoards are too few to offset the impact of the innumerable remmtmgs coins underwent 14

Coins, the Money of the Roman Economy

-~ C: Cl)

-c

0

C:

Q

.E

2.6

2.6

2.4

2.4

2.2

2.2

2.0

2.0

1.8

1.8

1.6

1.6

1 .4

1.4

.9::, 1.2

1.2

-~ '5 0

0

1.0

1.0

~

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

£C:

0.4

0.4

~

0.2

0.2

>0

Date A.O.

81 82

Wars

Britain

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

Figure 1.2 Volume of Denarn under Dom1t1an (A.ll. 81-96). Survivmg Hoards

93

94

95 96

Reconstructed from

Source: From A. M. Burnett, Ccnnagein the Roman World (London. 1987), p 93 Repnnted by penrnss1on of Scahy. 1mpnnt of B T 8atsford

over the centuries. Even if large numbers of hoards are consulted, surviving coins and statistical methods cannot produce a reasonable guess as to the numbers of rnins in circulation at any time in Roman history. 20 The best that studies of dies and output can achieve are figures that convey an order of magrntude of comages that are now well represented due to their survival in hoards Nor can these methods tell us how much coined money the Roman state accumulated or spent each year Instead, literary and documentary sources, when they preserve plausible figures such as in triumphal inventories reported hy L1vy or state reserves cited by Pliny the Elder, rcmam the foundation to understanding state revenues and expenditures Therefore. the figures on production employed in this book are limited tu rnmages whose origmal or surv1v111gnumber of dies are reasonably well known, hut even these figures cannot yield much more than a 111111,mum of an order of magrntude I'S

Coinagein the Roman Economy

Given the selective composition of hoards, archaeologists have pioneered statistical analysis of stray coins found in excavations of military sites, towns, and villas Stray finds are coins that owners casually lost rather than a cache of coins deliberately secreted for later recovery. Coins found under such conditions distort the record JUSt as much as those in hoards, because owners lost those coins they could most afford, namely small change of low purchasing power. Given their occupation, place of residence, and personal attitudes, owners had varying opinions about what was an acceptable loss. Peasants took care to guard hard-earned money, and, not surprisingly, few coins of any type have been found in villages or at roadside marts. Legionaries, on the other hand, had frequent nights out on the town, and they could always borrow or take advances on salary to recoup losses, so they were prone to lose many more coins. Roman military sites across the empire show a remarkable uniformity in the types of coins lost over the centuries. In Julio-Claudian army camps in the Rhineland, soldiers seldom lost denarii, but they cared far less when they lost worn base metal fractions. Excavations yield mostly Republican asses, the middle and lower imperial fractions of asses, semisses, and quadrantes (which are often countermarked), halved coins, forgeries (so-called plated coins), and a sprinkling of Celtic coins that were curiosities of little monetary value. Excavation reports from the Roman world confirm what is inferred from economic activity, namely that coins were more numerous in cities, military centers, and villas than in the countryside. The reports, however, are far less helpful for determming the types or numbers of coins in use, and it is dangerous to conclude from casual finds alone that peasants lived in a world of barter and seldom used any coins or that Roman soldiers received the bulk of their wages in bronze coins. 27 Coins recovered at Pompeii, which was suddenly buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.n. 79, point to a very different structure of Roman currency than that reflected by stray coins or hoards. Nearly one-half the coins found were silver denan1 (48 percent) while base metal fractions (48 percent), and a handful of gold aurei (4 percent) make up the rest The structure of Pompeii's currency diverges from the typical pattern suggested by other excavated slles. 16

Coins, the Money of the Roman Economy

Table 1.1 Structure of Currency in Finds, ea. 30 Western Military Camps

B.C.-A.D.

80: Select Italian Sites and

Military Sites Denomination* AU Aureus AR Denarius AE Sestertius AE Dupondius AE As AE Semis AE Quadrans Non-Roman

Pompeii 4% 48% 9%

Minturnae

Camulodunum

27%**

1% 8% 5% 67%

3% 10°,{, 20% 65%

11 % 1%

18% 1%

1% 1%

Moguntiacum

Haltern

Y

Coinage in the Roman Economy

Table 7.4 Debasement of "A" Denomination,

Date 348-50 350-51 351-52 352-55 355-58 358-61

Module AE2, AE2, AE2, AE3 AE3 AE3,

Average Weight (Grams)

large large small

small

5.26 5.30 4.34 2.48 2.26 1.96

348-61 Number per Pound 60 60 72

120 130 144

Silver Content Fineness

Milligrams

3.0 0.8 0.4 0.6 0.5 0.1

158 42 17 15 11 2

Source: Kent, R/C VIII, p. 64

Tetrarchic stature to the size of the tiny Constantinian nummus it had replaced (Table 7.4) io As soon as he crushed Magnentius, Constantius II moved to impose monetary order, and in 354 he issued an edict outlawing the maiorinae and centenionales as well as a general prohibition covering old nummi, imitative pieces, counterfeits, and coins of Magnentius. But it shall be entirely unlawful for anyone to handle forbidden coms, because it is proper for the price of a thing to be in coins established in public use and not in merchandise. And if ships l.c\·1e~ 111kind, requis111011ing,and pillage did little to relieve the prl·~surc lllr com, because armies on the move had access to a narruw hand of towns and lands along high-

Coinagein the Roman Economy

ways and little time to collect supplies. Expeditionary armies offered a lucrative market, and vendors could cover high costs of transport and still reap big profits by selling to the commissariat. 53 Campaigning proved ruinously expensive, and logistical costs rose at an unrelenting rate because emperors, save for brief respites under Diocletian and Constantine, were continually on campaign during the third and fourth centuries. The civil and frontier wars in the fourth century generated new waves of price rises, ruining a dozen reforms of the billon currency. These costs in turn drove emperors to the fateful final steps of abandoning the expensive professional imperial army in favor of barbarians, who by the mid-fourth century already figured prominently in the ranks of crack units and frontier garrisons (/imitanei). Barbarian federates from the 350s on were granted short-term contracts that relieved the imperial exchequer from annual wages, retirement benefits, donatives, and most equipment costs because mercenaries only received wages and supplies for the duration of a campaign The lump sums of gold paid to Alaric's Goths or the tribute that Attila extorted from the Eastern emperor Theodosius II were far less onerous than the budget of a professional army, but fiscal savings compromised the defense of empire by ruining the imperial army that had acted as the main agent of monetization. For the six centuries after 200 IH., Rome had a constant need for coins, numbering rn the tens of millions. Government expenditure was the engine that drove the Roman economy. Rome was able, by the fruits of conquest and the exploitation of mines, to secure fresh supplies of bullion on an unprecedented scale, and the state perfected a system of tax collection that recovered and pumped corns through the economy. Despite the loss of the Western Empire, the budget in the East soared again dunng the sixth and first half of the seventh century so that the Roman state, even rn declrne, never relented rn its demand for huge numbers of coins. It 1s time to turn to taxation, the means whereby Roman government, long before Ccrealis's clay, collected and spent hundreds of millions of corns each year

210

Government'sAims and Needs

Coins and Taxes The Roman system of taxation too was a legacy of conquest. Rome adapted and extended throughout her empire a plethora of money taxes inherited from the Hellenistic world Rome imposed capitation or head taxes, collected at fixed rates reckoned in denarii or drachmae; provincials detested the census and head tax as Roman oppression made manifest. To regressive head taxes were added a host of other direct taxes, surcharges, rents, and licensing fees on produce and the legal status of land, on livestock, or on the means of production. Indirect taxes were exacted from citizens and provincials alike, notably tolls levied ad va!orem on the transit trade within the empire and customs duties on commerce beyond the frontiers. The annual value of transactions in the Roman world-the gross national product, so to speak-is estimated at between 2 and 6 billion denarii in the Antonine age. Such estimates, however, tell little about the amount collected in taxes or the number of coins required. 'j 4 In 118 Hadrian burned in the forum ofTrajan arrears of 225 million denarii owed by Roman citizens, suggesting annual receipts of 90 to 110 million denarii from indirect taxes alone. 'j'j Although they had access to immense taxable wealth, Roman emperors sought popularity as well as profit. They wrote off arrears, forgave taxes of cities stncken by calamities, extended exemptions to favored groups, and, at their accession, reduced or abolished odious imposts as gestures of good will (although the last were invariably reinstated later) The impenal government favored relatively light taxation to save on administrative costs and so invested responsibility for exact mg taxes to decurions who administered the cities Since the fortunes of impcnal taxation depended upon cooperallon of the uvIC elite~. emperors who raised taxes after 235 nsked rebellion from cine elite classes. It is argued, based on head taxes reported in Egyptian papyri, that taxation was kept simple so that payments were m whole numbers of denarn, drachmae, or tetradrachmae or, m the lime of the Dommate, solidi Lnder this scenano, peasants sold produce, purchased silver or gold rnms, paid off taxes, and then headed 2ll

Coinagein the Roman Economy

home to their world of barter. There are several problems with this vision of tax collection; foremost, taxpayers did not queue up in an orderly fashion to render unto Caesar his due. Taxes were collected throughout the year, often in installments rather than on a fixed due date; arrears, remissions, and reassessments inevitably impeded and thwarted the process. Tax collectors entered villages armed with intimidating commissions and swordbearers, and their success depended upon the accessibility of taxpayers, the number of hired guards, the vicissitudes of harvests, and the urgency of the demands from above. Collection of taxes at any time in the Roman Empire must have been similar to what Charles "Chinese" Gordon, Victorian soldier of fortune and administrator, described in the Sudan, where Ottoman officials and soldiers collected a complicated set of customary and new taxes in coin and kind. Immediate presence and brute force alone assured payment· "The people unless they are physically coerced by the whip will not pay their taxes. _By putting them in prison you would need a huge prison of defaulters _ so they must be beaten into it. "~0 It was a daunting task to reach 15 million reluctant taxpayers with so few senior imperial officials in the provinces during either the Principate or the Dominate, and then to convey the coins to the proper treasuries. In most of the Roman world, civic officials and liturgists assumed liability for their city's taxes. Leading citizens sometimes advanced their city an interest-free loan on the promise of prompt reimbursement from monies collected. One benefactor on the isle of Tenos endowed a fund to pay the capitation taxes of his fellow citizens; other inscnpt10ns laud generous donors like Opramaos ofRhodiapolis who assumed a year's tax obligation at his own expense ~7 At the Egyptian town of Tebtynis in 100, four liturgists drew lots~two for collecting the poll tax m the town and two for collecting ll from cillzens resident m the nllages The latter two, who were expected to collect a minimum of 3,300 tetradrachmae from 300 village taxpayers, pledged lo pay 2 75 tctradrachmae per month lo guarantee against shortfalls arising from arrears, missed taxpayers, or powerful magnates who refused to pay up '3H Even after Trapn introduced salaried imperial tax officials to track down rural taxpayers in Egypt, local officials and liturgists still 2"32

Government'sAims and Needs

provided the information and advanced money. In the fourth century, this obligation was codified into the collective legal responsibility of the ten leading councilmen who were made liable for deficiencies in their city's taxes. The brothers Dorotheus and Papnuthis, petty officials and landowners of Oxyrhynchus, in 365 borrowed solidi to pay in advance taxes due and then exacted what they could from the peasants as their reimbursement and, perhaps, profit. "'9 It is hardly surprising that the emperor and his subjects alike repeatedly censured overly zealous collectors who exacted excessive profits. Even in the best of times, fiscal agents obtained, at most, fourfifths to five-sixths of assessed taxes. Arrears figure prominently in Egyptian registers of all periods. At the f'ayyum town of Philadelphia, delinquent taxpayers annually cost the government approximately 15 to 20 percent of expected revenues (between 62 5 and 750 tetradrachmae) during the reign of Claudius_hll Contemporary collection of a land tax m Greece was more efficient smce only one-eighth of the tax due from Messene-12,639 out of 99,365 denarii-went unpaid_h 1 The powerful could resist the longest; hence the conscientious Julian, while caesar in Gaul in 356, refused to forgive arrears since such generosity benefited the wealthy_h2 Lesser men resisted with passive pragmatism, offering partial payment, as apparently did many taxpayers named on rolls of Antonine Karanis. Once again, Gordon's experience captures the essence of how tax eollect10n in the Roman world was the art of the possible Even so responsihle a Victorian governor as Cordon who tirelessly traveled from Khartoum to remote districts of Equatoria could do no better than Roman proconsuls ··we never get m so much as five-sixths of our revenue: the collectors say to the heads of communities, ·Pay me four-sixths uf the sum due, and give as hachshccshto me one-sixth: then I will certify that you cannot pay the remaining one-sixth·"(, 1 Such methods uf rnllect1on did not make for the t1dy sums reported m Egyptian tax registers of the l·ayyum and Delta townst,· 1 Many arc registers that hankers drew up as summary ledgers fur each category of tax collected which were used to check aga111stn11nplaints, for copies of them were forwarded along with the sums of money to the appropriate tax office of nome, dwhctcs, lll /dins Logos Others were s1111pl1hedre2ll

Coinage in the Roman Economy

ports of a community's total tax, converted into neat units of four drachmae, for use by fiscal offices; still others were lists issued to collectors to aid in their identification of taxpayers by residence. Three great papyrus rolls from the modest Fayyum town of Karanis offer a unique glimpse into the actual collection of coins. The register, spanning the regnal years 12 through 14 of Marcus Aurelius (171-75), 1s part of a "day book" of an unnamed banker (trapezites) and his partner Serap(ion) who meticulously recorded the coins taken in each day by their agents as they collected taxes from the villagers. Over forty different taxes, rents, licenses on manufacturing, commutation of labor services, interest payments on loans and mortgages, and even administrative fees appear on the rolls of Karanis. Only three taxes were assessed in units of 4 drachmae and thus easily collected in tetradrachmae: the capitation tax (laographia),an otherwise unattested head tax of 16 drachmae abbreviated as kh, and a bath tax paid by L Longin us Gemellus 65 The other taxes were reckoned in a ghost currency based on the Ptolemaic standard of the third century B.c. In turning ghost currencies into actual coins, the scribe added a variety of surcharges to each transaction and then a symbolikon of either 3 or 1.5 obols for the cost of converting the sum into Roman provincial coin at an exchange rate of 29 bronze obols to the tetradrachma, which itself represented a premium of more than 20 percent (5 obols) over the official rate of exchange of 24 obols to the tetradrachma_hn Since many payments were made in bronze coins and generated surcharges, it was profitable to collect from every small property studded wlth its vines, fruit-beanng trees, and pigeon coops all of which were subject to tax. For example, the modest Karanian landowner Athenion, son of Pyrrhus, paid in surcharges and fees on his two principal land taxes, the apomoira and gcomctna, an addllional 41 and 10.6 7 percent, respectivelyn 7 By such fiscal manipulating, lesser taxpayers throughout the Roman world probably endured effecllve increases of 50 to l 00 percent on their land taxes while emperors, at least in Egypt, avoided the odium of raismg ancestral tax assessments unlll the Severan age. The assessment of land taxes in a complicated money of account and the collection of taxes and arrears m installmcnts over the 234

Govemment's Aims and Needs

course of the year resulted in numerous payments in bronze drachmae and obols rather than billon tetradrachmae. Tax agents obtained most money as small sums paid by individual farmers. Many taxes such as the apomoira and geometria, levied on the seasonal produce of garden lands, dumped numerous bronze fractions on the tables of Karanis's bankers at the harvest's peak between the Egyptian months of Phamenoth and Mesore. The register's entries allow for a day-by-day estimate of the number of bronze coins (reckoned in obols and paid in denominations from 1 obol to 1 drachma) and tetradrachmae taken in tax (Table 9.4). The count of the number of bronze coins is a minimum, because many entries reckoned as drachmae or sums of 4 drachmae might have been paid in bronze coins. The rolls preserve payments of nearly twelve continuous months stretching from Choiak in year 13 to Hathyr in year 14, roughly from December 172 through November 173. Surviving receipts for these months show total collections of 10,224 tetradrachmae and 20,855 bronze obols (a combined value of 10,933 tetradrachmae and 4 obols) so that the fractional bronze coins were, at the most, 6.5 percent of the total value, but were about two-thirds of the number of coins collected. The tax register of Karams, a small town numbering perhaps 4,000 souls of whom 650 were assessed on the rolls of 171- 75, suggests that an Egyptian in the second century was expected to pay annually 25 to 30 tetradrachmae in direct taxes. If eligible taxpayers m Egypt numbered 1 5 million out of 5 to 6 million residents, the imperial government could anticipate 40 to 50 million tetradrachmae in dJrect taxes alone (1K Indirect taxes and tariffs withm Egypt, profits of JUsllce, admimstrative fees, and customs levied on imported luxunes of the l'ar East would have raised annual revenues at least to l 00 to I 50 million tetradrachmae. Money taxes of Egypt m the second century, even if one-fifth were in arrears, yielded at least 75 to 11 5 million tetradrachmae, valued at some 3 million aurei (or nearly fifi,700 pounds of gold) The figures suggest that recent estimates ot Fgypuan revenues in the sixth and seventh centunes as between I and 2 rrnllion solidi (13,900 to 27,800 Roman pounds of gold) might he too low, hut reports by Arab chroniclers that revenues ranged between 12 to 20 million solidi 2l'J

Coinage in the Roman Economy

Table9.4 Coins Collected in Taxes at Karanis, Egypt,

A.ri.

Record of Coins Collected in Taxes Year and Month Year 12 (171-72) Thoth Phaophi 1 Hathyr Choiak Tyb12 Mecheir 2 Phamenoth 2 Pharmouth1 1 Pachon 4 Payni 1 Epeiph Mesore 0 Epagomenoi Total Year 12

Tetradrachmae

AE Obols

lost 31+ 468 376 237+ 147+ 743+ 2,190+ 579+ 21+ lost 130+

640 591 502+ 112+ 894+ 3,175+ 1,056 12+ lost 148+

4,922+

7,130+

171-74 Collect1ons for 12 Consecutive Months

Tetradrachmae

lost

Year 13 (172- 73) Thoth 6 Phaoph1 liathyr Choiak 7 Tybi Mee heir Phamenoth Pharmouth1 Paschon Paym Epc1ph Meson' Epagomen01 Total Year l 3

377+

653+

553+ 386 487 874 867 751 443 581 2,253 213 7,785+

904+ 1,344 1,470 l, 140 1,812 1,026 832 1,142 3,614 750 14,687+

553+ 386 487 874 867 751 443 581 2,253

904+ 1,344 1,470 1,140 1,812 1,026 832 1,142 3,614

Year 14 (173-74) Thoth Phaophi Hathyr 8

1,196 1,015 818

2,877 2,8LJ7 1,797

I ,ILJ6 l,0l'i 818

2,877 2,8LJ7 1,797

236

AE Obols

Government'.\Aims and Needs

Table 9.4

( Continued) Record of Coins Collected m Taxes

Year and Month

Tetradrachmae

Chmak Tyh1 Mccheir 4 Phamcnoth 2 Pharmouth1H PachonCJ Payrn 2 Epe1ph 7 :vlcsorc 2 Epagomenoi 1 Total Year 14

lost lost

319+ 442+ 491+ 188+ 518+ 310 644+ 55+ 5,996+

347+ 874+ 1,073+ 521 + 1,265+ 1,088 883+ 196+ 13,818+

for 12 Consccutiw

Collections

AE Ohols

lost lost

18,703+

Recorded Collect 10ns. Years 12-14

Collections

for Months ,

12 Consecutive Tetradrachmae

AE Obols

35,635+ 10,224

Months

20,855

1f'ragmentary month represented hy few entnes Part1al total, poss1h\y 50 percent of cntncs preserved 'Perhaps 75-80 percent ol receipts preserved. -+Perhaps one-thnd of cnllrcs preserved 'Fragmentary entnes ol Mesorc and Fpagomcnrn reckoned together hf'ragmentary entncs ol fhoth, Phaoph1. and Hathyr reckoned together 1 Largcly complete: some rrnssmg entnes HPoss1hly two-thirds of entnes preserved "hagrnenury· pnhaps 2'S percent ol entnes preser,ed 2

Sou,,c

Demnl

(167,000

lrnrn P \Ju/1. 22\

to 278,000

thont1es employed

22'>

poumls cil gold) arc too high fiscal Inst !l ut1ons and currency

r,ci

Roman au-

tn

Egypt that

differed from other pnn·1nccs only by a matter of degree Other Egyptian ducurncnts from indirect

duties under the Pnnupatc the customs

harrier

stew of cu1t1shronzc

rC\cal the range and potential profits

taxes, liccns1t1g fees, profits of 1ust1cc. and customs 1111

A month's receipts t)fTrajarnc Bacchtas,

the· Nile hcforc Memphis,

l '-J6 tct rad rac hmac,

ohols, and

I') hrnnzc

162 hronzc

half-obols

netted a mtxcd drachmac,

1KO

hav1t1g a value of 27CJ 2 \7

Coinagein the Roman Economy

tetradrachmae and 1.5 bronze obols. 70 Since the provinces (Italy was exempt) were grouped into customs zones, imperial agents at each frontier station daily collected sundry coins in portoria or percentage taxes on the value of goods. Most lucrative was the tax at 25 percent ad valorem on the transit of luxury goods to or from the Far East, possibly yielding over 6 million denarii annually and often paid in aurei or denarii. 71 Philostratus tells a humorous anecdote about an agent at Zeugma, the customs barrier on the Upper Euphrates, who sensed a profit of perhaps 6.5 aurei when he mistook the six virtues declared by the sage Apollonius of Tyana as names of courtesans destined for Indian courts. 72 The many different direct and indirect taxes inevitably netted huge sums in local currencies and innumerable low-value fractional bronze coins. Many coins collected in taxes were promptly paid out to meet expenses, such as the salaries of two guards of the customs station at Bacchias. n Owners of the record office of Tebtynis perhaps operated at a loss, at least during some months, because surviving receipts seem to indicate that they paid out more for food and writing supplies than was taken in as fees. 74 Bankers and moneychangers acted as traffic directors moving the varied coins taken in taxes along appropriate channels to their proper destination They were found wherever buying and selling took place, in markets, on quays, or at sanctuaries. Their ranks included humble moneychangers who opened once a week to change small sums of silver denarii into aes in Galilean villages as well as great bankers who operated tables of exchange at the bourse at Constantinople. Any city of consequence required daily tables of exchange Jesus cast the moneychangers out of the temple, but they must have returned on the morrow, for otherwise business in Jerusalem could not have proceeded. Much of the success of taxation (and commerce) rested upon the shoulders of moneychangers who performed several vital fiscal tasks that earned them the nght to a premium on exchange or agio They had the knowledge of exchange rates and stocks of coms necessary to convert fractional and local coins taken in taxes into the portable hillon, silver, or gold denom1natwns demanded by a government which never mvented bills of exchange to avoid conveymg coms m taxes or payrolls. The 1mpor218

Government'sAims and Needs

tance of moneychangers is illustrated by the situation at Karanis in 172-73 where small denominations were 6.5 percent of the value, but about two-thirds the number of coins collected in taxes. The 21,566 small coins would have weighed about 280 pounds; but, when converted (into 742 tetradrachmae plus 19 obols at 29 obols to the tetradrachmae) the weight would have been about 40 pounds. In the second century, the Egyptian firm of Deius and Sons at Theadelphia routinely exchanged bronze coins taken in tax into tetradrachmae for shipment to state treasuries. 75 Moneychangers streamlined the transport of coins taken in tax-a task they continued to perform under the Dominate. The register from Skar in the Hermopolite nome in ea. 4 35 records that 60 percent of the land taxes were collected as 1,522,000 bronze nummi of AE4 module or 5,285 pounds of coined metal, which was exchanged into 211.33 solidi, JUSt under 3 pounds of gold, for ease of shipment 70 Banks advanced money to local authorities to meet imperial taxes, and they also had the capital to purchase new coins, especially during a recoinage, and then issue them into markets. The strategos of the Oxyrhynchite nome ordered reluctant banks to accept coins of Macrianus and Quietus (260-61) because otherwise the provincial regime, which recognized the usurpers, could not collect taxes and pay its bills.77 Moneychangers checked for fakes, imitative coins, and underweight pieces at the start and finish of each shipment of taxes. They discounted worn pieces, certified good money, and pulled from circulalion counterfeit, imitative, and foreign coins. By screen mg out most bad cams before they reached tax offices, moneychangers more than earned their fees. Egyptian banks were regulated by imperial authorities because they ensured that only the billon tetradrachma and its bronze fractions passed current in the Nile Valley It was critical that moneychangers retain a monopoly on exchange among vaned coms used in taxation. The council and assembly of the Canan city of Mylasa in the Severan age affirmed that rights of exchange were held exclusively by those leasmg from the city and laid down stiff fines for private individuals caught chargmg on exchange 7 K Taxation and government expenditures at every level produced varying patterns of nrculat1on that can be illustrated by charts 2N

Coinage in the Roman Economy

that reconstruct how fiscal demands moved different currencies through the economies of Egypt, the eastern provinces, the western provinces, and Italy (Figures 9 1-5). In Egypt, the best-documented case, taxes were paid in fiduciary billon or bronze coins struck at Alexandria, which bankers in the villages and Greek-style towns converted into tetradrachmae to be forwarded to name treasuries or provincial financial departments at Alexandria. Bankers, operating as state lessees, returned to circulation a significant portion of the taxes in payrolls and purchases of the name administration. Bronze drachmae and obols taken in tax were immediately returned to exchange tables in the marketplaces of villages and towns where vendors and buyers needed small change. The balance of taxes, tetradrachmae duly tested and sealed in bags, arrived at the financial offices of Alexandria where they, with or without a stay in a treasury, suffered one of three fates. Whenever a maJor recoinage was ordered, the coins were returned to the mint and struck into new money which was sold to moneychangers who put It into circulation. If there was no recoinage, tetradrachmae earmarked to meet imperial tax obligations were exchanged into aurei or denarii either by financial departments, which obtained Roman coin through the sale of surplus grain to cities of the eastern Mediterranean, or by Alexandrine hankers, who thereupon returned the tetradrachmae to circulation in Egypt. The balance of tetradrachmae reentered local markets in payrolls and purchases by the Roman civil administration and army in Egypt. This pattern of circulation required far more billon tetradrachmae than bronze fractions, because banks returned the latter to circulation quickly. Bronze coins passed through the hands of villagers, moneychangers, and tax officials dozens of llmes a year, as indicated by the high degree of wear suffered by most surviving specimens. Tetrac.lrachmae, on the other hanc.l, must have lain ic.llc for months in strongboxes of moneychangers, in hags of nome treasuries awaiting shipment, or in leather sacks at Alexandria earmarked for payrolls or recoinagc. The dynamics of tax collection and government expenditure dictated that most bronze coins were confined to the territory around the clly m which they entered

