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State and Coinage in the Late Republic and Early Empire*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

E. Lo Cascio
E. Lo Cascio
Affiliation:
University of Lecce
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Extract

From the time of the introduction of the denarius system onwards, Roman currency gradually spread over all, or nearly all, the regions under Roman rule, in the wake of their progressive integration into the Empire. Partly, the denarius replaced previous currencies, partly it brought about the monetization of areas not yet monetized. It was therefore the most striking feature, and indeed the logical premise, of the economic unification of the Empire (in so far as one can speak of such a unification). Until the Severan age, the Roman monetary system remained stable, notwithstanding the widening of the area it covered and the various changes it underwent—the introduction of new denominations and new metals, the retariffing of some elements in relation to each other, the transformation of the physical quality of the coins, for instance through debasement: in fact, there were no sudden and considerable rises of prices and Roman currency almost always enjoyed automatic confidence.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 71 , November 1981 , pp. 76 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © E. Lo Cascio 1981. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 See now Hopkins, K., in Abrams, Ph.—Wrigley, E. A. (edd.), Towns in Societies (1978), 39 fGoogle Scholar., and JRS 1980, 106 f.

2 E. Lo Cascio, MEFRA 1980, 445 f. and references there.

3 One can only speculate on the existence, in an only partially monetized economic system like that of the Roman Empire, of ‘primitive money’ (for the concept, see Einzig, P., Primitive Money2 (1976), esp. p. 309 ffGoogle Scholar.; see also Braudel, F., Capitalism and Material Life (1973), 330 ffGoogle Scholar.). Against a statement of Finley, , The Ancient Economy (1973), 141Google Scholar, J. Andreau argues that ‘l'activitg bancaire… crée nécessairement un pouvoir d'achat supplémentaire’, even if it does not create materially negotiable instruments, that is even if the possibility of a direct transfer of a credit is not provided for (ASNP 1977, 1143). Now, it is true that the intermediary activity of a bank can produce an increase in the value of transactions (insofar as it increases the velocity of circulation of money) and that the physical quantity of money which is necessary for a given level of exchanges is therefore less than it would be in the absence of a banking system. But I know of no measures aimed at influencing the economic function of banks of deposit and credit, although more general enactments that limited hoarding or lending or obliged people to invest in land a minimum of their property (infra, p. 83) had obvious effects on banking activity. In any case, given the limits of this activity and given the lack of an actual ‘creation of money’, it seems legitimate to leave out the whole issue.

4 Jones, A. H. M., The Roman Economy (ed. by Brunt, P. A., 1974), 74, 219, 224 fGoogle Scholar.; Crawford, M. H., JRS 1970, 40–6Google Scholar; Annales ESC 1971, 1228 f.; ANRW II 2 (1975), 560 f. On a more general level, an interpretation of pre-modern monetary policies in terms of public finance is offered by Hicks, J. R., A theory of economic history (1969), ch. VI, esp. p. 88 fGoogle Scholar.

5 JRS 1970, 45

6 ibid., 47.

7 Lo Cascio, E., Athenaeum 1979, 235 fGoogle Scholar.

8 Buttrey, T. V., The American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 1957, 57 fGoogle Scholar.; Crawford, M. H., Roman Republican Coinage (1974), 612 f., 621 fGoogle Scholar. Pliny's dating of the retariffing (N.H. XXXIII 45) is defended by Marchetti, P., in Les ‘Dévaluations’ à Rome. Epoque républicaine et impériale (1978), 197 fGoogle Scholar., and Histoire économique et monétaire de la deuxième guerre punique (1978), 174 f., 325 f., but he does not seem to have overcome the two main difficulties besetting his chronology, the appearance of the mark XVI on denarii issued around 140 B.C., which would be inexplicable if they were not contemporaneous with the retariffing, and the progressive abandonment of the sextantal standard in the course of the first decades of the second century B.C.

9 M. H. Crawford, PCPS 1968, 1 f.; but see Cascio, Lo, Athenaeum 1979, 215 ffGoogle Scholar.

10 What usually happened in pre-modern economies characterized by a metallic circulating medium was the progressive appreciation of full intrinsic value coins: Cipolla, C. M., Mouvements monétaires dans l'Etat de Milan (1580–1700) (1952), ch. 1Google Scholar; Money, Prices and Civilization in the Mediterranean World (1956), ch. III; see also Braudel, F. and Spooner, F., in Cambridge Econ. Hist, of Europe, IV, 379 fGoogle Scholar.

