SILVER AND BRONZE MINT OUTPUT

In the previous chapters I suggested that the repeated debasements of the silver coinages and the simultaneous stability of the gold aurei guaranteed the stability of the Augustan monetary system for more than two-and-a-half centuries. However, this stability was risked in the middle of the third century, when the uncertain political situation in the Roman empire undermined the power of the central authorities and eventually destabilised the monetary economy. The emperors in their attempt to increase their revenues resorted to the manipulation of precious-metal coinage through the debasement of the denarius and its eventual replacement with the highly overvalued antoninianus. The lowering of the fineness of the silver coins gave the emperor the means to increase the silver and possibly also the bronze mint output. As we have already seen, military expenditure probably increased during the Severan dynasty and later during the Military Anarchy period, a fact that seems to have affected the silver and bronze mint output during the third century. The production of denarii minted in Rome was intensified during the reigns of Septimius Severus and Caracalla in order to cover the increased needs of the army for coined metal, while the increasing production of silver coins destined to cover military needs became more apparent during and after the reign of Gordian III. It is worth noting, though, that during this Military Anarchy period we detect the extensive use of antoniniani, instead of their silver predecessors, the denarii.

Once the praetorship was created, jurisdiction was mainly the responsibility of praetors in Rome throughout the Republican period. In theory, the consuls could preside over formal proceedings on private law, such as adoption, manumission and emancipation. It is possible that they did actually perform such duties and it is reasonable that ancient sources did not see them as important enough to mention, unless something extraordinary happened in the process. However, the usual absence of the consuls from Rome allows us to presume that throughout the pre-Sullan period their intervention in such proceedings would usually be an exception. Nonetheless, it is unlikely, as De Martino claimed, that the consuls did not have civil jurisdiction in the Urbs. The consuls would have had no legal restrictions in this respect, given that such jurisdiction derived, after all, from their imperium, but their habitual absence from Rome would have made this responsibility, as a matter of custom, fall to the praetors.

However, in exceptional cases the senate entrusted consuls with the task of conducting extraordinary criminal investigations (quaestiones) and seeing to the punishments that followed the outcome of their inquiries. The assignment of consuls to perform criminal inquiries and to oversee their consequences had legal grounds in the ius coercitionis that resulted from the imperium with which they were invested.

ROMAN SOCIETY AND THE MONETISED ECONOMY

The identification of specific social groups that use predominately precious-metal coinages is essential, if we aim at estimating the level of monetisation in the Roman empire. Gold and silver coins were destined to be used in large transactions either by the state or by the citizens. Such transactions included the exchange of commodities, banking, the liquidation of properties, the exhibition of wealth, investment in businesses, the payment of taxes, the payment of magistrates and army officials or the completion of public works. In previous chapters we analysed the intervention of the emperor in the economy and we gave an overview of his annual budget. In this chapter we should focus on the revenues and expenses of the inhabitants and their involvement in interregional trade and other profitable activities. Once we establish their role in the use of precious-metal currencies, we will have the chance to assess the extent of the monetisation of the Roman economy. To start with, there is an array of questions in need of an answer. For example, who handled the majority of coined wealth within the empire? What was their financial capacity? What type of businesses were they involved in? How is this part of the monetised economy represented among the archaeological finds? Once the answers become clear, we will be able to explore further the integration of the Roman economy, an integration that relied partly on the entrepreneurial activities of the upper and middle echelons of society.

As has been seen in previous chapters, when carrying out their duties the consuls acted chiefly as the transmission system for decisions previously taken by the senate, fulfilling the instructions of the senators. In their role as intermediaries between senatus and populus they were in charge of making senatorial resolutions known to the people when they were in Rome, according to the formula specifically mentioned by Livy: ‘senatus censuit et consules edixerunt’ (‘the senate resolved and the consuls published an edict’). In their absence, one of the praetors, usually the urban praetor, would fulfil this duty. Communication between the consuls and the people took two different forms: in writing through edicts and orally through their personal appearance in a contio.

CONSULAR EDICTS

In fact, the two forms of communication complemented each other. As the word edicere indicates, an edictum should first be proclaimed, that is, announced orally in public. This would take place in a contio, the official assembly at which the Roman people received all sorts of information, summoned and presided over by the magistrate who produced the edict. This action was called edicere pro contione or in contione, and was simultaneously accompanied by the display of the edict in the most frequented public place possible, usually the forum, both means being used in order to inform the maximum number of people.

In the pre-Sullan period the consuls, always under orders from the senate and depending on the circumstances, played a more or less leading role in the control of public land (ager publicus) and its possible distribution amongst colonists, either individually or for the foundation of Roman or Latin colonies. Since they were the supreme magistrates, supervision of the use of the land owned by the Roman state also justified consular intervention in the creation of fora on the roads the consuls promoted in Italy.