240

Government'.\Aims and Needs

circulation, but tetradrachmae often passed current throughout the province. Rome applied variations of this Hellenistic taxation found in Egypt to the rest of the empire In the eastern provinces of Asia, Cappadocia, or Syria, regional silver staters struck by Roman authorities served the same fiscal role as the Alexandrine tetradrachma. In contrast to Egypt, where banks bought coins from a central mint, many eastern cities struck their own bronze money and leased to private firms the right to exchange civic bronze into provincial staters or denari1. Moneychangers in Asia, for example, obtained bronze assaria from the city and silver cistophori from the proconsular mints at Ephesus and Pergamum. Dynamics similar to those operating in Egyptian taxation affected the circulation of these currencies. Civic bronze coins circulated in a discrete radius around their mint, whereas cistophon collected in taxes and remitted to the governor were spent in payrolls, exchanged into denani for shipment to Rome, or recoined. 79 Cistophori were frequently stockpiled; hence Cicero in 59 ti.c fretted over the fact that his brother Quintius received his expenses in the cistophori that Pompey had deposited at Ephesus years earlier. 8 Collection and distribution of coms m taxation provided the means whereby Roman authorities could swiftly recoin the entire silver currency of a province as in the case of Asian cistophon under Augustus, Egyptian tetradrachmae under Nero, or Syrian tetradrachmae under Trapn The dynamics of taxation had as much to do wllh confining eastern silver and hillun staters to distinct regions as offiual tariffing that overvalued these corns vis-a-vis the denanus. A simpler version of this system operated in the western and North African pnwmccs f'rnm the Flavian age on, moneychangers (nummularii) acquired Roman cums from either the imperial mint or Roman bankers (urgcntcm1) Milllary expcnd1tures on the frnntiers put into circulatwn vast numbers of Roman coins which hankers and moncychangcrs rerouted to clly and village markets where denarn and w·s were swept up mto the cycle of meeting tax obligations to Rome. Rapid pcnctratwn of Roman imperial money mW western markets spelled the demise of civic bronze currencies and

°

EXPORT ureii & Denar LOMATICCO ONG-DISTA TRADE

BULLION/ FOREIGN COIN-MINES, PLUNDER, TRIBUTE

Old Coin Taken in Taxes

IMPERIAL MINT Bullion, Old & Foreign Coin Minted into New Coin

IMPERIAL TREASURIES

New Coin

Purchase of Imported Luxuries

Coins Purchased

MONEYCHANCERS (NUMMULARII)

ARISTCX:RACY Senators & Fquestrians

Indirect faxes (Aes & Denarii) Vf-NDORS

I I I

----,

Rents from Estates,ind Urban Properties (in Aes & [)pnarii)

Largess to Clients; Purchases in Mdrket

CARRISON/URHAN

COINS ~ CIRUJLATINC I IN fHfI MARKETPLACE I

• _________

J

h,~u,c ') I

EMPFROR as PATRON OF ROME

Largess

Exchange for Vc·ndors

,----

Loans for Patronage, Display & Investment

BANKERS (ARGENTARII)

'Convert : Taxes to •Aureii & : Denarii

:

PROVINCIAL TAXES

Payrolls; Largess; Court and Administrative Costs; Ceremonial .ind Huilding Costs

l'LFBS

CONSUMf-RS--ClllZENS/CLIENTS Require Fxchange for Market Purchases

\1nckl lor (1rculat1on

lli ClllllS Ill C11y uf Rurnc ,\

Personal & Temple S,1vings

11

lllll

Roman Coin Purchased by Bankers & Moneychangers

EMPEROR & COURT As Patrons of Italian Cities

MONEYCHANGERS (Nummularii Lesseesof city)

BANKERS (Argentarii)

Loans for Patronage, Commodity Markets, Land Investments

___________

Indirect Taxes (Converted to Aureii & Denarii)

Imperial Indirect Taxes & Rents for Imperial Properties (Denarii & Aes)

DECURIONS T _______

OFFICIALS & LITURGISTS

DISTRIBUTIONS; PAYROLLS for BUILDING and EVENTS (Aureii & Denarii)

Imperial Largess (Aureii & Denarii)

_

PATRONS Purchases

.-----------,

Local Taxes CIVIC IREASURY

IMPERIAL ARISTOCRACY Senators/Equestrians as Patrons of Italian Cities

i

Rents P,1id

I ocal I axes

1 I

.,

COINS CIRCULATING IN ITAI IAN MARKErPLACE-

_____ -----------·

Distributions

Payroll for Civic Projects & Events

PC)PUI ATION TAXPAYERS

CONSUM~RS f'ersonal & Jemple Savings

Requiring I xchange for Purcha,es and MarkPt Duc'S

hgwc rs

hgurc ') l

PPrsonal & Jm1ple

S.ivings

Mo,kl for C:mula11on of C:,11ns 1n Western l'nl\·1mTs, ca ,\ ,, lllll

I

Denarii or Bullion and

PROVINCIAL LEVEL:

Old Cistophori Returned for Reminting~-----~ PROCONSUL Financial Departments

MINT

Bullion from Mines or Trade

New Cistophori Sold to Moneychangers in City

CIVIC LEVEL:

Cistophori

PAYROLLS Largess Building Administration

Provincial Taxes Sent to Financial Departments (Cistophori/Denarii)

1

Convert Acs to CIVIC MINT

1---------.i

Local Aes Sold to Moneychangers

_. ~istoph.ori;• Clstophon to

BANKS Moneychangers (Lesseesof City)

Aes

Cistophori & Aes spent in Marketplace

Advance/Borrow Silwr Coin to Pay Provincial 1axes

Return Aes and Cistophori to Circulation

DFCURIONS ------------7---------

0FFICIALS/ LITURGISTS Receive Taxes & Rents in Local Coin

, , '

PA 1RONS Distributions in I ocdl Coin Exchange in Market (Vendor'>)

locdl

f'.1yroll of City

TdXC'S ldXl'S

CIVIC TR~ASLJRY f'c1yrollfor Civic Projects & Fwnts

l\1id COINS CIRCUI ATINC IN lHF MARKHS I -

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

f'Ol'UIATION lAXf'AHRS

CC)NSUMrRS

R,~1uiring[xch,inge from Moneychc1ngPrs for TdXSUJng 2HI

Coinagein the Roman Economy

wheat rations of 20 modii castrenses (Just under two-thirds of a soldier's annual needs, which, at state prices, represented a value of 160 nummi), a cash supplement of another 48 nummi for grain purchases (which could purchase six modii castrensesof wheat according to the Price Edict), and four donatives each year amounting to 800 nummi. 49 Total remuneration came to 992 nummi in cash or 1,152 nummi if the value of the wheat rations is included, but a daily wage of either 2. 75 or 3.2 nummi calculated from these sums fell far short, by at least 60 percent, of the official price of 8 nummi per modi us of wheat in the Price Edict. Without yet more supplements in cash or kind, Tetrarchic soldiers could not buy minimum needs of wheat; the erosion of purchasing power was considerable. Diocletian designed his currency reform to provide his legionaries with silver-clad nummi issued as salary in the same numbers and with the same buying power of denarii of the first century. By early 301, when fourfold and eightfold price rises ruined this scheme, Diocletian promulgated his Edict of Maximum Prices, hut this measure swiftly failed as vendors withdrew goods from markets r,o Thereupon, he rescinded the edict and doubled tariffing of denominations above the denarius communis. In effect, he halved prices so that such staple grains as wheat and millet (at a price of l 00 d.c.) were officially halved from 8 to 4 nummi, and barley and rye (at 60 d c.) from 4 nummi and change to 2 nummi and change per modius castrcnsis.The daily wages mandated in the Price Edict were too low even if markets followed official pricing of basic commodities A farm laborcr was allowed a maximum daily wage of 2 nummi (25 d.c) so that he earned daily only 25 percent of the price of a mndius of wheat, whereas his forefathers m 100 earned two to four times this amount. Craftsmen such as shipwnghts and masons fared marginally better wllh salaries of 4 to 12 numm1 A family of four that purchased its subsistence needs of gram, oil, and wine at official maximum prices expended approximately 1,250 nummi each year, so that an annual subsistence wage of 720 numm1 would have defrayed only 60 percent of total costs. r,1 Market prices of wheat m Egypt dunng the early fourth century suggest how the Roman public reacted to Diocletian's nurnrnus and price schemes. W1thdrawal of the Price Edict and rctanffing the 282

Coins, Prices,and Wages

currency in 301 generated a wave of inflation, but by 305 the public might have begun to accept the nummus, for one modi us of wheat sold for 2 nummi in the market of Oxyrhynchus in the Fayyum Egyptian prices, normally at the most only one-half those elsewhere in the Roman world, suggest that one modius of wheat sold at between 4 and 10 nummi in other markets. The climb in Egyptian wheat prices after 305 mirrored the steady decline of the weight and silver content of the nummus. 52 The price of 2 nummi for a modi us of wheat in 305 doubled to 4 nummi by 312, rose by 4.5 times to 18 nummi in 314, and then more than doubled again to 40 nummi by 327. At the same time, the nummus, although officially rated at 25 d.c., was reduced in weight by over 75 percent, from a middlesized coin (10 75 g) to a miserable-looking fraction (24 g) Romans were reduced to employing ever more nummi of ever diminishing size and weight as their sole coins for small-scale purchases. Theophanes, on the staff of the prefect of Egypt, reports that, while travehng on offioal business in Syria in ea. 317 -23, he paid at Antioch prices of 2 nummi for a loaf of bread, 4 to 8 nummi for a pound of meat, and 6 to 14 nummi for a sextarius of wine."'' Any conclusions deduced from military pay and the price of wheat for the period between 325 and 650 are highly speculative, so it is best to review what is known. During this period, salaries were 9 solidi per annum for a cavalryman and 5 for an infantryman (56 and 31 percent, respectively, of the gold equivalent of the annual salary of an Augustan legionary) 5 -+Grain prices were quoted in the quantity-modi1 or, m Egypt, artabai-that could be bought for a solidus: in other words, what survive for the most part are wholesale pnces. The price of 30 modii of wheat per solidus was common m state purchases and taxation dunng the fourth century and one of 40 modii per solidi m the late fifth and sixth centuries. Pnces at Oxyrhynchus early m the reign of Justinian (527-65) ranged from 10 to 14 artaba1 (or approximately 45 to 63 mod ii) per solidus, and those quoted at Aphrodllo at a slightly later date (ea 555-HO) arc similar,·, Therefore, at the most expensive end of the range ( 10 modu per solidus), the annual wheat of 48 mod11 would cost about l .f> solid 1, I H percent of the annual salary of a cavalryman who would need between five and s1x days to earn h1s 2Wl

Cmnage in the Roman Economy

monthly bread. At the least expensive end of the range (63 mod ii per solidus), it would cost three-quarters of a solidus, meaning that it would take a cavalryman three days to cover his cost of wheat for a month. An infantryman would have taken ten and five days, respectively, to earn his monthly bread. Such figures are not inconsistent with costs of the Republic or Principate. Regional and seasonal variations cannot be documented, but famine prices of 10 modii (or, in Egypt, 5 artabae) per solidus were universally regarded as catastrophic. Prices in urban markets must have fluctuated violently far more often because far fewer benefactors regulated prices or imported grain during shortages, as decurions abandoned the public service of their forefathers It is seldom possible to express wages or prices in terms of billon denominations of the fourth century or bronze nummi mini mi of the fifth century, although they were the coins most often spent in daily purchases. Two sets of prices, however, cast light on the buying power of silver argentei and bronze numm1 minimi. In the spring of 363, the emperor Julian cited wheat prices at Antioch m accordance with local market practices by numbers of cab (metra) per argenteus. Antiochenes, among the most pampered of the empire's inhabitants, expected to pay for one modi us of wheat between one-quarter to one-half of an argenteus (almost certainly in the form ofbillon maiorinae whose tariffing 1sas yet unknown) and, in hard times, three-quarters of an argenteus. The massing of forces for Julian's Persian war drove up the subsidized pnce of wheat by 50 percent, from 15 to I 0 cab (approximately 3. 75 to 2. 5 mod ii) per argenteus. These pnces yield a range expressed m wholesale terms of between 90 and 60 modu per solidus, although during the acute scarcity of early sprmg, the pnce could be as high as 30 modu per solidus. 'it, Julian subsidized low pnces for the Ant1ochcnes by importmg 100,000 modii of wheat from eastern Syria, 22,500 nwdti from imperial estates, and unspecified amounts from Egypt. In 445, the Western emperor Valentinian III mandated that taxpayers in Mauretanta and Numid1a must commute wheat rallons due military forces at the rate of 40 modii per solidus. At the then rate ol exchange of 7,200 numm1 ( I 15 g each) per solidus, one modi us ol

284

Coins, Pricn, ancl Wa½f.l

wheat in Roman Africa was officially reckoned at 180 nummi mimmi or the same as the daily wage of a cavalryman. 'jf The regional structure of prices documented in the sixth century exhibits significant changes as the empire's financial center shifted back to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean during the fifth century. Constantinople displaced Rome as the center of the empire's concentric circles of decreasing wages and prices As taxes and trade rerouted specie to Constantinople, regions sustaining the new imperial capital also prospered, and consequently prices rose at satellite cities on the Bosporus or Aegean shores of Anatolia. Antioch and Alexandria, populous cities and seats of powerful eastern patriarchs, acquired new patrons and sources of money. Prices mounted in Syria and Palestine during the boom years from the late fourth to sixth centuries as the money supply rose due to the profits from the pilgrimage trade and the largess that pious emperors poured into endowing holy cities. Simultaneously, the money supply of Italy rnntracted as Rome lost population and imperial patronage. By the tlme of Alaric's sack in 410, residents of Rome numbered between 500,000 and 600,000, half the inhab1tants of Augustan Rome. Rome, desplte an ephemeral recovery under Ostrogothic rule, lost her position as the center of the Med1terranean economy. In the sixth century, stable prices and wages returned in the East with the reintroducllon of a heavy token bronze coinage It wa;,, based on a follis that was far larger than any fractional denormnation struck in over a century In diameter and buy.mg power, the lullcs of 498- 512 were mm parable to the rmddlc-sized acs of the Pnnnpate, although their weight (8 5 g) was but two-thirds that of dupondi1 or asses. The heavier lullcs, struck between 512 and 565 (ranging m weight fmm 17 to 22 g) were rnmparahlc to Roman sestertii or Egypuan hmt1Zl' drachmae of the Prinnpate: in 56561 5 they fell again t() the lc\·cl of bras;, dupondti ( 11 to 15 g) The mint mg of follcs by Ostmgothll" and Vandal kmgs suggests a similar stahil1ty in Italy and Afnca ncn though docurnentatmn 1s lackmg ;\ guide to pnLTS and wages during the sixth century can he constructed hy rccak-ubt111g daily military salaries and the range of wheat prices per i11()d1u~rqiurtcd 111 Lgypt 111terms of lollc~ at

2K'S

Coinagein the Roman Economy

known rates of exchange Whatever the size and official tariffing of the follis, an elite cavalryman serving in Egypt during the sixth century would have purchased his monthly needs of wheat with the wages of three to four days; infantry with wages of five to six days Soldiers serving elsewhere paid higher prices. At the most commonly cited official price of 40 modii per solidi, a modi us of wheat cost 10 folles in 498-512; 4 to 5 folles in 512-65; and 6 to 8 folles after 5 78. 58 At these prices, horse soldiers bought their monthly wheat from the wages of six days; infantry from wages of eight days. Yet, even this purchasing power compared favorably to that of legionaries of the middle Republic and Principate, and it was far above that of Tetrarchic soldiers. Residents of Fayyum towns might have paid average market prices as low as 7 folles per modi us of wheat in A.O. 500; 3 folles in 540, and 5 folles in 580 (although transactions were reckoned by artabai and paid in bronze duodecanummiae) Egyptian grain prices were by far the lowest in the Roman world, often averaging between one-third and one-half of official prices Citizens of Constantinople, a capital so often beleaguered after 578, without subsidized grain prices would have paid at least four or five times as much. Minimum wages in the sixth century, as in the Principate, were above bare subsistence and, what is more important, they apparently kept pace with price rises m staples resultmg from the reduction of the weight of the follis after 542. In the early sixth century, ascetics in Egypt and Palestine who hired out as laborers m the fields or on construction earned a going daily rate of 5 follcs ( weighmg between 17.5 and 22 g each) The amount of 5 follcs was also considered apprnpnate as daily alms to the poor.~ 9 In 540 an adult male could purchase with l follis his daily subsistence of bread, rnl, and vegetables (equivalent to 25 percent of his wage, as m the Principate); ascetics could survive on a mere half-folhs_hll Withm four months, lahorers could earn 3 to 3 5 solidi-a considerable sum, the price of a camel or a young slave at the military post of Nessana in the Negevh 1 Cavalrymen stationed in Egypt ate well on a hearty diet of bread, meat, wine, and rnl at 3 to 4 folles each day,

286

Coins, Prices, and Wages

while residents of Constantinople, Antioch, or Persian Nisibis paid considerably more 62 The price of a loaf of daily bread remained quite low relative to minimum daily wages (10 to 15 percent) 6 3 In 498 it might have cost a light-weight follis, so that after 512 a loaf sold on average for 20 nummiae (a half-follis) and less in times of abundance. In Egypt, a low average cost of 12 nummiae (or three-tenths of a follis) for daily bread might have popularized the use of the duodecanummia In the 570s the thirty-nummiae piece was perhaps introduced when daily bread might have risen by 50 percent from 20 to 30 nummiae An Egyptian laborer in 540 could earn in six months 900 folles (each weighing 22 g) or 5 solidi, with which he could purchase six times his own annual grain needs or cover annual costs of wheat, wine, and oil for a family of four.M Such purchasing power was threefold what was envisioned in the Price Edict of 30 I, and it compared favorably to that under the Principate. Sometimes laborers could demand higher wages. In 506, when Anastasius rushed construction on the fortress of Daras, he offered daily wages of 35 folles per man and 70 folles (equal to 1 gold tremissis) for each man with a draft animal. At the exchange rate current in 540, these wages were three and one-half and seven times greater, respectively, than the typical daily wages 6 " Natural calamities and war could quickly disrupt prices of staples during the late fifth and sixth centuries Joshua the Stylite reports that m 495 wheat at Edessa. seat of the governor of Mesopotamia, sold at the comparatively high pnce of 30 modii to the solidus or the equivalent of 14 follec.(8 g each) per mochus after the Anastasian reform of 498. Famine raged for three years, in 499-501, after swarms of locusts devoured the crops. In the first year of the famme, prices of wheat and barley rose to I 05 and 70 folles per modi us, Jumped in the next year to l 30 and 93 folles, and by the third year, 501, fell to 70 and 42 lolles per modius, respectively. Requisitions of grain for Roman forces battling the Persians and ambitious buildmg programs in 505 agam drove up pnces to the levels of 499-500. l'nccs at Edcssa m 499-501 arc among the most catastrophic to survive from any pcrllld The emperor Anastasius remitted taxes

287

Coinagein the Roman Economy

in 499 and returned to each villager 2 folles-little more than almsgiving-as prices relentlessly mounted By 500 prices for all foodstuffs soared; meat and eggs were selling at four to five times customary rates 60 By 580 the daily wage of 5 folles in 540 had risen to 10 to 15 folles (weighing 11 g) with corresponding increases in the cost of subsistence and almsgiving. 07 It is difficult to document the rate of inflation in the late sixth and seventh centuries, because solidus and folles were traded in markets at rates well beyond those fixed by imperial decree. On the eve of the Persian War of 602-28, prices and wages stood at perhaps double to triple of those in 540. The follis still commanded public trust and considerable buying power, but its weight had been slashed by one-half (from 22 to 11 g) As Heraclius rapidly debased the currency after 616, he destroyed faith in imperial bronze money, and with it, the stable prices and wages of the Justinianic age. The extent of monetization was reflected by the widespread willingness of the Roman public for well over eight centuries to employ coins in markets. Prices and wages surviving from the periods of 200 B.C. to A.D. 235 and 500-615 reveal that Romans routinely employed huge numbers of hefty token base metal coins. During these periods, middle-sized bronze coins weighing between one-third and one-half of the Roman ounce passed as the coin of common transactions, easily buying a loaf of bread, whereas its heavy multiple weighing an ounce offered the subsistence of a day. Official tariffing did not matter so much as the rnnstant power of the bronze coins in purchasing staples and the ready exchantJ,e of token bronze coins into high-value rnins such as the silver denarius or gold solidus. Full-bodied and bronze rnins together extended by many times the kinds of daily transactions in which Romans could deal in coin, and this was increased further by the ease of extendmg private credn quoted m the trustworthy coins of the realm. Token bronze coins, m short, were the final ingredient that ensured the triumph of coins in daily usage that made the monetized markets of the Roman world possible. Between the two periods of relallvely stable currency, prices, and wages stretched over 250 years of debasement, abortive reform, and 288

Coins, Prices,and Wages

inflation. Prices and wages during the period of 235-498 can be briefly glimpsed in the years 285-325. The Roman public refused to accept a single billon denomination m place of the silver denarius with its token bronze fractions. A billon currency of a single denomination, although profitable to mint, was too cumbersome for daily markets, particularly when their low value necessitated large batches of them to be sealed in leather purses or wrapped in rolls of papyrus or skin to provide multiple denominations. Despite their silver coating, radiate antoniniani or laureate nummi in size and weight never impressed the public Consequently, they failed miserably in the marketplace; they were exchanged at values far below the tariffing pronounced in imperial edicts. Radiate antoniniani of the third century, Tetrarchic nummi, and diminutive bronze nummi of the fifth century in large part failed as currency because they failed to facilitate exchange in the marketplace. If coins were created as a fiscal instrument and source of state profit, their success depended upon their usefulness in the marketplace. The reasons for the demise of the Tetrarchic nummus applied to all the sundry billon denominations and bronze nummi minim1 struck between 235 and 498. Romans perceived Diocletian's nummus as a fraction for purchasing daily bread rather than as the pnme high-value corn for hulk purchases or payment of salaries Hence, it is no surprise that the disappearance of the denarius and its fractional aes panicked Romans and set off the scourge of notational rnflat1on of billon nummi reported in Egyptian papyn. This inflation did not spell the end of monetary habits, for Romans had grown far too accustomed to the convernencc of corns. When Anastas1us and Justrnian rebuilt a version of the Augustan currency based on bronze follcs and gold solidi. they restored, however bnef1y, the stable prices and wages oft he Roman monetary order

2.HcJ

Twelve

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers

T

he Chrisllan geographer Cosmas Indicopleustes writing in the sixth century declared: "There is another mark of the power of the Romans, which

God has given them. I mean that it is m their solidus that every nation conducts its commerce, and it is acceptable in every place from one end of the earth to the other The solidus is admired by all men and all nations, for in no other nation does such a thmg exist." 1 Cosmas's praise of the solidus of his day could apply just as well to aurei and denari1 of the l'rinupate, which won adm1rat1on from the raph of Taprobane (Sn Lanka) and the histonans of Han Chma. Roman coins travcled beyond impenal frontiers in long-distance trade, d1plomat1c subsidies, and, from the mid-third century on, as spoils wrested by Teutonic and Sassamd invaders Flows of coms out of the Roman world arc often viewed as 1rretnevablc drams of specie, but the forces drawing specie back mto the empire were JUSt as strong The export of coins, along with other commodities, from the Roman world required that comparably valued goods (mcludmg speuc) return, otherwise an imbalance would have quickly ruined what Fernand Braudel terms '·trade urcuns ,. BraudeLs pmnt applies as much to Roman trade in the Indian Ocean for spices and silks, as to

290

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers

European trade in the Far East since the sixteenth century. 2 Literary sources and archaeology offer at best ambiguous details, often distorting rather than clarifying the role of coins in overseas trade. Classical authors mentioned export of coin incidentally in moralizing tales, but they offer few clues concerning the dynamics of specie flows across the Eurasian continent.' Coins, unlike many other wares, survive in the archaeological record, but dating finds is complicated by preferences for older coins of a familiar type or those of high purity. For example, a Palmyrene merchant on a caravan bound for Charax in 193, when given a choice, selected 300 "old aure1," presumably Antonine pieces struck at 45 to the pound. 4 The great numbers of denarii found as caches of treasure, burial gifts, or votive offerings in South India, Germany, and Scandinavia-lands where coins were treated as bullion-do not necessarily reflect the scale or main directJons of trade. In contrast, aurei and denarii that entered the Parthian or Kushan empiresgreat states with their own currencies-often were reminted or reexported to the West, leaving little trace in the archaeological record. Rome never struck trade coins-which, by their immobilized design and unchanging standard passed without examination in foreign markets-like the Austrian thalers of Maria Theresa that were minted long after her death by European governments to settle debts in the Near East But through usage peoples beyond the frontiers learned to trust denari1, aure1, or solidi as universal media of exchange As noted previously, the rajah of Taprobane, who entertained a freedman captam of Anmus Plocamus, "was most impressed with Roman honesty m that amongst the money m his guest's possession, the dcnarn were all equal m weight, although the different likenesses on them indicated that they had been struck by vanous emperors_"~ At the opening of the second century B.c., the gold stater, minted m the names of Macedonian kmgs and by weight an Alllc didrachma (8 S g), and its silver teradrachma (17.2 S g) were the trade coms of the Mediterranean world and Near East. Denari1, reckoned from 26 to 33 to a gold stater, were awkward to trade agamst an Attic tetradrachma, and denan1 leaving Italy prior to 125 B., were 291

Coinage in the Roman Economy

probably reminted; hence few surface in hoards outside of Italy. Italian merchants did little to popularize denarii in foreign markets, for their major focus was supplying Roman armies overseas. Roman arms imposed the denarius as the premier silver coin of the Mediterranean world, and Hellenic cities adjusted by placing the Atticweight drachma at par with the denarius. The mounting numbers of Roman coins penetrating far-flung reaches of Europe and Asia after 125 B.c. marked a fundamental shift in trade patterns, and the rise of the importance of Rome in the Mediterranean economy.