11 Crawford, PCPS 1968, 3.

12 The Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, III 481, ed. R. Hicks (=J. R. Oliver, Hesperia suppl. 6, 1941, 55–85), for Ephesus; OGIS 484 (on which see now Macro, A. D., Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 1976, 169 fGoogle Scholar.), for Pergamum. Of the two Transylvanian tablets taken by Crawford to prove that the denarius could be worth 20 and 24 asses (FIRA in, 157; CIL III, p. 953, see , Crawford, JRS 1970, 43 n. 32)Google Scholar, the former is too fragmentary to allow sure conclusions (J. R. Melville Jones, BICS 1971, 103), the latter may attest the particular rate of exchange of the mines coins, probably issued for exclusive use in the metalla (see now V. M. Simić and M. R. Vasić, RevNum 1977, 48 f.). The fluctuating relationship between aes and silver or billon coins in Egypt is a rather different problem: Gara, A., Prosdiagraphomena e circolazione monetaria (1976)Google Scholar.

13 In other words, whereas it was possible to use the denarius everywhere, without exchanging it (except for petty transactions, such as the ones alluded to in OGIS 484), it was perhaps not possible to use local assaria of Pergamum elsewhere, without being obliged to exchange them (I do not see why it should be an objection to the notion of limited legal currency for civic issues that there are bronzes with an imperial obverse and a civic reverse and bronzes with a civic type on both sides : Bellinger, A. R., in Essays in Roman Coinage presented to H. Mattingly (1956), 147 f.)Google Scholar: this probably made the denarius worth more than sixteen assaria. That the kollybos is a gain for the town is explicitly stated in OGIS 484, lines 19 f.; that it contains a remuneration for the trapezitai (who exercise, probably as contractors, the monopoly of the exchange) is obvious and emerges from the whole document (the attempt of A. Gara, op. cit. (n. 12), 115 f., to deny that lines 8–11 refer to the trapezitai is desperate).

14 P. Bad. 37 = P. Sarap. 90 shows, indisputably in my opinion, that the aureus was not tied by a fixed relationship to the tetradrachm (I accept the interpretation given by , J. Guey, Mél. Carcopino (1966), 458 fGoogle Scholar.): it is indeed possible that we face here an extraordinary occurrence (infra, p. 80), since it would have been impossible to maintain the equivalence between tetradrachm and denarius (West, L. C. and Johnson, A. Ch., Currency in Roman and Byzantine Egypt (1944), 72)Google Scholar, had the valuation of the aureus been continuously changing.

15 For the difficulties of maintaining a bimetallic system see e.g. Helfferich, K., Money (1927), 49 f., 356 fGoogle Scholar.

16 The evidence collected by Lewis, D. M., in Essays in Greek Coinage presented to S. Robinson (ed. by Kraay, C. M. and Jenkins, G. K., 1968), 105–10Google Scholar, shows the continuously changing gold-silver ratio in Athens from the middle of the fifth century to the middle of the fourth (see also W. E. Thompson, NC 1964, 103–23): the range of variations is not always low. We do not have comparable evidence for the period under consideration here, but the supposition seems legitimate that, even in the different situation of a big territorial empire, the range of variations would have been a wide one, unless the government intervened.

17 Even if we admit, with Crawford, Annales ESC 1971, 1232, that ‘free coinage’ did not exist at Rome, Gresham's law would have operated, since there was a market in uncoined precious metals.

18 A peculiar one, if there was no ‘free coinage’.

19 [Xen.] Poroi 4, 10 : see G. Bodei Giglioni, introd. to Xen. de vect. (1970), p. XLIV, p. LXXIV; Pol. XXXIV 10, 10 ap. Strabo IV 6, 12; Suet. DJ 54, 2; Jos. BJ VI 6, 1 (317): see Guey, art. cit. (n. 14), 472 f.

20 , Finley, The Ancient Economy, 20Google Scholar, quoting Schumpeter.

21 Davies, O., Roman Mines in Europe (1935), 3Google Scholar; Täckholm, U., Studien über den Bergbau der röm. Kaiserzeit (1937), 97 fGoogle Scholar.: this is true, whatever the system of exploiting them, if the opening of new shafts was under public control.

