Bronze coins found in Somerset reveal Roman age of austerity

This Is Somerset ^ | Wednesday, December 7, 2011 | Western Daily Press

[SunkenCiv]

:’) There was practically no gold paid to the legions and auxiliaries over the centuries of the Roman Empire, and the bigger the empire got, the more currency was needed. Soldiers were paid in salt (that’s where the word “salary” comes from), vinegar, room and board, and after action booty from the occasional vanquished enemy. Bronze coin was never treated as paper money where gold could be demanded.

Trajan’s big gold strike came from his conquest of Dacia with its gold mines, which go back into prehistory a bit; Trajan’s catamite-loving successor had to be talked into hanging on to Dacia, but retreated from other areas (most famously, building Hadrian’s Wall), and spent his time as emperor travelling a good bit of the Empire, and persecuting the Jews, all the while knocking off young boys.

Rome’s gold supply went off into trade with India, if the complaints of at least one surviving Roman writer is true. The figures of this flow of gold were exaggerated (at best). Gold is rarely found on ancient wrecks from any era, it just wasn’t carried along as a rule; trade was in goods, iow barter.

OTOH, some enterprising Roman actually brought pottery makers from India and established their industry on the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea, thus moving the supply closer to the Roman market, and obviating the need for the time factor of the monsoon trade route. Rome learned of the orangutan and brought it as a curiousity to amuse the riff raff, and imported a lot of pepper, not to mention the silk and other common Far East goods.

The Byzantines controlled a buttload of trade thanks to the location, and of course, they persisted a long time, so gold Byzantine coins are fairly commonplace today. A good many of the bronze coins dug up in the Balkans by people armed only with metal detectors are of late Roman Empire date, but a good many are Byzantine.

Byzantine goods were traded by sea throughout the former Roman west, as pottery (which persists even in a broken state for a long time in the soil) and other stuff from Byzantium is found in archaological contexts in the UK. I suspect that any coin in use in post-Roman Britain was locally circulated, and that commercial transactions were by barter, which always works.

[SunkenCiv]

I have met someone from the UK who has found buried metal here and there, and (ahem) has never reported any of it. I think there’s a quantity standard at and above which reporting is legally required.

[Happy Rain]

I’ll concede your mastery of the subject, my thoughts being not always reliable remnants from High School history 40 years ago and assorted documentaries on TV.

My main historical interests are mostly of the last several centuries.

Besides,Thule,Atlantis and Mu are much more captivating ancient civilizations than stuffy bloody old Rome;)

[SunkenCiv]

Those are pretty interesting places to study, not least because the field is so wide open. :’)

Gold : prices, facts, figures & research
Commodity Numbers FAQs
How much gold is there?
http://www.galmarley.com/framesets/fs_commodity_essentials_faqs.htm

In the world there are currently somewhere between 120,000 and 140,000 tonnes of gold ‘above ground’. To visualise this imagine a single solid gold cube with edges of about 19 metres (about three metres short of the length of a tennis court). That’s all that has ever been produced.

Divided amongst the population of the world there are about 23 grams per person, about 1.2 cubic centimetres each. This equates to about $250 - $350 worth per person on Earth, depending on the current price.

[Mr Apple]

Not shining them up.

Yes. I agree with this. Only getting the debris off is acceptable; not shining them up.