Roman Coins in Northern Europe, 125 B.C.-A.LJ.

300

Denarii first traveled in large quantities to the northern regions beyond Rome's immediate political horizons at the close of the second century B.c. This movement is documented by the number of denarii, over 25,000 to date, and native imitations unearthed in Dacia and Moesia (modern Rumania and Bulgaria).° Dacians and their Getic kinsmen dwelling in the Lower Danube Valley had, from the late fourth century Il.C . , bartered slaves, hides, salted meat and fish, grain, honey, and wax in return for wine, oil, fine wares, textiles, and silver (first Macedonian and then Thasian tetradrachmae) imported over the Balkan river routes from the North Aegean and Adriatic ports. 7 Denarii, arriving from 125 H.C. on, ousted Hellenic competitors by 70 B.c., but as soon as Augustus secured the imperial frontier on the Lower Danube, the export of freshly minted denarii to Dacia-based on the archaeological record-seems to have fallen abruptly until Trapn's conquest in 105-6.8 The absence of imperial denarii in Rumanian hoards during the first century A.D. might reflect Dacian preference for Republican denani, or 11 might be the result of the capture of many imperial denani (paid in subsidies by Domitian and Nerva) by Trapn's legions when they sacked Sarmizegetusa. In Dacia, where gold was plentiful, imported silver was exchanged against Dacian gold, which could be sold at a profit m Aegean and Asian markets where gold was dear. Such trade 1sevidenced by tetradrachmae and denani that have been unearthed in Dacian mining districts, and the gold staters minted from native metal with types mode led after

292

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers

Roman denarii from 55 ll c. on (pl. 31.252) Roman exploitation of Spanish and Dalmatian gold mines shifted the ratlo between the precious metals, and the trade m Dacian gold now yielding lower profits fell off in the first century A.nlJ Even though many imported silver coins were cast into ingots or ornaments, most specimens, along with Dacian gold staters and imitative tetradrachmae (based on Macedonian

and Thasian prototypes)

and denarii (pl. 31.253)

exhibit wear and so were circulated. Rulers such as Kmg Burebistas (ea. 60-44 1u.) presumably paid warriors and craftsmen in coin, but the full monetization of Dacia came with the Roman conquest. 10 Commerce and diplomacy carried denarii far beyond the limits attained by Roman arms m western Spain, Transalpine Gaul, the Alpine regions of Rhaetia and Noncum, and the lands of the Middle Danube. The Celts of Noricum (modern Austria) exploited gold and iron deposits that attracted Italian merchants, who familiarized natives with Roman coins. By 70 B c. Noricans struck, for local consumption, light-weight silver tetradrachmae (9 6 g) and fractions with native designs at the royal capital Noreia (modern Magdalensbcrg). farther cast m Pannonia, the Illyro-Celtic Eravisci occupying the regions around present-day Budapest and Lake Balaton in Hungary struck a short-lived series of imitative denarii, possibly in ea. 50-10 B.c 11 In Noncum and Pannonia, as m Dacia, trade with Rome transformed rnmmernal habits by mtroducmg coins and thereby prepared for rapid ass1rrnlation within the Roman monetary world upon conquest The campaigns of Augustus opened trade with Scandinavia, the southern shores of the Baltll Sea, and the central European lands between the Rhine and V1stula occupied by the free Germans. Ccrmany and Scandinana emerged as markets hungry fur clcnarn for the next three centuncs. 1;, The Romans surveyed the coastal waters from the mouth of the Rhme to the Elbe dunng the military operations of Drusus m 12-lJ II l and Ccrmamcus in i\D. 16. Augustus boasted that his fleet penetrated Danish waters in,\ D 5 "My fleet sailed through the Ocean eastwards from the mouth of the Rhme to the territory of the C:1mbn. a rnuntry which no Roman had visited before either by land or sea, and the C1mlm, C:harycles. Semnoncs. and other (;crman peoples of that region sent ambassadors and 2l) \

Coinage in the Roman Economy

sought my friendship and that of the Roman people."i, GalloRoman and Frisian merchants soon after undertook regular voyages to Jutland, the Danish isles, and southern Sweden to sell wine and other Roman goods to markets with sophisticated tastes for imports since Celtic times, and in return they carried amber, slaves, and raw materials to the Rhineland, Gaul, and Britain. In the process, Scandinavians acquired denarii with which they purchased Roman imports. Overland routes radiated across Central Europe following the river systems. 14 Cities in the Roman Rhineland like Colonia Agrippina (Cologne) profited not only from the new markets offered by the imperial frontier army, but also from commerce with the northern lands From Castra Vetera (Xanten) and Moguntiacum (Mainz), routes up the Rhine's tributaries Lippe and Main connected Roman Germany via the Fulda Gap to the Upper Elbe, and thence to Scandinavia. The eastern trade axis or "Amber Route" started from Carnuntum, on the Upper Danube downstream from Vindobona (Vienna), and followed the March until it forked into two tracks, each leading to the Baltic. The northerly route descended the Oder Valley, while a northeasterly route ran over Kalisia (the modern Polish town Kalisz) to the middle Vistula, where it merged with routes coming from the Black Sea along the Bug and Dneister river valleys, and followed the Vistula to its mouth in the Danzig Bay Carnuntum also faced south, offering a direct route over the Alps by imperial highways to Aquileia in Northern Italy Denarii passed along these routes in both directions. The Hermunduri regularly traveled from their homes in Thuringia to trade at the Rhaetian captial of Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg). 1~ Marcomanni and Quadi purchased Roman goods at markets held on fixed days on the Pannonian border m the first and second centuries; Goths were permitted the same privileges on the Lower Danube in the fourth century. In Germans welcomed Roman traders, and wily king Mar20), who welded the Suevic tribes of the oboduus (o B c.-A.D. Marcomanni and Quadi into an effective kingdom in Bohemia, lured Roman traders and sutlers to his capital with promises of privileges and profits. Denarii also came north m the purses of discharged German auxiliaries or as subsidies to princes friendly to 294

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers

Rome. The Cherusci in northwestern Germany and the Marcomanni and Quadi were the principal beneficiaries of this flow of Roman coins. With regard to the latter, Tacitus summed up imperial policy: "These kings [of the Marcomanni] occasionally receive our armed assistance, more often our financial, and it is equally effective." 17 Tacitus notes how the influx of Roman coins changed native commercial habits: The Germans nearest to us value gold and silver for their use in trade, and recognize and prefer certain types of our coins. Those of the intenor, truer to the plain old ways, employ barter. They like the old and well known money, denarii with notched edges [serrati] or with the type of the two horses [bigati]. They likewise prefer silver to gold, not from any special likmg, hut because a large number of silver coins is more convenient for use among dealers in cheap and common wares. 18

Tens of thousands of denarii, found in well over 400 hoards and numerous stray finds bear out Tacitus's observation that the Germanic peoples preferred silver money-a taste that endured long into the Middle Ages save for a brief influx of solidi into Scandinavia in the fifth century Even Germans dwelling far beyond the direct reach of Rome, such as the tribes occupying the Danish peninsula and islands, treated denari1 as money to purchase coveted wares from the south rather than bullion for _iewelry and plate Germans desired the purest denarn available, accepting Republican over imperial denarii and then finer Julio-Claud1an denani over later baser ones. 1'J As late as 300, denani were mterred among weapons, arms, and clothmg dedicated a~ votive offenngs to the god Wotan (Norse Odin) m the eerie peat-hog deposits at ThorshJerg and Eishol m Jutland, and at Nydam and Vimose on the Danish islands of Als and Fyn_20 Given the nature of the1rt rack with Rome, the volume of denari1 exported to the northern peoples could not have been a maJor drain of the empire's money supply As Tacitus noted, and archaeology confirms, the Germans rrnncd no significant deposits of gold and silver, and Baltic amber was the pnnupal precious commodity exported to the Roman world 2 1 In the first century, Germarnc peoples of western Gcrmany,Jutland, the Darnsh islands, the Swed-

29'5

Coinagein the Roman Economy

ish island of Gotland, and along trade routes of eastern Europe minted limited numbers of imitative denarii (pl. 31.254), but for the most part they depended upon Roman coins. Those dwelling in East Prussia even placed sestertii in the mouths of the deceased interred in graves of the second century. 22 The use of Roman coins was widespread and commonplace among Germans living in proximity to Roman frontiers. Archaeology documents the stages whereby the Suevic Marcomanni and Quadi, living in present-day Bohemia and Slovakia, adopted Roman material culture, including the use of denarii and fractional aes. Their King Vannius was levying taxes on transit traffic (vectigalia)across Suevic lands by the year 50; most likely he collected this most Roman of taxes in Roman coin. 2 ' Trade and coins so transformed Suevic life that a century later Marcus Aurelius could contemplate the smooth annexation and assimilation of the Sueves. A similar process is suggested by the numerous coins found in Moldavia, which the Carpi probably occupied during the second and early third centuries. The Carpi too became addicted to Roman coins and wares by frequent commerce on the northeastern frontier of the province of Dacia. 24 From the Carpi and the Greek port of Olbia, denarii, along with imperial and civic aes, passed farther north into the Dnieper Basin, heartland of the Cherniakhov Culture of the East Slavs. Therefore, a large body of Roman coins circulated across the northern frontier from the first through early third centuries This continual movement of money across political boundaries was not an exodus of specie but rather the forging of a network of trade circuits that drew Germanic societies into the monetary and economic orbit of the empire. But regular trade and diplomatic contact with the Germanic world depended upon the Roman peace, and the migrations of the later third and fourth centuries disrupted trade routes and reduced the now of coins northward Saxon and Frankish pirates in the late third and early fourth centunes cut off Scandinavia from regular supplies of silver corns. Their raids proved an inadequate substitute for trade, impovenshmg many tribes and compelling many Germans to seek fortunes and lands withm the Roman Empire Most Germans reverted to older habits

296

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers

of exchange, treating looted gold coins as treasure, or as models for jewelry rather than as money to buy Roman wares.

The Eastern Trade and the "Specie Drain" The passage of aurei and denarii to lands far east of the imperial frontier has often been viewed as a sign of Rome's decadent craving for luxuries, which created an unfavorable balance of payments and drained specie from the empire. Classical authors complained of Roman coins flowing eastward in exchange for wares originating in China (raw silk), India (spices, aromatics, and gems), and Arabia (spices and aromatics). What they overlooked was the fact that much of the price paid m Rome covered costs incurred or profits earned within the empire. These goods traveled over varied routes before they reached the markets of Rome Raw silk left China by one of two principal routes. The first was the famous "Silk Road," whereby Sogdian caravans skirted the wastes of the Tarim Basin and arrived at the cities of Bactria and Sogdiana-Bactra (Balkh), Maracanda (Samarkand), or Antiochia Margiane (Merv)-in Central Asia. A second route passed overland via Burma to ports at the mouths of the Ganges and on to Cholan ports on the Coromandel coast in southeast India These centers of commerce were destinations for Roman traders seekmg silk and other goods from the far East. There were two sets of routes available to Roman merchants trave 1ing cast The first was the series of caravan trails crossmg the Roman and Parthian empires Caravans departed from the (;reek cities Phasis and Trapazeus on the southeastern shores of the Black Sea, headed toward the Caspian Sea or across the Armenian plateau, passed through the Cities of northern Mesopotamia, Media, and Bactria, and arrived at the c1t1esof Sogdiana Another well-traveled route crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma, a Roman customs station, and entered Parthian domams hound for the Hellenized cities Seleuua and Ctesiphon m Babylonia, Ecbatana (Hamadan) m Iran, and Susa, or Aramaean Charax, entrepot of mantime traffic m the Persian Gulf. A third caravan mute, farther south, crossed the northern rim of the Arabian desert, avoiding Parthian domains, and

Coinage in the Roman Economy

linked the Aramaean cities of Petra (in modern Jordan) and Bostra and Palmyra (in modern Syria) to Charax at the head of the Persian Gulf. From Charax, there were two choices-traveling by sea to ports at the mouths of the Indus River, or overland via Hecatompylos (Damghan) to Antiochia Margiane (Merv) on the edge of the Parthian eastern frontier The second set of routes started from the Egyptian ports of Myos Hormos and Berenice on the Red Sea for African and Arabian ports on the Gulf of Aden, and then either across the Arabian Sea with the aid of monsoon winds to cities on the western shores of India or south along the East African coast to Rhapta (a trading post on the coast of modern Tanzania near DaresSalaam) In the time of Augustus, diverse currencies, based on Atticweight denominations introduced by the Macedonian conquerors, circulated in the area that was the source of the goods sought by Roman merchants-it encompassed the lands bounded on the north and west by the southern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains and the Euphrates River and enclosed by an eastern frontier sweeping in a great arc from Transoxiana across the Hindu Kush to include northwestern India and the middle Gangetic plain. When the Seleucid and Mauryan emptres fragmented by the early second century B.c:., their royal currencies dissolved into a medley of silver drachmae and bronze or copper fractions. 2 ~ This economic world included the Sabaean Kingdom (modern Yemen and known to the Romans as Arabia Felix) on the Red Sea, which minted tetradrachmae copied after Athenian prototypes and then the ubiquitous tetradrachmae of Alexander the Great. [nd1an kingdoms south of the Vmdya Mountams and Narbada River (which separate the Indo-Gangetic plam of northern India from the rest of the peninsula) employed "punch marked" silver coins, the harshapcma(I. 7 g), along with potin and bronze fractions rather than Hellernc-style rnins. Therefore, Roman traders and their money entered markets that (save for southern India) had a long tradition of deal mg in mm. Smee few of the eastern currencies matched the fineness of 1mpenal money, aure1 and denarn were pnzed and often used to settle accounts in mternal!onal trade None of the 1mpenal governments on the Eurasian continent298

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers

Rome, Parthia, the Kushans, or Han China-forbade trade in specie or luxury goods; but Chinese chronicles report that Parthian kings discouraged direct trade between Rome and China. In 166, during Marcus Aurelius's Parthian War, Roman merchants are reported to have arrived at the Han court by sea to open direct trade for Chinese silks. Representing themselves as envoys of the emperor, they claimed "their kings always desired to send embassies to China, but the An-hsi [i.e., Parthians] wished to carry on trade with them in Chinese silks, and it was for this reason that they were cut off from communication." 2 b But, for the most part, the Arsacid kings of Parthia and later the Sassanid shahs of Persia taxed (and the duties were quite lucrative) rather than blocked the brisk transit trade for eastern luxuries. Merchants who avoided routes through Parthian domains did so to escape the delays or disasters that caravans risked whenever Roman and Parthian armies clashed over Armenia. Borders were not barriers to international trade, but, by the use of custom stations, they served as filters whereby governments could secure hard cash and, to some extent, control importation of foreign coin. Merchants from Rome carried aurei and denarii to purchase luxury goods at the commercial centers in Central Asia and India. Most of the coms were spent for wholesale purchases of silks or spices; but along the way they exchanged Roman wares for local products to be later traded or sold and they paid customs officials, tolls, bribes, and the expense of their daily sustenance. Few Roman coms strayed beyond the limits of commercial centers, and they suffered one of three fates many were melted and reminted as local currency, as was probably the case of aurei m the Kushan Empire, or turned mto private 1ewelry and plate; some, aurei and denarii in southern India or Tynan and Antiochene tetradrachmae m Parthian Mesopotamia, circulated as trade corns; and many returned home in payment for goods 1mptlrtcd from the Roman world Moneychangers in the centcrs of commerce routinely exchanged varied currenctes, including popular trade coins and obsolete corns, and incoming Roman corns were directed westward back along the narrow channels of trade ur mtu their government's coffers (and thence to the mint for recommg) 299

Coinagein the Roman Economy

There are no records of wholesale prices Romans paid for eastern luxuries. Pliny the Elder quotes prices in the Roman world for frankincense, myrrh, pepper, cassia, cardamom, malabathrum, and cinnabar ranging from 1 to 16 denarii per pound, although superiorgrade spices, nard, and rare perfumes sold at prices between 50 and 100 denarii.27 In 301 Diocletian's Price Edict set maximum prices for malabathrum, cinnamon, bdellium, parsley, frankincense, marjoram, celandine, and ginger at amounts ranging from 5 to 20 silver-clad nummi per pound; more expensive items-oil of myrrh and Arabian saffron-were priced at 48 and 160 nummi, respectively.28 Pliny's prices and the official ones in the Price Edict suggest that spices and aromatics, while costly, were not prohibitively so either during the Principate or the Dominate. Comparatively low retail prices suggest that Roman traders bought quality goods at reasonable wholesale prices in the eastern markets. Much of the retail price must have covered costs of transportation, customs fees, tolls, and kickbacks, which, in one case reported by Pliny the Elder, amounted to 688 denarii per camel load of frankincense conveyed by caravan from Sabbatha in Arabia Felix (Yemen) to Petra in modern Jordan 29 What little is known about silk prices confirms the high purchasing power of imperial coin. The prices paid and those charged by Aramaeans in Central Asia or Levantine Greeks in India for raw silk or silk floss are not known, but they were trading in what was a raw commodity. The big profits came from the meticulous respinning of silk fibers, the weaving of cloth dyed in Tyrian purple (often intertwined with gold and silver threads), and the conversion of the cloth into garments. Phoenician cities producing ceremonial garments, rather than the Aramaean and Sogdian middlemen shipping raw silk west, reaped the lion's share of the profits The Price Edict fixed one pound of silk dyed purple and spun into fine threads at 125 aurei (nearly 3 pounds of gold), 12. 5 times higher than the price of undyed white silk. io The scale of profits also can be sensed by comparing the price of finest domestic wool, 16 nummi per pound, to that of ceremonial garments of dyed wool marketed at prices 20 to 250 times higher (ranging from onequarter aureus to 42 aurei). 11 Such pnces put the flow of com in trade mto a new perspective Roman ships returning from India 300

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontlcrs

carried cargoes differing little from those on board Dutch and English vessels comrng home from the Far East during the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Roman merchants employed gold or silver to buy into eastern markets much as Europeans employed silver mined in the New World to pry open closed Asian markets from the mid-sixteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. The greater number of Roman coins leaving the empire in trade entered lands just east of the imperial frontier. The Spartoc1d kings reigning over Greek cities on the eastern shores of the Cimmerian Bosporus (Crimea) and Tauric (Taman) peninsula minted Greekstyle gold staters and bronze fractions (pl. 31.256-57). Bosporan coins circulated as the trade currency from the Lower Don to the western slopes of the Caucasus, and so Roman coins were either exchanged or reminted. 12 In border lands of the Caucasus (known to the Romans as Iberia and Albania) and Armenia, a mix of denari1, Cappadocian and Parthian drachmae, Seleucid and Roman provincial tetradrachmae, and Asian cistophori have surfaced rn hoards concealed along trade routes. 3 3 Farther east, in Mesopotamia and Iran, the Arsacid kings of Parthia, after they lost the Central Asian silver mines soon after 88 n.c., debased their drachma from 90 to 40 percent fine (pl. 31259) By the reign of Augustus, the Parthian drachma contained two-thirds the silver of the denarius and the Parthian tetradrachma had half the silver content of the pseudoSeleucid tetradrachma of Antioch (pl. 31 258). 14 Oenan1 and Anttochene tetradrachmae circulated as the preferred corns on both sides of the boundary that cut the Fertile Crescent into Roman and Parthian halves down to the Severan age l'i Arsand krngs, habnually short of hard cash, counted on imported Roman coins to sustain their own silver cornage Parthian corns did not penetrate Roman markets because merchants would have exchanged their money into aurei and denarn at bourses rn Charax or Seleuna ad T1grim rather than face unfavorable rates for the Parthian drachma in Antioch and Tyre. Tanffing of silver coins and the dynamics of trade in the Fertile Crescent probably resulted in many aurei and denarn streamrng back mto the Roman Empire Aurei and denari1 that escaped reminting by Parthian kmgs or were not returned to Rome passed farther east to cities of Central 'lll I

Coinagein the Roman Economy

Asia and northern India. Early in the first century, Kushan emperors united the Tocharian nomads who had swept away the Greek political order m Bactria, and welded together an empire embracing Central Asia, eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern India. They controlled the crossroads of Eurasia, rich gold deposits m the Punpb and Kashmir, and alluvial gold fields in the Gangetic Valley. Vima Kadphises (ea. 78-126) introduced a gold stater (pl. 32.265)-almost equal in weight (7 9 g) and purity to the Augustan aureus-and a chain of fractions based on a bronze drachma (17 g; pl. 32.266). 36 lranian-speaking Sogdians in Transoxiana, the lands between the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxertes (Syr Darya), struck as silver trade coins Attic-weight tetradrachmae copied after Seleucid and Bactrian originals that circulated widely until ousted by Sassanid dirhems in the late fourth century (pl. 32 26 7) 37 The fate of Roman coins in Kushan domains is unclear because, with the exception of the excavations at Taxila, few efforts have been made to publish finds. British travelers of the nineteenth century, however, reported that lndo-Greek and Roman coins were sold as old gold or silver in the bazaars of Pakistan and northwestern India. 38 Stylistic and iconographic features of the copper coins of Kujula Kadphises (ea. 45-64) and staters of Kanishka I (ea. 128-51) point to familiarity with aurei and denarii that must have been gained in trade. Aurei could circulate at par with Kushan staters, as suggested by the three aurei found in a hoard unearthed near Jalalabad in Afghanistan, but aurei and denarii were likely reminted into Kushan gold staters and Sogdian tetradrachmae, respectively. lY The same probably was true for Roman coins arnving by sea at the ports of Barbaricum and Pattala at the mouths of the lndus, which acknowledged !ndo-Parthian kings of Taxila m the early first century and Kushan emperors from the late first to mid-third centuries. If Kushan emperors reminted imported coin as policy, many Roman merchants would have avoided coin in favor of other commodities. Pausanias apparently refers to such transactions at Kushan ports: "The sailors on ships that go to India say that the Indians will give produce in exchange for a Greek cargo, but coins are meanmglcss to them, even though they have an enormous amount of gold and bronze ones. "4 (1 lt is unlikely that Roman gold and silver reached Han China in 302

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers

any significiant quantity, even though Pliny the Elder asserts that the Chinese (known to him as Seres) were the ultimate beneficiaries of the specie drain. Aurei and denarii (or any other Roman wares) have not been recovered from any of the thousands of Han graves in China or burials of Central Asia. Commerce between the two great empires of Rome and China was in the hands of middlemen, even though Han armies imposed Chinese overlordship upon nomads straddling the Tarim Basin. The Han court presumably saw aurei and denarii, for the chronicle of Hou-han-shu, written in the fifth century, preserves what purports to be a description of the Roman Empire (Ta-t'sin) based on envoys received from An-tun (Marcus Aurelius) in 166. The country contains much gold, silver, and rare precious stones. They make coins of gold and silver. Ten units of silver are worth one of gold. They traffic by sea with An-sh1 [Parthia] and T'ien-chu [India], the profit of which trade is tenfold. _ They are honest m thetr transactions, and there are no double pnces. Cereals are always cheap. The budget is based on a well-filled treasury When embassies of neighhoring countries come to their frontier, they are driven by post to the capital, and, upon arnval, are presented with golden money. 41

Roman coins and wares were novelties to Chinese of the late second century; in large part, aurei and denarii were also prized by (and useful to) Parthians, Sogd1ans, Kushans, Arabians, and Indians Pliny the Elder, writing under Vespasian, gave a false air of precision to stock Stoic complarnts that luxury bred rndolence by assertrng that 13.75 rmllion denani (550,000 aure1 or nearly 12,225 pounds of gold)-a figure possibly rnferred from imperial customs receipts-were sent to India each year to buy gems and spices He also claimed that total payments to Arabia Felix, India, and Chrna topped 2 5 millmn drnarn (1 million aurei or nearly 22,225 pounds of gold) L' l Jvcr 1,350 aurei and 6,000 denarii daung from the Augustan to the Scveran ages have been published from finds rn central and southern India-the lands that figure prominently rn Pniplu,, a manual composed by an Alexandrine Creek merchant rn about,\ ll 4ll. The Pniplus and Roman geographers parnt a picture of commerce in the Erythraean Sea quite

