Imperial Finance & Coinage Part Two

Going back to Fergus Millar's The Roman Empire and its neighbors about the empire's treasury, minting and coinage: "The letters S.C. may indicate that the separate issues were decided on by the Senate and produced by the monetales; but there is no evidence for the activity of the monetales apart from the appearance of the title on inscriptions.

Nor is there any evidence from the first century for officials of the Imperial mint at Rome. Under Trajan (98-117), however, a Procurator of the Mint appears; and from 115 we have some dedications by the workers there-officinatores (?), signatores (die-cutters?), suppostores (setters?), malleatores (srikers?)-all of them Imperial freedmen, aided by Imperial slaves. Under Aurelian (270-5) the mint workers in Rome were numerous enough to stage a serious revolt whose suppression acquired thousands of soldiers. In the Greek provinces, apart from the local city mints striking bronze and copper coinage, there were provincial and some city mints striking silver coins on standards different than those of Rome coinage. These mints are more or less regarded as 'Imperial'; though nothing whatsoever is known about them except the coins themselves.

The question of who decided the frequency of issues, the standard of the coins (the silver coins especially show a steady debasement from Nero on, ending in complete collapse in the second half of the third century), or the type and legends to be put on them is totally obscure. The last point is particularly tantalizing, since the Imperial coinage carried propaganda for the Emperors in a vast variety of forms-representations of Imperial constructions (like the harbour at Ostia), largesses of victories-or slogans like AETERNITAS or PROVIDENTIA. Much of the history of the Empire can be seen reflected in the coins. Yet we are ignorant not only of who decided what should be portrayed, but to whom the new coins were issued and under what circumstances (in donations to the army and congiaria to the Roman people?). The point is important, for coins remained in circulation for a very long time after their issue: 64 percent of the coins buried in hoards during the Flavian period (66-96) had been minted before 27 B.C. Hoards show similarly that coins in circulation in the Antonine period (138-80) averaged about fifty years from the date of issue. Our only clue to the sources of decisions is two lines of a consolatory poem by Statius on the death in the 90s of a former Imperial freedman a rationibus (in charge of accounts); among his duties was to decide how much metal 'should be struck in the fire of the Italian (Roman) Mint.'

That apart, we have two references in the historian Cassius Dio to Imperial coinage; in one he says (as the coin hoards abundantly confirm) that Trajan called in old coins and issued new ones; in the other he says that his own contemporary Caracalla (211-17) gave debased coins to his subjects, but good ones to the barbarians across the frontier-whom by this time Rome was buying off. In neither case does he say anything of the processes of decision. More details about the Imperial coinage and its collapse in the third century will come in the final chapterl for the moment the coinage must serve as an example of how little we know of many aspects of the Imperial system.

When we come to the actual activities of the Emperor, his advisers and assistants, the same warning must apply. In a famous passage Cassius Dio explains that, while in the history of the Republic-the truth could be arrived at because affairs were subjected to public debate, different accounts of historians could be compared and public records checked, in Imperial history it was not so: 'After this time most things began to be done secretly and by hidden meansl and if anything is made public it is disbelieved, since it cannot be checked. For it is suspected that everything is said and done by the wish of the Emperors and those who have influence with them. As a result many rumours spread about things which never happened, many things which happened are unknown, and nearly all public versions of the events are different from reality.'

To be continued......