Roman Money

[brotus maximus]

what kind of money did the romans use and what were the amounts per each set(i fyou get what i am thinking) and did the romans(all of the working class any way)get wages or any thing like that. I know the soldiers did and the higher ups also but what about the rest??

[Primus Pilus]

Roman Coin Demoninations

 

Wages were earned throughout the Roman working society, slaves included (depending on the task and the natures of the slave/owner). I once saw a wonderful list of various wages that I recall being in relation to the price reforms of Diocletian (I think), but I can't seem to locate it.

 

Actually I believe it may have been a collection of wages recovered from excavations at Pompeii.

[caldrail]

what kind of money did the romans use and what were the amounts per each set(i fyou get what i am thinking) and did the romans(all of the working class any way)get wages or any thing like that. I know the soldiers did and the higher ups also but what about the rest??

 

It wasn't quite like today. Romans only issued coins to facilitate tax and make political statements. Barter was as common as coinage. Soldiers would only be paid three times a year. Some employees would have received a sort of wage even if a slave, but cash was gained from providing a service or craft more often not. Scrounging too, lining up with the rest at your patrons house every morning to say hello. Perhaps you did well gambling last night? Did that stranger really believe the price you charged him? Or did that fool not check his purse until you'd gone?

[M. Porcius Cato]

Romans only issued coins to facilitate tax and make political statements. Barter was as common as coinage.

 

That's hard to believe. How do you know how much of the Roman economy depended on barter?

[Andrew Dalby]

Romans only issued coins to facilitate tax and make political statements. Barter was as common as coinage.

 

That's hard to believe. How do you know how much of the Roman economy depended on barter?

 

Yes, I'm doubtful about barter. I once attended a lecture by Mrs Quiggin (author of /Primitive Money/ and the first woman trained in anthropology at Cambridge) (she was 90 when she gave this lecture) and she said that anthropologists had never yet found a society in which barter (as we normally understand it) was a normal practice. I don't know whether that's still true. I suppose (trying to remember what she might have said) she was saying that you may find a view is held of whether people play their part in give-and-take or not; you may find a slate is kept, mental or in writing; you may find that some fixed medium, e.g. money, is actually exchanged or is imagined as being exchanged. You don't normally find that people swap a sack of onions for a plough.

 

Silent barter, however, definitely does exist (between people who don't share a language), as Mrs Quiggin went on to emphasize. It is described in the /Periplus Maris Erythraei/ and in many later travellers' reports.

 

I feel, with 'coins as political statements', something is being missed (I don't mean by Caldrail in particular!). The fact that a coin has something political on it -- a Queen's head, let's say, or a map of the EU, or the name and current titles of a Roman emperor -- /is/ a political statement. But the coin will also be used, maybe every day, maybe for many years, by people who don't give a damn about the political statement. One aspect may be significant to a political historian, but the other aspect may be much more important in general history.

[Gaius Octavius]

The Code of Hammurabi (?) sets down the rate at which things were exchanged (bartered). Taxes were likewise calculated. That is not to say that 'money', which represents 'things' and 'labor', was not extant.

[Pantagathus]

To suppliment what Andrew has said, people actually moved around a lot in the ancient world. They went on vacation and there were tourists just like there are today.

 

That being said, there were obviously no credit cards or traveller's cheques and they sure as hell weren't going to lug around sacks of grain or salt to pay their way.

 

Coinage was easy. They were made of three things that everyone agreed had worth: bronze, silver & gold. How much it was worth was how much of the metal it was composed of.

 

What was on them really didn't matter other than giving an indication where a traveller might be from and to preserve in memory (for a time) who commisioned that money. Sure there was barter in small communities just as you can still find it in mega-capitalist USA but I highly doubt it was the standard.

 

The silent trade that Andrew talks about is a really neat topic... It is an area where the god Hermes/Mercurius/Lugh comes into play as the protector of boundries & trade. That it occured so frequently from Africa to Asia & all over Europe is a testiment to the trust put into unfamiliar peoples via trust in that/those god(s).

 

If group 'A' leaves gold lets say, hoping to get amber from group 'B', group 'B' will leave a fair amount of amber. If group 'A' thinks that it is indeed fair, they will pick up the amber. If it is not and they leave the amber where it lay, that means group 'B' needs to put more amber down. For group 'B' to pick up the gold before group 'A' picks up, i.e. before a fair trade is presented is to risk the wrath of Hermes/Mercurius/Lugh.

 

It apparently occured a lot on the roads. People would leave offerings in the form of food to the gods and when another passerby came along, they would take it as a 'gift from the gods' and would leave money to the god in exchange.

 

 

 

The Code of Hammurabi (?) sets down the rate at which things were exchanged (bartered). Taxes were likewise calculated. That is not to say that 'money', which represents 'things' and 'labor', was not extant.

 

The Persians didn't start using coin money until the 6th or 5th Century BC. The Phoenicians & Greeks seemed to have been the first to come up with the concept because they travelled far & wide over the seas.

