Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Roman–Barbarian Discontinuity
The collapse of the Roman Empire in the West was so prolonged a process that to expect to find any cataclysmic change in the coinage would be unreasonable. No such violent change or lengthy cessation of coinage occurred except in Britain. After the departure of the army and the breakdown of administrative contacts with the rest of the Empire, no further coin entered Britain, and, within a generation, by about A.D. 435, coin ceased to be used there as a medium of exchange. Not until the latter part of the seventh century were coins again used in Britain as money, although many survived as jewellery or were used for gifts or for compensation. Everywhere else in the area of the western Empire the use of money was maintained.
The coinage of the late Roman Empire reflected its economic decrepitude. On the one hand there was highly valued gold coins, the pure gold solidus, introduced by Constantine in 309, together with its half, the semissis, and its third, the tremissis or triens. The solidus weighed 24 carob seeds or carats, about 4.48 grams in modern terms. On the other hand there was the heavy copper follis, revived by Anastasius I in 498 as a coin of forty nummi, and its poor relations down to the nummus. In between came the sparsely issued silver coins, conventionally termed siliquae by numismatists. As units of account 24 siliquae were worth a solidus. The gold coinage was used for imperial gifts and the payment of subsidies to imperial ‘allies’, like the 50,000 solidi paid by Maurice Tiberius to Chilperic in 584.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.