Management of Mint in the Late Roman Republic

Author: * QuintusCinna Cocceius - 7 Posts on this thread out of 1,054 Posts sitewide.
Date: Jun 21, 2003 - 00:38

The Management of the Mint in the Late Roman Republic
David B. Hollander (Columbia University)
An understanding of the management and policies of the Roman mint would greatly facilitate the study of Roman economic thought. Much is known concerning the physical production of Roman coins but relatively little about why the Romans minted coinage — beyond the obvious fact that it facilitated state payments. Numismatic research indicates that Republican coins were produced intermittently and in issues of varying size. Who decided when to mint coins and how much new coinage to produce? What criteria led to their decisions? Could an individual go to the mint and have his private bullion converted into coins? The answers to such questions would reveal the level of sophistication in Roman monetary policy: whether the government conceived of its role in the production and distribution of coinage in economic or purely fiscal terms. Unfortunately, but predictably, little evidence survives concerning the mint magistrates, their activities or their interaction with other officials, individuals and institutions.
Primarily on the basis of numismatic evidence, M. H. Crawford proposed a rough model of the institutional processes behind the production of coins in his Roman Republican Coinage. This model, with some modifications, has gained wide acceptance over the past two decades despite continued debate over certain important details. An examination of Crawford’s scheme and the subsequent work on this topic will serve as a useful introduction to the problems of Roman monetary policy and expose some unwarranted assumptions about the functioning of Roman government.
Crawford hypothesized that, in the late Republic, the Senate determined how much coinage to produce at the beginning of each year. The Senate then authorized the quaestor of the aerarium to release a specified amount of bullion to the tresviri monetales, the three magistrates annually elected to manage the Roman mint. When the tresviri had received the bullion allocated to them from the treasury, they could then produce the requisite amount of coins for that year. However, in some years, according to Crawford’s model, the senate’s initial authorization of coinage proved inadequate for the needs of the state. In such cases the senate would make a further authorization of coinage later in the year. These coins (along with certain other ’emergency issues’) bear the legend EX SC (ex senatus consulto). Most EX SC issues (25 of 48) stem for the period between 80 and 51 B.C. when there were “recurrent financial crises and. . . it is possible that. . . the Senate was frequently unable or unwilling to decide at the beginning of the year how much coinage should be struck.”² Crawford concluded that “it thus seems probable. . . that routine coinage, although authorized by the Senate, bore no special

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mark and that only when an issue was separately authorized during the year was it marked with EX SC.”³
Though widely accepted,⁴ Crawford’s model faces some rather formidable difficulties. First of all it is unclear whether the tresviri monetales were elected or appointed by the consuls. The question is by no means trivial since, if the consuls appointed the tresviri, they may have exerted a fair degree of control over mint policy. If elected, the tresviri would have been either relatively autonomous or, more probably, under the general supervision of the senate like other junior magistrates. Andrew Burnett argued strenuously in favor of the idea that the consuls appointed the tresviri. First of all, he pointed out, the legend EX SC rarely appears on the coins of the tresviri but appears rather frequently on coins issued by other magistrates.⁵ Burnett suggested that the most plausible explanation for this phenomenon is that the “moneyers were appointed by the consul and struck by his imperium”⁶ and that other magistrates required senatorial permission to mint coins. In support of this assertion Burnett drew attention to Polybius’ statement that the “consuls had the right to draw unlimited sums from the treasury, but that all other expenditure had to be authorized by senatorial decree.”⁷ Burnett further suggested that the consular appointment of moneyers best explained the coincidence of certain consuls and moneyers of the same family in the same year.⁸ Burnett suggested that “the senate had in practice usurped control” of the treasury and concluded that “whereas there is no evidence that the Republican moneyers were elected, there are indications that they were appointed by the consul.”⁹
Burnett’s model is complicated and raises several important questions. However let us first consider only his argument that the consuls appointed the tresviri monetales. Consular appointment is indeed one way to explain the coincidence of related consuls and moneyers in the same year but it is not the only possible explanation. It seems equally plausible that the voters who supported a consular candidate would also look favorably on his relatives.

