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The Origin and Early History of the Follis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
One of the mosaics of the villa at Piazza Armerina, which are generally dated to the early fourth century A.D., depicts in connection with a contest a table on and under which are what are evidently prizes, crowns, palms, and bags labelled 
, that is 12,500 denarii. I suggest that these bags are the folks, which were at this date and later units of currency. A follis was, as its name implies and as various metrological writers confirm, a purse, and these purses, according to literary and epigraphic sources, contained bronze coins or denarii. The follis is first attested in 308–9, but was probably introduced at an earlier date, somewhere between the great debasement of the antoninianus by Gallienus and the reform of the coinage by Diocletian, when the antoninianus or Aurelian's piece marked XXI were the only coins in circulation and their value had sunk so low that some higher denomination was essential. If this is so, the coins which the follis contained cannot have been denarii, which had ceased to be minted, though the value of the follis was reckoned in denarii.
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References
1 Incorrectly described on p. 42 of G. V. Gentili, The Imperial Villa of Piazza Armerina (1956): the correct reading of the numeral is just discernible in the photograph of the mosaic (no. 26). Other labelled money bags occur on the Constantinian mosaic floor of the church at Aquileia (Cecchelli, La basilica di Aquileia, pl. xxv) and in the illustrations of ‘Roma’, ‘Constantinopolis’, and Constantius Gallus in the Chronographer of 354 (Jahrb. deutsch. Arch. Inst., Ergänzungsheft I (1888), nos. 4, 6, 35). But these are apparently bags of gold. The last is labelled 
(presumably mille solidi) and the others carry similar figures (∞, ∞ϲϲϲϲ ∞ϲϲϲ; in the last two the figure disappears round the side of the bag).
2 Studi in onore di A. Calderini e R. Paribeni II, 329.
3 Hultsch, , Metrolog. Script. Rel. I, 144–5, 267, 269, 303, 308Google Scholar; 11, 105, 151–2.
4 Scr. Hist. Aug., Elag. 22, ‘centum aureos et mille argenteos et centum folles aeris’; CIL v, 1880, ‘denariorum folles sexcentos’; 1973, ‘fol. sescentos’; 2046, ‘foll. quingentos’.
5 P. Ryl. 607, P. Oslo III, 83, PSI 965: their contents are summarized in Ec. Hist. Rev. v (1953), 317–8.
6 Num. Chron. 1957, 32.
7 Ed. Diocl. xxx, 1. The reading has been doubted, but is correct, see Ec. Hist. Rev. V (1953), 299.
8 P. Oxy. 2106.
9 Archiv Pap. XV (1953), 104; PSI 310.
10 P. Thead. 33 and P. Oxy. 1653, as interpreted by S. Bolin, State and Currency in the Roman Empire to 300 A.D., 311–13.
11 P. Oxy. 1430.
12 I give this name to the silver coins struck by Diocletian at 96 to the pound.
13 See above, n. 2.
14 Cod. Theod. v, xvii, 2.
15 Cod. Theod. XI, xxxvi, 2 and 3; for the dates see Seeck, Regesten, 54.
16 Cod. Theod. XI, xxxvi, 5.
17 Eusebius, , Hist. Eccl. X, 6Google Scholar.
18 Optatus, App. 1.
19 Zosimus II, 19; the figures come from Hesychius (see below, n. 21), but the minimum scale of 2 folles is confirmed by Cod. Theod. VI, ii, 13.
20 Hesychius, fr. 5; FHG IV, 154.
21 Cod. Theod. VI, ii, 15.
22 Two Greek versions are printed in Hultsch, , Metrolog. Script. Rel. I, 259–67, 267–71Google Scholar, with variant readings on p. 144, n. 4, and II, 151–2; the Latin version in II, 100–06. For the Syriac version see Or. Inst. Univ. Chicago, Stud. Anc. Or. Civ. XI (1935).
23 Hultsch, o.c. I, 267 (§ 49); cf. 144, n. 4, and II, 151–2; Latin version, II, 105 (§ 40).
24 o.c. I, 269 (§ 17).
25 o.c. I, 267 (§ 1), as corrected in II, 152 (cf. I, 143–4).
26 o.c. I, 302–3.
27 As, owing to the rapid depreciation of the denarius, the equation soon ceased to be valid, the meaning of the word miliarense was quickly forgotten. In Epiphanius' day the current explanation was μιλιαρίσιον δὲ τὸ ἀργυροῦν, ὅ ἐστι στρατιωτικὸν δόμαμιλιτία γὰρ ἡ στρατεία (1, 269 (§ 16)). This explanation is rightly dismissed as folk etymology, but the other, that the miliarense was so called becaus it was equivalent to 
lb. gold, which depends on a nomic gloss of quite uncertain date (cited in Dindorff's edition of Epiphanius, vol. IV, pars I, 128) though scarcely more plausible, received Seeck's approval and is still widely accepted.
28 SPP I, 4, cf. Num. Zeitschr. N.F. VI (1913), 161 ff., 219 ff.
29 PER 187, 37; SPP XX, 96, 81; Sb.7034; P. Oxy. 1223; PSI 960–1.
30 Cod. Theod. XIII, i, 13.
31 Cod. Theod XIII, i, 11.
32 Regesten, 82.
33 This date has been questioned, but is probably right. Constantina of the subscription must be Aries, and Rufinus thus praetorian prefect of the Gauls.
34 Val., Nov. XIII, 3 (445).
35 ibid., XXXVI, 2.
36 Aug., Serm. 389, 3.
37 XXII, 8.
38 Vita S.Melaniae Jun. 8; Anal. Boll. VIII (1889), 26 (Latin), XXII (1903), 13 (Greek).
39 Cod. Theod. VII, vi, 4.
40 Ed. Diocl. XXVI, 28–33; XIX, 1, 42, 61.
41 P. Oxy. 1056.
42 P. Cairo 67320.
43 Val., Nov. XIII, 4.