Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T06:52:20.368Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Tablettes Albertini and the Value of the solidus in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Philip Grierson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The discovery in 1928 of what are now known as the Tablettes Albertini threw a flood of new light on economic conditions in late Roman imperial times. The Tablettes consist of a potful of legal documents, written on wooden tablets and dating from the last three years of the reign of the Vandal king Gunthamund (484–496), which were found at some not precisely ascertainable spot on the frontier between Algeria and Tunis. They include the details of a marriage settlement, a contract for the sale of a slave, a number of deeds relating to the sale of olive trees and other agricultural property, and a list of personal names with sums of money noted against each. Many of the tablets are no more than fragments and their decipherment and interpretation involve problems of great complexity. Two of them, and an assessment of the extent and value of the whole collection, were published in 1930 by Professor Eugène Albertini, of the University of Algiers, and he continued to collect material for their definitive study up to his death in 1941. In 1952 they were elaborately published by four French scholars, who subjected every aspect of their material features and their contents—epigraphy, language, law, economic significance—to minute analysis and review.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1-2 , November 1959 , pp. 73 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Philip Grierson 1959. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘Actes de vente du Ve siècle, trouvé's dans la region de Tébessa (Algérie),’ Journal des Savants 1930, 23–30. He had previously read a communication on them to the Académie des Inscriptions on 21st September, 1928 (Comptes Rendus des Séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1928), 301–3).

2 Tablettes Albertini. Actes privés de l'epoque vandale (fin du Ve siècle), editées et commentées par Courtois, C., Leschi, L., Perrat, C., et Saumagne, C. (Paris, 1952)Google Scholar.

3 See the analysis of the contracts on pp. 81 ff.

4 Tablette II, 2 b (p. 217). The word unum before semis has been accidentally omitted in the printed text, as can be seen by comparing it with the facsimile in the folder of plates. Albertini read the text correctly.

5 In view of the ambiguities of unum semis, which are discussed below, I leave it untranslated. Numero properly means ‘by tale’, but in this context has rather the meaning ‘in money of account’.

6 pp. 203–5.

7 See Pliny, NH XV, 21, 80–1Google Scholar. The belief is still a general one in Mediterranean countries.

8 Tablettes 202, n. 4, following the suggestion of Albertini that pistacia was deformed into psitacia and ultimately into sitecia.

9 In no.IV, three almond trees, four fig trees, and a sitecia are sold for 500 folles, a total which is exactly made up by the normal prices of the two first items.

10 There is what looks like an impossible price in no. XI, where thirteen fig trees ‘et nobellas sex cum bitibus suis’ are valued at 300 folles, but the reading tre(de)ci is certainly incorrect. The whole phrase runs ‘fici arb […..] ci et nobellas sex’. The word arbores is commonly abbreviated as arb in the documents; there is a stroke following it which might be t, which is all that Albertini believed he could read, and that only conjecturally; the letters re after the t, making tre(de)ci, which are given in the printed text, are invisible in the plate that accompanies it. Since the ‘nobellas sex cum bitibus suis’ would be worth the full 300 folles—in no. X fici novellas sex and a caprificus of a particular and evidently much prized variety are valued at 340 folles—I doubt if the word following arb(ores) is a numeral at all. More probably it qualifies the fici, like the caprificus of no.X, which is nomine ernassoneu, or the ‘fici arbor un alaxsandrina’ of no. III, but I am unable to suggest what the word may be. All that is certain is that it ends -ci.

11 NH XV, 19. 70.

12 Tablettes 202–3. M. Courtois miscalculated the figure as 62½ folles, apparently through inadvertently reckoning the solidus as 1,600 instead of 1,400 folles.

13 Anecdota XXV, 11–12; cf. also XXII, 38, which alludes to the same event. Some scholars have construed these passages as indicating that Justinian actually debased the gold coinage, in the sense of reducing its bullion content. Such an interpretation is neither required by Procopius' wording nor borne out by the numismatic evidence. The ‘calling up’ or ‘calling down’ of the value of coins is a common phenomenon in monetary history.