101

Coinage in the Roman Economy

different from impressions gained from complaints in Pliny, Dio Chrysostom, and Tacitus. On the eve of the first century B.c., Greek sailors from Egypt learned how to use the monsoons to navigate the Arabian Sea. The Greek geographer Strabo, visiting Egypt in ea. 2519 B c., noted that the number of ships bound for India from the port of Myos Hormos had risen by sixfold, from 20 each year to 120. 43 The imperial aristocracy at Rome offered a market for eastern luxuries that turned voyages of discovery into regular commerce with India. Private fortunes were to be made, and imperial officials augmented considerably customs receipts The capital investment and organization required for Roman trade in the Erythraean Sea could have only been sustained if it were a profitable venture-a trade circuit benefiting all participants. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why it lasted over 250 years and, then, was revived in the fourth century. Roman merchantmen docked at a number of ports on the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden en route to India. They sailed to Muza, the Himyarite capital on the coast of Arabia Felix (North Yemen), to purchase frankincense and myrrh The rapid growth of Roman trade on the Erythraean Sea drew the Arabian ports of present Yemen into the Roman economic orbit. Himyarite sheiks discouraged the export of their hard-earned specie, reminting denarii into fractional denominations based on a half of the denarius (pi 32.262-63) 44 The Himyarite trading stations on Pemba Island and at Rhapta on the coast of Azania (modern Tanzania) funneled more denarii spent on the East African coast hack to the royal mint at Muza. Himyarite prosperity depended on commerce with Rome; once the Erythraean trade waned in the early third century, the reserves amassed in trade proved insufficient to sustain a currency Roman merchants spent heavily m Indian ports dotting the western shores from Barygaza (Broach) to Muzins (Cranganore) In the first century, native vendors and moneychangers eagerly accepted aurei and denarii over aged Greco-Bactrian drachmae (struck 175 to 150 years earlier), base Greek-style and Mauryan punch-marked karshapanas, and square copper, potin, and lead fractions Hoards and stray finds of denarii, totaling over 6,000 specimens, are almost exclusively Julio-Claudian issues, with the 304

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers

overwhelming maJority being Augustan pieces with Gaius and Lucius Caesars on the reverse (pl. 8. 54) or Tibenan ones with a seated goddess. Virtually all denarii have been found in Indian states south of Kristna River-Mysore, Kerala, Madras, and the southern districts of Andhra and Madhya Pradesh-due to the efforts of the British Colonial Service. The native punch-marked coins were so base and variable in weight that denarii of Augustus and Tiberius became the preferred medium in regional trade between 5 B.c. and A.D. 70. Julio-Claudian aurei, most of the same Augustan and Tiberian designs, circulated along wnh the denarii, but soon after the Neronian recoinage in 64-68 only aurei struck at 45 to the Roman pound were imported as late as 215. 4 " Romans flocked to the port of Barygaza (modern Broach at the mouth of the Narbada River and on the Gulf of Cambay opposite the Saurashtra penmsula), JUSt beyond Kushan domains, to buy Chinese silks, lndian cottons, ivory, gems, and spices In the last quarter of the first century, Satavahana rulers who dominated Barygaza and her hinterland covering western Madhya Pradesh and northern Bombay perhaps reminted Greco-Bactrian drachmae and denarii into punch-marked karshapanas because few finds of Roman coins have been reported in this region.% Few Roman goods and corns reached Paithana (modern Pai than), seat of the Andhran Empire in the Telagu country of the northern Deccan, whose rulers struck bronze and lead fract!llns for local consumption. From Barygaza, Roman \'Cssels made for ports on the Malabar coast in the Tamil-speakmg lands Llf the far south where gold and silver were in high demand Romans purchased spices (pepper and malabathrum) and gems (beryls, diamonds, ,rnd sapphires) at Muziris (C:ranganore) and Nelkynda (Kuttanadul. the prmcipal ports of the Chcra and Pandya kmgdoms, rcspcct1wly They uhtained Chinese silks at C:holan ports, such as Korka1 and Ka\Tnpatanam, on the Coromandel coast. By the reign of Uaud1us (41-54 ), Romans also opened direct trade with Taprnhanc (Sn Lanka), hut few Roman com;, dated prior to the fourth century han' surfaced on the isle 47 The numerous aurc1 and dcnarn unearthl'll 111the Chera and Pandya kmgdoms reflect the n1lume of Rom,111uimmcrce '.\lany specimens suffcrL'd

Coinage in the Roman Economy wear, apparently

from heavy use m native markets;

pierced or bent for mounting

others were

in jewelry. Tamil monarchs saved as

treasure rather than re minted the fine gold and silver coins brought by Yavanas ("Ionians" or Greek-speaking westerners) Their subJects trusted dcnarii of Augustus as pure silver. When denarii of this type were unavailable in the late first century, Tamils accepted only aurei, red coral, and fine wares in exchange for pepper and gems.-+H Southern Indians, although conducting

most trade with foreigners

by barter, learned to use aurei and denarii as trade coins. The total of aurei and denarii from published

Indian finds falls

far short of those found in Dacia or Germany. Some Indians struck imitations of denarii based on Augustan prototypes in the later first century and of aurei from the second through early fourth centuries, and others cut deep slashes across the imperial portrait on aurei, virtually halving the coins so the damage would discourage merchants from accepting them for export back to the Roman West or eastward toward the Chinese world. Most denarii found ma large hoard from Pudukota

were defaced by chiselmg out the imperial

visage and counterstampmg

with punch marks, perhaps so that the

coins were acceptable for use among followers of aniconic Hinayana Buddhism dwelling in the Krishna Valley during the first century (pl 31255) -+9 The impact of Roman coms upon the economic

life of central

and southern

India was uneven.

manufactured

copies of Roman cums for decorallvc arts as much as

for money. They too depended

Indians, just like the Germans. upon m1ported specie, and their

striking of imitati\T pieces and the measures taken to prevent the export of aurci suggest that imported local needs. Kingdoms

coms were 111suffic1ent for

south uf the Narbacla River ouh1dc the

Kushan or later Gupta empires failed to amass from trade bullion suffiucnt

to mamtam

a nallve currency

in gold or silver They

minted base silver fracllons and token copper and lead corns bet raying no mfluence of Roman \\Tight standards or types The currency of kmgdoms demand

tn

central and southern

India rested upon the

of Roman markets for their luxuries, and as commerce

between India and the t\1ed1tcrrancan world contracted and fell off,

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers

these kingdoms first reduced and then, in the seventh century, suspended minting coins for nearly four centuries.

Decline and Revival of Long-DistanceTrade, 235-650 The might and prosperity of imperial Rome fostered trade across the Eurasian continent during the Principate, but conditions rapidly changed after 235. The military crisis that compelled emperors to debase the currency, and so to fuel inflation, forever altered commerce and the use of Roman coins beyond the imperial frontiers. The emergence of the Sassanids, who overthrew the Parthians and subjected the Kushans, profoundly affected trade and currency cast of the Euphrates. Roman and Sassanid armies clashed over the Fertile Crescent and Armenia throughout the third and fourth centuries, and they renewed the struggle with greater ferocity in the sixth and early seventh centuries. Campaigns of the shahs Ardashir (224-40) and Shapur I (240- 70) disrupted the network of Aramaean communities so vital to trade in the Fertile Crescent. The armies of Shapur ravaged Roman cities in Mesopotamia, Syna, and eastern Asia Minor, and twice, in 253 and again in 260, sacked Antioch. Roman armies in turn invaded and sacked Ctesiphon so that by the time of Julian's campaign in 363, Sassanid Babylonia was a borderland bristling with fortifications rather than dotted wnh cosmopolitan commcrCJa! ccntcrs. The sacks of Bostra and Palmyra in the Roman Civil Wars of 270- 73 and raids by nomadic Nobadcs and Blcmmycs against caravans passmg between Coptos and the Red Sea ports 1mpa1rcd trade 1n the Persian Gulf and Erythracan Sea. Once the shahs Ardash1r and Shapur I brought their Kushan foes to heel, the nch gold and s1h-cr deposits in Central Asia henceforth fed Sassanid mmts. Ardash1r resurrected the Augustan aureus and denanus 111 lraman guise as gold dmars (8. l g) and fine silver dirhems (4 g and 93 pcrL-cnt fine) with Zoroastnan iconography and Pahlavian legends (pi 32 260) ~0 The dirhems (pi 32.261 ), by weight a drachma, approached 111 size (2 5-30 mm) a trade coin, a tetradrachma, because they were struck on wide, thin flans cut from sheets of rolled metal~a manufacturing techmquc transmitted to

307

Coinagein the Roman Economy

the medieval world As Roman emperors rapidly debased the aureus and denarius, the Sassanid heavy dinar and dirhem circulated as the prime trade coins from the Fertile Crescent to Central Asia, supplanting Sogdian tetradrachmae and Kushano-Sassanid coins by 375 The Chonites, Hun allies of Shapur II, and the Hephthalites or "White Huns" (who overran Sassanid frontiers in Transox1ana during the fifth century) popularized dirhems on the steppes of Turkestan. Sogdian merchants carried Sassanid and Hephthalite imitative dirhems to Turks in the Tarim Basin and Chinese of the western provinces, where dirhems were interred in graves by the mid-fifth century.~ 1 Constantine's solidus reestablished the reputation of imperial money in international trade Shah Barham IV (388-99) discontinued the Sassanid heavy dinar in favor of a lighter one struck on the same standard as the solidus (4 5 g) Procopius later claimed that "while the Persian king is accustomed to make silver comage as he likes, still it is not considered right for him or any other sovereign in the whole barbarian world to imprint his own likeness on a gold stater [i.e., solidus]."~ 2 The solidus facilitated the revival of eastern commerce between the fourth and seventh centuries as Aramaic, Levantine Greek, and Sogdian merchants adjusted to new conditions and resumed trade along familiar patterns. After the suspension of commerce between India and the Mediterranean world during the third century, Roman merchantmen returned to their old haunts on the Culf of Aden and the western shores of India m the early fourth century, but they lound that the Axumite emperors of northwestern Ethiopia had gamed rnntrol ol the ports on the Somalian and Ycmemte coasts. Axumlle emperors mmtcd their own tiny gold coins from East African metal that circulated on both sides of the Horn of Africa as fractions of solidi imported from the fourth through sixth ccntunes (pi 32 264) "i In the fourth century, Roman traders also returned to the Indian ports to purchase spices, gems, cottons, and raw silk. Cosmas lndicopleustes, who travelecl to India dunng the early sixth century, remarked on the wide acceptance of the solidus; Roman merchants must have circumvented imperial edicts banning the export of speue as readily as their counterparts in the sixteenth and 108

Roman Coins beyond the Imperial Frontiers seventeenth Crown

54

centuries

ignored similar regulations

Solidi have surfaced

at Taprobane

of the Spanish

(Sri Lanka), where

Romans bought pepper and pearls; many Constantmian AE3 module, maiorinae of 348-52,

century were also imported and imitated hoard of solidi deposited Travancore,

nummi of

and nummi mini mi of the fifth In southern

in ea. 52 5 was unearthed

India, a large at Pu 42-4 3, and J E. Lendon, "The Face on the Coins and Inflation m Roman Egypt," Klio 72 ( I 990), I I 1-14 4. Suet., Aug. 98. 2- > 5 Walker, MRSC:I, pp 22-2"l. 6 Sec C 11.V SuthcrLmd, R/C 12 . pp. 24- N, and 'Uctav1an's ,;old and Silver Comagc from c l2 to 27 1u .," NAC 5 ( 1976), 129-58, hut his attributions of aurc, and denarn of 32- I 6 1u to mmts mns1de of Rome based the suh1ecll\T Lntena of style and iconography must he rc1ectcd. Rome comed aurc1 and dcnarn heanng, M s1\R Ill\'! 1 and 1~11· LAts,\Rirl )2-2911, (/lMUls1d. 17; the twenty-four lcg1hlc payments total I, l 2 5 numm1 (we1ghmg l 1.7 pounds), the commutatrnn of over 35 sarganc of chaff ( I 50 Roman pounds)

Chapter 10 Coin.1in CitJn and Marhcts of the Roman \Vorld JohnChrys.,lnPnnccpActorum4. 3. = \1ignc,l'C5I lJlJ,translat![)n from S J R. Barmsh, "The Wealth of Julius Argentanus Late Ant14m· Bankmg and the Mediterranean Economy,·· Bvzantwn 55 ( l lJ8'5), 37 2. Sec Max Weber, The Agrarian Sociologyof Ancient C:1vi/1;:atwns (London, l lJ76), and \1 I Fmley, The Ancient b onomv (London. l lJ?'l) See also 448

Notes to Pages251-254

3.

4.

5.

6

7.

8.

9.

Ill

C R. Whittaker, "Trade and the Aristocracy m the Roman Emplfe," Opus 4 (1985), 49-75, and collected articles of A. H. M. Jones, The Roman Economy,ed. PA. Brunt (Oxford, 1974) See Fmley, Ancient Economy, pp. 165-66, and cf. Crawford, JRS 60 ( 1970), 40-43, citing as evidence stock complaints or incidents when aristocrats ran short of hard cash in buymg up a glut of confiscated property from 62 8 c to A.ll. 3 3. See cr1tique by Mrozek, Historia 25 (1976), 122-23, and discussion of financial crises by Fredenksen,JRS 56 ( 1966), 128-61, and Rodewald, Money in the Age of Tiberius,pp 117 and 138- 39. See Millar,/RS 71 (1981), 72-73, and see prices complied from literature, papyri, and inscriptions in Johnson, ESAR 11, pp. 302-21 (Egypt), and Heichelhe1m, ESAR IV, pp 182-88 (Levant) See E. Patlagean, Pauvretetconomique et pauvrete socialea Byzancc, 4e a 7r sii'cles(Pans, 1977), pp. 353-543, and cf. Hendy, SBME, pp. 64069. See S.J B. Barmsh, "Pigs, Plebeians and Potentes:Rome's Economic Hinterland, c. 350-600 A.D.," PBSR 55 ( 1987), 179-85, for use of coins m rural Italy in same period. Sec Y Hirschfeld, TheJudamn Desert Mona.,teriesin the Byzantine Penod (New Haven, I 992), pp I 02-11, for monetizing impact of monastcnes. See Schwartz, Archives de Serapion, pp. 77-79, nos. 49-51, and pp 111-23. For prevalence of wages in coin during the third century, see D. Rathbone, Economic Rationalism and Rural Society in ThirdCentury A.D. Egypt (Cambndge, 1991), pp. 148-74 and 265-110. Sec P. Vcync, "Les cadcrnx de colons a !cur propneti:rc," RA ( 1981 l, 245-52, and J. Drinkwater, "Money Rents and Food Renderers m Callie Funerary Rchefs," in The Roman West in the Third Centurv, BAR Supp. Reports no. 109 (Oxford, 1981), pp 22 )-11 and pl. 15. VIIIIX. Twelve out of fifteen rclieb depict tenants makmg courtesy gifts rather than paymg renb m kmd; see Whittaker, Opus 4 ( 19851, 74, n 61,andd.Mart.8 44.4and 1072.1-2. See M. Avi-Yonah, "The FrnnomKs of Byzantmc Palestine," IE/ 8 (1958), 19-51, and D. Claude, Die hvzantinis1.hcStadt 1m .mhhcn Jahrhundcrt (Mumch, I %91. pp 15-106. R MacMullcn, 'Market Days 111the Roman Empire," Phoenix 24 ( 1970), B 1-41. and L de l1gt and I' W de [\icc·ve,"Anuent l'enod1c Markets Festival-, and hms." Athcnacum 06 (l 9881, 191-41 o. 'ice Rraudcl, Wheels of Commcru·, pp 42-41. for weekly town markets engagmg o,000 t" 7 .llllll people m the eighteenth century Sec Artcrmdnrus. ( Jnnnilmtwn 2 o9 (dreams of divme favnr prnm1s111g mm hoards), and Phil . \'A h 39 (sage aids suppliant with hoard of cn111s)_ For sold1ns search mg out caches of cums, sec Plut, Pomp I I )-4. and App., /l( 4. 7 l, 81-Kl

Notes to Pages254-258 11. Sec Samuel, BASP 21 (1984), 187-206. 12. See Bagnall and Frier, Demography of Roman Egypt, pp. 53-57 and 171-78. 13. See P Mich. 123. Loans include daneion, parathehe, paramone; see A. E. R Boak, Papynfrom Tebtunis 1, Michigan Papyri, vol. II (Ann Arbor, Mich , 1933), pp. 88-89, and R Taubenschlag, The Law of Grew-Roman Egypt (Warsaw, 1955), pp 113-18, 285-93, 349-52, and 499-501 14. See Boak, Papyrifrom Tebtunis,II. 1, pp. 92-103, but Boak's sums must be recalculated at 6 obols to the drachmae (rather than 7 obols); see Youtie, ZPE 15 (1974), 117-41 1984 ), 15. L Mildenberg, Coinage of Bar Kohhba War (Frankfurt/Main, pp. 22-29, and "A Bar Kokhba Didrachma," IN] 8 ( 1984-85), 33-36, pl. 24. 4-5. 16. Calculations based on dies reported 111Mildenberg, Bar Kokhba War, pp 57-60. If the Zealots controlled 750,000 inhabitants, adult male taxpayers totaled 150,000; see Dio 69. 13 3, SHA, Vita Had. 14, and Euseb., f/E 4. 6. 1-2, and discussion by S Applebaum, Prologemenato the Study of the Second.JewishWar (A.D 132-/35), BAR Suppl. Series 7 (Oxford, 1976). For population and revenues under Herod, see Jos, Ant. 17. 11 4-5, 318-19; 18. l. 1-2; 19. 8. 2. 352; and BJ1 18. 5, and 2. 6. 3 and 95-96. 17. See Sutherland, Cistophoriof Augustus, pp. 105-9, but his estimates of 500 obverse and 2,000 reverse dies arc too low, because many new dies have s111cebeen noted. 18. See Phil., VS 2. I, and cf Cic De Imp Pomp 14; see discussion by Hopkins,JRS 70 (1980), 116. !'or population figures, see Broughton, ESAR IV, p. 81 5. 19. Sec Reece, Oxford.Journalof Archaeology 3 ( 1984), 197-210 20 See Hahn, 111SEBCC, pp. 67-6'1, for urculatllln of solidi CTh 9 22 (34 3) and Just1111an, Edie/um 11 (55'1), outlawed the 12 '5 percent premium on solidi, hut reckonmg solidi by carats arose because of the weight loss suffered from wear; see Johnson and West, Byzantine E,cypt, pp. 140-'56, and Hendy, SBME. pp 3'5n-60. 21 Bohn, State and Currencv,pp. 3 30- 1'1, and N A Mouchmov, I.e ucs1n num1smat14ucde Ri·ha-Dnwa (Sofia, l l) H ), pp. '5-n 22 Sec Chnstianscn, C/-i 7 ( 1'18 '5), 80-82, and cf. Lendon, Klio 7 2 l I l)l)ll), 118-ll) 2 3 ~1acrnb1us, Saturnalia I 7 22, Un,~o .~cnu,/,/,omanac1 '5 fl'fns tu hcacb and tails of Republican asses as cap1taaut navia, "heads and ships ·· Sec Callu, Dcvaluatiom ( l '180l, 11, l '1'1-206, for obcil to denote civic two assana pieces of the Fr111upatc and Byzantine lollcs 24 Sec EtH:nnc and Rachel, Tri'sor de (;aronnc. pp 421-26.

450

Notes to Pages259-263 2 5. See Bellinger, Dura, pp. 199-203. 26. See ibid., pp. 186-87, and Howgego, G/C, pp 27-28. See] Simon, "Dura-Europos and the Chronology of Syria in the 250s A.D ," Chiron 15 (1985), 111-24, for concealment of hoards in 254-56. 27. See W Woodward, "A Hoard of Impenal Coins from Tarsus," NC 5, 5 (1925), 301-35. 28. P Grierson, "Review of S Bolin, State and Currency in the Roman Empire," 50 (1960), 267-68. 29. OG/S 484. 8-12 authonzes a 5.5 percent charge (aspouratia) at exchange of 17 assaria to the denarius; Valentinian lll, Novel. 14 (445), a 2 percent charge in exchanging 7,200 nummi to the solidus. For moneychangers in Talmudic sources, see M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132-212 (Totowa, NJ, 1983), pp 56-57. "Fresh" coins (aspcr) could be demanded in taxes, see Suet., Nero 44, and cf. usage by Mart., Epigr 4. 28. 5; Persius, Sat. 3. 69-70; IGRR IV 494 (Pergamum); and REG 6 ( 1893), 187 (Iasus) Egyptian tax officials distingrnshed "clean" (hatharai) from "dirty" (rhyparai), i.e., worn, tetradrachmae; see Johnson and West, Currency,pp 30-42. In sixth century, obryza designated the discount charged on worn solidi; see Hendy, SBME, pp. 356-60, and Johnson and West, Byzantine Egypt, pp 140-45. 30. Plato, Phaedr. 109B. 31. Cic., Pro Fiacco91, the sum suggests light taxation as argued by Hopkins, JRS 70 (1980), 116-20. 32 See Finley, Ancient Economy,pp. I 50-51. Antlhc, 2 vols. 33 See B. Laum, Stiftungcn in dcr gricch1schenund rDm1schen (Leipzig, 1914), and Broughton, ESAR IV, pp 797-98. S Mnchcll, "Festlvals, Games and Civic Life in Roman Asia Minor," JRS80 ( 1990), 183-93, and c; M Rogers, The Sacred ldenti(v of Ephesos (London, 1991 ), pp 39-79, offer model discussions on civic endowments that yirlded annual returns of 6 to 12 percent on investments in land 34. Tac., Ann 2 4 7; Veil Pat. 2. 126; and D10 58. 17; d. /LS 156; Sardn VIL I, no. 9; and ICRR IV I 351. For relief to Anlloch, see Hendy, SBME, p 201 35 See Duncan-Jones, b onomv, p L) I, nos. 27- 31 (Africa), and p 157, nos. 439,442, 44 l, 445a, 44LJ(Italy). For building costs in Asia Minor, see Plin., Epist I 0 11- 14 and 17 (Flnhyma); IGRR Ill 804 (Aspendus); Phil., VS 2 1 (Alexandria Troas); A. Balland, fouillcs de Xanthos VII (Pans, 1LJ6I), no n7, and /(;RR Ill 739 (Tins) 36 Sec TAM II 2. 905 ~ /(;RR Ill 719, cc. 53, 59, and 63, chronology is based on E Ritterlmg, "Zur Ze11sbestimmung ciniger Urkunden vom Opramoas Denkmal," RhM Tl ( 1920-24), 35-45 For Opramoass endowment of Tlos, s,T /Alv1 II 2. 578-579 = ICRR 111 67LJ, and 451

Notes to Pages26.3-265

37. '38. 39.

40.

41 42.

4 '3 44.

45

46 47

452

Balland, Xantho.1Vil, pp. l 7'3-85, no. 66. For gifts over l ,1 '38,000 denarii by an unknown donor to Xanthus, Tlos, Patara, and Myra, see 1h1d., pp. 185-224, no. 67, and J J Coulton, "Opramoas and the Anonymous Benefactor, 'JI/S l 07 ( 1987), 171- 78. See JGRR Ill. 7045, for comparable gifts by Jason of Cyaenac to sixteen eastern Lyc1an Cities. See 010 Chrys., Or. 46. '3, and Or. 45. 5-6. 010 52. 30. Dio Chrys., Or. 40: cf. 45. 8-10 and 4 7. 19. See also Ael. Anst., Or. n 24, and Phil., VA 8. 7-8. See Mitchcll,JRS 70 (1990), 183: a Hadriamc endowment of 15,000 denani for a market at Oenoanda mcludcd the costs of buying up and removing old huildmgs from the site. See Plin., Epist 10. '39, and cf 33 and 37 (Nicomed1a) and 39. 5 (Claudwpo!ts), and cf. Dw C:hrys., Or. 40 14, for Prusa raising funds by sellmg seats on the council. Suet., Vesp. 18, and see PA. Brunt, "Free Labour and Public Works at Rome,"JRS 70 (1980), 81-100. Suet., Claud. 20: cf Pim., NH 36. 122-24, Orn 60. 11 5 and 33. 3-5, and IL5 218:. See M. K. and R. L Thorton, Julio-Claudian Building Programs· A Quantitative Study in Political Management (Chicago, 1989), pp 66-73, estimating '3,000 men engaged in the constructwn. The m1mmum wage is calculated at 22 5 denarn per year or 10 asses per diem: subsistence is reckoned at between 2 and 2. 5 asses per day (or an annual cost of 45.5 to 57 dcnarn per man) for an annual total of 1,365,000 to 1,710,000 denarii. See B. Levick, Government in the Roman Empire (London, 1985), p. xv1i, for a higher estimate ol 1,725,000 to 2,075,000 dcnarn Sec IBM 491 = Sl/l 1 850. and cl Plin., 1:p 10. 75, and M1tchell,JR_\ 70 ( 1990), 190. Sec Duncan-Jones, Eeonomy, pp. 245-46, and cf nos 281-89 and I 07 4a-49, for cost of gladiatorial games. For the rnst of gymnas1archy, sec L Robert, Etudn anatol1cnnn /./.echcrchcs sw lcs insc nptionsg1n4un de l'A.11cmincurc (Pans, 1937), pp '344-45, and A I!. M Jones, /he Grcf/1 Cuv from Alexander to Justlnwn (Oxford, 1966). pp. 221-26 Sec CJG 2758, and Broughton, /'SAR IV, pp. 856-57: sums arc expressed m denari1 and all hut two arc readily convcrt1hlc into whole numbers of aurc1 Duncan-Jones, Fwnomv, pp I 39-41 and 10'5-6, nos 290- 320 (Alnca), and pp 188-99, nos 818-1050 (Italy) Sec Robert, Etudcs anatolicnnn, pp H 3-45, no. 41, !or 1 dcnanus pet citizen and '3 dcnani per councilor D1s1nbu11ons at Stralllmcca d1s11n gmshcd classes, sfC CM Sahm, Die lmchnftcn 10n )trutonifll'ia (B,irrn. 1Y8l-82),nos 6h2(10denarn), 192,309, 311,and 3l3(5dcn,1r11l

Notes to Pages266-271

48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53.

