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Diocletian's Reform of the Coinage: a Chronological Note1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

C. H. V. Sutherland
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Extract

Diocletian's reform of the coinage included the following elements :—

(1) The raising of the weight of gold coins from a norm of about 70–72 to the Roman pound to one of 60 to the Roman pound.

(2) The abandonment of the silver-washed coin now known as the antoninianus and its replacement by a silver coin of the weight of Nero's reduced denarius, i.e. at a rate of 96 to the Roman pound.

(3) The introduction of the so-called follis—a copper coin of about 10 gm. in weight and struck at all ‘reformed’ mints with something very near uniformity of types. The follis was accompanied by fractional denominations.

The date of (1) is discernible (even if it cannot be fixed with absolute precision) by weighings of dated gold coins from a.d. 284, when Diocletian succeeded to power. ‘There was a change in basic standards not later than a.d. 286. One hundred and twenty-seven coins from the mints at Rome, Cyzicus, Lyons, and Antioch dated in the years 284 to 286 show an average weight of 71 grains, indicating a basis of 70 or 72 to the pound. Twenty seven coins from the mint at Cyzicus dated in a.d. 286, twenty-three from the mint at Rome dated a.d. 286–7, and at least ten each from the mints at Siscia and Antioch dated in a.d. 286–9 all show average weights of 82 or 83 grains, indicating a basis of 60 to the pound. No later group containing five or more coins varies more than 5 per cent from this average, except one dated a.d. 296–9 from the mint at Treves.’ The same phenomenon had previously been observed by K. Pink, who associated the change of standard with Maximian Herculius' elevation to the rank of Augustus on 1st April, a.d. 286.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1-2 , November 1955 , pp. 116 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © C. H. V. Sutherland 1955. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

1

I had collected the material for this paper, and had begun to arrange it in its present form, when the brief report of Dr. H. A. Cahn's remarks to the Société française de numismatique was published in the Bulletin de la Société française de numismatique, Nov., 1954, 307 f. As Dr. Cahn's reported views appeared to coincide so closely with those which I had reached independently it seemed worth while to work the problem out in closer detail.

Abbreviations used below are as follows :—

Cahn XIII = Monnaies et Médailles S.A. Bâle, Vente aux enchères XIII (17–19 June 1954). Lallemand = Jacqueline Lallemand, ‘Le monnayage de Domitius Domitianus,’ in Revue belge de numismatique 1951, 89 ff. NNM = American Numismatic Society's Numismatic Notes and Monographs. NZ = Numismatische Zeitschrift. RN = Revue Numismatique. RIC = Mattingly, Sydenham, and others, Roman Imperial Coinage.

References

2 The contemporary name of the new Diocletianic silver pieces is unknown. Nor has the degree of purity of these relatively rare pieces been yet, so far as I am aware, determined.

3 Folles are frequently found on which an apparently even and—one would say—deliberately applied silvery coating covers the surface of the copper, as, for example, in the hoards discovered at Seltz (N. Lewis, NNM 79; H. Herzfelder, RN 1952, 31 ff.), and Fyfield (E. T. Leeds, A Hoard of Roman Folles … found at Fyfield, Berks). But nine folles from the Seltz hoard which were analysed because they ‘seemed to have a “white” or silvery coating were found … to have a thin layer of copper salt deposited on the surface. On very close examination it was further revealed that this copper salt was actually green in color’ (Adelson, H. L., Museum Notes VI, 116 f.Google Scholar). The former assumption that folles were silver-washed in order to increase their intrinsic value is therefore questionable.

4 See my ‘Flexibility in the reformed coinage of Diocletian’ in Essays in Roman Coinage presented to Harold Mattingly, forthcoming.

5 cf. Cahn XIII, 34 ff.

6 West, L. C., NNM 94, 183 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 NZ 1931, 57.

8 RIC V (2), 230, 275, 306; Cahn XIII, 28 f.; Mattingly, H., ‘The Imperial “Vota”,’ in Proc. Brit. Acad. XXXVI, 175 ffGoogle Scholar.

9 cf. RIC V (2), 275, no. 485; Mattingly, op. cit., 192 f., notes 66–8. It is by chance alone that no relevant pieces for Constantius have been so far recorded.

10 Mattingly, op. cit., 193, note 68, points out that ‘the “vota decennalia” of the Caesars … belong to the same year, but not to the same day as the “vot. x mult, xx” of the Augusti’. The vota-day of the Caesars was 1st March.

11 RIC V (2), 230, 273.

12 id., 238, 278–9.

13 Occasionally mis-combined: cf. RIC V (2), 206; 261, nos. 344–5, by confusion with Diocletian's legends, RIC V (2), 221 f., nos. 4–5.

14 So also Pink, NZ 1930, 22; he associates the new silver issue with the nomination of Constantius and Galerius as Caesars on 1st March, 293, but it is difficult to see the aptness of this view since the new Caesars in fact had time—as the coins themselves show—to strike not only some antoniniani but also some denarii and quinarii on the old, pre-reform system.

15 Pink, NZ 1930, 22 f., 1st emission; Cahn XIII, 32, nos. 396–7.

16 The attribution of the unmarked folles to British mints (cf. Leeds, op. cit., 21 ff.), mainly on the grounds of observed hoard-frequencies, is here accepted. Such folles vary considerably in portrait-style, as Leeds’ plates make plain.

17 P. Gerin, NZ 1917, 49 f.

18 Pink, NZ 1930, 38.

19 J. G. Milne, Catalogue of Alexandrian coins in the Ashmolean Museum, 123 f.

20 Lallemand, 91, citing Voetter, NZ 1911, 173, no. 1; cf. H. A. Cahn as reported in Bulletin de la Société française de numismatique, Nov. 1954, 307. I t is uncertain if this is the same coin illustrated by G. Dattari in his paper on the chronology of Diocletian's coinage reform in Egypt in RN 1904, 394 ff.; in any case Dattari's views in that paper appear to be vitiated by the incorrect dating which he assigned to the Greek-style, pre-reform coins of Constantius at Alexandria.

21 Lallemand, pl. 6, 18 (Vienna).

22 Lallemand, 90, and in Aegyptus 1953, 97 ff., where (within the broad theoretical limits of a.d. 293–7) a year c. a.d. 295 is preferred.

23 Lallemand, 94 ff.

24 Lallemand, 99 f.

25 Lallemand, 100 ff.

26 Lallemand, 88, n. 2.

27 O. Voetter, NZ 1911, 172: officinae Δ and Ε are at first very rare.

28 It should be noted that Herculius' LIB follis of a.d. 295–6, noted above, came from officina A.

29 Being apparently later, for example, in certain of the eastern mints.

30 cf. Hettner, Westdeutsche Zeitschrift VI, 141; Webb, P. H., RIC V (2), 204 ff.Google Scholar; and, most recently, H. Mattingly in Num. Chron. 1946, 112.

31 cf. Pink, NZ 1930, 21 ff.