14 W. Wroth, Catalogue of the Coins of the Vandals, Ostrogoths and Lombards … in the British Museum (1911) 3, 6.

15 ibid. XVII. The argument is that they cannot have been contemporary with the silver coinage, which bears the names of the kings from Gunthamund (484–496) to Gelimer (530–3) inclusive, since the system of values marked on them is incompatible with that on the silver. The bronze coinage, however, is marked in nummi and the silver in denarii, so there is in fact no incompatibility between them, and the parallelism between the coinage of Vandal Africa and Odovacrian and Ostrogothic Italy is too strong to be ignored. In each case the higher denominations of bronze are municipal, the only exception being that of Theodahad at Rome, which is semi-royal, while the silver and the lower denominations of bronze are royal. A coinage of heavy pieces of bronze as early as the reign of Gaiseric is inconceivable, for it would have been completely out of step with the contemporary coinage of other parts of the Mediterranean world.

16 See below, p. 77.

17 The price of copper is given in the Code of Justinian (10. 29. 1) as 20 lb. to the solidus.

18 A general run of the weights can be found in W. Wroth, Catalogue of the Imperial Byzantine coins in the British Museum (1908) 29–30. I hope to study the metrology in some detail in a forthcoming book on Byzantine coinage in the sixth century.

19 Since the bronze coinage was of a token character, one would expect only a very rough correspondence in weights, not a precise one.

20 Tablettes 204–5. The price of 10 solidi is from CJ 6. 43. 3. 1 and 7. 7. 1. 5.

21 I should like to express my thanks to Mr. R. D. Dawe for having allowed me to discuss with him the problems involved in the interpretation of these phrases.

22 Six solidi were struck to the ounce of gold. Since the document is describing the actual form in which the payment was effected—the solidus as one gold coin, the folles presumably done up in bags of 500 or 100 coins—there is no difficulty over the relative dimensions of the sums they represent and of 700 folles amounting to more than a solidus.

23 A monk's cloak is worth 3 nomismata new (c. 192; in Migne Patrol. Graeca 87 (3), col. 3072Google Scholar) or I nomisma second-hand (ibid., c. 116; col. 2980). The first price refers to Rome during the pontificate of Gregory the Great (590–604), the second to Palestine at the same period.

24 A complication in North Africa is that Vandal silver coins were reckoned in denarii in a fashion found nowhere else. Since this valuation was a local one and these coins are not mentioned in the Tablettes Albertini, there is no need to discuss them here.

25 These ‘nummi’ were regarded by Wroth as specifically ‘Vandalic’ (BMC Vand. 17 ff.) but are now known to be not peculiar to any particular region of the empire. Large hoards of them have been recorded for North Africa, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, and elsewhere, and they have come to light in large numbers in such systematic excavations as those at Athens and Antioch. The more important articles include: Troussel, M., ‘Les monnaies vandales d'Afrique: découvertes de Bou-Lilate et Hamma,’ Rec. des notices et Mémoires de la Soc. archéologique du département de Constantine LXVII (1950–1951), 147–192Google Scholar; Cesano, L., ‘Delia moneta enea corrente in Italia nell'ultima età imperiale romana e sotto i re Ostrogoti,’ Rivista italiana di numismatica XXVI (1913), 511–551Google Scholar; Pearce, J. W. E. and Wood, M. E., ‘A Late Roman hoard from Dalmatia,’ Num. Chron. 5th ser., XVI (1934), 269–281Google Scholar; Pearce, J. W. E., ‘A Late Roman hoard from south-west Asia Minor,’ o. c. XV (1935), 21–4Google Scholar, and ‘More late Aes from Egypt’, o. c. XVIII (1938), 117–126Google Scholar; and Milne, J. G., ‘The currency of Egypt in the fifth century,’ o. c. VI (1926), 43–92Google Scholar. The last article contains (pp. 61–4) a discussion of how these tiny coins were used, with a striking modern parallel from the Saharan oases. His conclusion is that ‘the simplest plan for dealing with the problem of small change was to use anything that could easily be counted over for purposes of reckoning without requiring it to possess any definite value in itself’.

26 The date is given by the earliest coin in the series, which bears the name of Zeno and the Caesar Leo (476–7). The unique specimen of this is now in the Hermitage Museum at Leningrad (Tolstoi, J., Monnaies byzantines, St. Petersburg, 1913, pl. 10, no. 65Google Scholar).

