Rome in Its Coins: Silver, Emperors and the Fall of the West

What Roman Coins Tell Us

1Rome began minting a silver coin called the denarius in about 211 BCE, while the republic was at war with Carthage. Under the republic, the officials who ran the mint changed every year, and each put his own name on the coins along with gods and symbols of Rome. Putting a living leader's face on a coin was not the custom. In 44 BCE, coins struck in Rome showed the face of Julius Caesar while he was still alive. Weeks later, senators who feared he would rule like a king killed him.

2After Augustus became the first emperor in 27 BCE, most coins carried the face and titles of the emperor. As Roman armies and governors ruled lands from Britain to Egypt and Syria, the same coins came to be used across this huge area. A merchant could sell olive oil in Spain and pay with the same kind of coins for grain shipped from Egypt.

3Roman builders were famous long before the emperors. The paved Appian Way, a road heading south from Rome, was begun in 312 BCE. Coins of the emperor Titus show the Colosseum, the great arena that opened in Rome in 80 CE. Roman builders mixed lime with volcanic ash to make a strong concrete, and with it they raised the dome of the Pantheon, finished in about 125 CE and still standing. Roman judges and lawyers also built up a large body of law on property, contracts and families. In the 530s CE, the eastern emperor Justinian had these laws collected into one code, which later shaped the law of many European countries.

4In the 200s CE, emperors needed huge sums to pay soldiers fighting on the borders and in civil wars. To make more coins from the same silver, they mixed in cheaper metals. Prices climbed again and again. In 271 CE the emperor Aurelian ordered new walls built around the city of Rome itself. In 301 CE the emperor Diocletian issued an edict that set the highest legal price for more than 1,000 goods and services; a writer of the time claimed that sellers hid their goods instead. Later, Constantine began minting a gold coin, the solidus, which kept its weight for centuries in the eastern half of the empire. That half lasted long after the last western emperor was removed in 476 CE.