Richly illustrated with photographic reproductions of nearly three
hundred specimens, Coinage in the Roman Economy offers a significant
contribution to Roman economic history. The first comprehensive history
of how Roman coins were minted and used.
The premier form of Roman money since the time of the Second Punic War
(218-201 B.C.), coins were vital to the success of Roman state finances,
taxation, markets, and commerce beyond the frontiers. Yet until now, the
economic and social history of Rome has been written independently of
numismatic studies, which detail such technical information as weight
standards, mint output, hoards, and finds at archaeological sites. In
Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 B.C. to A.D. 700, noted classicist
and numismatist Kenneth W. Harl brings together these two fields in the
first comprehensive history of how Roman coins were minted and used.
Drawing on literary and documentary sources as well as on current
methods of metallurgical study and statistical analysis of coins from
archaeological sites, Harl presents a sweeping overview of a system of
coinage in use for more than a millennium. Challenging much recent
scholarship, he emphasizes the important role played by coins in the
overseas expansion of the Roman Republic during the second century B.C.,
in imperial inflationary policies during the third and fourth centuries
A.D., and in the dissolution of the Roman Mediterranean order in the
seventh century A.D. He also offers the first region-by-region analysis
of prices and wages throughout Roman history with reference to the
changing buying power of the major circulating denominations. And he
shows how the seldom-studied provincial, civic, and imitative coinages
were in fact important components of Roman currency.
Richly illustrated with photographic reproductions of nearly three
hundred specimens, Coinage in the Roman Economy offers a significant
contribution to Roman economic history. It will be of interest to
scholars and students of classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, as
well as to professional and amateur numismatists.
