Coinage and the Roman Economy

<p>This chapter presents Roman coinage as a distinctive type of communication that developed in the centuries preceding the empire’s fall in the West and the loss of Egypt and Syria to the Moslem caliphs in the East. During this period, the Romans minted standardized images in the hundreds of thousands, even millions, a massive output that transformed marketplaces, and with them the economy of the empire. Linked to coinage in this period was unprecedented government regulation of the economy. Harl concentrates on by far the most important innovation, the establishment of a fiduciary coinage in the third and fourth centuries. While this step has typically been taken to signify economic decline or incapacity, Harl argues that fiduciary coinage represented a new, abstract level of communication.</p>