27 BMC Vand. XVIII and literature there cited. I have records of several other unpublished specimens from Italian hoards or of Italian provenance. Sig. E. Leuthold, a Milanese collector, possesses several from Tunis or its neighbourhood and ascribes to them a North African rather than an Italian origin (‘Bemerkungen zu Elmers “Gotenmünzen”’, Mittheil. d. Österreichischen Numismatischen Gesellschaft N.F., X (1957), 17–19Google Scholar). The fact that the numeral XLII is found also on coins which are indubitably Vandal supports this opinion, in which case the specimens found in Italy must have been brought there by Belisarius' troops or in some similar fashion. The sestertii with LXXXIII are of extreme rarity.

28 ‘Veteres … sex milia denariorum solidum esse voluerunt’ (Cassiodorus, , Variae I, 10Google Scholar: Mon. Germ. Hist., Auct. Antiquissimi XII, 19). Cassiodorus refers this to no specific date, but there is independent evidence that the value stood at this figure some time in the fourth century.

29 BMC Vand. 116–17. See further below, p. 80.

30 Nov. Val. 16. I.

31 Peter was Count of the Sacred Largesses twice, 538–543 and 547–post 550 (Stein, E., Histoire du Bas-Empire II (Brussels, 1949), 761–9Google Scholar). The first date (538) is not entirely certain: Stein holds that Peter followed his predecessor Strategius some time between 538 and 542, but that it is impossible to say exactly when. There is some evidence, cited but not regarded as decisive by Stein, that Strategius died in the later months of 538 and the coincidence of Peter's personal interests—he had been a professional money-changer—with the monetary reform of early 539 renders it extremely probable that he took office at the end of the year 538.

32 The earliest dated coins of Constantinople, Nicomedia, and Cyzicus are of Year XII (1st April, 538–31st March, 539), while those of the remoter mints of Antioch and Carthage begin with Year XIII. It is reasonable to infer that the reform took place towards the close of Year XII, i.e. in the early months of 539.

33 There is a parallel in the history of English subsidiary coinage. When the weight of the penny was halved in 1860 the metal was changed from copper to bronze, partly because bronze stands up better to wear but also because it was felt that the change in metal would prevent a possible public outcry against the lighter coin.

34 The reform is briefly noted in Bury, J. B., History of the Later Roman Empire I (1923), 448Google Scholar, and Stein, o. c. n, 205. The only full-scale study is that of Blake, R. P., ‘The Monetary Reform of Anastasius and its Economic Implications,’ Studies of the History of Culture (American Council of Learned Societies, New York, 1942) 84–97Google Scholar, but it practically confines itself to an analysis of the literary evidence.

35 The three series were first distinguished in the Ratto, R. sale catalogue Monnaies byzantines, Lugano, 10th December, 1930Google Scholar. If one looks at a large group of them, the distinction is at once apparent to the eye.

36 The recent discovery of what appears at first sight to be a ‘transitional’ coin antedating the creation of the reformed coinage (Whitting, P. D. in Num. Chron. 6th ser., XVI (1956)Google Scholar, ‘Proceedings’ (6 might appear to cast some doubt on the order of issue I have suggested, for this coin (a decanummium) weighs 3 · 85 g. and so corresponds to the ‘normal’ series. But the fact that it is the ‘normal’ and not the ’light“ series that carries on into the reigns of Justin I and Justinian seems decisive testimony in favour of placing the ‘light’ series first. Mr. Whitting's coin can probably be regarded as one of a special issue struck on some particular occasion and not as belonging to a transitional issue preceding the main series.

37 I hope to discuss the metrology of these issues in the work alluded to above, n. 18.

38 Chronicon Marcellini comitis a. 498 (Mon. Germ. Hist., Auctores antiquissimi XI, 95).

39 The CN coin weighs about 1·3 g. and was probably struck 240 to the pound, with a theoretical weight of 1·37g. If the coin was a siliqua, the gold: silver ratio would be as 1: 7·2; if it was a half-siliqua, the ratio would be 1: 14·4. Since this is identical with that given in CJ 10. 78. 1, we may take it that the coin was a half-siliqua.