[Primus Pilus]

Additionally, its important to note that early coinage was not propoganda at all, but basic lumps of metal without design or uniformity. Coinage obviously did not develop as a political tool when we simply look at its original usage. They developed as a convenience to aid the economy and because the bulk of society found it a far better alternative to simple barter. The standardized 'value and price' system allowed the economy to grow beyond the simplicity of an exchange of goods. It was only much later (continuing with Rome as the example here) that the treasury and its representing moneyers used the widely available and integral part of the economy as a political tool.

 

Yes barter continued, but it eventually became based upon the standardized coinage system. Once such a system permeates society, the barter does not take place without evaluating how much coinage could be garnered from a direct cash sale. I may have had a sack of grain and know it is worth 1 denarius at market, and you may have various farming tools worth the same at market and, rather than exchange 'cash', we may swap goods, but it was based upon the coinage prices that could be garnered from a direct cash sale. However, if I could sell my grain for 2 denarii and buy your tools for 1, I would sell the grain and buy your tools. Even today people may willingly exchange like goods, but it will always be reflective of 'cash value'. (which in the ancient sense unlike today would not only be based upon the supply and demand of goods but also upon the supply and demand of actual coinage.)

 

Sometimes we also forget that simply because the ancients did not have electronics and computers that they did not 'transact' without ever exchanging the actual coins. Millions of denarii and sestersii were transacted without ever exchanging hands. Barter may be fine in a localized or simple individual transaction but it was ineffective in dealing with the enormity of large scale economics... even in the comparatively simplistic ancient agrarian economy.

 

(and as Pantagathus suggests, this does not even touch upon the need for agreeable economic exchanges, ie coins, in the international trade arena)

[Pantagathus]

Sometimes we also forget that simply because the ancients did not have electronics and computers that they did not 'transact' without ever exchanging the actual coins. Millions of denarii and sestersii were transacted without ever exchanging hands. Barter may be fine in a localized or simple individual transaction but it was ineffective in dealing with the enormity of large scale economics... even in the comparatively simplistic ancient agrarian economy.

 

Perfect example is some of the information contained in the Vindolanda tablets where goods bought on 'credit' are listed as outstanding debts between X & Y.

 

As soon as aquisitive individualism took hold in the late Bronze Age, barter started to fall out of favor. Simply because it's hard to make a profit that way... The only ones who could were people skilled at the oath

[Andrew Dalby]

The Code of Hammurabi (?) sets down the rate at which things were exchanged (bartered). Taxes were likewise calculated. That is not to say that 'money', which represents 'things' and 'labor', was not extant.

 

I just checked (naturally I have it at home ...!) Hammurabi's code always seems to set values either in silver (by weight) or in grain. So, yes, acting on this code is not 'barter' in the strict sense. Values are set against a standard.

 

The difference between this and (let's say) Diocletian's Price Edict is that, in between times, money (coin) had been invented! So Diocletian always sets values in denarii etc.

 

Commenting on what a later poster said, the inventors were not the Phoenicians. They traded widely, and they did eventually use coins, but they were certainly not the inventors of coinage. The invention seems clearly to have been made (as Herodotos quite rightly says) by the Lydians of western Asia Minor, and immediately taken up by the Greeks of the Asia Minor coast, their neighbours. From there, it spread across the Greek world.

[Pantagathus]

Commenting on what a later poster said...

 

:bag: Ack... I should have remembered my Herodotus better, at least I didn't state it definitively!

 

Note: Please see the gallery for my face saving image of the first Lydian coinage!

Edited March 23, 2006 by Pantagathus

[M. Porcius Cato]

As far as the money being used for political propaganda, I'm duty-bound to point out that it was that darling of Venus, Gaius Julius Caesar, who first plastered his face on Rome's currency. Previously, there were laws against that sort of vain nonsense and for a darned good reason too.

[Germanicus]

I'm duty-bound to point out that it was that darling of Venus, Gaius Julius Caesar, who first plastered his face on Rome's currency. Previously, there were laws against that sort of vain nonsense and for a darned good reason too.

 

When was this first done ? There seem to be many coin portraits of other Romans dating from 56, 54 BC. When did Caesar produce his first ?

[Primus Pilus]

I'm duty-bound to point out that it was that darling of Venus, Gaius Julius Caesar, who first plastered his face on Rome's currency. Previously, there were laws against that sort of vain nonsense and for a darned good reason too.

 

When was this first done ? There seem to be many coin portraits of other Romans dating from 56, 54 BC. When did Caesar produce his first ?

 

Yes there are portraits of Romans on coins but never portraits of living Romans before Caesar. This may seem such a little thing to us now, but it was a terrible affront to the sensibilities of the aristocracy. In my blog (which is due for an entry) I point out a coin of Sulla that shows him represented in quadriga (four hourse chariot) while still living, but it is definately not a portrait. Additionally that style of coin was very popular in the Republic and there is virtually no distinction between Sulla's and numerous other examples. Although the coin depicting Sulla also contains the legend SVLLA, so the representation is quite clear.

[Germanicus]

Do we know when Caesar produced the first ?