The type of money introduced by Rome was unlike that found elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean. Eventually, the economic conditions of the Second Punic War forced the Romans to fully adopt a coinage system. For these reasons, the Romans would have certainly known about coinage systems long before their government actually introduced them. The greatest city of the Magna Graecia region in southern Italy, and several other Italian cities, already had a long tradition of using coinage by this time and produced them in large quantities during the 4th century BC to pay for their wars against the inland Italian groups encroaching on their territory.
Coinage proper was only introduced by the Roman Republican government c. Bullion bars and ingots were used as money in Mesopotamia since the 7th millennium BC and Greeks in Asia Minor had pioneered the use of coinage (which they employed in addition to other more primitive, monetary mediums of exchange) as early as the 7th century BC. Roman adoption of metallic commodity money was a late development in monetary history. The Romans cast their larger copper coins in clay moulds carrying distinctive markings, not because they did not know about striking, but because it was not suitable for such large masses of metal.īronze aes signatum produced by the Roman Republic after 450 BC. Some of the emperors who ruled only for a short time made sure that a coin bore their image Quietus, for example, ruled only part of the Roman Empire from 260 to 261 AD, and yet he issued thirteen coins bearing his image from three mints. The populace often learned of a new Roman Emperor when coins appeared with the new Emperor's portrait.
Roman mints were spread widely across the Empire, and were sometimes used for propaganda purposes. This goddess became the personification of money, and her name was applied both to money and to its place of manufacture. The origin of the word "mint" is ascribed to the manufacture of silver coin at Rome in 269 BC near the temple of Juno Moneta. The manufacture of coins in the Roman culture, dating from about the 4th century BC, significantly influenced later development of coin minting in Europe. Roman currency names survive today in many countries, such as the Arabic dinar (from the denarius coin), the British pound, and the peso (both translations of the Roman libra). It served as a model for the currencies of the Muslim caliphates and the European states during the Middle Ages and the Modern Era. This trend continued into Byzantine times.ĭue to the economic power and longevity of the Roman state, Roman currency was widely used throughout western Eurasia and northern Africa from classical times into the Middle Ages. Notable examples of this followed the reforms of Diocletian. A persistent feature was the inflationary debasement and replacement of coins over the centuries. From its introduction to the Republic, during the third century BC, well into Imperial times, Roman currency saw many changes in form, denomination, and composition. Roman currency for most of Roman history consisted of gold, silver, bronze, orichalcum and copper coinage (see: Roman metallurgy).