Chapter 2 - Embedding Contexts of Roman Money

Summary

The Roman monetary system was historically unique. Its complexity arose out of several intersecting and sometimes contradictory embedding contexts. This chapter identifies several important embedding contexts and provides a broad diachronic outline of their influence in the development of Roman money. Some of Rome’s Republican-era experiments with coinage, for example, were inescapably influenced by Greek practices and concepts. Roman territorial expansion seems to have been correlated with the rise of impersonal exchange in Rome, Italy and beyond – presenting unique cultural challenges for Roman elites in the Republican period. Notions of monetary value in the Roman Principate remained tethered to historical monetary contexts – but shifts in value and in the prominence of certain contexts over others could and did happen. Oscillations in the intensity and breadth of state power, for example, influenced money use, value and the scope for market exchange. It is impossible to import modern economic theory into Roman monetary history without first accounting for some of the key embedding contexts which shaped monetary practices, processes and concepts in the Roman world.