22 Walker, D. R., The Metrology of the Roman Silver Coinage, 1, BAR Suppl. Ser. 5 (1976)Google Scholar; II, BAR Suppl. Ser. 22 (1977); III, BAR Suppl. Ser. 40 (1978); see E. Lo Cascio, AIIN 1978, 252 f.; papyrological evidence: discussed by J. Guey, art. cit. (n. 14), 449 f. (on P. Giss. 70, see infra, pp. 80–81). I think we now have clear documentary evidence of the over-valuation of a pure silver coin, the argenteus of Diocletian: the price of silver bullion, in the edict, was fixed at 6,000 denarii (Edictum de pretiis, ed. M. Giacchero (1974), 28, 9, p. 206) and there were 96 argentei, rated at 100 denarii each on 1 September, 301 (K. T. Erim, J. Reynolds, M. H. Crawford, JRS 1971, 171 f.), to the pound, the rate of overvaluation being 60%. However one reconstructs Diocletian's monetary policy, in the light of recent discoveries, I do not believe it is possible to dismiss this datum (the hypothesis of J. Lafaurie, Rev Num. 1975. 107 f., of a radical fall in the price of gold and silver between September and November-December 301, is unbelievable). For CTh XIII. 2. 1 (397), see S. Mazzarino, Antico, tardoantico ed età. costantiniana (1974), 284 f. On S. Bolin's general theory of overvaluation of ancient coins, see now Lo Cascio, MEFRA 1980, 449 f.

23 Walker, op. cit., I, 87 f., III f.; see Lo Cascio, AIIN 1978, 252 f.; MEFRA 1980, 458 n. 44.

24 See now Walker, op. cit., III, 115 f.

25 Walker, op. cit., I, 96 f.; Lo Cascio, AIIN 1978, 256 f.

26 Walker, op. cit., II, 7 f., 55 f.

27 Booty : Lyd. de Mag. 28 = Kriton, FGrHist 200 F 1, corrected b y J. Carcopino, Dacia 1924, 31 f. =Les étapes de l'Impérialisme romain (1961), 112 f., see now e.g. Russu, I. I., Studii clasice 1972, 117 fGoogle Scholar.; mines : R. P. Longden, CAH XI, 232 f.; output of the mint : Hill, P. V., The Dating and Arrangement of the undated coins of Rome (A.D. 98–148) (1970), 36 fGoogle Scholar. and App. E; Lo Cascio, AIIN 1978, 75 f.

28 Congiaria : Chron. of 354, p. 146 Mo.; games : Fasti Ostienses, ed. Vidman, L., Rozpravy ĉeskoslov. Akad. Vêd., LXVII (1957)Google Scholar, XXI, XXII = Small-wood, E. M., Documents illustrating the Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (1966), nos. 21 f., p. 31Google Scholar; Cass. Dio LXVIII 15 (Xiph.); public works: Bodei Giglioni, G., Lavori pubblici e occupazione nell'antichità classica (1974), 199 fGoogle Scholar.

29 Walker, op. cit., II, 29 f., 33 f. 57 f.

30 Cass. Dio LXXIII (LXXIV) 8, 3 (Xiph.); compare Eutr. VIII 8.

31 Walker, op. cit., I, 96 f., 115 f.; III, 3, 51, 117 f., 127 f.; see also E. Lo Cascio, RFIC 1980, 285 f.

32 Clearly attested, in my view, by P. Bad. 37 = P. Sarap. 90: F. Heichelheim, Klio 1932, 124 f.; Mickwitz, G., Geld u. Wirtschaft im römischen Reich des IV Jhdts n. Chr. (1932), 32 fGoogle Scholar.; J. Guey, Mél. Carcopino (1966), 458 f. The attempt of Walker, op. cit., II, 117 n. 3, to deny the connection is not convincing: Lo Cascio, AIIN 1978, 88 n. 42.

33 The Roman Economy, 191 n. 3 (compare 74).

34 Walker, op. cit., II, 7 f., 55 f.

35 Cass. Dio LXVIII 15 (Xiph.).

36 See now Lo Cascio, AIIN 1978, 82 f.

37 Annales ESC 1971, 1232; see also D. Sperber, NC 1970, III f.

38 Lo Cascio, AIIN 1978, 88.

39 Pliny, NH XXXIII 67Google Scholar; Regling, K., Blätter für Münzfr. 1931, 370 fGoogle Scholar.; Thirion, M., Le tréor de Liberchies (1972), 43 fGoogle Scholar. and table on p. 47.

40 Guey, art. cit. (n. 32). 449 ff. I assume that Egyptian currency was convertible into Roman.

41 D. Foraboschi and A. Gara, CE 1976, 169 f. It is true, however, that we cannot say, with absolute certainty, whether this document is prior to the great debasement of Septimius Severus: M. Vandoni, Acme 1956, 27 f. = Papiri dell‘Università degli Studi di Milano, II (1961), 191 fGoogle Scholar.

