|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
Click Images
|
Ancient Rome was a smallish city on the banks of the Tiber River founded about 753 B.C.E. by Romulus, a grandson of the Etruscan royal family. It was built on seven hills, and in turn, ruled by a series of seven kings. The last of these was Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud. He was driven out of Rome by Marcus Brutus in the 6th century B.C.E., and a republic was established that lasted roughly 500 years. Rome absorbed its neighbors beginning with the Etruscans. This brought them into conflict with the Greeks, who had colonized in Italy. The Romans had traded with the Greeks of Magna Gracia, of southern Italy, and other Greek entities. The Greeks had silver and gold coins of great beauty that impressed the Romans. By 300 B.C.E., large silver tetradrachmas, displaying images of Alexander the Great as Hercules, were being minted in Ptolomeic Egypt, now ruled by a great Greek dynasty. They began circulating in Rome along with staters of Corinth, tetradrachmas of Pamphylia, Athens, Macedonia, Syria, Thoses, and even tetradracmas of the Danubian Celts. The Celts seemed to be everywhere, spanning from Turkey to Central Europe, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland. If they had possessed the ability to get their act together, we would have studied the history of the Celtic Empire instead of the Roman Empire in high school and college.
The Romans knew that in order to engage in trade, the real basis of imperial wealth, they needed a solid monetary system. In the 3rd century B.C.E., the Roman Republic minted silver cons that were strongly influenced by the Greek coinage that dominated trade around the Mediterranean Sea. The coins were the size of Greek staters and in time became known as the denarius. These were about the diameter of the modern dime. This denomination would last for centuries. When the English began minting silver pennies, which circulated from the 6th through the 16th centuries, the letter “d” came to stand for “penny.” The lower case “d” used to denote this denomination until the suspension of the old form of English money in the early 1970s and the advent of the “New Pence.” As time marched on, Roman coinage became more distinctive By the 2nd century B.C.E., Roman coinage was respected throughout the Mediterranean world. Shown here are denarii of consuls Domitius and Athenobarbus and Lucretius trio. The homage to Greek coinage can clearly be seen in these pieces.
Romans idealized the Greeks. When, at long last, Greece was added to the Roman Empire, they were treated with greater respect than all other subject peoples. Greeks were the most expensive slaves and the best treated. Greek tutors were employed in the patrician households of the great families of Rome to instruct the future leaders of the Roman State. With the end of the Republic and the rise of the Empire, Rome’s emperors now graced the imperial coinage. The majority of the men who ruled the Roman Empire died of unnatural causes. Poison, the dagger, the sword, or some other savage means ended the lives of many of the emperors. Yet the imperial throne was a prize sought with some degree of eagerness. Some of the ancient rulers are still almost household names almost 2,000 – or more – years later. Julius Caesar, the man who would be emperor, was murdered by some Roman senators at the foot of Pompey’s statue on March 15, 44 B.C.E. This event brought an end to republican rule. The Roman Empire was ruled by three men for a time after the assassination of Caesar, but after the defeat of Marc Antony at Actium in 31 B.C.E., only one man was left standing. This was Julius Caesar’s great nephew who was granted the name “Augustus” by the Roman Senate. A lot of numismatists attempt to collect all of the Roman Emperors on the denarii and the silvered and debased antoniniani. This can be a difficult task, but it can be done. Some collectors collect Roman coins by images on the reverse of the denarii. Various gods, temples, and animals decorate the reverses of the Roman pieces. My own favorite Roman coins feature interesting personalities. The coins of Augustus, his great uncle Julius Caesar, Caligula, his uncle Claudius, Nero, the intellectual Antonius Pius, and his gladiator son – Commodus – who disgraced the office of emperor by fighting lions and gladiators in the public arenas, Constantine the Great, and Justinian the lawgiver were makers of history for good or ill, and therefore are most interesting. As the Roman Empire declined, so did its coinage. by the 4th century C.E., the Empire was split into the Eastern and Western Empires. The Western Empire struggled on until 476 C.E., when its teen-aged emperor, Romulus Agustulas, was retired from his throne by the German general Odoacer. Constantine the Great had united the whole Empire under his personal rule in the early 4th century C.E. He established his capitol on the Bosporus and modestly named it Constantinople. This became the capitol of the Eastern Roman Empire. Here gold coins were minted along with silver for almost 1,000 years after the fall of the Western Empire. But their turn came on May 29, 1453. On that day, most of the population had fled the city, and most of the 50,000 citizens who stayed in Constantinople fled to the great cathedral of Santa Sophia. On that day, the Turks entered the city more than 1,100 years after Constantine founded it. Besides the great ruins throughout the ancient Roman world, what now remains to remind us of the glory of an empire that lasted in one form or another from 753 B.C.E. to 1453 C.E.? Millions and millions of Roman coins still remain after all these many years. The coins were saved, collected, and found in amphora and the other clay pots entombed in the earth by soldiers of the far flung empire to be dug up later. Other hoards were hidden away by terrified Romans on the Empire’s frontier as barbarians poured over the borders into the Empire and Rome itself. Still the coins remain as mute witness to empire. My Calendar If you Journal readers want to catch up with me, this is where I will be: On April 25, I will be at Tom Lacey’s Greater Worcester Coin Show in Auburn, Mass. at the Best Western Yankee Drummer on Route 12, just off the Mass. Turnpike at Exit 10. The show hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. On May 2, I will be at Richard Murphy’s N.E.S.S. Coin and Stamp Show at the Holiday Inn (near the junction of Routes 1A and 128) in Dedham, Mass. Show hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. On May 23, I will be back at Lacey’s show. Hope to see you all there! |
|||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
author of several books. He has also written more than 1,500 articles and monographs in The Numismatist, Linn’s Stamp News, The Regional Recorder, and other publications.
