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Dio, Zonaras and the Value of the Roman Aureus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

T. V. Buttrey
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Extract

The Roman aureus exchanged for 25 denarii. The evidence for the equation, all literary, has reached us rather indirectly. The earliest preserved source is Claudius Didymus (first century A.D.), quoted in Priscian; in the second century Lucian equated 30 aurei with 750 denarii; in the third, Dio 55, 12, 3–5, a lost passage entirely reconstructed from the epitomes of Xiphilinus and Zonaras, put the exchange directly (p. 41, [3] below). In addition, the exchange can be inferred from two parallel passages: Suetonius relates that when Otho entertained Galba at dinner he regularly gave each member of the guard an aureus (Otho 4, 2 = Plutarch, Galba 20, 4, χρυσοῦς); Tacitus tells the same story, using the words ‘centenos nummos divideret’ (Hist. 1, 24).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1-2 , November 1961 , pp. 40 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © T. V. Buttrey 1961. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Priscian De figuris numerorum 18, in Hultsch, F., Metrologicorum Scriptorum Reliquiae II (Teubner, 1866), 86.Google Scholar

2 The equation is quite off-hand and thus certain. Pseudologistes 30.

3 There is no doubt that at least sentence [3] below is directly from Dio; whenever possible Xiphilinus quotes verbatim. (For the first person pronoun, cf. the first person verb forms commonly taken over from Dio, e.g. Xiph. (Dind. p. 75, 11) = Dio 51, 1, 1).

4 Dio 71, 32, 1, makes obiter the equation 8 χρυσοἰ = 200 δραχμαί. Suetonius, Domitian VII (three aurei) parallels Zonaras XI, 19 (Dind. p. 58, 16–25) (25 drachms), but, obviously, not directly. I omit relating the two passages, which have to do with the army pay; the parallelism is involved and only confirms the other evidence. The problem is handled at length in Marquardt, , Römische Staatsverwaltung 2 (Leipzig, 1884) 11, 95–6.Google Scholar

5 Bahrfeldt, M., Römische Goldmünzenprägung (Halle, 1923)Google Scholar, no. 19. I leave his no. 18 aside; its authenticity is still questioned. At any rate the enormous issue of Hirtius created for the first time the question of the aureus: denarius ratio (the only really common Roman gold struck earlier, the Mars/eagle gold of the late third century, was marked with its value in asses, not denarii—nor sesterces, for that matter). Given the theoretical weight of Hirtius' aurei, lb., and that of the contemporary denarii, lb., the gold: silver ratio was 1: 11.90. Grueber (BMCRR 1, lx) seems to have believed that the aureus was always tariffed at 25 denarii, whatever its weight. But the results of this suggestion are anomalous: the earlier aurei of Sulla (Bahr. nos. 10–14), weighing lb., would have defined a gold: silver ratio of 1:8.93, an uncommonly high price for silver at a time of its great abundance; while the reductions in the weight of the gold coin would require that the price of gold rose just as great quantities of it were being thrown into circulation.

6 Dated to A.D. 194–5 by Guey, , in Bull. Soc. Nat. des Antiquaires de France 1952–1953, 89 ff.Google Scholar

7 Frank, T., Economic History of Rome 2 (Baltimore, 1927) 489Google Scholar; Mickwitz, G., Geld und Wirtschaft im römischen Reich des vierten Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (Helsinki, 1932) 37Google Scholar; Heichelheim, Fr., ‘Zur Währungskrisis des römischen Imperiums im 3. Jahrhundert n. Chr.,’ Klio 26 (1932–1933), 104Google Scholar; Oertel, in CAH XII, 725; Bolin, , State and Currency in the Roman Empire to 300 A.D. (Stockholm, 1958), 269.Google Scholar Frank gives a second example, Digest 29.5.25 (Gaius), 100 aurei (= 10,000 sesterces), and Paulus 3.5.12, 100,000 sesterces. The retariffing implied here is very harsh, and no other scholar seems to have used this doubtful analogy.

8 West, L., Gold and Silver Standards in the Roman Empire (Numis. Notes and Monographs 94, New York, 1941), 132–3.Google Scholar

9 I give each sentence a key number in brackets to avoid repetition of the Greek below.

10 Cassius Dio, ed. Boissevain, vol. II (Berlin, 1898), 497–8; ed. Dindorf-Melber, vol. III2 (Teubner, 1928), 186. The same text is taken up into Cary's Loeb edition, vol. VI, 422–4.