54. 55 56.

no. 527 (3 denarii), and 701 (2 denari1) The sum I drachma per man 1,000 drachmae) should he restored for (rather than unprecedented Balland, Xanthos, VII, no. 67. 22-24. IGRR Ill 800-801; and d. 802. C/L IX. I 149 (Vele1a, Italy), and see Duncan-Jones, Economy,pp. 2079, 300-30, and 333-42, and nos. 1165, 1167, and 1168. For alimcnta m the East, see IGRR Ill 801-2 (S11lyum), LBW 1228 (Balhura), /GRR Ill 676 (Tlos), and Balland, Xanthos VII, no. 67. 2 3, and pp 2 I 2- I 4 (with 1,000 andrcs sitomctroumcnoias beneficiaries), and Mitchcll,JRS 70 (1990), 184 (Oenoanda, with boule and s1tomctroumcnoias beneficiaries) Sec P Oxy. 2941-42, and N. Lewis, "The Recipients of the Oxyrhynchus S11eresion," Chroniquc d'Egype 49 (1974), 158-62, for distribuuons m Egypuan towns. See Sahm, Stratoniheia, no. 70 I. See Harl, Civic Coins, pp. 29 and 36; denommations based on companson to Klose, Smyrna, pp. I 03-12. The average weight 1s 22 g, but many specimens were damaged by damnatio memoriae so that their diameter has been widened. D10 C:hrys., Or. 7. 49, LCI. translauon; see also IGRR 69 (Prusa), and 800-801 (S1llyum), for grants to paroihoi. See Mitchell,JRS 70 (1990), 184-85 and esp doc. 111 80ff, and V I OOLSee /GRR IV (C:yz1cus), for exemption from market dues at the panegyns, except for itinerant merchants. Plin, Epist 9. 39. Sec Spufford, Moncv, pp 382-85, and Braudel, Wheel., of Commme, pp. 57-63. PR. L Brown, The Mahing ofLate Antiqui(v (C1mhndge, Mass, 1978), p. 51, and see Sahm, Srraton1hew,nu. 3 I O For record of gdt-givmg, sec A. Lrnmomer, Ln L ulrn 1nd1gencs en Cane (Pans, 1958), rP 292- l2 l (Panamara) and H2-40h (Lagma)

Chapen I I. Coins, Pncn, and Wages Pim , Nfi 18 89-90: fmcst meal of winter wheat yielded I h pounds of hrcad. Daily consumption was between 2. 5 to 3 pounds. Sec SB 464049, for I pound of hre.id a, d,uly allotment of lahurcrs m L:pper Egypt Bread rallons of 2 tn 4 pnunds ol bread issued ell her daily to a cavalry· man and his groom or 1s,ued every second day in the sixth century; ,cc P Oxy 204h am] I 920, and ],mes, Liff, pp. 629 and 1261, n 44 Soldier, In the Spanish army of the sixteenth century were issued two loaves of bread cad1 wc1ghmg 1 5 pounds every two days; sec Parker, Army of Handn 1, pp 1t,2 ~h4 2 Polyh h )9 I l-I5 \ce L Fnxhall and H A l'orhcs, ''S1tomctna The Role of Crain a, a Staple l nnd 111 Classical Anti4t11ty," Ch1mn 12 ( 1982 l,

Notes to Pages271-2 73

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

454

41-89. Roman soldiers received monthly two-thirds medimnos of wheat ( = 4 modii) or 2 sextarii (850 g) of wheat per day Soldiers in Egypt received 1 artaba ( = 4. 5 modii) per month. The ration of 4 mod ii per month is comparable to the recommended rate of 7. 5 medimnoi per year or 1 choenix per day m Greek and Macedonian armies; see Hdt. 7. 187. 2, and Xen., Anab. 7. 3, but P Garnsey, Famine and FoodSupply in the Graeco-RomanWorld. Responsesto Rish and Crisi, (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 91-92, suggests a low annual minimum of 6 medimnoi of wheat ( = 36 modii) per Athenian adult of the thetic class. Cato the Elder (De Agr 56-58) recommended monthly rations of 3 modii of wheat for slaves with light duties, 4 to 4.5 modii for unchained slaves, and 4.8 to 6 modii for those m chain gangs. See Duncan-Jones, Economy, pp 50-51 See Liv 30. 26. 5-6 (203 B.c:.) for price of 4 asses per modi us. See Plaut., Most. 357, and Plut., TG 13, for 3 asses per diem as subsistence wage; see Crawford, CMRR, p. 14. The cost of subsistence was deducted from army pay; J Roth, "Logistics of the Roman Army in the Jewish War," Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1991, pp. 203-4. Cic., Pro Sestio 5 5, Liv, Epit. 68, and Ascon., Ad Pison. 4; see P Garnsey and D. Rathbone, "The Background to the Grain Law of Gaius Gracchus," JRS75 (1985), 21 Liv 30. 38. 5 and 33. 42. Imported Sicilian wheat in 211-10 Ill cost 12 drachmae per medimnos (Polyb. 9. 44) or the equivalent of 22.5 asses per modius with the denarius at 1/84 to the Roman pound or 26 asses with the denarius at 1/72 to the pound. Polyb. 2. 15, pricing 1 medimnos ( = 6 modii) of wheat at 4 obols (or 6 asses) and of barley at 2 obols (or 3 asses); price of daily keep at mn for one-half as ( = one-quarter obol) Polyb. 34. 8. 7-10, pncmg 1 medimnos of barley at I Attic drachma or 9 asses and 1 med1mnos of wheat at 9 Alexandrine obols or 11. 5 asses. Imported wine, sold at I metrctes per I drachma or 9 asses, suggests a pnce of 6 asses per Roman amphora. See O M,.irkholm, Early Hellenistic Coinagefrom the Accession of Alexander the Great to the Treaty of Apa mea (J.36-186 n.c) (C:ambndge, 1991), p 10, for the Alexandrine drachma (3 6 g) as 15 percent lighter than the Attic drachma (4 2 5 g) so that 9 Alexandnne obols = 7.65 Attic obols oriust under 11 5 asses. J A. 0 Larsen, "Roman Greece," ESAR IV (1938), pp. 384-86, wnh rcservat10ns by M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1953), pp. 1488-89, rrn. 110-1 I In 190-169 H c , I medimnos of wheat sold at 10 to 1 I drachmae or 90 to 99 asses (9-10 denarii); 1 medimnos of barley sold at 3 drachmae, 4.5 obols and 4 drachmac or 33.75 to 36 asses (an average of 3.'S denarii)

Notes to Pages273-274 10. See Larsen, ESAR IV, p 384, and P Garnsey, T Gallant, and D. Rathbone, "Thessaly and the Grain Supply of Rome during the Second Century B.c.," JRS 74 (1984), 43-44. Wheat donated to Delos by Massinissa in 179 B.c. sold at 3 drachmae to 4 drachmae, 1 obol per medimnos or 4.5 to 6.25 asses per modius. Soon after 188 B.c. Samos purchased wheat at 5 drachmae, 2 obols per medimnos or 8 asses per modius; see S/G 1 976 = M. M. Austin, The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest(Cambridge, 1981), pp. 198-201, no. 116. In the late second century B.C., at Priene the pnce was 4 Attic drachmae per medimnos or 10.67 asses per modms; at Megalopolis 5.5 Corinthian drachmae per medimnos or 7.33 asses per modius. During a shortage at Olbia in 225-175 B.C. wheat prices rose to 5 medimnoi per gold stater or 7.2 asses per modius; see S/G' 495 = Austin, Hellenistic World, pp. 170-74, no. 97. A benefactor sold l 0,000 medimnoi at half this pnce or 3.6 asses per modius. During a later shortage, the price rose to 1.33 medimnoi per gold stater or 21.6 asses per modi us, and a benefactor sold 500 medimnoi at 4.16 med1mnoi per stater or 8.64 asses per modi us and 2,000 medimnoi at 2. 583 medimnoi per stater or nearly 14 asses per modius. See M0rkholm, Early HellenisticCoinage, pp. 66-67, for 24 Attic drachmae per gold stater. 11 See F M. Heichelhe1m, WirtschaftlicheSchwankungender Zeit von Alexander bis Augustus (Jena, 1930), pp 51-52, 67-77, and 118-22, Table VIII, but note rcv1s10ns and discuss10n m T Reekmans, "The Ptolemaic Copper lnflat10n," Ptolemaica(Studia Hellenistica)7 (1951 ), 61-119, and "Economic and Social Repercussions of the Ptolemaic Copper Inflat10n," Chromqued'Egypte 48 (1949), 324-42. In markets of 2 I 0-160 B l . I artaba of wheat sold at the equivalent of 2 to 3 silver Alexandnnc drachmae or 4.2 5 to 6. 3 3 asses per mod ms of wheat. In 130-90 B.C:. wheat pnces are cited as the equivalent of 3 to 4 silver drachmae or 9.75 to I 3 asses per modms. The exchange rate is reckoned at I Alexandnnc tctradrachma (14 g, 98 percent fine) equaling 3.67 denam (1/84 pound); sec R. A. Hazzard and I. D. Brown, "The Silver Standard of the Ptolcmaic Coinage," RN 6, 26 ( 1984), 238-39. 12 See I lopkms, Conquerors,p. 19, n. 52, and Roth, "Logistics," pp 20610. Needs of a family of four arc reckoned on the assumption that the adult male consumed 40 pnLTnt of the total. Wme rations vaned from one-half to l sextanus (or I to 2 Attic Kotylai) per day For one-half scxtanus, sec SB 4640-49 (sixth century). for I sextanus, see Polyaenus, Strat. 8. 16 2, and d. I' Oxy 2046 and 1920, for presumably doublr rations of 2 scxtam of wme per day Cato the Elder (De Agr. 5f>58) recommends annual ratrnns of unchained slave and slave on cham gang at 7 and l0amphorac, respectively, or I to 1.33sextam perd1em

Notes to Pages 274-275 For 011rations, see P Beat. Pan. 2. 245-49, setting the monthly rate of 4 pounds ( = 4 sextarii) of olive oil per soldier or I acetabula per day (one-eighth sextarii) See P Oxy. 2046 and 1920, for rations of oneeighth or one-tenth sextarii; contrast R. P Duncan-Jones, Scale and Structure in the Roman Economy (Cambridge, 1990), pp 109-10, arguing for one-elevrnth sextarius per diem. For meat rations, see Roth, "Logistics," pp 207-8, and Davies, Service in the Roman Army pp. 191-96, suggesting one-half pound of pork (or one-quarter pound of beef) issued daily or 80 percent of the meat annona granted to the urban plebeians by Aurelian; see CTh 14. 4. 10. 3. 13. The price of wine is based on Polyb. 2. 15, who reports that l metretes

14.

15. 16.

I 7.

18.

456

of wine in the Po Valley cost 2 obols ( = 3 asses) or 2 asses per Roman amphora. At Rome, the price would have been at least four to five times higher or 8 to 10 asses per amphora so that the sextarius sold at onesixth as. The price of oil is based on 16 drachmae ( = 144 asses) per metretes at Delos or 96 asses per Roman amphora. If prices at Delos were three times those of Rome, the cost per amphora at Rome might have been at 32 asses or two-thirds asses per sextarius. The pnce of one-halfsestertius (= 2.5 asses) per sextarius of oil m rural Italy 180 B.C. is inferred from Cato, De Agr. 22 3, hut see reserval!ons in Crawford, CMRR, p. 346. Cic., Ver. 2. 3. 179 and 188-89, and cf Frank, ESAR I, pp. 402-3. Verres was ordered to buy Sicilian wheat at I 2 asses, but he charged the state 14 asses, even though he purchased wheat at prices ranging from 8 to 12 asses. His excessive allowances to his staff of 16 asses per modius of wheat (and 8 asses per modius of barley) possibly reflect high market prices at Rome. Pnces of oil and wine are difficult to estimate; see Frank, ESAR I, pp 403-5. Ch01ce wmes are reported at 8.33 to 33.33 asses 1.er sextanus. See Plin., HN 14. 56, for choice Falerman wme at 25 denarn per amphora in 121 B.c. See D10d. Sic. 37. 2 and Plm, NH 14. 95, for censors in 89 B.c fixing a maximum price of 100 denani per amphora. Cic., Pro Rose. Comm. 28, considered I 2 asses per diem for a slave lahorer (paid to the owner) a minimum. Tac., Ann. I l 7. Seneca, Epist 2 18. 7, and Petron., Satyr. l 6. 14 See S Mrozek, "Zu den Preisen und Lohnen hei Lukian," Eos 59 (1978), 235, no 15, for comparable pnce of I oho! (2 assaria) in the East. C/L IV 4428, 5 380, and 8566. See Breglia, Pompeiana ( l 950), 48-'5 3, estJmatmg an average daily wage of 8 asses and food costs of 24 to 28 asses; see Callu, Dtvaluarions ( 1980), II, p. 209, for slightly higher

Notes to Pages 275-276 daily wages based on CIL IV 4000 and 6877. 19. See Callu, Devaluations (1980), II, p 209, and Mrozek, ANRW 2, 6 (1977), pp. 100-104, forDacian miningcontractsinA.D. 164-65. For subsistence deductions against legionary pay, see Fink, Roman Military Records, no. 68 (A.D 88-90), and Cotton and Geiger, Masada II, pp 46-4 7, no. 722 (A D 72) Twenty denarii (26 6 percent of the pay) or 2. 5 asses per diem is deducted, reckoned at I as for bread and I. 5 asses for other food; see Roth, "Logistics," pp. 203-4. 20. See Heichelheim, ESAR IV, pp 181-82 and 196-97, and Sperber, Roman Palestine, pp. 126-27 and I 74-77 21. C:ic., Ad Fam. 12. 13. 4; the measure of modius rather than of medimnos is intended because l medimnos at 12 dcnarii produces a price of only 2 denarii per modi us. Pompey's army in 6 7 H.c paid a comparable price of I I denani per modius m Palestine; see Jos., Ant. 16. 2 2., reporting 11 Tyrian drachmae per "measure" (metron), by which he intends a modius rather than cab. A price of 11 drachmae per cab gives an unprecedented price of 66 denani per modius. 22. Jos, BJ2. 2 I. 2. 23. See Duncan-Jones, Economy,pp I 45-57 and nos. 1161-83, for Italian and African prices. Pompeiian grafhti report pnces of 12 asses to I denarius, I 4 asses per modius; see E. Diehl, Pompeianischr Wandinschnften, 2nd ed (Berlin, 1930), nos. 391-92. For Anatolian pnces, see AE ( I 92 5), no. 1626 = 1APA 55 ( 1924 ), 5-20 = JRS16 ( 1926), 116; the edict of the legate L Antistius Rusticus fixes the price of wheat at I denarius per modius during a shortage when the usual market pnce was 8 to 9 asses m 92/3. A pnce of 8 asses per modius is cited as 1ust in a Scveran novel set m Tarsus; see Historia Apo! Tyr cc 9-10. Sec /(;RR IV 492 (Oenoanda, Lyna), for endowment providing each rnunulor monthly 4 modi, of wheat and 2 dcnarn, perhaps cqu1vakn1s that suggest an average pncc of 8 asses For Pakstiman pnces, sec Sperber, Roman Palrstinc, pp I 02-3, and He1chelhc1m, !::,AR IV p 187; Talmudic sources considered I wa of wheat per denanus as ,1 Lur pncc, but 2-4 denari1 as high. Sec Lendon, Klio 72 ( l 99ll), I l 1- H, for Egyptian market pnces (as opposed to state pnccs ol H drachmae per artaba) reported m P M1d1 II 123 and 127; P I.oncl I 31, I' Amh I 33 = P Sa rap 92; P Oxy. 23'3 l, and I' Bad. IV 79. 24. Sce Tac , Ann. 2. tll) and 15. W, !or 1mpcnal ceiling of 8 and 14 asses per mod1us, and cl Mart 12 76, not mg that It was unprofitable to sell wheat below I denanus per modms. Sec Pim , NI-/ 18. 90, for the flour of 1 mod,w, of the f111c,twheat pnccd at 40 asses or 2'3 dcnarn, hut this mcludcs m1llmg and gnnd1ng charges.

4'57

Notes to Pages 277-278 25. Tac., Ann. I 17, and cf. Dio 76. I. I. 26. Cic., Ver. 2. 3. 214, for a rise from 8-12 asses to 5 denarii in Sicilian towns. See Sperber, Roman Palestine, pp. 102-3, and Heichelheim, ESAR IV, p. 187, for seasonal fluctuations from l to 4 denarius per sea of wheat, the equivalent of 11 to 4 3 asses per modi us. 27. P Mich. II 127; see R. Duncan-Jones, "The Price of Wheat in Roman Egypt under the Principate," Chiron 6 (1976), 253-54. Prices are 4.4, 5. 7, 7. 3, and 8 drachmae per artaha from Thoth (September) 7 to after Phaophi (October) I; they are equivalent to 4, 5, 6. 5, and 7 asses per modius. 28. JGRR IV 146 = SJG 3 799 (A.IJ 38), translation from N. Lewis, Roman Principate (Toronto, 1974), p 49, no. I 8. 29. for Tenos, Cyclades, see JG XIII 5. 947. 79. Barley was bought at 5 denani per medimnos and sold at 5 assaria ( = 3. 75 Roman asses) per medimnos. The purchase price was 13.33 asses per mod1us; the sale price five-eighths of the Roman as per modi us. If the pnce of barley was double that of wheat, the purchase price of wheat would have been 26.67 asses per mod ms and the sale price I .67 to 1.25 asses. For Antioch, Pisidia, seeAE(1925), no. 1626 = TAPA 55 (1924), 5-20 = JI-IS 16 (1926), 116. For Sebastopolis, Caria, see Robert, Etudes anatoliennes, pp. 342-45, no. 4; wheat was purchased at 4 denani per kyprios or 2 denarii per modius. For Sparta, see JG V 1 44 = SEG Xl 486 = A W Woodward, "Excavations at Sparta, 1926," ABSA 28 (l 92 5-26), 228. C Julius Theophrastus during a scarcity in 124/5 or 12 7 /8 imported wheat at 40 denarii per medimnos (or 6.6 7 denarii per modms) and sold It at I denarius per hem1hectus (or 2 denarn per mod1us) See P Cartledge and A Spawforth, Hellenistic and Roman Sparta (London, 1989), pp 258-59, n. n 30 C:11.VlII 25,703-4 (Thuhurnica, Afnca), for 10 c.Jcnarn per mocl1us (ten to eighteen times the average pnce) See Apocalypse 6, for 8 dcnari1 per moc.J1us in Asia (eight to fourteen times the average pnce), or 1 aureus per moclms at Tarsus in a Sevcran novel HistoriaApo/ Tyr cc 910 (fifty times the average price). "31 Petron, Satyr 16 44, for nostalgic pncc of two loaves of bread (presumably each of 2 pounc.Js) at 1 as; cl. Pim, Nfi 18. 90, fur 1 5 to 2 asses per loaf See C/L IV 5)80 (Pomprn), and Duncan-Jone;,, honomy, p. 244, n. 4, tor a loaf at 2 asses per day to feed a slave; and cl /LS 7212 (A 11 117- 38), for 2 asses per loaf at Lanuv1um. 32 See Die lnschnftcn von EphcsosIll, nos 910, 923-24, 929,934, and 938, and VII I, no. "30I 0, for offiual pnces of 2 or 4 oho ls ( = 4 or 8 assana) per loaf (weighing from O 75 to 1.25 pounds depcndmg on quality) 3) 'ice He1Lhelheim, ESAR IV, p 184, and Sperber, l~oman PalC111nc, p I 03

458

Notes to Pages 278-279 34. See P Mich. 123 and 128 for 1 obol per loaf at Tebtynis in A.D. 45/6 and 46/7. The same price is cited in a Severan military requisition; see SB 7181 (0xyrhynchus). For rise of prices in late second century, see Lendon, Klio 72 (1990), 107-9, and cf. 0 Brussels 71 (undated), for a daily bread allowance of 2 obols for a builder. The price of one-half obol per loaf in P Oxy. 736 (A.IJ. 1) was based on a tetradrachma tariffed at 1.5 denarii. 35. Matt. 20:2, and see Sperber, Roman Palestine, pp 101-2. 36. See P Land. I 31 (Hermopolis, A.D. 78- 79); P Oxy 871 (ea A ll I 00); P Fay. 102 (AD 105); P Lond. 1177 (All 113); PSI 688; and Tait 0. CJ 89. For wages m later second century, see Johnson, ESAR II, pp 3079. 37. See Duncan-Jones, Economy, pp 46-47. Columella, De Re Rust. 3. 3, notes a break-even price of wine at Rome as 3 denarii per amphora or 5 asses per sextarius. An endowment in A.IJ. 153 provides wine pnced at 61 and 88. 5 sestertii ( 15 to 23 denarii) per amphora or 5 to 8 asses per sextarius; see II.S 7213, and Duncan-Jones, Economy, pp. 364-65. Customs dues on Spanish wine imply wholesale pnces of 2 to 3 denarii per amphora (0.67 to I as per sextarius); see T. Frank, "On the Export Tax of Spanish Harbors," AJP 57 (I 936), 87-90. 38. Prices of olive oil are inferred from five prices of oil issued or sold to cltizens for use m the gymnasium. This oil (for cleansing and fuel) was cheaper than grades of olive oil for consumption. At Sebastopolis and Thyatira, where oil had to be imported, I denarius per kotyle or the equivalent of 2 denarii per sextarius was charged; see Robert, Etudes anatoliennes, pp. 34 3-45, no. 4. At Derriopus, olive oil was bought at a high market pnce of 12 asses per sextarius and sold at an official price of 7 asses per sextarius; see N. Vu lie, CRAI ( 1939), 221 = "Bull. Epigr." ( 1939), no. 161bis. At Stratomcea where olive groves were plentiful, 9 asses per sextarius was common; see Sahm, Stratonihea, no. 6 78, and L and J. Robert, La Cam II, pp. 320-23 (cited at wholesale pnces 40 denari1 per metretcs or 26.67 denari1 per amphora). The price of 2.75 denani ( = 44 asses) per scxtarius was paid in a shortage at Sparta during Hadrian's visit; sec SEC XI. 492 = Woodward, ABSA 27 (J 92526), 231-32. The price 1s rned as 30 denarii per hydria, equal to I 05 denarn per amphora or, reckoning 3.5 hydria = I amphora, 35 asses per sextanus. 39 Subsistence for four 1s calculated by two methods. First, wheat is pnccd at 120 denarn for 120 mocqucncc of Cal he me Antonimam, A 11.2 59268 'N/7,

17(!977)2lh-19

"The Metallurg1c·al l·xam1nat1on ol Debased Foiles Issued hy Constantrnc,, Anhacomctrv I '5, 2 ( 1971), 721-28. 487

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I Iistory of the Currency I! IE ROMAN REPUBLIC, 500- 1 I ",

Amandry, M. "Apropos du monnayagc de L Scmpnm1us Atratinus." SMB 3 3 (1983), 82-85 ---. "Le monnayage en bronze de B1bulus et Capito." RSN 65 ( 1986), 73-85; and 66 ( I 987), I 02-34. Burnett, A. M. "The Begmmngs of Roman Comage "Al/N 3n ( 1989), 3 3-

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Boehringer, C Zur Chronologic mittelhcllcnistischer Munzscricn 220-160 v Chr Berlin, 1972. Giovannini, A. Rome et la circulation monetairc en Gri:ccau llc s1cclcavant psus Christ. Basel, 1978. liar!, K. W "Livy and the Date of the Introduction of the C1stophonc CA 10 (1991), 268-97. Tetradrachma" Jenkins, G. K. Anuent GrfCk Coins. rev ed. London, 1990 ---. "Coins of Punic Sicily" RSN 50 ( 1971 ), 25-78; 53 (1974), 23-41, 56 ( I 977), 5-66; and 57 (1978), 5-68. Jenkins, G K., and R. B. Lewis. Carthaginian Gold and Elcctrum Coim. Royal \Jumismatic Society Special Puhlicat10ns 2. London, 196 3. Kleiner, F S "The Dated C1stophon of Ephesus." ANSMN I 8 ( 1972), I 732. ---. "Hoard Evidence and the Late C:1stophori of Pergamum.,, ANS MN 23 (1978), 77-106. Kleiner, F S , and S W Noe The Early Cistophonc Coinage Num1smat1c Studies 14 New York, 1977 Kraay, CM. Archaic and Classical Creek Coins. Berkeley, 1970. Lewis, D M ''The Chronology of the Athenian :\ew Style Coinage." NC 7, 2 (1962), 275-300. Martin, T R. Sovcrngntv ancl Co1nagcin C/assirnl C11·eu· Pnnccton, 1981 vlorkholm, 0 r:arly Hellcn1sti, Coinage f mm the Aunswn of Alcxancln the c;1rnt to the Peace of Apamca (.3J6-/H(, 1u ) C:amhridgc, I LJLJ I --"Some Rcflccllons on the Productmn and L;se of Coinage in :\nucnt Crcece" l/11t,ma 31 (ILJ82l. 2LJ0-303. Rutter, \J K. Campantan Coinagn, -+75-3H0 Ii, Fdinhurgh, l lJ7lJ ·1hompson, M 1 he New Stvlc Silva Coina,~cof Athens \'ob 1-2. :\lu1111,mat1c St ud1cs I O :\cw York, l lJ'i8 11\[RIAN

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Allen. D I "\1unna1cs-a-la-cnm:.· ,\'( 7, lJ (ILJ8LJ), 3l-78 ---. "!\iew [_1ghton the Serra RJCco Hoard ol C1,alpinc Com, · J,\J(, 2 l ( l lJ71 l, LJ7 - l 08 Allen, D F, and I, I- :\ :\ash. Co111sof th,· Anucn1 Cell\ Edinburgh, I LJ8ll Chnc,rn, \1 ,'iunmnw/1, A.1/Jc'< t.1of /he rfo/orv of the Dw 1anSt,Atc 1he Roman

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Les monnaies de la Gaulc inspireesde ccllesde la republiqueromam, Louvain, 1969

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Barcelona, 1977. Wmkler, L "Uber dako-geuschc Munzschatze." Acta Anharologirn Carpathirn 8 ( 1966), 83-1 I 0 "Zur relativen Chnmolog1e dcr dako-gcuschen Munzcn " Aua ArchacologicaC:arpathi,a Ill ( 1968), 111-15 I llE PRINCIPATE, , I

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Coins and EconomicLife COINS IN MARKETS Andreau, J. Les affairs de MonsieurJucundus. Collection de ]'Ecole franc;a1se de Rome 19. Rome, 1974.

