| Description: |
533 pages, 32 excellent plates with total of 267 coins illustrated and described
(including provenance, majority of the coins are coming from the collection of American
Numismatic Society), published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, ISBN: 0801852919,
Hard cover with dust jacket, Book is second hand, used in very fine condition, some
wrinkles to the dust jacket, content clean and tight. An historical and numismatic study
demonstrating how Romans used coined money in payrolls, tax collection, trade, and daily
transactions over the course of a millennium. Harl (history, Tulane U.) skillfully blends
a love of coins with solid economic history from literary and documentary sources and
emphasizes the important role coins played in Roman expansionism (particularly in Egypt),
offering a regional analysis of prices and wages throughout Roman history. The author's
study often challenges current scholarship, bringing fresh perspectives to accepted
economic theories. Includes 267 black and white illustrations of the coins discussed. We
will recommend this book to anybody interested in Roman Numismatics; book has an excellent
section on Select Bibliography. Description The premier form of Roman money since the time
of the Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.), coins were vital to the success of Roman state
finances, taxation, markets, and commerce beyond the frontiers. Yet until now, the
economic and social history of Rome has been written independently of numismatic studies,
which detail such technical information as weight standards, mint output, hoards, and
finds at archaeological sites. In Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 B.C. to A.D. 700,
noted classicist and numismatist Kenneth W. Harl brings together these two fields in the
first comprehensive history of how Roman coins were minted and used. Drawing on literary
and documentary sources as well as on current methods of metallurgical study and
statistical analysis of coins from archaeological sites, Harl presents a sweeping overview
of a system of coinage in use for more than a millennium. Challenging much recent
scholarship, he emphasizes the important role played by coins in the overseas expansion of
the Roman Republic during the second century B.C., in imperial inflationary policies
during the third and fourth centuries A.D., and in the dissolution of the Roman
Mediterranean order in the seventh century A.D. He also offers the first region-by-region
analysis of prices and wages throughout Roman history with reference to the changing
buying power of the major circulating denominations. And he shows how the seldom-studied
provincial, civic, and imitative coinages were in fact important components of Roman
currency. Richly illustrated with photographic reproductions of nearly three hundred
specimens, Coinage in the Roman Economy offers a significant contribution to Roman
economic history. It will be of interest to scholars and students of classical antiquity
and the Middle Ages, as well as to professional and amateur numismatists. Reviews
"This thought-provoking work . . . should be important reading for scholars in a
variety of disciplines. It challenges, for example, the long-held belief that a
large-scale drain of Roman specie went to India and the East in the early centuries of the
Roman Empire and the concept that the western provinces of the Roman Empire were never
completely monetized. These reinterpretations and others, presented forcefully with
careful documentation, should arouse the attention of anyone interested in ancient or
medieval history, economics, or numismatics."--History
Author Information Kenneth
W. Harl, professor of history and Fellow of the American Numismatic Society, teaches
classical and Byzantine history at Tulane University. He is the author of Civic Coins and
Civic Politics in the Roman East, A.D. 180-275. |
