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Diocletian's Currency Reform; A New Inscription

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Kenan T. Erim ,
Joyce Reynolds  and
Michael Crawford
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Extract

During the 1970 campaign of excavations at Aphrodisias in Caria, investigations begun during the previous summer in the Portico of Tiberius were continued and brought to light some 150 fragments of marble panels bearing inscriptions in Latin in a hand of the fourth century A.D. Initially, these fragments were considered additional evidence to the considerable harvest of pieces of Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices found in the course of preceding seasons. Most of them, indeed, proved to belong to the Edict. On closer examination and more careful transcription, however, it became clear that, while the Price Edict was cut on free standing panels, most of which were c. 0·12–0·14 m thick, a small number of fragments belonged to thicker panels.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 61 , November 1971 , pp. 171 - 177
Copyright
Copyright ©Kenan T. Erim and Joyce Reynolds and Michael Crawford 1971. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 The supervisors in charge of this excavation were Professor J. Stephens Crawford of the University of Delaware and Dr. Joseph Gary of New York University. The assistance of Mr. David MacDonald of the University of Minnesota, for a useful squeeze of fragments b (i) and (ii); of Mr. Frederick Lauritsen, of Eastern Washington State College (Cheney, Wash.) for recognizing the connection between fragments b (i) and (ii); and of Miss C. M. Wrinch, of Newnham College, Cambridge, for help with the transcriptions, is hereby gratefully acknowledged. In preparing the commentary we have had most generous help from Mr. Michael Hendy (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) and Professor S. Lauffer of Munich.

2 See JRS LX (1970), 120 f.Google Scholar (hereafter referred to as Erim/Reynolds). There can be little doubt now that in view of the huge quantity of fragments of the Price Edict found there the Portico of Tiberius is definitely part of the agora of Aphrodisias.

3 For the precise original location and display of the panels we still lack specific evidence. The great majority of the pieces discovered in 1970 were found within the Portico itself, and some were located near a building that lies immediately south of the colonnade, and was very probably a temple.

4 διχάρακτος in IGRR IV, 595 is no help.

5 For the idea of a currency reform complementary to the Price Edict, see Sutherland, C. H. V., RIC VI, 99Google Scholar.

6 For regulations covering repayment of debts applied to state debts, compare Cicero, pro Fonteio 1–5 on the Lex Valeria of 86 B.C.

7 For the notion of a debt being reclaimable in the exact form in which it was incurred, compare Dig. 46, 3, 99; 46, 3, 94, 1; M. Kaser, Tijdschrift 1961, 169.

8 See n. 5.

9 Compare Pliny, , NH XXXIII, 47Google Scholar, ‘ita ut scripulum valeret sestertiis vicenis’. For an argenteus of 100 denarii, see Epiphanius 15 = Hultsch, , Metrol. Script. I, 267Google Scholar; compare the equations 1 follis = 12,500 denarii (P. Panop. 2, 302, Feb./Mar. 300) = 125 silver coins (Epiphanius, 19 with 49 and 40 = Hultsch, , Metrol. Script. I, 269Google Scholar and 267).

10 J. Bingen, Chron. d'Eg. 1965, 206–8; his reluctant retraction of this figure, ib. 1965, 431–4, is unwarranted, and is rightly rejected by J.-P. Callu, Politique monétaire 358, n. 6.

11 See J.-P. Callu, Politique monétaire 357–8.

12 For the relationship of this to the argenteus see below.

13 The suggestion that the mark of value refers to the proportions of silver and bronze contained in the coins, Brambach, W., Frankfürter Münzzeitung 1920, 204Google Scholar; Bolin, S., State and currency 292Google Scholar, may be discounted–the proportions of silver and bronze are about 1: 25, not 1: 20, see n. 23. The view of L. H. Cope, NC 1968, 115, that the mark of value indicates 20 obols of silver to 1 libra of bronze is even more improbable (his assertion that the proportion is the same in the reformed coinage of Aurelian is simply untrue).

14 We take it that this figure, like the earlier figure of 100 denarii, expresses the value of a coin after the reform.

15 An eighth, J.-P. Callu, Politique monétaire 362 n. 1; a seventh, L. H. Cope, NC 1968, 148; over a seventh, T. V. Buttrey, Gnomon 1969, 679, para. 4.

16 A 12½ coin appears under Licinius, , RIC VII, 548, 607, 645, 681, 707Google Scholar, after a series of currency adjustments; a coin with a value including ½ is not plausible in Diocletian's new coinage of 294–301. We are not prepared to express an opinion on the marks (Lugdunum, , RIC VIII, 263Google Scholar, A.D. 308–9) and CMH (in monogram) Nicomedia, , RIC VI, 561Google Scholar, A.D. 308–11; Cyzicus, , RIC VI, 591Google Scholar, A.D. 311–13); cf. J.-P. Callu, Politique monétaire 464, n. 4.

17 For a coin named from its type compare quadrigatus, bigatiis, victoriatus. Note also Pliny, Paneg. 52, radiatum caput.

18 Compare Gaius I, 122, ‘nummorum vis et potestas’; Volusius Maecianus, Distributio 44.

19 The absence of a phrase such as ut ante indicating that no change is involved may perhaps be explained by the hypothesis that the reform was fully described in the early part of the text of the inscription. The choice of the nummus argenteus and the radiate piece as the two coins to be mentioned here is readily intelligible; each is the larger of the two coins in their respective classes.

20 Anyone used to a silver standard doubtless believed that the measure devalued the radiate bronze coin and the small laureate bronze coin; if Ἰταλικόν ἀργύριον can be taken generically as meaning ‘Italian money’ (i.e. some of the new coinage of Diocletian introduced to Egypt in 294),P. Ryl. 607 perhaps reflects this belief.

21 K V, Antioch, RIC VI, 620Google Scholar (A.D. 300–1); XXI, Alexandria, RIC VI, 648, 651, 665Google Scholar (A.D. 300–1); XX 1, Siscia, RIC VI, 437, 445, 467Google Scholar (c. A.D. 300).

22 C. H. V. Sutherland, JRS 1961, 94.

23 XX I = 20 units (denarii). Contemporary marks of value on the aureus and argenteus identify them as fractions of a pound of gold and silver respectively, a significant difference of approach; the aureus and argenteus now, as the solidus later (CJ 10, 72, 5), were worth just their metal content, the large laureate silver-bronze coin was valued in terms of denarii and heavily over-valued. For the silver content of the coin see now L. H. Cope, NC 1968, 115 (with unacceptable conclusions, see n. 13).

24 Compare CTh. 9, 22; CJ 11, 11, 2 and indeed the whole of 11, 11, 1–3.

25 Compare the retariffing of the denarius in c. 141 B.C., Crawford, M. H., The Roman Republican coinage (Cambridge, forthcoming), Ch. 6.Google Scholar