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There is also some doubt as to the accuracy of Polybius’ account of the respective prerogatives of senate and consul on which Burnett’s argument relies. F. W. Walbank, commenting on Polybius 6.13.1, notes that “there is no recorded instance of a consul drawing money on his own initiative; indeed, on occasion he would remain embarrassed by the refusal of the Senate’s authorization.”¹⁰ Walbank refers to the events of 191 B.C. when the senate refused to grant money to the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio for the games which he had vowed to present. Instead they instructed him to pay for the games out of his own pocket or by means of booty in his possession.¹¹
One might also note an episode which Plutarch mentions in his biographies of Pompey and Lucullus.¹² During the consulship of Lucullus in 74 B.C., Pompey, then waging war against Sertorius in Spain, wrote to the Senate requesting more money and threatening to return to Italy if he did not receive it. Plutarch writes that Lucullus, fearing that, if Pompey returned, he might obtain the lucrative command against Mithridates, “E)/SPEUSEN A)POSTALH=NAI TA\ XRH/MATA” [Pompey 20.1] or “SUNE/PRACEN. . . PROQUMO/TATA PEMFQH=NAI TA\ XRH/MATA” [Lucullus 5.2]. This is not the sort of language one would expect Plutarch to use if Lucullus could have sent the money on his own authority. Plutarch stresses two aspects of the episode in these passages: first that Lucullus has the money sent despite personal animosity towards Pompey (hence the use of the words PROQUMO/TATA and SPEU/DW) and second that the matter was difficult to arrange (hence the use of verbs such as A)POSTALA/W and SUMPRA/TTW). The passive constructions with TA\ XRH/MATA further suggest that the decision was not for Lucullus alone to make. Opposition most likely came from the Senate (to whom, after all, Pompey had sent his request), since Lucullus’ colleague Marcus Aurelius Cotta would have shared his desire to keep Pompey away from Rome.

A passage from Cicero’s In Vatinium also seems to contradict Polybius. Cicero here claims that the right of administering the treasury had always belonged to the senate, making no mention of any rights of consuls in this regard.¹³ Though it is possible that changes in the administration of the treasury occurred in the late second or early first centuries BC (Polybius himself foresaw the possibility),¹⁴ it seems unlikely that Cicero would be unaware of them.

Ultimately knowing who controlled the aerarium does not help solve the problem of who controlled the mint. Burnett’s argument relies on the conflation of the two institutions. Even if one accepts that the consuls, at least de jure, controlled the aerarium, it does not follow that they also controlled the mint.

On the question of how the tresviri monetales attained office, the literary sources offer no definitive explanation. In 1979, Crawford suggested that the monetales were elected

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because their forerunners, the tresviri mensarii, were “certainly elected.”¹⁵ Curiously, five years earlier in his Roman Republican Coinage Crawford had stated that the tresviri mensarii were appointed.¹⁶ Livy, the only ancient source to mention these officials, does not provide any definitive answer. He writes merely that “triumviri mensarii rogatione M. Minuci tribuni plebis facti” (23.21.6). Unfortunately, since Livy uses the verb facio in situations involving both election and appointment, it is not possible to know with certainty to which procedure he was referring.¹⁷

H. B. Mattingly, citing a passage from Cicero’s Pro Fonteio, also argues in favor of the election of the tresviri monetales.. Cicero says of M. Fonteius:

Both as a triumvir and as a quaestor — two offices which involve the management and handling of large sums of money — [Fonteius] so acted, judges, that, in public matters involving many people and recorded in both public and private records, no sign of theft nor suspicion of any crime has been suggested.¹⁸

But was Fonteius a monetalis? Cicero does not say so explicitly but his emphasis on Fonteius’ financial dealings has led many scholars to think so even though no coins bear his name. Crawford assigned him a place in his Roman Republican Coinage (#347) commenting that “none of his coins, if he struck any, survive.”¹⁹ Mattingly also assumes that Fonteius was a monetalis and goes on to argue that the Cicero passage implies election because “in defending a client’s pre-Sullan career Cicero treats his two financial magistracies — the posts of moneyer and urban quaestor — with no hint of any difference between them.”²⁰ This is, obviously, an extremely tenuous argument; however the idea that some monetales never struck coins is intriguing.

