Imperial Finance & Coinage Part One

I should have been doing this all along by now-but better late than never! I would like to do articles (hopefully I can keep them between 1-3 posts long) about different areas of every aspect of Roman life. This article or set of articles is about the already mentioned treasury or Aerarium, coinage and minting in Imperial Rome. I got lucky when I found Fergus Millar's 1967 book The Roman Empire and its neighbors, for one dollar on sale at the library. The following information comes from pages 69-73 and 241-2 in this book:

"The very faint traces of evidence available can best be considered along with two branches of the 'central administration' (the term an exaggeration), the treasury (Aerarium) in Rome, and the mints in Rome, and the provinces. The study of the Aerarium suffers from the disadvantage already mentioned, the total lack of evidence about the transport of funds to and from it. The Aerarium itself, however, is fairly well known. It was the temple of Saturn on the side of the Capitol hill, which had served since the early Republic as the depository for the treasure, including coin, and documents of the State. Among the documents were financial ones, State contracts and the accounts deposited by provincial governors on leaving their province; provincial governors also 'reported' their apparitores, comites and others to the Aerarium, thus putting them on the list for pay, and (it seems) continued to do so even in the third century. But the officials of the Aerarium-quaestors in the Republic and then, after various changes, Prefects of ex-praetorian rank, chosen by the Emperor-never used these documents to make up general accounts or a budget for the State. Their functions were limited to keeping the cash and documents to making payments on the authority of the Senate or the Emperor, and the same judicial activities, which they were acquired to do in the Empire, over the recovery of debts. They did not administer or plan the finance of the Empire. The Aerarium is a prime example of the survival in the Empire-to the mid-fourth century, in fact-of the primitive and now inadequate insititutions of the city-state. To meet the deficiencies five separate commissions of senators were set up in the course of the first century, with the task of calling in revenue or limiting expenditure; none of them is recorded as having done anything. The management of State finance was left-in so far as it was managed at all-to the Emperor and his assistants.

In spite of the immense volume of evidence provided by the many thousands of coins surviving from the Empire, very little is known about the mints themselves and even less of the processes of decision which governed their output. Here too there was a surviving Republican element, the tresviri monetales (moneyers)-three of the posts in the most junior senatorial, or rather pre-senatorial rank, the Vigintivirate. These posts are attested until the mid-third century. Among the bronze and copper coins produced in Rome and circulating mainly in Italy and the West (bronze and copper coins produced locally in the Western provinces disappear by the middle of the first century) the majority are marked S.C. senatus consulte- 'by decision of the Senate'). The types on the coins, however, are very similar to those of Imperial coins-which include all silver-produced in Lyon until Caligula (37-41) and thereafter at Rome."

To be continued.....