42 It is indeed possible that the appreciation of silver was in part neutralized by the lower velocity of circulation of gold pieces, compared with silver ones: different coined metals, as they have different economic roles, circulate at different velocity (see the remarks of Spooner, F., L'économie mondiale et les frappes monétaires en France 1493–1680 (1956), 68 ffGoogle Scholar.).

43 Livy XLV 18, 3–5; 29, II; Diod. XXXI 8, 7: see now G. Calboli, intr. to Cato, pro Rhodiensibus (1978), 150 f., who believes Livy: but if Livy is reliable over the motive, why were only gold and silver mines closed ?

44 M. H. Crawford, EconHistRev 1977, 44 f. What follows can be true only if one accepts the absolute chronology established by Crawford in Roman Republican Coinage, 1.

45 L. Perelli, RFIC 1975, 411 f., plausibly argues that the closing of the mines, as well as the measures attested by Pliny NH III 138 and XXXIII 78, were prompted by the wish to avoid an excessive depreciation of gold and silver and a rise in prices.

46 Whatever the system employed by the state in exploiting the Macedonian mines : Richardson, J. S., JRS 1976, 143 fGoogle Scholar.

47 Crawford, RRC, 47 ff., 229 f.

48 T. V. Buttrey, AJA 1972, 31 f.; Crawford, in Les ‘Dévaluations‘ à Rome, cit. (n. 8), 151, 154 f.

49 Suet. Aug. 41, 2; Cass. Dio LI 21, 5; Oros. VI 19, 19 : the attempt of Rodewald, C., Money in the Age of Tiberius (1976), 7Google Scholar, to dismiss this evidence carries no conviction : Lo Cascio, AIIN 1978, 250.

50 According to Crawford, in adopting the new standard, Augustus may have been ‘influenced by the fact that the Lex Papiria was, as it were, the last law on the statute book’ : I cannot see why this could have been of importance, given the long interval between the two measures. Furthermore, it is worth observing that the standard was not precisely the same as that enforced by the Lex Papiria, that a new alloy was used for producing sestertii—formerly a silver denomination—and dupondii, and that copper was only used for the as and its fractions. In establishing a new monetary system, there would have been no need to refer to the last law on the statute book.

51 Les ‘Dévaluations’ à Rome, cit. (n. 8), 155.

52 This point is rightly made by Rodewald, op. cit. (n. 49), 140, although he objects that ‘prices would probably have been pushed up as a result’: but prices in gold and silver coins had already gone up (see supra, n. 49, and infra, p. 86) and the addition to the circulating medium, prompted by the revaluation, would not have been high, given the low value of the individual coins.

53 EconHistRev 1963, 413 f.; Le awenture lira 2 (1975), 59 f.

54 Cipolla warns that ‘the circumstances listed…can reasonably be defined as ‘causes’ only in an ex-post sense. Ex-ante, they are merely sundry types of problems which a given society may find itself called upon to solve, problems for which the depreciation of the currency is certainly not the only possible solution’. This is why I would speak rather of the purposes than of the causes of a particular monetary readjustment.

55 The other ‘causes’ listed are : ‘the growth of government expenditure and deficits’, ‘the pressure of social groups in the direction of profit-inflation’; ‘disequilibrium in the balance of payment’; ‘the mismanagement of the mints’; ‘the wear of the existing stock of coins in circulation, occasionally aggravated by the practice of clipping’, ‘fluctuations in the market rate of exchange between gold and silver’. All of them, except the second, have been suggested as responsible, alone or as contributory causes, for individual cases of depreciation in the ancient world too.

56 NH XXXIII 44. That monetary readjustments, before the semuncial reduction, were a device to face increasing state expenditure, is also the conclusion of Marchetti's wholly different reconstruction of the early phases of the denarius coinage (see supra, n. 8).

57 XXXIII 46: Crawford, RRC, 339; 611 n. 11.

58 NC 1964, 142; RRC, 77, 596, 610 f.

59 Cn. Papirius Carbo surely held his tribunate in 92: G. V. Sumner, The Orators in Cicero's ‘Brutus’: Prosopography and Chronology (1973), 117 f.; H. B. Mattingly, NC 1977, 203 n. 23; Lo Cascio, Athenaeum 1979, 227 n. 55.

60 Broughton, MRR n, 18 n. 5; 26; 30 n. 8; 34.

61 RRC, 596.

62 Lo Cascio, art. cit. (n. 59), 227 f.; analogously Ch. T. Barlow, AJPh 1980, 203.

63 As Crawford believes : JRS 1970, 47 f. And that motive cannot explain why individual communities under Roman rule went on issuing their subsidiary coinage : I do not believe that civic patriotism is the sole justification. Even if we assume that local authorities derived income from minting (S. Bolin, State and Currency in the Roman Empire to 300 A.D. (1958), 244; see supra, n. 13), this income would have paid for the service of providing small change.