If Fonteius was a moneyer who struck no coins, how can Cicero claim that he had handled pecunia maxuma during his triumvirate? There would seem to be five possible explanations for Cicero’s statement in the Pro Fonteio:

1) Fonteius was a monetalis but struck no coins. Cicero, doing his best to defend his client, was trying to deceive the jury who would have associated the office with the handling of large sums of money but may not have realized that Fonteius had not, for

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some reason, taken part in such activities during his tenure. Cicero was probably not above this kind of subterfuge and the existence of anonymous coin issues (see below) would reduce the risks involved in such a gambit.

2) Fonteius was a monetalis who struck no coins but the office involved some responsibilities pertaining to money other than its production of which we are unaware and to which Cicero refers.

3) Fonteius was a monetalis who struck so few coins that none now survive. Cicero merely exaggerates his client’s actions and responsibilities.

4) Fonteius was a monetalis who struck coins which did not bear his name and Cicero was, therefore, completely honest in his description of his client’s activities while in office. Since several anonymous issues are dated to the period during which Fonteius would have been a monetalis, this is certainly a plausible explanation.²¹

5) Fonteius was a tresvir capitalis rather than monetalis. Although the capitales are typically associated with public order rather than money, they did merit explicit mention in a Republican lex repetundarum²² and therefore probably handled money in the normal course of their duties.

The fourth and fifth explanations seem most likely although all are possible and none provable.

Scholars have sometimes sought to infer election or appointment of the monetales from their appearance or non-appearance in various surviving lists of magistrates. Cicero, for example, included the monetales in a list of magistrates in the De Legibus (3.3.6-9). Crawford and others have considered this as evidence for election.²³ However, as Michael Harlan has pointed out, “the passage itself says nothing of the method of selection.”²⁴ Crawford’s inference faces two additional difficulties. First, Cicero includes in his list of magistrates the dictatorship, an appointed position. Second, Cicero is writing about an ideal Republic rather than the existing one and so has taken the liberty of making some changes. For instance, in Cicero’s Republic the censors would serve for five years (rather than the eighteen months of the actual Roman system) and would control the treasury (in reality, according to Cicero’s other writings, the prerogative of the senate).²⁵ In the dialogue Quintus tells his brother that his provisions for magistrates are “nearly those of our state, although you have made a few changes.”²⁶ Clearly we cannot regard the De Legibus as entirely credible evidence for actual Roman political practices.

The tresviri monetales do not appear in lists of elected magistrates in the Lex Repetundarum Tabulae Bembinae (perhaps the Lex Acilia of 122 B.C.).²⁷ This law specified, among other things, that no one could be a juror for repetundae trials who was

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or had been a tribune of the plebs, quaestor, triumvir capitalis, a military tribune in one of the first four legions, a triumvir agris dandis adsignandis or a senator. Burnett, following Mommsen, has interpreted the absence of the monetales from such lists as a further indication of their appointment.²⁸ Although, once again, the text does not explicitly indicate that election is a criterion of inclusion, it is suggestive that the list includes the elected military tribunes (those from the legiones urbanae) and not those who were appointed. However, the omission of the monetales from these lists of officials could merely reflect their limited magisterial powers rather than their mode of selection. It is difficult to envision a monetalis, in his official capacity (as we understand it), having much opportunity for extortion.²⁹

The strongest evidence for the election of the tresviri monetales may come from Cicero’s Pro Cluentio. In this speech Cicero states that one Q. Manlius “in discordiis civitatis ad eam columnam, ad quam multorum saepe conviciis perductus erat, tum suffragiis populi pervenerat.”³⁰ Although Cicero identifies Manlius only as triumvir,³¹ he must be referring to the capitales.³² Since the tresviri capitales and monetales both belonged to the vigintisexvirate , it seems plausible to suppose that they shared the same means of gaining office.³³

While the evidence which might imply the appointment of tresviri can be more easily dismissed than that suggesting election, certainty on this issue must await some as yet undiscovered text or inscription. In the meantime it seems best to follow Mattingly (and, indeed, Burnett himself)³⁴ who concludes that “on balance then I think that we should assume election throughout.”³⁵