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La vie financiere dans le monde romain. Les metiers des manieux d'argent (IV siecle av. ).-C-III siecle ap. ).-CJ Bibliotheque des Ecoles

franc;aises d'Athenes et Rome 265. Rome, 1987. Bagnall, R. S. "Agricultural Productivity and Taxation in the Later Roman Empire." TAPA 115 (1985), 289-308. Balland, A. Fouillesde Xanthos VII. Inscriptionsd'epoqueimperiale de Li:t6on. Paris, 1981. Barnish, S. J. B. "The Wealth of Julianus Argentarius: Late Antique Banking and the Mediterranean Economy" Byzantion 55 (1985), 5-38. Bogaert, R. Banques et banquiers dans les cites grecques. Leiden, 1968. ---. "Changeurs et banquiers chez Jes Peres de l'Eglise." Ancient Society 4 (1973), 239- 70. Bowman, A. K. "The Economy of Egypt in the Earlier fourth Century." In

Imperial Revenue, Expenditureand Monetary Policyin the Fourth Century, ed. C. E. King. BAR lnt. Ser. 76. Oxford, 1980, pp. 23-40. Carrie, J.-M. "Les distributions alimentaires dans les cites de !'empire romain tardif." MEFR 87 (1975), 995-1101 C:oulton,J. J. "Opramoas and the Anonymous Benefactor."JHS 107 ( 1987), 171-78. Crawford, M. "Money and Exchange m the Roman World."JR') hO ( 1970), 40-48. Duncan-Jones, R. P The Economy of the Roman Empire Quantitative Studies. 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1982 ---. "Mobility and lmmohility of Comm the Roman Empire .. AIIN 36 (1989), 121-37. ---. Structure and Scale in the Roman Ewnomy C:amhridge, 1990 Fulford, M. G "Coin C:irculauon and Mint ActlVlty m the Late Roman Empire Some Economic lrnplicauons" An hacolog1calJournal 135 (1978), 07-114 Carnsey, P A, and C R. Whittaker, eds. Trade and 1-"aminein C:/cm1ca/ Antiqwty C:arnhridge Phil. Soc Supp. Papers 8 Camhridge, 1983

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the International Numismatic Convention, Jerusalem, 27-31 December 1963, ed. A Kindler and C H. V Sutherland. Jerusalem, 1967, pp. 129-79. Laum, B. Stiftungen in der griechischcnund romischenAntike. Vols. 1-2. Leipzig, 1914. Mac Mullen, R. "Roman Market Days." Phoenix 24 ( 197), ,ll-41 Millar, F "The World of the Golden Ass "JRS 71 (198 l), 61- 7 5. Mitchell, S "Festivals, Games, and C1v1cLife m Roman Asia Minor"JRS 80 (1990), 183-93. Patlagean, E. Pauvrcti:i:conomiqueet pauvrett' socialea Byzance, 4i:me-7t'me siecles. Paris, 1977. Pekary, T "Les limites de l'economie monetaire a l'epoquc romaine." ln Les devaluations a Rome 11.Rome, 1980, pp. 101-30. Reece, R. "The Use of Roman Coinage." Oxford Journal ofArchaeology 5 (1984), 197-210 Whittaker, C R. "Trade and the Aristocracy of the Roman Empire "Opus 4 (1985), 49- 75 Wipszyeka, E. I.es rt'WUIH'\ et Jesw Uvit/·1honomiqucs dC\egl1snen l',eyptcdu /Ve au VIile sii'clfl. Brussels, 1974 PRICES AND WAC;Es

Bagnall, R. S Curren,v unJ In/lauon in hJurth Century Egvpt BASP Supp. 5, 1985. C:allu,J-P "Les pnx dans dew; rnmans mineurs d'cpoque 1mpcnalc H1stone d'Apollomus ro1 de Tyr~Y1c d'!'sopc "ln LC\ devaluationsa Rome ll Rome, 1980, pp. 187-214 Carne, J-M "Monna1e cl'or et monnaie de bronze dans l'Egypte prntohyzantml'" In 1.n Jn·uluutwm a Rome 11 Reline, 1980, pp 251-69 C:asson, I "Wine Measures ,111d Pnccs in Byzantine Egypt " 7Al'A 7() (1919), 1-16

')()l)

Select Bibliography Coles, R. "Comparative Commodity Pnces." In The Oxyrhynchus Papyri LIV London, 1987, Appendix III, pp. 232-40. Corb1er, M. "Devaluations et evolution des pnx (ler-llle s1ecles)." RN 6, 2 7 (1985), 69-106. Courtois, C, L Lesch1, C Perrat, and C Saumage. TablettesAlbertini. Actes privees de l'epoque vandale (fin du Ve siecle) Paris, 1952. Duncan-Jones, R. P "The Price of Wheat in Roman Egypt under the Prinupate." Chiron 6 (1976), 241-62. Foxhall, L, and !I. A Forbes. "Sitometria The Role of Grain as a Staple Food m Classical Antiquity" Chiron 12 (1982), 41-89. Frezouls, E. "Prix, salaries et niveaux de vie: Quelques ensc1gnements de !'Edit du Maximum" Ktema 3 (1978), 291-300. Garnsey, P Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World. Responses to Rish and Crises. (Cambridge, I 988) Irmscher, J. "Einiges uber Lahne und Preise im 1ustiniamschen Reich." In Les devaluations a Rome ll. Rome, 1980, pp. 245-52. Johnson, A C:, and L C West. Byzantine Egypt: fronomic Studies Princeton, I 949. Lendon, J.E. "The Face on the Coins and Inflation in Roman Egypt." Klio 72 (1990), 100-34. Mickwitz, c; Geld und Wirtschajt im romischen Reich des viertenjahrhunderts n. Chr. Helsmki, 1932. Mrozek, S "Zu den Pnesen und Lohnen bei Lukien "Eos 59 ( 1971 ), 23139. Ostrogorsky, G. "Lohnc und Prc1se m Byzanz." BZ 32 (1932), 293-3T3. Schwartz, J. Lesarchives de Sarapion et de ses fils. Une exploitation agriwle aux environs d'Hermoupolis Magna (de 90 ii LB p C Cairo, 1961 ---. "La monnaie et ['evolution des prix en Egypte mmame ., In Les d{:valuationsii Rome I. Rome, 1978, pp 169-79. ---. "Rcchcrches sur ['evolution des pnx en Egyptc mmamc ·· In Les dcvaluation.1ii Rome 11. Rome, 1980, pp 141-53 'ipcrber, D. "Costs of Lmng m Roman Palestine 'jESHCJ 8 ( l 9o5). 248- 71, 9(1960), 182-211, 11 (1968),235-74:and 13(1970), 1-15. ---. Roman Palestine 200-400 A 1, Moncv and Prices. Ramat-(;an, 1974 Straus, _j A "Le prix des esclavcs clans le;, papyrus d'epo4ue mma111e trouvccs clans ITgyptc" ZPt 11 (1973), 289-95 Sz1Ligyi, J "Pnccs and \\'ages m the Western Prnv111ccs of the Roman Empire ,, Aua Ant1qua I I ( I 9h 3). 32 5-89 Zclrnackcr, 11. "Monna1es de compte et pnx a Rome au lie sH:clc avant not re (·re,, In In dcvaluat1on.1a Rome II Rome. 1980, pp. ll-48.

510

Select Bibliography Coins and Long Distance Trade COINS AND TRADE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD Crawford, M. H. "Rome and the Greek World: Economic Relationships" ccHR 2, 30 (1977), 42-52. Garnsey, P, and CR. Whittaker, eds. Tradeand Famine in ClassicalAntiquity Cambridge Phil. Soc. Supp. Papers 8. Cambridge, 1983. Gnerson, P "Commerce in the Dark Ages A Critique of the Evidence." TRHS 5, 9 (1959), 123-40. Lopez, R. S "The Dollar of the Middle Ages" ]EH 11 (1951), 209-34. Wickham, C "Review Article: Marx, Sherlock Holmes and Late Roman Commerce." JRS78 (1988), 190-93. COINS AND TRADE IN NORTHERN EUROPE Bichar, G. The Archaeology and History of the Carpi from the Second to the BAR Supp. Ser. 16. OxFourth Century A./J., trans. N. Hampartumian ford, 1976. Bolin, S Fynden av romerska mynt i det f ria Germanien. Lund, 1926. Brogan, G. "Trade between the Roman Empire and the Free Germans." JR', 26 (1936), 195-222. Ch1tescu, M. Numismatic Aspects of the History of the Dacian State: The Roman Republican Coinagein Dacia and Geto-Dacian Coins of Roman Type. BAR lnt. Ser. 112. Oxford, 1981. Crawford, M. H. "Republican Denari1 in Romania The Suppresswn of Piracy and the Slave-Trade "JRS67 (1977), 117-24. Eggers, H. J Der rcimischcImport im freien Germanien. Hamburg, 1951. Fagerlie, J M. Late Roman and Byzantine Solidi Found in Sweden and Denmark. Numismatic Notes and Monographs 157. New York, 1967. Glodanu, I Dacian Trade wirh the llcllenist1cand Roman World. BAR Supp. Ser. 8, Oxford, 1970 Hansen, U L Rom1s,ha Import 1m Norden Warenaustauschzwischen dem

romischen Reich und dcm /rcicn Ccrmanicn wahrend dcr Kaiserzcit untn bcsondcrc Berucb1cht1gungNordcuropas Copenhagen, 1987. Hedeager, L "A Quant1tat1vc Analysis of Roman Imports m Europe North of the Limes (0-400 ,\ 1,)" In New Directions in Scandinavwn Archaeologv,ed. K. Knstianscn and C Palaudan-Muller. Lyngby, 1977, pp 19121 o. Iluk, J "The Fxport of ( ;old from the Roman Empire to Barbanan C:ountnes from the 4th to the oth Centunes." Munstenschc Bntragc zur antikcn Handdsgcschichtc4, I ( ILJ85), 79-102. Ku now, J Negotiator et Vccturu liundlcr und Transport 1m frcien (;crmanicn. Marhurg, 1980 Puts, L F "Relations between Romans and the German 'Kings' on the

511

Select Bibliography Middle Danube in the First to Fourth Century A.D "_JRS79 (1989), 4558. Wheeler, R. E. M. Rome Beyond the lmpenal Frontiers. London, 1954. Winkler, J "Schatzfunde romischer Silbermunzen m Dak1en bis zum Begmn der Dakerkriege." _]NGl 7 (1967), 12 3-56. COINS AND TRADE IN AfRICA AND THE EAST Carson, R. A G. "Late Roman and Early Byzantine Solidi from India." Numismatic Digest 4, 2 (1980), 20-23. Casson, L., ed. and trans. The Periplus Maris Erythraei. Princeton, 1989. Charlesworth, M. P "Roman Trade with India." In Studies in Roman Economic and Social History in Honor of Allan Chester_Johnson,ed. P R. ColemanNorton, F C Bourne, andJ VA Fine. Pnnceton, 1951, pp. 129-42. Codrmgton, H. W Ceylon Coins and Currency Memoirs of the Colombo Museum, ed. J Person. Senes A, no. 3. Colombo, 1924. Hill, G. F "A Hoard of Corns from Nineveh." NC 5, 11 (1931), 160-70. ---"Roman Aurei from Pudukota, South India_" NC 3, 18 (1898), 304-20. Hirth, F China and Rome. Shanghai, 1885. MacDowell, D. W "The Weight Standards of Gold and Copper Coinages of the Kushana Dynasty from Vima Kadphises to Vasudeva." _JNS/ 22 (1960), 63-74. McDowell, R. H. Coinsfrom Seleucia on the Tigris Ann Arbor, M1ch., 1935. Matthews,]. T "The Tax-Law of Palmyra Evidence forthe Economic History in a C:1tyof the Roman East." _JRS74 (1984), 157-80 _ Miller,] I. The Spice Tradeof the Roman Empire 29 1u .. to A.ll 64 / Oxford, 1969. Mitterwallner, G von. Munzen der spaten Kusanas, des Hunnen Kirada!Kidara und der fruhen Gupta Munich, 1983. Morkholm, Cl. "The Parthian Coinage of Selcuua on the Tigns, ea. 90-55 KC "NC 7, 2 (1980), 31-47 \1unro-Hay, S CH. "The al-Madhanba Hoard of Gold Aksumite and I.ate Roman Corns_" NC 149 (1989), 83-100. ---_ The Munro-Hay Collectwn of Ahsumite Coin.1. i\aples. 1986 Munro-llay, S CH, WA Oddy, and M. R Cowell. "The Gold Coinage of Aksum 1\cw Analyses and Their Sigmhcancc for Chronology." In Metallurgy in Numismatics, ed. WA. Oddy Royal :\Jumismatic Souety Special Publications 19. London, 1988, II, pp 1-lo :\Jodclman, S A. "A Prehmmary History of C:haracene" Berytu1 1 ( l 9f>0), 83-120 Raschke, M. C "New Studies in Roman Commerce m the Fast.' ANRW 2. 9. 2 (Berlm. 1978), 004-1301

512

Select Bibliography Sellwood, D. G. "The Parthian Corns of Gotarzes I, Orodes l and Sinatruces." NC 7, 2 (1962), 73-89. Sewell, R. "Roman Coins Found in lndia."Journa1 of the RoyalAsiatic Society 17 (1904), 591-637. Sidebotham, S. E. Roman Economic Policy in the Erythraean Thalmsa, 30 H c.-A IJ 217. Leiden, 1986. Simonetta, A. M. "Some Remarks on the Arsacid Comage of the Penod 9057 ll.c." NC 7, 6 (1966), 15-40. Simonetta, A. M., and D. G. Sellwood. "Agam on the Parthian Comage from Mithridates ll to Orodes II" NAC 7 ( 1978), 95-119. Still, J. "Roman Coins Found in Ceylon." Journal of Royal Asiatic Society (Ceylon) 19 (1907), 161-90. Turner, P J. Roman Coins from India. Royal Numismatic Society Speual Publications 22. London, 1989. Yarshater, E., ed. The Cambridge History of Iran Ill 1-2 rhc Srlcucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods.London, 1983. Ying-shih Yu. Trade and Expansion in /Ian China. Berkeley, 196 7

'51 l

Index

'Abd al-Malik, 205, pl. 30.249 153, 248, 249, 429n. 18, AEl, AE2, AE3, AE4 defined, 163 Table 7.1, 473, AE3 fraction, 169, 171-74, 178 Aeg1d1us, cmnage ol, 183, pl. 21 171 Aemilius Paullus, L, 44, 68 aes, token currency: CIVIC, 35, 62, 64, 69, 76, 88-89, 107-17, 119-41, 147, 255, provmual, 76, lJ7, 104, 106-8, 120-22, 141,258, 418n 53, Roman, 4, 16, 21-22, 24, 27. 3132, 34-l5, 39-40, 47-51. 54, 56-57, 76-77, 8l-85, 88-91. 95,114,146,172, 174-N, 18384, 186, 188-90, I lJ2-20'S 2 l'S, 257-59, 266-68, 274, 278-7lJ, 288-8lJ an d1choncutum (hi\1011), I 7 2 angravc,24,26,27. 1I an rude, 21 an ,1gnatum (rngotsl. 4, 21 -22, 24, 26-27 Aet1us, rnmage ol. 183. pi 21 171 Alnca, pnmmT, 176, 2lH. 217. rn111 urculat1,m 1n, 20, 55. (1I, (11. 87adaeralw,

89,151,176,179,183, 187, 191, 195,198,212,241,244 Ftg. 9.1 Afnca. Last (see Azama); West, 63, 79 Agngentum (Acragas), 28, 35 Alaric, 217, 210, 285, 309. See also V1s1goths Alexandria, Fgypt, 79, 209, 240, 276, 28'S; 1mpenal mm!, 86, 150-51, 164, 193, 410n. 49, pl 19.157, pl. 2 3 181, pi 26.21 5-17, prnvmctal mmt, 107,117, 142-41, 147-49, pl. 14 l 08- 14, pl. 17 .118- 39 al1menla, 261, 266, 460n. 39 Allcctus, comage ol, 148-49, pi 16. l 34 Amh1anum, 1mpcnal mmt, 171, pl. 22 18'S Am1sus, mmt ul, l 00, l 02, pl 10.84 Anastasi us L l 78, 287-88, 31 l, 312, comage of, 116, 178- 79, 182, 18990, 192-94, pl 2l201, pi 24.202 and 204, pl 2b 214, 1m1tat1vecoms ol, pl. 27 225 Anglo-Saxons, corns of, 182, 184-85, pl. 28.230- 32 Antioch, ~yna, 108, 11 3, 117. I 73.

515

Index

Antioch, Syna (cont'd ) 259, 262, 276, 285, 287; civic mmt, 1 I 5; imperial mint, 86, 139, 14447, 159, 193-94, 202,410n. 49, pl. 15.124, pl. 19.155 and 158, pl. 22.188; provincial mint, 88, 98, 103-5, 107-8, 137-39, 215n. 23, pl. 7.51, pl. 9.71, pl. 11.89-91, pl. 16.135-36 antommanus, 9, 20, 128-36, 139, 144-46, 148,222,223,229,257, 270,289, 420n. 14, 423n. 41, pl. 15.118-21, pl. 16.129-30 and 133 Antoninus Pius, 264-65; coinage of, 8, 84, 127 Table 6.1, pl.10.78, pl.14.113-14; reserve of, 78, 85, 94,222 Antony, Mark (M. Antonius), 53, 54, 57-60, 71, 74, 76, 99,100, 401n. 51, pl. 6.42, pl. 7.45, pl. 10.77 Apamea, Phrygia, mint of, 71 Aphrodisias, coins at, 108, 154, 415n. 26 Apulia, coinage of, 28, 34. aqueduct: Claudian, 264; costs of, 262-63; Marcian, 45, 227, 265 Aqmleia, 294, imperial mint, I 73-74, pi 19.156, pi 21 170 Arabia Felix (Yemen), 297, 300, 3034, 306; coins of, 298, 106, pl. 32.262-63 Arcad1us, comage of, 173, I 75, I 78, pl. 20.163 Ardashir, 128; comage of, 307, 477 Arelate (Aries) imperial mmt, 170, 175, 182-83, 185, 188, pi 21 178, pi 22 180; pseudo-1mpenal mmt, 184, pi 27.226 argenteus, 149, 151-'52, 155-56, 160-62, 172-71, 177,183, 192, 284,474, pi 19 1'56, pl. 20.168, pi 21 169-71, fractions of, 171, 177, 183-85, pi 27 221 and 223, pl 28236 argentum osup10, P, coins of, 55, 63, 71 Caesarea, Cappadocia, as 1mpenal mint, 410n 49; as provincial mmt, 98, 101-2, 107, 109, 116- 39, pl. 11.85-97, pl. I 7117 Caligula, 221, coinage of, 85, pi 10.80 C:ampama, 22, 21, 24-2'5, 75, coms of, 28 C:amulodunum, 1mpenal mmt, 148, pi 16. l 34, fmds at, 17 Table I 1 Capua, 38, 48; rnmage of, l I- l4 Caracalla, 216, 2 I 9-20, 224, 229, 258-59, comage of, 100, 113, 120, 127-28, 112, 138,280,474, pi 12 100, pi 13 102 and 104, pi 14.107,pl. 15115and 118,pl I 7 144 and 146 carat, 149, 162, 173, 196, reckomng by, 177,203,204, 475-76 Caraus,us, comage of, 148, pi 16 I 32- ll Cansius, P, coms of, 87, 88, pi 8. 55 Carnuntum, 85, 294; 1mpcnal mmt, 144 Cartagena .'>t't'New Carthage Carthage, 21, 6 l, 79, 188,276. l I l, 517

Index

Carthage (cont'd ) coinage of, Pumc, 21, 27-28, 3536, 44; cams from, 12, 135, 187, 191, as impenal mmt, 15 l, 195, 198,202,204, pl. 23.194 and 199; Umayyad, 204, pl. 30 250, Vandal, 187, pl. 28.236-37, pi 29 238 Cassius 010: on buildings, 227, 263, coms, 92, 97, 125, donations, 222, soldiers, 126 Cassius Longus, \1., coms of, 58, 69, 71 casual loss, of coms, 18-20, 17 Table I 1, 19 Fig. 1.3; 47, 56, 61, 84, 135, 139,198,202,206,251, 25657 Catana, mint of, 35, 62, 199, 202, 204 Cato the Elder (\1 Porcius Cato Maior), 45; on coms, 33 Cato the Younger (\1 Poruus Cato Minor), 210; coinage of, 55, 65 C:eltibenans, rnms of, 6, 63, 64 Cclts, coms of, 5, 16, 65, 87-89, 293 centemonalis (AE2), 167,169,171, 174, 429- 30n. 30,476, pl. 22.181 and 189 Central Asia. mmes m, 307, trade to, 297, 300-301, 303,308, 309 chalcus. as accounting unit, 121, bronze, 67, 69, 109, 114-16. 476, silver, 4 76 C:harax, 291,297, 301, 314 C:hcrson, impenal mmt, 198, 199. pi 27 219 C:hma (Seres): coms lound m, 302- 3, 308, trade w11h. 290-91, 299, 302l, 309 Chins, rnmagc ol, 11 5- In C:ilina,rnmagcol, 100,102, lln-38, pi 7.50 urculation ol coms m cities, 3, 5, In17, 48, 64, nn, 251-55. 2n1-n2. 2n6-n7, m countyrsidc. 4, In. 209, 252. 253-54, 259-nO, 267-n8;duration of, 18, 113-14, 118-20, 257-59; regional patterns ol, 4-5, 20. H - 3n. n3-n7. 8h-88, 100102, 108-9, 118-19, 145, 172-Tl.

518

210-11, 238-47, 254-55, 270-71, velocity of, 18, 84, 240-41, Yi7; wear from, 6-7, 84, 121-22, 196, 388n. 11, 418n. 48 C:1salpme Gaul, 30, 31, 42,213; coins m, 11, 37, 62, 65 cistophorus, 62, 67, 69, 97, 98-102, 114,136,138,210,241,256,301, 406n. 6, 414n. 15,476, pi 7 4950, pi 10.76-77 uvil war: m Empire, 83, 86, 91-92, 95, 104, 126-27, 129, 159, 163, 169, 173; in Republic, 12, 50, 52, 54-55, 57-60, 71 Claudius, 87, 221, 22 7, 264; cmnage ol, 85, 87, 89, 93, 98, 100, 101, 117-19, 121,123,228,482, pl. 9.72, pl. 14.109-10 Uaudms 11,comage ol, I 31, 133, 145 Cleopatra Vil, coms of, 1 I 8-19 clipping, of coms. 7, 50-51, 109, 169, l Tl cocmptio (state purchases), 21 5, 22 324, 229-30 Coloma Agnppma, 294; impenal mmt, 144,145, pi 16.127-28 rnlornes, Roman, as mmts, 28, 34- 35, 47, M, 88, 89, 108, 114 Commodus, coinage of, 120, 123, 126,280 rnmmutation, 217, 248-49 Set a/10

adacratw C:onstans, rnmage ol, ln7. ln9. pi 2ll. ln5. pl. 21 178, pi 22 182 Constans 11, rnmagc ol. 196. 199, 201-2, pi 2'i 212 Constantme I, 228,229, rnmagc ol, ! 'i9, 1n 1-nn. 308. 4 74, 4 7lJ 482 pi 2Ll lhl, pi 21 172 76 (onstantmc IV 199, 200. rnmagc ol, 182, 196,200,201.pl 26213 C:onstantmoplc, 181 199 238,285. 28n. 287, 309, 311. imprn.11 mint. 175. I lJ2, 194, 200-20 I, 20l. pi 211163-M, pi 2 3 llJ2-93. llJ798, and 20 I. pi 24 202-4, pi 25 207. 210- 11. 212 13, and 218

