COINAGE AS SEEN BY CONTEMPORARIES

Ancient writers say notoriously little about currency. The accounts of change under Nero, Commodus and Septimius Severus that might have been expected are not there in the narrative sources. And their fleeting allusions to changes by Trajan and Caracalla would be misleading by themselves. The most interesting coinage initiative of all, Domitian's revival of earlier standards, is also passed by in silence. Dio's text says nothing of Trajan's change in silver fineness or in the weight of the aureus. Caracalla's new denomination Dio apparently ignores, although as a contemporary he presumably knew of its existence. And Dio's complaint about plated gold currency under Caracalla is not borne out by the coin evidence, which shows only a weight-reduction. It is natural to infer from all this that there was little awareness of coinage change among the upper classes. The gold currency on which they mainly depended altered little before Caracalla, and once that had changed, some criticism of minting policy does emerge, even if not in a coherent form.

Another pointer is the failure to exploit the propaganda potential of the coinage to the full. The obverse of a coin from the central mint showed the Emperor, his consort, or another member of his family. But most coin reverses have motifs of a quite conventional kind, whether symbolic, religious, or mythological. This use of iconography may be merely unimaginative.