Unfortunately not all aspects of Crawford’s model stand up as well as his assumption that the tresviri were elected. Let us now examine his theory of an annual coinage decree and the hypothesis that coins bearing the legend EX SC represent the products of crisis. Although EX SC coinage does sometimes appear in the context of crisis or political disturbance,³⁶ the evidence does not fully support Crawford’s conclusions. Most impor-

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tantly, there is little evidence to support the idea of an annual coinage decree.³⁷ Such a decree, for it to be useful, would rely on accurate knowledge of several important variables: anticipated income and expenses, the current state of the treasury and the production rate of the mint. The auctioning off of tax concessions to publicans would provide the senate with only a rough minimum figure for income³⁸ since there were further unpredictable revenues from foreign conquest, successful public prosecutions³⁹ and occasionally even the balance of an allowance given to a provincial governor.⁴⁰ Even if the Roman senate could accurately estimate annual revenues and expenditures,⁴¹ it would be a far more complicated task to determine how much new coinage would be required in a given year. Such an estimate would depend not only on figures for income and expenses but also on the form in which and time at which these various sums arrived in and departed from the treasury.

A number of variables might affect the treasury’s supply of coinage over the course of a year: in what form taxes were paid and expenditures made (whether in coin, bullion or by some other means), what sort of coins were used, the degree of wear on those coins, as well as when the money was received or had to be paid out.⁴² Plutarch, in his biography of Cato the Younger, makes it clear that the aerarium itself did not always function in an efficient or consistent manner: After assuming the office of quaestor, Cato “found that there were many people who owed old debts to the state and that the state

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owed money to many people.”⁴³ Although Cato quickly sought to rectify the situation, the anecdote demonstrates that the Republican treasury could be lax in both the collection and disbursement of funds. Its willingness to deal in credit as well as cash⁴⁴ would only increase the difficulty with which the aerarium might be expected to estimate its coinage needs. In addition, the Senate seems to have been quite willing to consider and pass expensive legislation during the course of the year⁴⁵ (which would certainly upset any previous estimate of coinage needs) and provincial governors seem to have had few qualms about requesting money from the Senate during their terms of office.⁴⁶ If it was standard practice to estimate both expenses and coinage production at the beginning of the year, we never hear objections to that effect when requests for money were made and expensive legislation was proposed later on. It seems far more reasonable to suppose that the urban quaestor himself, having perhaps first obtained the permission of the senate,⁴⁷ would periodically decide to release bullion to the mint on the basis of the condition of the treasury and expected short-term revenues and expenditures.⁴⁸ This

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scenario is more in keeping with the passive, ad hoc nature of Roman government and explains, as well as any other model of mint management, the varying sizes of Roman coin issues and why some tresviri perhaps minted no coins at all.

While the EX SC legend may not necessarily indicate Senatorial miscalculation of annual coinage needs, as Crawford supposed, it may suggest other circumstances of monetary or political significance. All coinage may have technically been ’by order of the Senate’ but only some moneyers may have chosen to emphasize this fact on their coins. By including this legend a tresvir might simply call attention to his allegiance to the optimates. Alternatively, a moneyer might use the legend to emphasize a disagreement with the Senate. Consider, for example, the coins of the quaestors Piso and Caepio (Crawford #330). In addition to EX SC these coins bear the legend AD FRU EMU, short for ad frumentum emundum, “for purchasing grain,” and on the reverse depict the magistrates seated and flanked by ears of wheat. Clearly this issue was meant to pay for grain. In the Rhetorica Ad Herennium it is reported that, when Saturninus proposed new grain legislation in 100 B.C. shortly before his death, Caepio told the Senate that the treasury could not afford it.⁴⁹ A major struggle between Caepio and Saturninus ensued and Caepio, later defending himself against treason charges, stated that he had saved the treasury.⁵⁰ Yet Caepio, together with Piso, did strike coins for the purchase of grain, apparently in a time of state fiscal crisis. While too much information is lacking to understand these events fully, one possible interpretation is that Caepio and his colleague used the legend EX SC to emphasize that the decision to mint coins was not theirs.

