General
The earliest form of commercial exchange was barter. A number of flint axes or corn grains might be given, say, for a horse. The biggest problem, however, was to decide just how many axes or grains a horse was worth. This was solved by a community's agreeing to take an article in common use as a basic unit of value. The Saxons chose grains of corn; the early Greeks, a drachma, or handful of iron spits. A metal unit proved very convenient, especially for its portability, so metal units became more and more common. The early Italians used bars or ingots of bronze for their standard unit of value because copper was relatively easy to obtain. For a similar reason the Greeks chose silver. So did the Saxons: twenty-four grains of corn were found to be balanced, literally, by a quantity of silver, which became known as a pennyweight.
Once the metal was chosen and the quantity to be regarded as the unit of value was fixed, that quantity was made up (with strict attention to quality) and stamped with the mark of the maker as a guarantee of correct weight. These primitive coins, for that is what they were, served as goods themselves, rather than money as we understand the term. This is why quality and quantity were both all-important.
Slowly the idea of a token coinage evolved: a community agreed to use as its unit of value coins whose face value had no relation to the value of the material from which they were made. The earliest known example of token coins is the series of electrum - an amalgam of gold and silver - coins produced by the inhabitants of Lydia in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. All bore the same badge, a lion's head, the traditional emblem of the Mermnad dynasty, and fell into weight groups, apparently designed to serve as fractions of the same basic unit. The Romans were to take the same step in 289 B.C., when they set up a state mint to produce coins in a bronze unit, the as. Even though in 217 B.C. the Republic turned to minting mainly silver coins (thanks to the acquisition of Spain with its abundance of silver mines), the as remained at least the nominal unit and was to do so until Roman coinage ended in the fifth century A.D.
Furthermore, even after ancient local communities adopted a token coinage, the intrinsic value of their standard coins continued to be all-important for foreign trade, for debts abroad were regularly settled in cash, which was accepted at its bullion value, not its face value. Hence, the standard coin, or stater, of Athens and other leading silver-marketing cities never became a token piece as long as they kept their autonomy.
The noun "coin" has come into English from the Latin cuneus and the French coin, both of which mean "wedge". The French word also acquired the meaning "die, stamp", from the wedge-shape of a die. Originally, however, large Greek and Roman bronze coins were produced by casting, as it was almost impossible to find dies strong enough to produce pieces over an inch in diameter. Some bronze coins were minted by a combination of casting and striking. Silver coins, being smaller, could be struck quite readily. A frieze of Cupid coin-makers in the House of the Vettii brothers at Pompeii throws valuable light on the techniques involved.
With the simplest arrangement for striking, as illustrated, a mint worker found it very difficult to achieve axial coordination between the obverse and the reverse of his coins; that is the design on one side would most likely be along a different axis from that on the other side. Off-centre striking was also prevalent. Various aids were, therefore, devised to guide the striker, such as rims around the design, projecting "pegs" in the reverse with corresponding holes in the obverse, and (probably) hinged dies. On the other hand, while modern mints have obviated such technical problems, the perfection of their coins frequently appears sterile in contrast to the lively individuality of ancient coins.
The earliest Greek and Roman coins were stamped on the obverse only. The obverse type, or distinctive mark, served to show what person or what city was responsible for minting the coin. A person displayed his seal or, much later, his own portrait; a city, its distinctive badge, e.g. the turtle for Aegina, the owl for Athens.
The introduction of reverse types served a variety of purposes: to distinguish one denomination from another, to indicate the mint or mint-master responsible for the coin, or to commemorate some notable achievement or event. The last use was particularly common in Roman coins of the late Republic and the Empire. One striking difference between Greek and Roman coins is that, on the former, types were changed far less frequently. Obverse types persisted year after year, and, except for the need to show a change of symbol for a new moneyer, usually no more often than once a year, reverses were just as stable.
Greek Coins
The ancient Greeks minted coins of high artistic quality. This is particularly true of cities of little commercial importance: for these the striking of really beautiful coins was a sure means of winning wealth and prominence. The outstanding example is Elis, within whose territory and under whose superintendence the Olympic games were celebrated. The coins contributed by visitors to the games were restruck with the city's own artistic types and marketed as souvenirs just as a modern city might sell picture postcards. The results form an illustrious chapter in the history of Greek art.