11 Xiphilinus' is the preferable text, cf. n. 3 above.

12 Kubitschek, W., ‘Rundschau über das letztverflossene Quinquennium der antiken Numismatik (1890–4),’ Jahresberichte d. K. K. Staatsgymnasiums im VIII. Bezirke Wiens 1894–5 to 1895–6; reprinted as Rundschau über ein Quinquennium, etc. (Vienna, 1896).Google Scholar

13 Heichelheim, o.c. (n. 7) 104–5; Bolin, l.c. (n. 7); Oertel, l.c. (n. 7), does not mention Dio specifically, but follows Heichelheim.

14 W. Schmidt, ‘Über die Quellen des Zonaras,’ in Zonaras ed. Dindorf, vol. VI (Teubner, 1875) i–lx. For our purposes Zonaras' greatest value is that he had access to a fuller text of Dio than we. Schmidt makes the good comment that Zonaras is still worth something for the historian, even if he is valueless as historian.

15 Schmidt, o.c. cap. xl, gives a neat example from Zon. 10, 19 (Dind. p. 394, 10–15), a sentence in which clauses, and then words are taken alternately from Dio and Plutarch.

16 Which stater, is another question. Cf. Gardner, P., History of Ancient Coinage (Oxford, 1918), 241–2, 424–5.Google Scholar The Persian daric at any rate seems to fit. The equation, 1 stater = 20 Attic drachms is given also by the mysterious Polemarchus, quoted in Hesychius s.v. χρυσοῦς (Hultsch, o.c. 328, cf. 307).

17 Thus, the present infinitive ἀλλάσσεσθαι need not indicate that Dio used the present tense in the original. For example, Josephus, Ant. 5, 188, ‘A young Benjamite named Judes was living [imperf. κατῴκει] in Jericho,’ becomes in Zon. 1, 22 (Dind. p. 68, 23–4), ‘A young Benjamite whose name was Aoth (but Josephus says he is called [pres. inf. καλεῖσθαι] Judes) …’

18 o.c. 104: ‘… das Wertverhältniss des Aureus zum Denar, das der Schriftsteller erst ausdrücklich zu bestimmen für nötig hält, nicht mehr das althergebrachte 1: 25 ist, wie es der römische Schriftsteller aus dem archaisierenden Sprachgebrauch der Attizisten kennt.’ Note too that he follows Kubitschek in the use of the clause ‘whose books I read …’.

19 cf. Pollux 9, 35, ἠδύνατο δὲ τὸ τοῦ χρυσίου τάλαντον τρεῖς χρυσοῦς Ἀττικούς.

20 Examples in any grammar, e.g. Kühner-Gerth 11, 201; or Smyth, H. W., Greek Grammar (Cambridge, 1956)Google Scholar § 1872, a, 1.

21 cf. Pollux 9, 59, οὶν Δαρεικοἱ ἐκαλοῦντο στατῆρες, οἱ δὲ Φιλίππειοι…

22 Schmid-Stählin VII, ii, 2, § 760–2.

23 Pollux 9, 59, εἰ μὲν χρυσοῦς, προσυπακούεται ὁ στατήρ, εἰ δὲ στατήρ, οὐ πάντως ὁ χρυσοῦς.

24 On rhetoric in Dio, one need note only the enormous speeches which he records; his selfconscious concern with his own style in the introduction (1, 1, 2); and, for our purposes, his great interest in vocabulary, in how words came to mean what they do (see the earlier Books passim). As evidence that Dio was right to make clear his use of χρυσοῦς here, note not only that Zonaras confused the two meanings of the Word anyway, but that χρυσοῦς as the Roman aureus still has not made its way into LSJ (‘= stater’) although it can be cited at least fifteen times in Didymus, Dio, Lucian, Plutarch, Tatian. For χρυσοῦς as the Byzantine solidus, this sense too wanting in LSJ, cf. e.g. Zosimus 5, 45.

25 Dio 1, 2, 4, ‘Details will be found in their proper place, whenever the narrative demands.’

26 Carson, R., ‘Alleged Antoniniani of Severus Alexander,’ Num. Chron. 6 15 (1955), 230–1Google Scholar, has proved that the known examples are false. On Severus Alexander's obscure monetary policy, cf. West, o.c. (above, note 8) 130.