It is equally plausible that EX SC may refer to the use of a special source of bullion for coinage. There are several instances of aediles striking coins⁵¹ and it is possible that the EX SC legend on these coins indicates senatorial permission to mint bullion from either the aedile’s personal fortune, provincial ’contributions’ for the financing of games⁵² or

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the treasury of the aediles.⁵³ Magistrates often spent their own money on games and other public projects to increase their popularity.⁵⁴

C. T. Barlow’s study of coinage bearing the legend ARG PUB (public silver) also suggested that an issue’s legend might indicate the source of the metal used to produce it.⁵⁵ Barlow argued that periodically, from 112 B.C. on, the Romans used bullion from the sanctius aerarium to strike these ARG PUB coins. Such coins, he believes, financed campaigns against the Gauls.⁵⁶ H. B. Mattingly, however, suggests that the use of the ARG PUB legend on coins refers to the use of bullion “on its way to the treasury.”⁵⁷ Crawford proposed that the Romans minted some of these issues “from the money left to the populus Romanus by Ptolemy Alexander I of Egypt. . . and the unusual origin of the issues was perhaps felt to be important enough to justify the addition of the legends.”⁵⁸ Unfortunately none of these explanations are completely convincing or satisfying.⁵⁹ All silver coinage must have been, in some sense, ARG PUB in that the coins had been minted by the state and were legal tender. The legend may mean no more than ’public silver’ but it does seems possible that it was used to help distinguish coins produced from different bullion sources. As with control marks, this legend might have no particular significance outside the mint itself.

If the EX SC (or ARG PUB) legend refers to a specific source or type of source of bullion, it might explain the existence of partial issues (issues in which not all varieties bear the EX SC or ARG PUB legend). It may have been deemed necessary for the mint to keep strictly separate the coinage produced from various public and private sources. There would inevitably be some loss of metal during the minting process as well as variation in the quality of the bullion. In the absence of a good deal of assaying, it would be difficult to decide on a reasonable conversion rate and immediately hand over coins for bullion. Therefore it seems likely that any exchange of bullion for coinage involving a

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private individual or the personal bullion of a public official would involve the mint rather than the aerarium and necessitate the strict segregation of that coinage from public or other private moneys.⁶⁰ Special legends such as ARG PUB and EX SC might facilitate such segregation. De Ruyter’s study of the coinage of L. Iulius Bursio, which found ARG PUB and non-ARG PUB dies mixed together, makes such a hypothesis seem plausible.⁶¹ Crawford’s study of the coinage of P. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus found no die-links between his PESC (pecunia erogata senatus consulto) coins and others which do not bear this variation of the EX SC legend.⁶² These findings suggest the physical or chronological separation of dies during the minting process which would seem to make the use of a special legend redundant. It is hoped that further die studies will help clarify this issue.⁶³

Three issues related to the minting of coinage in the late Roman Republic remain to be mentioned briefly: the existence of ’free coinage,’ the role of provincial governors in coin production and the coinage produced by municipalities.

It has long been doubted that ’free coinage’ existed in the Roman Republic i.e. that an individual could take his own bullion to the mint and exchange it for coinage.⁶⁴ However, one of Cicero’s letters implies that this may have been possible. Cicero tells Atticus that he had written to his wife’s freedman, Philotimus, and suggested that he get travel-money from the mint.⁶⁵ It is possible to infer from this that ’free coinage’ existed (at least for an influential and well-connected senator) though the passage might also refer to money on deposit at the mint.⁶⁶ However the former interpretation seems more likely.⁶⁷ If free coinage did exist it further complicates the picture of how and why Roman coinage entered circulation.

Provincial governors⁶⁸ as well as cities and other communities also produced coinage. It is not at all clear whether the bronze coinages of cities such as Paestum and Velia, the

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Iberian denarii and the Asian cistophori were produced on local initiative, with the permission of Roman authorities or at the instigation and for the use of Roman magistrates.⁶⁹ Whether independent or official, the existence of such coinage demonstrates the complexity of the Roman monetary ’system’ and how difficult it is to reconstruct their financial activities with any certainty or in any detail.

Ultimately there may be little that we can know for certain about the management of the Republican mint. We lack sufficient literary evidence and the numismatic evidence admits of too many contradictory interpretations. Although the legends on Republican coins may well bear witness to complicated financial and political maneuvering, it is more prudent, albeit less satisfying, to suppose that they often reflect merely the whim of the moneyers. Although the evidence at hand may never support any interpretation of Roman minting practices to the degree that we would like, it certainly does not support the prevailing interpretation, Crawford’s model.