The aesthetic qualities of the coins of such important commercial centres as Athens and Corinth are bound up with other considerations (see on coins 2 and 11). Certainly, their use as bullion in foreign trade provided little incentive to depart from the city badge and deity as leading types. As a result, it is unusual to find any direct historical allusions in Greek coins before Alexander. Personal portraiture was barred by tradition. A moneyer, or mint-master, could do no more than display his symbol, which would convey little to the ordinary citizen. Apart from revealing alliances or the subjection of one state to another, therefore, Greek coins often present a challenge to the historical imagination that is truly tantalising (see on coin 2). A pleasing exception is the coinage of Greek Italy and Sicily, which from the first was much given to historical and personal allusions. After Anaxilas, the tyrant of Rhegium, for example, had scored a win in the Olympic races, he included a mule-car on his coins.
The main information conveyed on Greek coins, however, is economic. Some cities of the Greek west are justly famous for depicting in their coin types picturesque local products or services, such as the crab of Acragas, the satyr revelling in the spa waters of Himera, or the Dionysus and grapes of Sicilian Naxos. Compare in Australian pre-decimal currency the merino sheep on the shilling and the ears of wheat on the threepence. Certainly attractive advertising is always good economics. Again, the wide dispersion of Athenian and Corinthian staters and the imitation of Athenian owls and Corinthian ponies on the coins of other peoples provide a useful means of tracing commercial connections. The coins also provide information about denominations and weight standards. Apart from this they have much to say to the student of religion, especially as a theme in the visual arts. Perhaps the biggest difficulty in the interpretation of Greek coins is the fact that there are still so many gaps in our information. Not all surviving coins have yet been recorded. There is, moreover, an even chance that any issue totalling 5,000 coins or fewer has been lost forever. The study of ancient coins, in other words, still lags some years behind certain other branches of archaeology - and centuries behind the study of literary sources.
With the establishment of Alexander's empire, the Greek city-states lost their independence forever. The change in political organisation is reflected in the coinage. Advertising types of particular cities tended to disappear, as the coins which bore them rarely travelled away from their home territory. Such coins now offered the craftsman less scope for his talents and suffered an artistic decline. Though a few cities, such as Athens and Corinth, were permitted to issue coins as of old, most were reduced to minting undistinguished pieces in silver and bronze, which served as small change. Now the most beautiful and prestigious coins were minted by Alexander and the rulers who partitioned his Empire after his death. Alexander's tetradrachms (coin 15), which circulated throughout the Empire, were based on the Atttic weight standard, which consequently became the most important in the world. The Hellenistic era saw the gradual arrival of a new fashion in Greek coins, the portrayal of actual rulers. It began with the posthumous portrait of Alexander in heroic style (coin 19). Except for Persian imperial coins, which had depicted living rulers, this was without precedent. Greeks of bygone days would have considered it sacrilegious to portray a human being on their coins, yet, from the time of Julius Caesar on, the practice became widespread on Roman coins, and today we take it for granted.
Coins of the Roman Republic
The primitive communities of Italy were mainly agricultural and had few trade links. At the bartering stage their commonest units of value were cattle and sheep: the Latin word for "money", pecunia, is cognate with pecus, "cattle". The first metal currency employed consisted of rough bronze lumps of varying weight, aes rude. When the Roman mint was established - the traditional date is 289 B.C. - these gave place to rectangular cast ingots, aes signatum, stamped with a variety of devices, including a bull, which is perhaps a direct link with the days of barter.
The first circular coinage soon followed. This was a bronze piece, weighing about one pound and named, not inappropriately, aes graue. Rome's standard currency unit had arrived: the coin was stamped with the numeral I, meaning one as. This was divided into smaller denominations, whose weight variation was offset by distinguishing marks which clearly defined their face value.
