The Intelligibility of Roman Imperial Coin Types

Abstract

If any ancient historian—either Greek or Roman—made any systematic comment on the principles observed in the choice of coin types in the classical world his account has not come down to us. Aristotle, indeed, in his Politics, made a theoretical reference to coin types when he wrote ὁ γὰρ χαρακτὴρ ἐτέθη τοῦ ποσοῦ σημεῖον. This reference, though it is of characteristic Aristotelian brevity, in reality goes beyond the theory and implies the almost invariable principles of choice everywhere. For, as scholars have often noted and now generally agree, when Aristotle defined the addition of a type to a coin as a means of indicating its value, he was saying not that the type showed how great the value of the coin is, but that its very presence gives an assurance that the proper value of the coin—whatever that value might be—can be safely assumed. As G. F. Hill pointed out, and as will be seen later, ‘the importance of this apparently subtle distinction lies in its bearing on the significance of types.’