Let me conclude by describing what may be safely said with respect to the production and public use of Roman coinage and its relation to the Republic’s expenses and revenues. The senate probably determined most state expenses near the beginning of the year because most public money was spent by magistrates who would need their money as soon as possible in order to fulfill their duties and, in some cases, arrange for the transportation of their money.⁷⁰ However, sometimes these decisions might be made earlier or later depending on circumstances. Certainly magistrates often asked for more money and the senate often considered and passed expensive legislation later in the year. Although the senate made the decisions concerning how much money magistrates should receive for the purpose of maintenance, it was up to the quaestors of the aerarium to disburse the actual funds and they may have enjoyed a certain latitude in deciding when and how to pay out money.

It seems impossible to generalize about when the Roman state typically received its revenues. Crawford suggests that it would have been “at the end of the year for which they were collected” but that is far from evident.⁷¹ With respect to the publicani we do not have the text of any revenue collection contract but, as E. Badian suggests, it is probable that “the contractor had to pay a large sum in advance, and the rest either in installments or at the end of the lustrum.”⁷² Such practices are similar to those known from other kinds of public contracts and would mesh well with what Polybius and others

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say about the interaction between senate and publicani.⁷³ Other revenue might arrive with or after the return of the magistrate who collected it. State funds sometimes remained in the provinces, deposited with the publicani or in a temple.⁷⁴ Revenue might also be diverted from one province to another without passing through Rome at all,⁷⁵ or spend years in a kind of financial limbo before finally being deposited in the aerarium at Rome.⁷⁶

Because of the variables and uncertainties involved in both Roman state expenditure and revenue, it seems unlikely that the senate could have annually determined how much new coinage to mint. The idea of an annual coinage decree depends mainly on a possible, but by no means certain, interpretation of the EX SC legend. It may also be a relic of Crawford’s scheme whereby each year (at least down to the reign of Sulla) the state paid for all expenditures in new coin.⁷⁷ Under this system a coinage decree would be inherent in the annual budget. Such a system might also result in a substantial delay in getting coins to those who needed them.⁷⁸ Furthermore it is difficult to explain the state’s occasional large coin surpluses if annual coinage decrees were the norm. Pliny the Elder records that there were surpluses of HS 300,000,000 in 167 B.C., HS 6,135,400 in

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156 B.C. and HS 30,000,000 in 49 B.C.⁷⁹ Crawford evidently attributed these surpluses to miscalculation on the part of the senate,⁸⁰ but even a miscalculation of 6 million sesterces would have been substantial. It seems far more likely that these surpluses were the result of extraordinary revenue in some years. Indeed, this is how Pliny accounted for the surplus of 167 B.C., stating that it was the result of booty obtained from Macedonia after the defeat of Perseus at the battle of Pydna.⁸¹

There seems to have been no simple system for the production of coinage nor a single authority who decided when to produce coins. I would suggest that tresviri monetales periodically minted whatever bullion was supplied to them by the urban quaestors. It seems likely that they also occasionally minted the bullion of private individuals or of magistrates financing games with private resources. Communities and provincial governors could also produce coinage and it is unclear whether they would require explicit senatorial authorization to do so. Asian cistophori and Iberian denarii may also sometimes have been the product of Roman magistrates.⁸²

The functioning of Roman public finance during the Republic is difficult to understand, not simply because of a lack of evidence but because it was a patchwork of ad hoc methods and measures which accreted over centuries of expansion. It involved the use of a variety of currencies, taxation methods, treasuries and officials who were given a great deal of autonomy with which to spend money and collect revenue. Under such circumstances it is difficult to envision a senator or magistrate ever obtaining a clear picture of the supply and circulation of coinage in the Roman world or being able to carry out any sophisticated economic policy with respect to or by means of their currency.⁸³

Footnotes

1 The author wishes to thank the American Numismatic Society’s Summer Seminar (1995) as well as Professors Richard A. Billows, William V. Harris and William E. Metcalf for their advice and assistance in the writing of this paper.