Index Constanuus 1, coinage of, 150, pl. 19.154and 157 Constantius II, coinage of, 158, 167, 169-70, 474, pl. 20.167-68, pl 21.176-77, pl. 22.180-81 contracts, contractors, 31, 32, 37, 40, 43, 50, 54, 102, 103, 138, 139, 208, 212, 223 copper, 76. See also aes; mmes Cordoba, mmt of, 64, 89, 185 Corinth, 22, 44, 70; coins of, 34, 57, pl. 7.45 Cornelius Cmna, L, coms of, 50-51, pl. 6.32 Cornelius Scipio Afncanus, P, 34, 35 Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, L, 34, 35, 63 Cornelius Sulla, L, coinage of, 50, 51, 53, 69-70, 400n. 40, pl. 6.32 Cornelius Tautus: on coins, 91, 295; mines, 91, speue dram, 304; taxes, 205 Corsica, 29, 30; coins m, 37, 62 C:osa, coins from, 18, 35 Cosmas lndicopleustes, on cmns, 160, 290,308,314 counterfeits, 50-51, 69, 109, 148, 154,156,159, 166,179,239,259 countermarks, 476; on Roman rnms, 84-85, 89,100, 106, 113-14, 138, 141,147,203,204,257,266. 10fi. pi 9 fi9-71, pl. 10. 77 and 82, pi 14.107, p\.17.140-47, pl. 2(1214: on Sassamd coms. 4h9n 51. llfl Vandal coms, 188, 4 l5- 1(ln 21. pi 29.219 Crete, coinage or. 71, JOO. pi ll1 80 Ctes1phon, 29, 297, 107 customs on Far Eastern trade, 21 I. 237-18,299, 100, \04, 114,inRllman Empire, 107,231, 2 l7. 2 l8 Cyprus crnnage ol, JO1, I Llh. I I l. 2 lll, pi I l lllh. 1mpen,1I rmnt on. 57,199,202, pi 25.209, llllllCS ell, 81, 118 ( yrcne, 51, mm age ol. 98. ll1l1, pi 10 81 (y21cus, 54, 25h, 277, as 1mpcnal

mmt, 139, 144, 145,163,194,201, 202,203, pl 21 179, pl. 22.191, pi 24.206 Dacia, 62, 78, 79, 92; coms of, 87, 292-93; mmes of, 62, 80-83, 129, 146,221, 292-93, 412n. 74; Roman coms m, 9, 62, 87,173,254, 292-93 Dalmatia: c01ns in, 87, 186, mines of, 80-81, 129, 293 debasement, 2, 7-8, 125-26, 209, 228-29, 280-81, 288-89, 105, 307; m Empire, fi, 17, 74, 91-95, 98, 104-6, 119-20, 121, 125-42, 158-59, 164-65, 169-73, 178, 188-91, 193, 195-97, 200-201, 203, 229, Frankish, 184-85; Parth1an, 301, in Republic, 7-8, 28, 29-31, 34,46, 50, 54-55, 59-60, 70- 71, Seleucid, fi9 decanumm1a, 174,178,190,198, 203,476 decargyrus (AE2), 174, pl. 22.188 decurions, 231-33, 251, 2hl-62, 2fi5, 284 decuss1s, 32, 47fi defacement, of coms, 306, 453n 51. pl. 14.107, pl. 31.255 Delos, fi l -h2, 271 dcnanus Ill Empire, 8, 14, 73-75, 77, 81, 85-87, 90-96, 98, 102, 108, 125-29, l 1fi, 148, 191, 21fi, 22829. 218,241,247,255,257, 265t,t,, 272-74, 288,289, 291-96, 113-14, 47fi, pl. 8.53 and hi, pi 10 75, pl. lfi.112, pl. 31 2'5'5; lbenan, 5, fi4; imitative, 293, 29h, pl. ll 251-54, Republic, 7-8, 1112, I 1 hg. I I. 17, 2'5, 12. 40-42, 4'5-4fi, 50-51, 53-56, 58-fiO, 63M, fifi, 129,212,272, 3949511 40, 396-97n. 7, 401n 59, pi l I h, pi fi3fi-42 dcnanus mm mums (d c ), 14h, 4 77. pl. 15.123; as acrnuntrng umt, h, 129, 131, 134, 146, 149-51. 151, l'57, lhl, 165-h7, 177,187.477

Index denier, 4, 6, 154, 177, 185-86, 205, pl. 28.227. See also black money d1drachma: b1llon, 121, bronze, 114, pl. 13.105: Roman, 7-8, 25-28, 191-92n.17, pl. I 3-8and 10:silver, 2 3, 30, 98, 100-10 l, 136, 138, 477, pl. l 1-2, pl. 2 21, pl. 11.85 and 87, pl. 32.262 dies, 9-10, 107, 112-13, 406n. 6. 477 dmar, Sassamd, 129, 307-8, 477, pi 12 260: Umayyad, 185, 204-5, pi 30 247 and 250-51 010 C:hrysostom: on c1v1cexpenditures, 263, 267: on speCJe dram, 304 diobol: silver, 22, bronze, 115-16, 121 D1ocleuan, 216-17, 223, 229, 248, coinage of, 1,8, 109,132,141, 148-56, 158,180,211,474. 47879, pl. 19 l 54- 56 and 158- 59. Sec also edict, 1mpenal d1rhem Sassamd, 9, 161,177,102, 107-8.314,477,pl 12261,Umayyad, 6,185,186,192,200, 204'5, 206, pl. 30.249 discounting, of cmm, 7. 47, 84, 91. 114, 121-22, 177,195,196,226, 239,259 distributions· m mm -c1v1c, 47, 100,111, 114, 261-62, 264-h7, 277-78: -1mpenal, 5, 57, 74. 77. 85-Rh, 115. 14h, lol-h2, 205, 220-22, 247, of gram, 277. 45 3n. 492. See also donatJ\'C Dom1t1an, 216, 275, 292, c01nage of. 8. 14, 15 Fig. 1.2, 83, 84, 104. pi 10. 79 donative Hyzantmc, 218. 222-2 3. l:mp1re. 74, 114. 115, 148, lo2. 17'5, 215,218, 220-22. rates of, 44. 52, '56, 'SS, 74: Republic. 3'5. 40. 44-45, 49, '53. 5h, 'S7, 59, o0, o3-o4, 11. 213-14. 220 drachma: bdlon. 21, pi 14 110: hrnnze, 120-21, 14l, 23'5, 2>9-40.

520

278,280,302,478, pl. 14 113, pi 32 260: as ghost currency, 120-22, 133-34, 153, 155, 157, 160-67, silver, 22, 30, 33, 36, 62, 65, 71, 78, 98, 100-103, 10h, 115,255. 260,301, 395n. 44,477, pl. 2 9 and 22, pl. 10 78-80, pl. 11 91, pl. 31258, pl. 32.263 Dudius, C, memonal of, 28, 392n. 22 duodecanumm1a, l 94, 202, 286-87, pi 26.216; tnple of, 19, pl. 26.215 dupondms Empire, 17 Table 1 1, 7677, 85, 88-89, 91,134,275,278, 478, pl. 8.'57 and 63, provmual 76, 107, 11 'S, pl. 12.96, Republic, 3233, 56-'S7, pl. 6 4 3-44 Dura-l'uropos, 281, hoards of, 113, 2'58-'S9 edict: of Constantius 11 -on currency reform. l 70, -on forgery. 169, of Cyz1cus (C1v1c),277, of Diocletian· -on maximum pnces, 152, 1 53, 209,270, 276-77, 281-83, 300; -monetary edict, 153-54, 164, 209: of Hadrian, 114,116,209, 259: of Honorius. on ma1onna, 174, of Justmian, on solidus, 190, of Ylanus (;rat1dianus, 51, of Mylasa (uv1c), 239, of nome. on currency, 14 3, 2 N, of Valentm1an I and Valens· -on currency rclorm, I '5I. 159-hll, 161, l 72. 211, -on spe ue export, 17'5, 176. 108-9, ol Valentm1an Ill. on exchange rates, ]07-68, 178, 189, 191 l'gypt. 199: currency of. 2, 98. 107, 117-24. 149-'Sll, 152. 161, 19194, 23'5, 237. 240-41, 24h hg 9 '5 pncrs 1n, 209, 272-73. 277-78. 281. revenues ol. 215-37. 447n ti9, taxal!on m, 2 l l- 3'5 I lagabalus, rnmage ol, 108. 128. 1 l2. 138 elect rum coms. 06. 204. 205,478 I mrnta. 1rnpenal mint, 87-88, 4llhn 6, pi 8 '5'S

Index

Emesa, imperial mmt, 139, 144 Emponae, comage of, 36, 65, 395n. 44 engravers, 9-10; Byzantme, 189, 198, 199; civic, 101,109, 111-12, 116; Greek, 22; at Rome, 46, 99, 101, 105, 128, 132, 189, 210, 406n. 6, 413n. 3 Ephesus, 256, 264-65, as civic mmt, 109,pl. 17.146,as1mpenalmmt, 86, 410n. 44; as provmc1al mmt, 69, 99, 107,136,241, pl. 10 76-77 Erythraean Sea, trade in, 290, 298, 303-5, 307 ethnic, on coms, 25, 69, 107, 11,, 478 Etruna, 21, 22, 24, 26; coins ol, 24, 28, ,4 exchange rates 0uctuations of, 11415, 121-22, 127,129, 1,8, 15456, 174, 178-79, 20,-4, 209-10. 259; regulauon of, 51, 116, 143, 167-68, 178, 189,193,209,239, 259,277; stabtlny of, 96, 127, 14243, 147,238. See also tanffing festivals, 110,111,114,261,262, 264-68 fiduciary currency b11lon: -m Lgypt, 2, 95, 98, 117, 119, l,-24, 127, 147, 228-29, 240, -tmperul, 124, 129,146,149, 151-57, 172, 2818,, 288-89; bronze, ll, 40, 67, 69, 76-77, 121-22. 481 First Jewish War, 84, llH, 225-2h. 276 !'trst Pumc War, 24, 27-29, 212-l l Flav1us Josephus. on rntns. l l, 78. ,m mt!Itary pay, 225-2h, on pmcs, 220, 276 Fleet Cotnage, 57, 401n 58. pl. 7 45 lol!ts, 20, 192-'lS. l%-2lH, 217. 258,270,285, 288,4lhnn 27and 30, 4l7-l8nn. 40-41, 474, pi 2 l 20 l, pl. 24 202- land 2I1h. pi 25207-ll pi 2n212-l4,pl 27 2llJ, lract1ons ol. ILJ2-LJl lLJ8.

257, pl. 25 204-5, pl. 26.218; Ostrogothtc, 188, llJ0, pl. 29 24244; Vandal, 186-87, 190, pi 28.237- ,9 folhs, sealed purse, 166, 430n 23, 478 Franks, 128, 189, 171, 296, rntnage of, 183, 184-85, pl. 27 220-21 and 227, pl. 28.228-29 "fresh" cotns, 91, 114, 121, 41 l12n. 6, fuls (follis), 204, pl. 30.248 Galba, cotnage of, 74, 8,, 92 Galerius, 159, 161, 163; comage of, pl. 19.154 Galhenus,comageol, 111, 131-33, 135, 143-44, 145, pl. 15 117 and 121,pl 17.138,pl l8.148-50aml 152 c;arrnne, hoard, 8,-84, 247,258 Table 10 1 Gaul, 53, 54, 58, Ccluc rnms of, 5-6, 65-66, Frankish cotns tn, 182-85, Roman rnms m, 65-66, 88-89, 134,149,159,166, 170-71, 179, 241,243 Ftg. 9.,, 247 c;ermany, Roman cmns m, 5, 87, 91, 176,254,291,291, 295-96, ll0 ghost currency, 121-22, 176-77, 180, 2l4-l5, 248-49, 479 globular so!tdt, 198, 204, pl 21 194 gold, currency, Roman, 16-17. ,O, ll. 41-42, 44-45, 49-50, 52-Sl, 59h0, 74-75, 90-91, 94-96, 125, 132-H, 145-46, 148-49, 159-hl, l75-7h, llJl-LJ2, lll'S-%, 200, 204-h gold silver rallo, B, 5l. 74, 79, 2lJl, 312 c;ord1an I and II, rntnagc of, l 2h, l 2Ll, 474 c;ord1an 111,rntnage ol, 8h, 102, 129, l ll, 114, 138-39, 144, pl 17 l l7. 140, and 14 l Crattan, crnnage ol, 174. pi 22 18c) c;reece, coin CJrculat1onin. '5h, "58. hl.

'521

Index

Greece, coin circulation in, (cont'd.) 68, 70-71, 87-88, 98,199,211, 292 Gregory of Tours, on coins, 184-85 Gunthamund, coinage of, 187, 190, pi 28 236 lladrian, 79, 90, 94, JOI, Jll, 227, 231; coinage of, 101-2, 106, 138, pl. 10.83-84, pl. 31.256; edicts of, 111, 116, 120, 209, 259 halved coins: aes, 16, 35, 76, 89, 135, 257, 260, pl. 9.67; denani, 47, 398-99n. 26 hammered coinage, 177, 184, 307-8 hemidrachma: bronze, pl. 14.114; silver, 70, 101, pl. 10.81 hemiobol, bronze, 115, 120, 121, pi 12.99 lleraclea (Pennthus), 1mpenal mint, 194 llerachus, 199-20 I, 217, 3 JO, coinage of, 195, 197, 200-203, 211, 479, pi 23. I 94 and 196-97, pi 25.207-11, pl. 26.214and 217; imitative cams of, pl. 30 247 Hermopohs, 14; archive of Sarapion, 79,209; tax register, 154,248 hexagram, 200,479, pl. 23.197 H1ero JI, 28, 30, 31, rnmage of, 28, 30, 35 l!imyante Arah1a, coinage ol, 304, pi 32 262-63 hoarding, 5, 7-8, 11-14, 24, 91, 131-32, 140-41, 145, 155-56, 160, 164, 182 hoards, m Roman world· Africa, 20, 61, 6 3, I 79, Asia Mmor, 61, 71, JOO, 138-39, 140-41, 259, f\alkans, 113,129,161, Ill, 179,257, Bntam, 93, 145, 155-56, 161, 173, 182; Cyprus, 20 l, l'gypt, 120, 179, c;aul, 65, 66-67, 83,145, 161, 179,184,247,253,258; Greece, 56,61, 71,ltaly, 11-12, 13hg I I, 24, 30, 32-3 3, 35-36, 40, 44, 51, 145, 179, 190; Judaea, 255-56;

522

Macedon, 61, Rhineland, 161, Sicily, 30, 35; Spain, 33, 35- 36, 60-61, 64, 145, Syna, 20, 102-3, 113, 138-39, 258-59 hoards, outside Roman world: Axum, 469n. 53; Central Asia, 302, 303, 308; Dacia, 292; Eastern Europe, 176,296, Germany, 129,291,292, 295; India, 291, 303, 304-6, Kushan Emp1re, 302, Parth1a, 301, Scandinavia, 176, 291, 292, 295, Taprobane, 305-6, 309 llonorius: coinage of, I 73, I 78-79; imitative coins of, 184, 185, pi 27.220-22 Huns, 175,176,310, 31 I Illyncum, 78, coin c1rculat1on m, 89, 131,202,211 imitative coins, 479; of Roman cams, 173, 183-84, 186-91, 204-5, 293, 296, 304, 306, 313; struck by Rome, 69-71, 103-4, pl. 7 48 and 51; unofficial Roman, 87, 89, 147, 148, 166, I 71, 179, 239, 259, pi 9.72, pl. 16.131, pi 22.183 mdemnities to Rome, 28, 29, 30, 34, 40-42,49, 52,63, 67-68, 71 India, trade to, 290, 297, 300, 303-9, corns of, 298, 302; Roman coins in, 91,291,303 mllat1on, 8, 18-19, 248-49, 282, 289; m Fmp1re, 79, 95, 120, 123, 125-26, 141, 146, 152-53, 16567, 172,193,192,201,203,216, 2 30, 268-69, 275, 280-84; m Repuhhc, 46-47, 48, 270-71, 273. Src also pnces, nscs m mgols bronze, 9, 21, 22, 24, 29, gold, 49, 50, 6 3, I 5 3, I 59, 160-62, 22 3, 396n. 5, silver, 160-62, 22 3, 293, 396n 5 Isaura, 1mpenal mint 1n, 20 I i;sar (assanon), I J 5, 278 l1aly, 21-23, 51, 53, 58-59, 189-90, 217, 264-65; com nrcula11on 1n, 12-14, 13 hg I!, 21-2l, 179,

Index

188, 190-91, 198-99, 205,241, 241 Fig 9.3, 252-63, 264, mmes of, 22, 82; prices m, 271-75 Jerusalem, 11, 78, 225-26, 238 John Chyrsostom, on coins, 250, 254 Joshua the Stylite, on famme prices, 287-88 Jovian, coinage of, 171, pi 22 187 Judaea, coin circulat1on in, 255-56 Julian II, 171, 173, 213, 283, 307; comage of, 171,479, pi 22.186 Juhus Caesar, C, 53-55, 63, 66, 70, 71,210,212,213,215, 220-21, 273; coms of, 50, 51-56, 91, 209, pi 6.33-34, 6.41 and 41 Junius Brutus, M , 69; coins of, 58, pi 6 35 Justin I, 262; comage of, I 91, I 94, 197,199, pi 29.240-41; reserve of, 176,312 Justinian I, 217-18, 225; comage of, 189-96, I 98, 478, pi 23. I 95 and 199-200, pl. 24.203 and 205, pi 26.215-216; imitative coms of, pi 28.233; subsidies of, 111-12, 47071n. 66 Just1man II, comagc of, 196, 201 Kanishka I, coms of, 302, pi 12.200 Karam;, com urculat1on in, 215, 2 lo37 Table 9 4, 219, 240, 254-55, tax registers at, 122, 151, 234-15, 248-49,44on. 65 karshapara, 298, 104, 105 hathara1drahhma1, 121, 451 n 29 Khusrau I, 211, ll2 Khusrau II, 199, 201-2, ullns ,,!, pi 12 2o0 Kushans, 80, 102, 4o7n 'lo. «1magc ol.291,105-7 l.actan11us, on Pncc l'd1ct, I'> 1 LJodJCca ad Lycum, rnmagc c>I,71. pi 7 50 l.amhcea ad ~arc, 20. 270. 1mpn1al mmt, 10. 410n 49; provmual rrnnt. 104, 117

largess, ov1c, 102, 108, lll, 232-33, 254,261-69, 277-78, 284, 455n. 10; by German kings, 183, 184; impenal, 75, 77, 78, 101-2, 208, 220-21, 227,241, 242-3 Ftg. 9.1-2, 259,269,284 Laurium, mmes of, 22, 82, 98 legends, on coms, 25, 29, 46, 52, 74, 77, 93, 107, 135, 150, 167, 187, 189,191,479. See also types legionary denarii, 60, 74, 93, 40 In. 59, pi 7.42 Leo!, 176;comageof, 177,178,192 Leo Ill, comage of, 206, pi 21 I 98 Leovigild, coinage of, 185, pi 28.234 lex: Burgundorum, 183; Clodia, 26; /ulw Pap1ria,47, 48; Sempronia militaris, 212 L1cmms I, comage of, 159, lo 3, 164, 165 L1umus Lucullus, L, 54, 71, coms ol, 79, pi 7.48 light-weight solidi, 196, 200, 4 37n. 38, pi 21191 Ltri, coins from, 17 Table 1 1, 18, 20, 35 L1v1usDrusus Mmor, M., 46 I.ivy (J' l.lVIUS) On COlllS, 26-27, reserves, 40, tnumphs, 15, 40, 41-42 Tahle 3.1 Lombards, 190, 195,199,310, coinage ol, 204-5, pi 30 245-4o Londm,um, 1mpenal mint, 20, 148, 151, lo,, 173, pi lo 112-B, pi 21 174 I uceria, mmt of, 34, 40, pl. 5.27-28 Lugdunum (Lyon)· Burgundian mmt, 183, pl. 27.225, rn·1c mmt, 88-89, pi 9.o5 and 70; 1mprnal mmt, 75, 80, 80, 90, 92, 141',, 161, I 70, 182, 185, 4 !0n. 49, pl. 8.54, pi 20.17271, pl. 22 182 and I 80 Lyna, 12, 2o3, comagc of, 100, 1021, pi 10 79 ~acedon, 44, o7, 68, 225, comagc ol, 40, ol, 08-09, pi 7 4o-47, mmcs c>f,82

523

Index Macrianus, coinage of, 14 3, 239 Macrinus, coinage of, 8, 126, 132, 138 Magnentius, coinage of, I 59, 169- 71 , 173, pl. 22.185 Magnus Maximus, coinage of, 173-74, pi 21.170 maiorina (AEl, AE2), 167, 169-72, 174,178,309, 431n. 31,479, pi 22.180, 185-86 and 188; imitative, pi 22.183 Malalas, John, on coins, 192 Marcian, reserve of, 176, 310 Marcomanni, 120; coin use by, 29496 Marius Gratidianus, M , edICt of, 5 I markets: barter m, 250-51; coms m, 3-5, 251-53, 259-60, 264, impenal mint, 75, 80, 86, 90, 92, 146, 163, 170, 182, 185, 4 !0n. 49, pi 8.54, pi 20.172-73, pi 22.182 and 186; on frontiers, 294, 296 Mass1ha (Marseilles), comage of, 30, 33, 36, 65, 66; Frankish mmt, 184, 312 Maurice Tiberius, 184, coinage of, 192,195,198, pi 37.219; imitative coins of, pi 27.226, pi 30.245-46 Maxentius, coinage of, 159, 160, 161 Max1mianus, comage of, 148, I 51, pi 19.154 Max1minus I, comage of, 133, 134 Maximinus II Da1a, comage of, 159, 161, 164, pi 19.160 Max1mus, coinage of, pi 17 141, pi 18.153 Mediolanum (Milan), 1mpenal mmt, 144, I 46, 175, 189; Ostrogothic mmt, 188-89 mercenaries, com use by, 4-5, 23, 27, 30, 35-36, 63-M, 129, 160-61, 195,200,225 Mesopotamia, 199, 297; c1v1ccrnnage of, 87, l02-3, 110,202,259,297 Messana, coinage of, 21, 35, 36 Messene, tax register of, 213 m1liarense, 162, 173, 177, I 92, 479, pi 21 165-67 m1hares1on, 206, pi 2 3 198

524

mmes: copper, 83, 118; gold, 62, 79, 80-83, 87,118,129,146,185, 292-93, 302,307,313, 412n. 74; silver; 20, 22, 30, 34, 40, 46, 54, 58,66, 74, 79, 80,82,87, 98,100, 129, 185, 295, 301, 397n. 8, 408nn. 29 and 31, 414n. 12; zinc, 81 mint, Roman, organizauon of, 9-10, 46,83, 160-61, 175,192, 208-9. See also officina mmtmg, technology, 9-IO, 116, 132, 134, 115, 150, 169, 177, 198, 2024, 420n. 14,475, 477-78. See also engravers mmts CIVIC, 63-64, 69, 88-89, 97, 100-101, 107, l09-13, 110 Fig. 5.1, 253; Empire, 75, 86-87, 90, 134,139, 144-45, 151-52, 171, 190,194, 198-99, 201, 210-11, 405-6n. 6, 410n. 49, 423n. 39; provincial, 100, 103-4, 107-8, 137-38; Republic, 28-29, 32, 3435, 39,46-47, 50-51, 53-54, 63, 400nn. 40 and 49 Mithridates VI Eupator, 50, 51, 54, 71 Moesta, 161, mmes of, 80, 82, 83; Roman coms m, 62, 87, 292 monetary edict. see edict, of Had nan monet1zat1on, 3-4; of Dacia, 293; of Gaul, 5-6, 65; of Germany, 29596, 310-311, of India, 306; of Nor1cum, 293, of Republican Italy, 221, 24, 25-27, 29-30, 36-38, 4045, 48, 51-53, 58-59, 72, of Roman Egypt, 118, 2 34- 38, 246, Fig 9 5; of Roman Empt re, 3-4, 16, 51-52, 58-59, 60-65, 77, 86-90, 109-1 I, 179-81, 181-82, 185-86, 190-91, 205-6, 215, 217-19, 224-26, 230, 235-49, 250-59, 270-71, 288-89; of Spam, 5-6 moneychangers, 7, 47, 114, 121, 16667, 174, 178, 241, 242-46 Fig 9.1-5, 247 moneyers (lrn vin monrlale,), 46, 50, 75, 76-77, 210, 407n. 12, pi 6 40,

Index

pl. 8. 56-59; Frankish, 184, pl. 28.228 mult1ples, gold 134, 148, 160, 161, 175, 192, 223, 311, pl. l 9 154; silver, 161-62, 173,177,223,479 mutiny, 216, 217-18, 225-26, 275 Mylasa coinage of, 100, edict of, 239 Neapolis (Naples), cams of, 27, 199, pl. 1.1 Nemausus, mmt of, 88-89, pl. 9.6667 Nero, 90,216,221; coinage of, 8, 83, 85, 90-91, 101,104, 118-21, 210, 214,241,280,305,475,476, ~. 8.60-64, pl. 11 85-86 and 90, pi 12.98, pi 14.111 Nerva, 292; coinage of, 104, pl. 10 73 New Carthage (Cartagena; Carthago Nova), mint of, 30, 33, 34, 63, 199, pl. 23 195 New Style C:omage, of Athens, 39, 68, 98, 403-4n. 82 N1comedia, civic mmt, 109; 1mpenal mint, 163, 194, 200-203, pl. 22.190; provmual mmt, 102 Noncum· coins of, 87, 293; mmes of, 82,293 Numantia, coms from, 56, 61 Num1d1a, coinage of, 55, 88 nummus, 4, 8, 20, 47, 149-59, ltd67, 217,223,248,270, 280-83, 289,309, 426n. 56,427n 1, 47980, pi 19 1''7-'58, pi 21 172-7lJ, Italic weight, 21, slang fllr denanus, 51, 66 nummus mm1mus (AE4), lf>f>-h7, 174-75, 178-80, l 8 l-84, l8h-88. 192, 2 l9, 308, 42lJ-llln 20,430 l l n 27, 4 3 3nn 40-41, 480, pi 21 177-78, pi 22 llJ0-L)l, pi 28 2 3'5 OB (obrvz111tum), on sohd1, lf>0. lf>H. pi 20. lf>2, pl. 23 ll)2 llhol bronze, f>7, f>9, 97, l0lJ. 114lf>, 120-21, 128, 2 35--40, 258, 270,278,419nn l7and N,480.

