An excellent presentation on Late Empire coinage by Andy (Cristina)

1. LATE EMPIRE
ROMAN
Andrew Walsh
Session 10
November 2012
COINS

2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
 Rough Dates for the Roman Empire
 Early Empire: 1st-3rd centuries AD
 Late Empire: 3rd-5th centuries AD
 3rd century AD – ¨Crisis of the Third Century¨
 Economic problems
 Invasions
 Civil war
 Plague
All leading to major instability, politically, economically, and
financially. All the wealthy people began moving out of the cities.

3. IMPORTANT EMPERORS
 Diocletion (285AD-305AD)
 Split the Roman Empire in two sections – East and West – to aid the crisis of
the 3rd century.
 He revised the currencies based on old denominations of the denarii to help
unify the country.
 Aureus
 Argenteus
 Follis
 Constantine the Great
 (306AD-337AD)
 Officially legalized Christianity

4. IDENTIFYING A COIN
Image courtesy of http://tjbuggey.ancients.info/coinread.html

5. MINTING OF COINS
 They first used two-sided molds to mint coins.
 Open-air styles eventually were used, with a blank
disc of whichever material desired was inserted
into the correct area.
 Hoards of Roman coins have been found all over
the areas of their vast empire, in addition to dyes in
great condition that illustrate the issues of the
copying of coins during their circulation.
 Minting areas were located across their entire
empire

6. COINAGE
 1st century BC: circular design became standard
 3rd century AD: detailed stylization of the emperor portraits
 4th century AD: idealized Greek form, often indestinguishable
c o i n s d i s c o v e re d i n t h i s s e s s i o n b y C h r i s t i n a a n d J o e
 Common obverse: current or past emperors, usually celebrating a
victory or similar accomplishment
 Common reverse: deities, mythical scenes, ships

7. DEBASING & ¨CLIPPING¨ CURRENCY
 Coinage became extremely inconsistent when inflation hit the
Roman Empire hard during the 3rd century.
 There was a shortage of money from many reasons, including
paying military costs.
 Citizens all over the empire started to hoard coinage, and cut
some corners by stretching their financial wealth.
 This was done by clipping coins, which is several different
variations of obtaining precious materials from the coins to either
smelt.

8.  ¨Clipping¨ the coin meant
literally cutting the coin
in pieces to either extract
materials, or to pass the
coin of as equal tender.
 Often coins were shaved
down along the outer rim.
Lisa found this clipp ed coin!

9. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
 With the constant financial issues surrounding the wars and
invasions occurring across the empire, coins from previous years
were reused, restruck, and reissued.
 Constantine the Great attempted to alleviate the problems in 310AD
by lowering the gold content of the solidus, which lasted until the
11th century.
Coin depicting Constantine II
that Jeff found!
 Diocletian in 301AD announced the ¨ Price Edict¨ (Edictum de
Pretis) which limited the price on goods. Considered a good idea at
the time, it unfortunately didn not work because many of the goods
left the city instead of adjusting their prices.

10. FEL TEMP REPARATION
 Fel(ix) Temp(orum) Reparation translates to ¨Happy Restoration
of the Times¨ and was used as a slogan for the commemoration of
the founding of Rome. This phrase appears on many coins of the
Late Empire period in Roman history, especially of the 4th
century.

11. THE TIMES ARE CHANGING
Many emperors of the Late Empire period attempted to issue new currency at various
eights, combinations, denominations, etc. But all to no avail. Diocletian is one of the few
who was semi-successful on several levels.
 When Christianity was
legalized in the 4th century,
Pagan gods were replaced on
the reverse by older, more
traditional symbols like
victory
 The issues with debasing of
coins became a major problem
by the 4th century. Silver was
not used in minting anymore,
and was replaced by much less
valuable material.

12. BIBLIOGRAPHY
 A d k i n s , L e s l e y, a n d R o y A d k i n s . H a n d b o o k t o L i f e i n A n c i e n t R o m e . N e w Yo r k : O x f o r d U P, 1 9 9 8 .
307-12. Print.
 Ancient Coins for Education. "ACE: Anatomy of a Roman Coin." Ancient Coins for
Education. Ancient Coins for Education, 2 0 1 2 . We b . 1 9 N o v. 2 0 1 2 .
<http://ancientcoinsforeducation.org/content/view/61/30 />.
 Cristina. "The Roman Empire." ECOMUSEO DE CAP DE C AVA L L E R I A , M e n o r c a , I l l e s
B a l e a r s . S p a i n . 1 4 N o v. 2012. Lecture.
 G r o s s m a n n , R i c h a r d A . R o m a n C o i n s . C o m p . Wi l l i a m E . M e t c a l f . Ya l e U n i v e r s i t y A r t
G a l l e r y . Ya l e U n i v e r s i t y, 2 0 1 0 . We b . 1 6 N o v. 2 0 1 2 .
< h t t p : / / a r t g a l l e r y. ya l e . e d u / p d f / p e r s p e c t / r o m a n _ c o i n s . p d f > .
 L o c k ye a r, K . ( 2 0 0 8 ) A s p e c t s o f R o m a n R e p u b l i c a n c o i n s f o u n d i n Late Iron Age Dacia.
I n : S p i n e i , V. a n d M u n t e a n u , L . , ( e d s . ) Miscellanea numismatica Antiquitatis. In
h o n o r e m s e p t a g e n a r i i m a g i s t r i Vi r g i l i i M i h a i l e s c u - B î r l i b a o b l a t a . (pp. 147-
176). Editura Academiei Române: Bucharest, Romania
 S u t h e r l a n d , C . H . V. " A L a t e R o m a n C o i n - H o a r d f r o m Kiddington, Oxon." Oxoniensia 1
(1936): 70-81. O x o n i e n s i a . o rg . We b . 1 7 N o v. 2 0 1 2 .
<http://oxoniensia.org/volumes/1936/sutherland.pdf>.