ABSTRACT
The Augustan coinage was definitely based upon a gold and silver bimetallism,3 although, in fact, silver was the senior partner. The denarius continued at the weight of 60 grains, fixed in 217 B .C ., and the aureus was fixed at 120 grains in weight and in value 25 denarii. Gold was rated at a higher silver value than had prevailed since the revival of the coining of gold, but there is no reason to suppose that it had become token. On the contrary, it is probable that the coinage ratio was adjusted to the ratio between the values of gold and silver in the market. In his adoption of bimetallism, Augustus was
ROMAN IMPERIAL POLICY 409 aiming at the establishment of an imperial currency, with a view to the improvement of both trade and imperial organi zation. He took steps to have all public accounts and tariffs throughout the empire1 expressed in Roman denarii,2 and to enforce the use of Roman weights and measures. Imperial gold and silver was made legal tender throughout the empire.3 His desire to establish an efficient imperial system was again apparent in his attempt to coin a simple but comprehensive series of denominations. The aureus and denarius were accompanied by coins of half their weight, and the small change system was completely overhauled. No important issue of small coins had been made for sixty-five years, and there was no doubt an inconvenient shortage of bronze coins. Two new bronze denominations, the sestertius and dupondius, were issued, while the as and its quarter were made of copper. These small denominations were doubtless tokens, and the theories based upon the supposition that they were full value coins, because no uniform standard of weight can be discovered as their basis, are without foundation.4 The use
During the first half of the first century a .d . there was a
tendency to consolidate the imperial prerogative. About a .d . 38 the mint at Lugdunum was closed, and for the first time Emperors issued gold and silver coins in Rome. The mint was separate from the Senatorial establishment and was supervised by the Emperor’s finance minister. The Oriental notion of the divinity of Kings that had infiltrated the declining Republic and finally became patent in the portraiture of Caesar and his successors on the coins was directed at the beginning of the republic to the idea, also current among the aristocratic party during the previous century, that the value of the currency could be determined by the will of the Emperor expressed in imperial decrees. Their value was even said to spring from the effigy upon the coins. Csesar and Augustus were strong enough in their belief in the importance of the more prosaic economic influences at work, but their successors fell easy victims to the more flattering theories that attributed to them divine powers which did not stop short at the control of the value of money. Augustus permitted no worship of himself, but after his death coins of gold, silver, and bronze were struck in his divine memory bearing the legend “ d i v v s a v g v s t v s .551 Caligula (a .d . 37 to 41) arrogated to himself the attributes of divinity.9-In the ’forties of the 1st century plated coins began to appear again. Some authorities state that between a .d . 41 and 54 as many as four-fifths of the denarii issued were base. These issues mark the beginning of a series of experiments in debasement, which was to be continued over a perod of 230 years and to disprove tragically but certainly the fallacy that the divine nature of the Emperor would enable him to multiply the number of coins without limit and without effect upon their current value. As an 18th-century writer remarked of this decline: “ When money comes to be abased and . . . the mint like the pulse beats too slowly and irregularly, it is an evident symptom of some distemper in the bowels of a state.55 3 The seat of the distemper was in the incompetence of Emperors and their belief in their own divinity, two probably not unrelated causes.