CONTROL OF THE AGER PUBLICUS AND DISTRIBUTION OF LAND

On several occasions and in different contexts, ancient sources mention that the consuls were responsible for controlling the use and limits of the ager publicus or of carrying out the distribution of public land. In the first case, we have information from Livy regarding the problems of misappropriation of public land in Campania in the first quarter of the second century. In 173, the two consuls were allotted Liguria as their province. However, the senate decided that one of them, L. Postumius, should travel to Campania to establish the precise boundary between the public and private land. Livy adds that it was common knowledge that some persons had unlawfully appropriated public land by the simple process of moving the borders of their plots and invading the ager publicus. Postumius' mission was to recover for the Roman state the land thus lost.

One of the tasks performed by consuls during their term in office was to preside over the annual elections. This was not a function exclusive to consuls, as it could also be carried out by a dictator or an interrex. In fact, in the fourth century, the sources do not explicitly allude to any consul ever acting as president over electoral comitia – which obviously does not mean that they did not perform such a task – yet we know of the intervention of interreges, as well as of the appointment of dictators, solely to conduct the election process in various years throughout that century. Between 367 and 298, the presidency over elections belonged to a dictator or an interrex on sixteen occasions, or at least this was the intention, since at times the appointment of a dictator was challenged for a variety of reasons. For the remaining years one of the consuls must have presided over the elections.

In the consular year 297/6 Q. Fabius Maximus Rullianus was the first attested consul to act as president over elections. From then on, the presidency of dictators and interreges became exceptional, and it was more commonly the consuls who were in charge. We know the name of the presiding consul for some of the years at the beginning of the third century and for almost every year between the beginning of the Second Punic War – during which, due to the military situation, dictators were mainly in charge of the electoral process – and 167.

In this study we identified four different socioeconomic factors that affected the operation of the monetary system in the Roman empire: (a) the emperor, (b) the elite, (c) the ‘middling’ social groups and (d) the poor inhabitants. The emperor was responsible for the overall supervision of the production of money (minting and mining) and the control of revenues and expenses. Even if he did not devise long-lasting economic strategies, his monetary policies aimed at solving his financial problems and regulating the markets in an effective manner. The elite, on the other hand, may not have participated in the production of coins but they used them extensively in private business activities. Merchants, bankers and other entrepreneurs, who belonged either to the elite or the ‘middling’ social group, were responsible for the movement of predominantly precious-metal coins from one area to the other, thus creating unified circulation pools. In addition, they used credit in order to reduce transaction costs. Finally, the lower social strata used in local markets either civic or ‘official’ bronze coins. Although the value of these denominations was small, their significance for the monetary economy was high, since they facilitated daily transactions.

The different parts of the monetary economy functioned perfectly together. From this perspective, the Roman economy resembled a chain; if one of the links (production, distribution, weight standards, exchange rates etc.) changed, the other ones needed to adjust. Furthermore, it seems that the economy was intimately connected to the political and social conditions predominant at the time.

As we have already seen, the list of consular functions from 80 to 50 was long and qualitatively significant: the consuls received foreign embassies and introduced them to the senate; they took an active part in granting honours to individuals who had distinguished themselves by their actions in favour of the Roman state; they concluded or renewed treaties for whose implementation they were ultimately responsible; the consuls' intervention in debates in the senate regarding all sorts of questions was constant, and they promoted a large number of senatorial decrees; they were entrusted with the enactment of the senatus consulta once they had been passed, whether they had sponsored them or not; they legislated on very varied aspects of social life and the economy and politics of the Roman civitas, such as electoral corruption, distribution of public land, the corn supply, the courts, and the tribunician power; they were the representatives of the community before the gods of the Roman civic religion and had to ensure that relations with them were appropriate by conducting acts of expiation, supplications, and the traditional feriae Latinae, over which they had to preside; when necessary, they acted against deities and rituals which were perceived as pernicious, as in the case of the consul Gabinius in 58, who acted against the Egyptian cults; they took part in political debates before the people in contiones which were convened by them or by other magistrates and often had to give their opinion on topical public matters; […]

The main goal of this book is to properly frame and analyse the operation of the Roman monetary system from the first to the third centuries AD in the eastern provinces. The comprehensive study of a system such as the Roman may also give us the opportunity, in the future, to compare it with the mediaeval and the early modern ones, since they all share a range of similar characteristics. Here I may restrict myself to the use of comparative points with selected case studies (from Europe, North America and China) but I am convinced that fully comparative studies could and should emerge. I also hope that such a volume will enhance our understanding of the nature of ancient money and that, at the same time, it will prove that the Roman monetary economy was based on a sophisticated pre-industrial, pre-capitalist, pre-modern system. By this, I mean a monetary system that regulated the economic agents, controlled the money supply and identified the specific medium of transactions. Behind this system, at least in the case of the Roman empire, hid the central government, which guaranteed the value of money and the exchange of currencies, while it determined its monetary policies according to the needs of the treasury and the demands of the markets.