Early in the third century B.C., thanks to the war with Pyrrhus, Rome was brought into contact with the Greek cities of southern Italy, such as Tarentum, Neapolis and Metapontum. Fighting gave place to trading and the result was a number of extraordinary issues of silver didrachms. These were made by Greek artists, in the Greek style, from Greek silver. Their types were carefully designed to appeal to Greek tastes. Most of the obverses depicted deities which were common to Greeks and Romans, such as Mars (Ares), Apollo, Hercules (Herakles) and Victory (Nike). There was also, however, an occasional Roma and, invariably, the legend ROMANO, an abbreviation for the genitive ROMANORVM.
The next step was silver coins for local use: the heavy as must have been extremely inconvenient for everyday use. The new coins gradually took on a distinctly Roman character. First came didrachms with Hercules/wolf and twins types. The year was 269 B.C. The First Punic War resulted in Roma/Victory didrachms. Then in 235 B.C. came a series of Janus/ROMA, Jupiter with Victory in quadriga coins. These were known as quadrigati (coin 25). The half-piece soon followed, first with similar types, and then with obverse Jupiter, reverse ROMA, Victory crowning a trophy of weapons, as a result of which they were known as victoriati (coin 28).
The greater frequency of silver coins completed the process by which the bronze coinage was assigned a token value. As a result the as, which originally weighed one pound, was finally reduced to an ounce in 155 B.C. The value of ten such pieces was then expressed by a new coin, the denarius, a term destined to live on in the mediaeval denier, the modern dinar, and the formula ?S.D. The denarius in its first form depicted a helmeted Roma, backed by Castor and Pollux (coin 32). The half-piece was called a quinarius (coin 29), and a final sub-division was the sestertius (2?asses). Strangely enough, although the silver sestertius soon disappeared from circulation, the term persisted in everyday parlance - the English guinea provides a parallel - to the extent that large sums of money were regularly reckoned in sestertii. If, for example, someone boasted he was worth a million, this was invariably taken to mean sestertii, not denarii. For all practical purposes, however, the denarius was now the basic unit of currency.
The Second Punic War caused great advances in Roman coinage. Armies were dispersed over a great number of fronts and new territories were acquired. Where necessary, army commanders were given powers of coinage, in order to pay their troops. Many branch mints sprang up, each with its own mint-master. Not only was there a proliferation of types on denarii, but it became the practice for each moneyer to identify himself, first by a symbol, and later by his actual name, abbreviated to a greater or lesser degree. In some cases the result was a cluttered legend, but at least the numismatist had a helpful guide to dating the coin.
Rome was now the centre of a vast empire, acquired through the patriotism, sagacity and heroic deeds of her great men. She was imbued with a strong national consciousness and a sense of destiny. Her aristocracy in particular had better grounds than ever before for giving vent to the pride of ancestry, which was so strong within them. One of the major preoccupations of the Roman character was the concept of gloria, the esteem achieved for oneself and one's family in the eyes of present and future generations. In an age when men had scant expectations of surviving in a life beyond the grave, the pursuit of gloria was seen to offer immortality of a sort: an everlasting renown among generations yet to be born. The desire for gloria constantly appears in Roman literature. After the Second Punic War it was a dominating influence in the production of Roman coins. Moneyers, who were elected from the aristocracy, seized the opportunity of commemorating in their coins the achievements of their illustrious forebears. Apart from alluding to specific historic events (coins 37, 43, 45, 47, 50), they included types illustrating their family legends and traditions (coins 40, 47), the deities their ancestors supposedly worshipped (coins 35, 37, 39, 45, 50), or the heroes best typifying their ancestors' achievements (coin 41?). The resulting coins were of a high artistic standard, distinguished by higher relief, noble portraiture and an attractive spaciousness.
During the last fifty years of the Republic the coinage was dominated by the towering personalities of the age. The emphasis now changed from the achievements of past generations, to the recent exploits of Marius and his followers (coin 39), Sulla, the Pompeys (coin 53), Caesar (coins 49, 51, 52), Antony (coins 54, 55) and Octavian (coin 54). From Pompey the Great onwards, personal portraiture came into its own. After routing the pirates Pompey issued a gold coin with reverse depicting himself standing in a four-horse chariot - the first time a living person had appeared on a coin struck in Rome itself. In 44 B.C. Julius Caesar received from a complaisant Senate the right of being portrayed in profile. As dictator he held the Roman state in the palm of his hand, and it is clear from his coins that the moneyers were quick to take their cue. Roman coinage was now completely personal and topical, and it was to remain so till well into the third century A.D.
