Money in Classical Antiquity (Key Themes in Ancient History)
Sitta von Reden
Language: English
Pages: 260
ISBN: 0521459524
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This is the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of the impact of money on the economy, society and culture of the Greek and Roman World, using new approaches in economic history to explore how money affected the economy and which factors need to be considered in order to improve our understanding of ancient money. Covering a wide range of monetary contexts within the Mediterranean over almost 1000 years (c. 600 BC - AD 300) its method is comparative and specific in order to demonstrate that money plays different roles under different social and political circumstances. In line with the aim of the Key Themes Series, the book not only offers guidance to students and course directors for studying money at University level, but also some perspectives for future research to graduate students and specialists.
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had been rewarded with food rations (grain and beer), but under the Ptolemies paid in cash and kind. The introduction of the salt tax, the monetization of corv´ee labour, the creation of a large bronze currency, and the transformation of the Pharaonic economy into something more familiar to the Greeks were probably related processes. Beer, for example, which used to be a major component of food rations in pre-Ptolemaic Egypt, was no longer requisitioned by the administration directly as a tax in
have provided a number of complex perspectives on the function of coinage in Celtic society, especially in its relation to pre-existing patterns of social interaction, metal use and the circulation of prestige goods. Abundant coin finds, which have increased exponentially in recent years, have created databases that help to locate very precisely the movement and circulation of particular coin issues. The nature of the evidence and the models of explanation therefore offer an interesting
Greco-Roman period, but wine and oil were traded in containers of varying capacity. In the Ptolemaic period we have the additional problem of currency changes that make price information across decades difficult to translate into comparable monetary value. Moreover, large total numbers of data do not mean that they form a usable sample. The fact that prices of wine are known from Roman Egypt means that, at best, one is known for every two years. Wheat prices are represented by forty-five
rate negligible. Increasing military pay (both per soldier and in aggregate terms), the outflow of precious metal in subsidy payments and trade, combined with a notable decrease of mining activity in the Roman empire, led to massive Rathbone () with Szaivert and Wolters (). Inferred from DH’s report of a fifth-century bc grain crisis in Rome; Rathbone (). Burnett (): . Burnett (): . In c. bc the number of asses per denarius was changed from to .
Prices and price formation: issues pressure on Roman coinage from the third century ad onwards. By ad the silver content of the imperial silver currencies had declined to about per cent. Yet the effects of this debasement on prices in the Roman empire, and whether it had any effects at all, are still highly controversial. It has been argued that the continuous debasement of coins led to an increase in the supply of coinage in circulation, and thus to an increase in prices and