This study will be restricted to the geographical area to the Eastern Mediterranean provinces. These provinces represent a mosaic of different coinages, all of which were unified under the Roman political rule.

Studies both ancient and modern have been written on the Republican institutions as a whole, as well as in-depth analyses of the senate, the popular assemblies, the tribunate of the plebs, the aedileship, the praetorship, and the censorship. However, the consulship has not received the same attention from scholars. In fact, there are no monographs that deal specifically with the functions and activities of the supreme magistracy of the Roman state during the Republican period.

Of course, there are prosopographical studies which have shaped the chronology of the Republican consuls. Amongst these, Broughton's prosopography is absolutely essential, and without it this work would have been almost impossible to undertake. With a more limited scope, Albert Neuendorff completed a prosopography of the consuls from 78 to 49, focusing mainly on the candidates for the annual consular elections, and Adolf Lippold specifically studied the political role of the consuls in the period between 264 and 201. As a basis for consular prosopography, the fasti consulares have also been the subject of studies such as that of Fabio Mora, amongst others.

To the best of my knowledge, the first doctoral thesis on the Roman consulship was written by the Utrecht scholar Heinrich Gabriel Römer. It was published in 1841 with the title Dissertatio historico-antiquaria de consulum romanorum auctoritate libera in Utrecht, as stated on the first page of the copy preserved in the Sackler Library, Oxford. This was deposited in 1950 by Brasenose College in the Ashmolean Museum Library.

The production of coinages in pre-industrial societies has been studied predominantly in conjunction with the financial plans of ancient and medieval states. In the Roman empire, specifically, the emperor – the embodiment of the Roman state – was considered responsible for both the financial imperial policy and the minting of precious-metal coinages during the Principate. It soon became obvious to modern historians that the regulation of the imperial budget depended on the extent of the state payments, especially the ones destined for the Roman troops. Since these payments took the form of minted coins, the direct control of the production of currency became essential. As early as the nineteenth century one of the most pre-eminent historians, Theodor Mommsen, closely linked the fiscal policy of the Roman emperors with the production of coins. He insisted that the minting of precious-metal coinages brought large profits to the Roman treasury, while subsequently he examined in more detail the expenditures of the state and especially the military expenses and soldiers' pay.

The prevalence of capitalism in the Western world and the communist economic model that was promoted after the Russian revolution seem to have altered substantially the views of modern historians with regard to the link between ancient fiscal policies and the production of coinage. Rostovtzeff certainly accepts that money was very important for the payment of salaries.

The day on which the consuls took office varied throughout the Republican period. Livy's periochae report that from the year 153 onwards the consuls took office on 1 January, and not on 15 March as had been the case until then, a change that may have been caused by the Celtiberian rebellion in Hispania. According to Mommsen, the date of the Ides of March was designated as the beginning of the consular year some time between 233 and 217, although he favoured the year 222 as the most likely, given the dates of consular triumphs reported by the fasti triumphales. More recently, Hans Beck suggested plausibly that, as in the case of the new regulation of 153, there may have been a military reason for beginning the consular year on 15 March, and that this may have taken place in 218, linked to the beginning of the Second Punic War. The outbreak of the conflict may have made it advisable for the consuls to take office earlier in order to see to preliminary military actions as soon as possible, once they had completed their compulsory civil tasks in Rome. Nevertheless, the first time Livy mentions the consuls taking office on the Ides of March is in his account for the year 217, and from then on he provides the same information on a good number of occasions, which indicates that this was indeed the norm until 153.

In the post-Sullan period, the civil functions the consuls carried out in practice were very similar to those performed by them in previous centuries. Some of the tasks, in particular the religious duties and those regarding international relations of the Roman state, remained virtually unchanged and continued to be completed mainly at the beginning of the year. Understandably, the form of communication of the consuls with the rest of the Roman citizenship continued to be through official edicts as well as their words as orators before the people in contiones. The fact that after Sulla's dictatorship the consuls remained in Rome for a much longer period than in previous centuries resulted in an increase in the number of consular edicts and speeches delivered by the consuls at popular assemblies. The main consequence of the consuls' presence in Rome during the entire year (or most of it) was their conspicuousness on Rome's political scene, their participation in day-to-day politics, in the senate or public debates, in the making of big or small decisions: in short, in the daily management of the community. Without a doubt, one of the most significant changes from the pre-Sullan period was the greater importance that the consuls began to have in the legislative field.