Coins of the Roman Empire
One of Augustus' most important powers was the control of coinage. The world was at peace once more and an ever increasing supply of coins was needed to facilitate the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, commerce and industry. Mines and mints were under government control. At first Augustus allowed the Senatorial mint at Rome to strike coins in gold, silver and bronze, though his profile was the standard obverse type. In 12 B.C. he took over the right of minting the precious metal coins and established a new mint at Lugdunum in Gaul for this purpose. This mint was later (probably under Gaius) transferred to Rome for greater convenience. Henceforth, branch mints operated only from time to time and their output was relatively low. The Senate continued to mint coins in copper and brass, but its control was more theoretical than real: the emperor's portrait and titles were just as common on S.C. coins (see below, Common Abbreviations in Roman Imperial Coin Legends) as on coins issued by the imperial mint. For this, of course, the numismatist is grateful, as the combination of titles and names is indispensable to the accurate identification and dating of coins.
For Roman emperors coins were a vital means of proclaiming every changing nuance of their achievements and policies. Modern governments and rulers have other means at their disposal: the press, radio, television, postage stamps, Websites or even "Dial-a-Politician" (periodically available to all Americans who own a telephone). Roman emperors, lacking such aids, made the most of the opportunities offered by their coins. For this reason, coin types changed with a rapidity quite foreign to us. The year A.D. 139, for example, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, was a prolific year in coinage but not exceptionally so. In this one year the standard denarius had a hundred reverse types; the sestertius (revived as a brass piece in imperial times), more than fifty; and this is to say nothing of other denominations.
First and foremost, coins offered an emperor an unrivalled means of disseminating his features. All images of the emperor were sacred, intended as objects of veneration, and coin portraits were no exception. Indeed, the very process of minting coins was under divine patronage: the Roman mint was established in the temple of Juno Moneta (whence our "money", "monetary") on the Capitoline Hill. Most modern autocrats have shown a similar enthusiasm for exhibiting their features, often by means of greater than life-size pictures prominently displayed. George Orwell's description in Nineteen Eighty-Four of portraits of Big Brother constructed so that the gaze is always directed at the beholder, is painfully close to reality. As one might expect then, the heads on Roman imperial coins are usually very fine. Some are, in a way, too fine, showing clear signs of idealisation and rejuvenation.
The reverses are filled with a great variety of news and views, including (a) personifications of blessings (coins 76, 77, 84, 86, 115), virtues (coins 86, 88, 117, 128, 162) and provinces (coins 96, 101, 131, 135); (b) anniversaries and commemorations (coins 58, 63, 68, 108, 176); (c) current events (coins 59, 69, 71, 78, 89, 94, 104, 113, 116, 145, 160, 174, 181, 188); (d) mere pious hopes or wishful thinking (coins 70, 83, 107, 119, 132, 141, 143, 149, 180, 186); (e) invoking the memory of a revered predecessor (coins 64, 65, 75, 93, 118); and (f) claiming (or proclaiming) the help of a particular deity (coins 79, 80, 81, 97, 136, 142, 146, 152, 154, 173).
Clearly Roman imperial coins are important as historical source material. Often they help to counterbalance the hostile account of an emperor in literary sources, though of course they commonly err in the opposite direction. They can often be used to corroborate or correct information gleaned from other sources, such as literature, inscriptions or state records. Occasionally they are our sole source of knowledge. Above all, however, their pictorial power, conveyed in high relief quite foreign to modern coins, can be quite overwhelming. The fact that they are so plentiful and inexpensive is a boon to students of Roman history.
The one danger in dealing with coins of the Empire is the temptation to accept them at their face value, in the way one can normally accept inscriptions. Coinage was a virtual monopoly of the emperors. Sometimes it told the truth; sometimes, a part of the truth. At other times it was over-optimistic or quite untruthful. For the modern scholar who is prepared to approach it critically, however, it holds a far greater wealth of information than it can ever have held for the subjects of imperial Rome.