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A Revisionist View of Roman Money

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2010

W. V. Harris
W. V. Harris*
Affiliation:
Columbia Universitywvh1@columbia.edu
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Extract

The consensus view that all Roman money consisted of coins has been undermined in recent times and should be discarded. The inhabitants of the Roman Empire frequently and on a significant scale made payments by means of credit-money, creating a ‘multiplier effect’, which meant that in high classical times the Roman economy was not constricted, as is often supposed, by an inelastic money-supply. Yet the monetary system was not modern; rather it had its counterparts in such economies as those of seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century Britain.

Keywords

Roman EconomyBankingCreditCoinageDelegatioMoneyMoney-Supply
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 96 , November 2006 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © W. V. Harris 2006. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

*

I warmly thank Jean Andreau, Jean-Jacques Aubert, Alessandra Casella, Marcello De Cecco, Richard Duncan-Jones, Martha Howell, Elio Lo Cascio, Paolo Malanima, and Peter Temin, who all read and criticized an earlier version of this paper with salutary effects. It is obviously not to be presumed that they agree with my conclusions. I am also extremely grateful to St John's College, Oxford, for the opportunities provided by a visiting fellowship.