pl. 12.98; silver, 5, 22, 23, 65, 66, 87, 480; slang for follis, 117, 192; two-assana, 116-17, 128 obryz11e(gold mgots), 153, 159 Octavian (C Julius Caesar Octavianus), comage of, 53, 57-59, pi 6.34 and 44. See also Augustus Odovacer, coinage of, 188 ,ifficina, 139,144,146,164,171, 192, 194, 196-97, 210,211 See also workshop Opramoas, benefactor, 102- 3, 232, 263 onchalcum (brass), c01n alloy, 57, 76, 91, 107,134,440, pl. 8.56-57 and 62-63 Ostrogoths, 184, 310, 464n 60, mmage of, 188-91, pi 29.240-44 Otho, coinage of, 92 output of aes, 47-48, 50, 83-84, 108, 109-13, 128,114, 401n. 58, aes grave, 24, 26-27, of antommam, 139; of argente1, 177; of aure1, 30, 33, 52, 53, 56, 71, 75, 78-79, 394n. 38; by Carthage, 27, of ustophon, f>9, 99-100, 106, 2'56, 41 3n. 3; of coms, esumated from dies, 2, 5, 10-15, 389n. 14, of denarii, 14-15, I 5 Fig. 1.2, 39-42, 51-53, 56, 58, 75, 78-79, 3949'in. 40, 396-97n. 7,401n. 59, of d1drachmae (heavy denarn), 26-27, 28, of drachmae, 10, 100, 139, ,ynan, I 04-f>, l 39; hy Zealots, 2 55-5f> overstnkmg, ol c01ns, 22, 31, 3'5, 'SO, f>l, 100, 106, l ll, lf>9, 195,201, 203, 20f>, 2'5'5-'if>, 404n. 82,480, pi 25.207 ( )xyrhynchus, archive from, 209, 2 3 3 l'aeslllm (Posndomal, 47, 'i 3, '54

mmt of, 2 3, Vi,

525

Index

Panopolis, archive of, 152,210,223, 220 Parth1a (Arsac1d Empire), 297, 298, 299: comage of, 81,291, 301, pi 31258-59 Parth1an War: ol Antony, 59; of Caracalla, 128, 138, 258-59, of Marcus Aurelius, 85, 95, 102, 120, no, 222, 299, of Trapn, 77, 78, 79, 85, 95, 102, 113 Paschale Chronicle, on c01ns, 200 Pausanias, on coms, 302 pay. ol late Roman soldier, 21 7-18, 283-80, of legionary, 16, 24, 27, 30, 32-33, 35-30, 212,216,217, 218, 224-26, 229, 272-77, 28081, 392n llJ. See also salaries, wages payrolls, army-Empire, 12lJ, I 3 I, 144, 2lo-18, 226, 228-29, -Republic, 38, 42, 44, '54-55, 212- I 5 Sec also army, costs of penny, English, o-8, 177, 184, pi 28231-32 pcntanumm1a. I 9 3, 198, 20,, 480 Pcrgamum, o7, 08, 2'5o, edict at, 114. I lo, 209, 2'59, prc1"rnual rrnnt, o9, 71. 7o, 88,107.109, 241. 40on o 413n l.pl 749,pl. 1294-9'5 Persia (Sassarnd I:mp1rc), 299, l07, rn1nagc ol, lJ, 20, 192, 307-8, 31112, pl. l2 2n0-n I Persian wars, 102, 111. 128, 29, l l8N, 141,144,170, 17'. ILJ'i. llJn, 199-200, 2l11- l, 307 f'crtmax. rnmagc ol, 8, 12h

Philip I, 129, 311, comage of, 129, 133, 134-35, 142-43, 210 Philip I Phdadelphus See pseudoSeleuud coinage ph1lipp1c (aureus philippeus), 49. See stater Philostratus, on customs, 238 Phocas, 310; coinage of, pi 23 19293 plate. eccles1astical, 172, 184-85, 195, 200; as 1mpenal gift, 153, 161, lh2, 233; Sassarnd, 192 plated denaru, lo, 50-5 I Sec also counterle1ts Plrny the Elder (C Plm1us Secundus) on coins, 21, 39, 40, 60, 29 I, mrnes, 81, prices, 264, 300, reserves, I 5, 45; speue drain, 303, 304 Plrny the Younger (C Phrnus C:aecilius Secundus): cm cities, 264: on fairs, 267 plunder. by barbanans, 129, 187, 309, 3 I 0-1 I, as source of Roman comage, 25-26, 27-28, 33-37, 38-44, 53, 58, 64, 66, 07-68, 69-71, 75, 78-79, 92-93, 225, 228, 292, 31 3, 391n. 15, 392n 22, 394-95n 40 Plutarch, on corns, h9 Poggio P1cenze, hoard ol, 4 3-44 Polybius on prices, 27 3: on revenues. 40, on war, H Pomprn. bankmg at, 247, 2hl, 278, COlflS I rum, In- 18 Pompe1us. Sex, comage ol. '58-59 Pompey tCn Pompe1us Magnus), 12, '54. 70, 71, 21 l. 220: crnnagc ol. '52, 55 J\)J\tUs,rn1nagcol, 100. ll11, 111-ll, 25l) l'opuloma, crnnagc of, H. 3CJ5n 41, pl. 2 20-22 l\1sturnus, rnmage of I 35. 14'5 pound, Roman (/1/Jrn), 2 I. 24. 28, l l '5 Praencste, '5 l, mint nf, 2 l

Pc.:-,ccnrnusi\1ger, cPmagc of, Hh

premium,

Palestme, 202, 269, 272, 276, 27879, 286 Palmyra, 14 3, 291, 298, 307, tanff law of, 108 panic, financial, 5, 49, 85, 209: and hoard mg, 7-8, 93-94, 14 3, 15550, 165 Pannorna, com use in, 87, 89, 11 3, 173

Plulacklph1a, l,lX registers nf. 2 l ,. 248-4lJ, 254

526

lHl

exchange

2 H, 2 l8 - N, 260

(agw), 2L)i.J,

Index

Pnce Edict. See edict, of Hadnan prices: cited m com, 188, 251-52, 270; famine prices, 276, 287-88, 463n. 66; mdex of, 253, 276 Table 111; regulation of, 116, 153, 172, 262,275,270,277, 281-82; rtses m, 48, 75, 78-80, 125-26, 143, 152, 165-66, 169,196,201,209, 271,274,276,280, 281-83, 288; seasonal fluctuations of, 3, 277, stability of, 3, 83, 96, 120, 123, 125, 127,142, 147, 197-98, 274-75, 285, 288-89 See also mflation prices, of specific commodities: arms and armor, 223-24; barley, 271, 273, 283, 454n. 8, 458n. 29; beer, 279, 460n. 43; bread, 116, 128, 271, 278-79, 283,287, 453n. 1, 458nn. 31-32, 459n. 34,462n. 60, 462-63nn. 62-63; buildmgs, 45, 166, 227, 262-64; clothing, 281, fish, 279, 460n. 42, 462-63n. 62; gladiatorial games, 265; gold, 79, 94,221, 225,407n 18, 427n. 18, horses, 217, 224; meat, 283, 463n. 66; oil, 276, 277. 279. 456nn. 13-14,459n 38, 463n. 64; silk, 300, 467n. 230; silver, 159, 426-27n. 65, slaves, 462n 61, spices, 300, 466nn. 27-28; wheat, 48, 55, 70,212,265, 271-76, 277, 280. 281-83, 284-86, 392n 19, 400-40ln 50. 454-55nn 9-1 I and 1 l, 457nn 21 and 2>-24, 27h Table 11 1, 458nn 29- ,(), wim·. 273, 279-80, 283,454n 8, 456nn. 13-14, 459n ,7. 460n l7. 4h 3, n 64; woolens. \00 St'ep11m1usSevcrus, 126, 216, 224, rnmagc of, 86, 120, 126, l 36- 38, 280,pl 13.101 Serd1ca, 1mpenal mml, 146, pi 15 125 snrali (serrate dcnarn), 46, 295, 481, pi 6 40 scs1ert1us, 481, as account mg u1111, l l4, I 50, 16 l; ol llosporus, 301, pi

Index 31 257; bronze, 57, 95, 128, 13435, 146, pi 7.45, pi 16.127-28; civic, 114, pi 13.104 and 106; double sestert1us, 135, pi 15.126; orichalcum, 6, 18, 76-77, 83-84, 85, 90,91, 222,270,275,278,296, ~. 8. 56; provmc,al, 76, 88, 107, pi 9.65, pi 12.94; silver, 32, 33, 40, 46, 48, 56, pi 2.18 Severus Alexander, 102, 108, 217, 222-23, 225; comage of, 102, 125, 128,132,210, pi 17.142 and 145 Severus II, coinage of, 163 sextans, 18, 4 7, 481 SHA (Scriptores liistonae Augustae) on donat1ves, 222; on soldiers, 225 Shapur I, 113, 144, 128,129,307, 311, comage of, 9, 129, 307, pi 32.261 Shapur II, 173, 308 shekel, of Carthage, 28, 30, 34 Sicily Byzantine coins of, 199,202, 204, pi 26.214; Greek corns of, 22-23, 28-29, 30-31, Roman coins in, 31, 35, 37, 54, 62,89 Side,comsof, 115, 140-41, 147, 422n. 34, pi 18148-53 siliqua, silverrnm, 187-89, 199,241. 482, pi 23 I 99-200, pi 28 216. pi 29.241 silk, trade m. 297, 299. 105. 108. 109 silver, currency in Empire. 75. 91. 91-99, 126-32, 149, 155-56, 158, 161-62, 172-73, 177. 189, 192, 199,200,206; m Germarnc We,t, 183, 185-87, 189-90, Greek, 2221, 67-69, 118-19, provincial. 76. 94, 97-106, 116-39, m Rrpuhhc, 7-8, 14-17, 25-27, 29-30, 3234, 40-%, 51-51, 55 -56. 6LJ-71 'iirm1um. 1mpenal mmt, 82, pi 22 187 ',i;.ua, 1mpenal mint, 82. !H. 150. pi llJ 160, pi 20 165 Skar. tax register ol. 178. I 79. 4 31n 51 Smyrna, rnmagc ol, 111, 112 hg 'i 2,

113, 116, 139-40, 147, 256, pi 12.98-100, pi 13.101-3 Sooal War, 47, 48,212,213; coinage of, 50, pi 6.39 Socrates, histonan, on taxes, 160 Sogdiana; 297, 308, 309; coinage of, 302, pi 32.267; mmes of, 80, 301, 307 soldiers, corn use by, 16-18, 43-45, 52, 56-57, 61,64,69, 75,84,85, 89, 110-13, 129,131,134,139, 205, 225-26, 230, 258-59, 269 solidus, 5,149,153, 159-60, 17576, 180, 183, 191-92, 195-96, 198,199,200, 204-5, 209-10, 217,257,270,289,290,291,303, 309-12, 314, 427n. 1, 440n. 7, 482, pi 20.161-62, pi 23.192-94; as accounting urnt, 176-77; Germamc 1m1tallve, 183-85, 188-89, pi 27.220, 222, 224-25 and 227, pi 28.233, pi 29 240; slang for aureus, 74, 149, 153 Spain, 53, 54, 60, 63-64, 131, 145, 213, 225; mmes of, 20, 22, 30, 14, 40-42, 46, 54, 58,60-61, 74,8082, 87, 97, 100, 129, 185, 293, 397n. 8, 408nn. 29 and 11; nauve coins of, 5-6, 10, 63, 64; Roman corns m, 64, 87-89, 198-99, 241, 244 Fig.9.3, 247, Surv1c coins m, 181; V1sigoth1ccorns m, 184-85 speue llows. wnh Afnca, 9, 49, 63, 113, 414n. Vi, m Daua, 79, 80, 94, 2LJ2-91; m Far East, 78, 112, 290, 291,297,299, l00-101, m Mediterranean, 22, 17, 19, 53, 60-61, 62, 67, 72, 102-3, 106, 118, 12829, 161, 169, 184-85, 198,253, 257, 285, 109, 310-11, m northern Europe, 295-96, m Persia, I 36, 139,192,200, 312-13; regulation ol, 49, 175, 176, 206, 108-9 spices, trade m, 290, 297, 305, 308 stater, 482; gold, 2 l, 28, 30, 11, 36, 39, 42, 49-50, 53, 63, 65, 66-67, 87,118,291, 292-93, 301, 302, silver -Creek, 22, 482. -prov1n-

Index

stater (cont'd. ) cial, 69-70, 71, 86-87, 94, 97-98, 102, 105-6, 136-39, 210,241, 256-57 Straho on coins, '5, 87; mrnes, 80, 81, trade, 79-80, 304 Stratomcea, 268, corns of, 100, 11115, 139-40, 266, 453n. '51, pl. 14.107 subsidies by Persia, 192, 309; paid by Rome, 129, 176, 184, 189, 230, 292,295, 310-12, 469n. 60, 47071n. 66 subsistence, pnce of: for adult male, 262, 271-75, 279,282, 286-87, 452n. 42, 4'53-54nn. 1-3, 457n. 19,462n. 60, 462-63n. 62, 463Mn. 67; for family of four, 271, 273, 279-80, 282,287, 4'5556n. 12, 459-60n 39. 460n. 43, 461n. SI, 463n. 64 Suetonius Tranqu1\lus, C:., on pnce rises, 209 Sueves, 92, coinage of, 185, pl. 27.222-23 supply, of money, 3, 29, 31, 4 3-46, 51, 77-78, 80, 82-83, 89-90, 108, 111, 144-45, 151-52, 207-9, 211, 221, 225, 259-60, regulauon of, 114, 116, 117, 120, 123-24, 143, I 53-54, 166-67, 169, 175-76, 181, 206, 308-9; shortages of, 3, 14, 28, 11-32, 37, 47-48, 57, fl7, 84, 85, 89, 95, 114-35, 16 I. I 7071, 17'5-76, 181. 184-85, 18h. 190, 1%. 209,219, 311 sweatrng, of corns, 7. 50-'5 l, 112, lfl9. 281 Syagnus, coinage of, 183 symhof1hon, 122. 2 l4 Syracuse, 3 l; cornage of, 2 3. 28. 30. l4. 36, h2; as 1mpcnal mrnt. 199. 204 ~yna, 144. 199; coinage -CI\'IC, 11 3. -1mprnal, 20, I 3lJ. 144. 202, -provmual, 39, hlJ-70. 88. lJ4. lJ8, 103-5 Ill? -8. 137- \9, h7 -~clcurnl,

530

bbae, corns of, 100, 113, 11 '5, pi 17.147 TablettesAlberlini, 186,188,191 lautus, cornage of, 141, 147, 42425n. 49,475, pl. 15.124 talent; 197n. 8, 473,474,475 Talmud on corns, 11 '5, 114; on rnflauon, 166; on moneychangers, 2 38, 260 Taprobane (Sn Lanka), Roman corns In, 91-94, 290, 29], 305, 308-9, 314 Taras (Tarentum), corns of, 22, 23, 27, 10, 11, 33-34, 36, pl. 1.2 tariffing, of corns: antonrnianus, 128, 132-31, 11'5, 118, argenteus. 149, 151-'53; as, 25, 47, 51, 391n 11, assanon, 115-16, 141, 147; aurel1amanus, 146-4 7; aurcus, 13, 74. 132-33, 146,149, !'51-53, 40'5n. l; denanus, 25, 32,47, 74, 77, 128, 405n. 1, d1drachma (hea\'y denanus), 25, 391n 13; drachma, 70, 98, I 02, folhs, 188, 189, 19293, 197 Table 8.1; nummus, 149, 151-53, 163-65, nummus mm1mus, 168 Table 7.3, 174, 178-79. 187, oho!, bronze, 108. I 14-1'5, solidus, 168 rablc 7. 3, I 74, I 7879, 187-89, 192-93, 197 rable 8 1, tetradrachma· -Akxandnnr. 98, 119. 147; -Ant1ochenc, 1034. - Tynan. I O3 Sl'C al.st,exchange rates

hrrarn. mrnt of, 74. 8'J larsus rnrnage of. !Oh, 108, 116-37. 118, 4 l '5n 26, pl. 10 82-83. hoard of. 259 taxes. rnllect1on ol. 2 32- 3 3. arrears m. 208. 231. 233. m min. Empire. 42, 79. 8h, 9l. lJ8, llll, 106. lll7. 115. 121-21, l'i3-54, !5lJ-fll. lfl7. 177, IN. 18'5, 18n. 189. 2078, 211,228, 2\1-35, 2$5-)(1 bhle 9.1. 2 39, 240. 248-49. 252 2',4, 2 '5(1,427n I 4 33n 5 I. 446n ti5, 111k1ml. '54. l '53. I 'Sh 248. 24lJ. 2'51, registers ol. 115.

Index

121, 152-53, 177, 196, 232-33, 234- ,5, 219, 248-49; remissions from, 79, 94, 208, 209, 231, 262, 287-88, m Republic. , l, 32, 40, 42, 43-46, 50-51, 54, 63-64. 68-69, 397n 12 rcbtyms, com circulation at, 254-55; record olfice ol, 254-55, 277, 27980, tax register of, 232 terentianu, (follis), I 92, 193 tetradrachma, 22. 482: Alrxandnne. 14, 97, 98, 117-21, 123, 142-4 3. 147-48, 172,210, 228-29, 23540, 254-55, 270,280,286, 418n 48,424n 46,pl 14.108-9 and 111-12. pi 17 138-39. Atheman, 23, 36, 19, 67, 70, 71, pi 748: civic -ofC:ilicia, 104, pi 10.82, -of Tyre, 97, 98, 103. 105, 209. 31 3, pi 11.92, Macedoman, 44, 67, 68, 69, 71, 92. 291. pi 7 47, Parthian, 301, pi 31 258: PtolemalC, 118-19, ~eleuud. h7. Sogdian. 302. pi 32 2ti7. Synan, 98, 103-5, 117- ,9, 210,212,241, 255,299, ,01, pi 7 '51, pi 11 8lJ91 Tetncus 1. rnmage of, 14'5. pi 1(1 110 tetmbol, bmnzc. 116 1headelphia, 2llJ, 280: mm use ,H. 254,280 Thrndebert, rnmage ol. HH. l I 2 Ihcodom. 188, 1lll. rnmage ol. \WJlJO. pi 2Y 240 Theodosius 1. rnmage ol. I hll Ii l7'5. pi 20 lM, pi 22 188 rheodosius 11.210. 1\l1. rn1nagc ol 178,183, pi 21 171. pi 22 \lll. re serve ol, 17h. 310 I heopham·s. on c rnns. 2111 l I hessalomca. 1mpenal mrn1 I 'i I -'12 17'i llJ2. llJ4. \LJLJ 2ll2 211 pi 211 I nK rhessaly. w1nage ol. tJ8. 114. 11 'l J'hracc. \lJlJ, rnms nl. WJ. 1111m·,,,I H2 T1hcnus. Wi. 2lYl. 2\n. 221 224. 2c,2 rn1nagc· lli. Ti. 85. H7. lJ2. ilH.

117, 118-20, 121. 172, 228, ,os. pi 9 68, pi 12.99, pi 14 108 Tibrnus II, comage of, 1%, 198, pi 26.218 Ticmum (Pavia)· impenal mmt, 146, pi 15.122: Ostrogothic, 190 Tnus. 79, 225, 225, comagc ol, 84, 9,, pi 29.2 39 token currency. Sec fiduuary currency Totila, 189, llJ'i trade, m Mediterranean, 21-22, 61n2. ti3, h'i. 80, 86, 184-85. 18h. 253, to Arabia Felix, 283, 297, to Azama, 78, 118, 128-29, ms. 31 3 to Central Asia. 78, 192, 283, 29798, 100- 302: to Chma. 78, 283. 297-98, 102. to Dana. n2. 291-94, to India, 78, 283. 298. lO'i-6, 308. to '-icar East, 101, 192, 2lJ7-98. ,01, to northern l:urope. 'i. 29396, 109, 310-1 I. regulatmn of, 209, 298-99. 308-9, 3 ! l-14, to laprobane, 9 l-94, 305-h, to West Alnca.(11. 79-80, 18h. I 98, 311 trade rnrn1ts. 290-91, 296. 299. 301 10(1 trade cums. l. aurcus. 51, 8h. lJ\. 132, 291. 298-99, 30 I, 30 l, 3lVi-h, 111, 311-14. dcnanus, 14. 62, 9 I 291. 292-%, 2lJ8, lO I. 104, 31 l14: dirhern. 107, 314: solidus. I hll. 184. 2tJO. 2lJ I, 30 l, 308. lOlJ. 312. 314, stater. gold, 4lJ-5l1. '5l. 'iK. n7. 2lJI. l02. tetradrachm.i. 22. 2l. lh. llJ.nl. ltll. ltH. \38.2lJI. 102 Tra1an. 18, 77-78. 85, l l l, 221,227. 2'5lJ. 2lJ2. ll l. crnnage ol. 7tJ, Y2lJ3. lJ4. !Ol, ICH-7. 120. \ l8, 2lllJ. 210.241.2~~-414n 1'5.pl. 10747'5 and 81-82. pi \ \ l)\ .ind lJl, pi l l \On lra1an Decius. rnmagc ol. \ l l. 1 l l. I l'i. l 4tl. pi l 'i. I 2h lralk,. 2h0. rrnnt ol. 7ll lrcbonianu, c;,dlus. rnm.igc t1I. 1 l I Ill. 141. pi 15 I lh

Index

trem1s (or trem1ss1s), 175, 198, 199, 205,481, pl. 20.164, pl. 23.19596: m barbarian, 182-81, 185-86, and 188, pi 27 2 31-14, pi 28. 228 and 2 30, pl. 10 245-46 trcss1s, 32, 483 Treveri: Frankish rrnnt, pl. 27.221, imperial mmt, 20, 144-46, IS I, 159, 161,163,175,182,181,185,211, pl. 19.154, pl. 20 162 and 166-67, pi 21 169, 171, and l 7'5-77, pi 22.184 tndrachma, 22, !00-102, 136-38, pi 10.83-84, pi 17 137 triens, 481, pl. 5.28 Tullius Cicero, M .. coms ol, pl. 7 50, on crnns, 51, '52, 06, 69, 241, on revenues, 260: on prices, 274 Twelve Tables, 21, 26 types: on CIVIC COIJ1S, 107-8, 111, 111, 116, 140; on 1m1tat1vecoms, 181-87, 189-90, on provmc1al coms, 68, 69, 76, 88, 99-10 I, 101-4, 107, 113-14, 120-21. 139, on Roman coms, 25, 27, 32. 13, 4h, 48, 52, '55-56, 57-58, 59, 74, 76, 77-78. 88, 92, 91, 127-28, I 3231, 145, 1'50, 1'56, 161-62, lh5, lh7. 1/JlJ. 171-72, 178,191,196, 200, 205, 270 Ser a/10 legends lyre. 101. rnmagc of, 97. 98, lOl, 104,ll7,pl 11.92 1:mayyad Ca\1phate, coinage of, 185. 2ll5,pl l0247-'>l unc1a llllTl, 47,483. weight, 24. 28, h7,, 1'> Lraniu'.-iAnton mu~. comagc ol, I F) Vahalla1hus, nllnag,· ol, 14 l. 14'5 Valens. 217, crnnage lli, I 56, 158-h I, 171-73, 180,211,479,p\ 20 ln2. cd1c1s ,,1, 17'>. 211. l09 V,t!cntrn1a11I, 217, comage of, I '>h, I '>8-fl I , I 7 I - 73, 180, 2 I I 4 79, pi 20 lnh,pl 21 lti9,cclic'hlli, I 7'>, 2 I I, lllLJ

5 l2

Valen1m1an II, 209; comage of, 174, pl. 22 190 Valentiman Ill· coinage of, 178; cd1c1 of, 167-68, 178, 189, 193, 20lJ, 284, 1m1tat1vecoins of, 183-85, pi 27 22 3-24 Valerian 1, 129, coinage of, 131, 141, 144 Valerius Flaccus, C, coms ol, 51 Valerius l'laccus, L, 51 value marks, 485, on civic aes, 88, 140-41, 147: on Etruscan rnins, 195n. 40; on OstrogothK coms, 189, on Roman coms, 12, 33, 47, 91, 144, 146, 147-49, 151, 159, 163-65, 167, 169, 187, 189, 19291, 196, 199-200, 202- 3, on Vandal coms, I 87-88 Vandals, 176, 186, 217, 109-10; COITlage of, 18/J-88, 191, 41'5-16n. 21, pi 28.236-37, pl. 29 2 38-39 Veget1us, on sold1crs, 225 Velia (Elaea), mint of, 27, 47, 54 Venus1a, mmt of, 14, 40 Vespas1an, 216, 227, coinage of. 83, 86, 92, 93, 100, 104 Vc1uloma, coins of, 34, 395n 41 v1ctoriatus, 12-l 3, 40, 46-48, 48l, pi 2. 19 V1rna Kadph1ses, rnmagc of, 302, pi ,2 2h'5 \ 1psan1us Agnppa, M . rnms of, 88, pi 9 hh-h7 \'ts1go1hs, 175, rnmagc of. 183-85, pi 27 224, pi 28 2 l l Vi \'11el\1us. 221, rn1nage ol. 92 wagc.s. 251-52. ol laborers, 2h4. 274 75, 278-80, 286,287,288, 4h2n nl,4hl--64n n7,lllm1ncrs. 275, nscs ol, 279-80, 288, s1ahtl1111y"I, 274- 75. 288-B'J -~ff u/11, pay, salanc-., we1gh1 s!andard c,/ argcnlcus, l 4lJ, J/12, J 72 73: llf ,IS, 8, 24, 28 2lJ \0, ll-12,40,47,51 ola11rc11s. 'i2, 74.90-'Ji. 125-20. ll2-ll.

Index

146, 148, 149; of denanus, 32, 39, 45, 74, 76, 91, 125; of didrachma (heavy denanus), 25, 28; of folhs, 192-93, 197 Table 8.1, of nummus, 149, 164 Table 7.2, of quadrigatus, 30, of solidus, 159, 171, 196; -Alexandnnc, 98; -Antiochene, 98, 103, 104, -At11c, 22, 37, 67, 98,100,101, -cistophonc, 67, 98, 100; -lynan, 98, 104

weights and measures, 315-16 Wit1g1s, 184, coinage of, 189-90 workshops (werkstatte), 109, 110, 112 XX (or KA), on coins, I 46, I 48, I 51, 424n 44, 425n. 49,475 Zeno, crnnage of, 178, 188 Zosimus, on corns, 146

sn

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also in the series Ancient Society l lll cl Histo,y Roman Literary Culture: From Cicero to Apuleius Elaine Fantham

Scholars of Roman literature have often focused on the works and lives of major authors rather than on such questions as how these works were produced, who ·read them, and under what circumstances they were read. In Roman Literary Culture Elaine Fantham examines the changing social and historical context of literary production: the habits of ·Roman readers; the accessibility of literature through booksellers and libraries; issues of patronage and the utility of literature; the ways in which the constraints of the medium influenced writing and reading; and the extent to which ancient literary criticism reflected cultural assumptions of the age. cJ1•,1 i/a/,I.: 111lwnlcovt:r

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