64 RRC, 628 f.

65 Nothing may be inferred from the presence of a halved denarius in the Maserà hoard: M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coin Hoards (1969), no. 162. The Pachino hoard (no. 151) contains denarii which are both halved, and carelessly broken.

66 Crawford, RRC, 77 f., 338, 341, 611.

67 Zehnacker, H., Actes du 8 ème Congr. Intern, de Numismatique, New York 1973 (1976), 384Google Scholar, bases much of his argument, with which in general I agree, on the Pachino hoard.

68 See also Zehnacker, ibid., 386. The fact that issues of silver sestertii, after the Lex Papiria, were very few and sporadic, does not reveal anything about the aim behind their revival.

69 For a recent survey, see L. Perelli, RSI 1975, 726 ff.; now Lo Cascio, MEFRA 1980, 445 f.; D. W. MacDowall, The Western Coinages of Nero, Num. Notes and Monographs, no. 161 (1979), 135 f.

70 Kunisz, A., in Les ‘Dévaluations’, cit. (n. 8), 92Google Scholar; WN 1976, 129 ff.

71 M. E. K. Thornton, TAPA 1971, 621 f.; ANRW II 2 (1975), 149 f.

72 MEFRA 1980, 455 f.

73 I am not sure that Crawford is right in assuming (ANRW II 2 (1975), 591) ‘that in a world where a precious metal coin was a piece of bullion an increase in the supply of currency did not necessarily lead to inflation, since there was also an apparently insatiable demand for objects of precious metal and coin could be and was made into jewellery’; but even admitting this, if jewellery could not be made into coins (as Crawford believes, see supra, n. 17), one has to postulate a deflationary trend, when market production increased more than the supply of coinage: an increase in the velocity of circulation is improbable, if there is no improvement in financial and commercial techniques or in means of transport. Of course, in the long run, there are several ways in which an economic system can adjust itself to a disproportion between volume of transactions and quantity of money (or there can be ways in which public authority reacts to it, apart from currency depreciation, see Cipolla, art. cit. (n. 53), 417 f.), but the most immediate result of this disproportion will be a change in the level of prices.

74 AIIN 1978, 85 n. 38.

75 Suet. Tib. 46–9; Gai. 37, 39, 40 f., 44; Cass. Dio LIX 21, 5. Even if Frank's basic arguments in his use of numismatic evidence are wrong (Rodewald, op. cit. (n. 49), 8 f.), I believe it legitimate to assume that public expenditure was very low during the reign of Tiberius: JRS 1978, 201 f.; AIIN 1978, 247 f.

76 Frank, ESAR, v, 40 f.

77 Tac. Ann. I 76; II 40, 42; A. Grenier, REL 1936, 373 f.; ESAR, in, 514 f.; Christopherson, A.J., Historia 1968, 354 fGoogle Scholar.

78 C. Nicolet, Annales ESC 1971, 1212 f.; see also Frederiksen, M. W., JRS 1966, 132 fGoogle Scholar.

79 Nicolet, loc. cit.; on the polemic, see e.g. Spooner, op. cit. (n. 10), 82 f.; Vilar, P., Oro e moneta nella storia (1971), 113 fGoogle Scholar.

80 Crawford, Annales ESC 1971, 1228 f.; for the credit function performed by the Roman state, Gabba, E., in Studi Fanfani (1962), I, 61 fGoogle Scholar.; Caesarian measure on hoarding: Cass. Dio LXI 38, 1–3; re-enacted by Tiberius: Suet. Tib. 49, 2; prohibition of the export of coinage : Cic. pro Flacco 67; in Vat. 12; Caesarian law de modo credendi possidendique intra Italiam: Tac. Ann. VI 16; Cass. Dio LVIII 21; Suet. Tib. 48, I; see Rodewald, op. cit. (n. 49), 1 f., with my remarks in AIIN 1978, 243 f.

81 Supra, pp. 81–82.

82 See e.g. Bannock, G., Baxter, R. E., Rees, R., The Penguin Dictionary of Economics (1972), 286Google Scholar; Seldon, A., Pennance, F. G., Everyman's Dictionary of Economics2 (1976), 237Google Scholar.

83 Bahrfeldt, M., Die römische Goldmünzenprägung (1923), 30Google Scholar.