I have been making rudimentary attempts to figure out what Harl was saying about the denomination relations within 4th century Roman coins. Its clear he was involved in a huge step forward from the positions Mattingly laid out about 30 years earlier. Although Harl is careful to distance himself from Bolin, all the same, I think a lot of the credit for the fruitful new 1990's attitudes to fiat matters - behind all this progress - was down a redirection of attitudes by Bolin. My only big criticism of the Harl book is really a kind of superficial one – about the old fashioned approach to presentation of his ideas. Just like Mattingly he has a text which references plates (different page) which in turn are annotated as to details (different page again). Indeed, by setting endnotes rather than subnotes its even more difficult that Mattingly, with the reader is being forced into repeatedly hunting backwards and forwards to different pages to try keep track of what is going on. I suspect this problem is probably not down to Harl himself, rather to do with rigidity in the ideas of his academic publisher/printer. Independent dealers like Seaby’s were already getting their illustrations into the text way back in the 1960’s, and independent collector scholars like Michael Mitchiner were revolutionising presentation by getting text and pictures side by side by the 1970’s. Anyhow – all that is becoming history as more and more information goes on line, and self typesetting on the web becomes 100x simpler than it once was. Which (finally!) gets me to my point. The only modern web site I found trying to explain the sort of thing Harl wrote about - with illustrations alongside text - is this one: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/...man-empire/monetary-history-of-imperial-rome/ And it is a very rudimentary effort. Have I missed something? Is there a web site I overlooked making a modern understanding of the workings of 4th century Roman coins more accessible? Rob T
I’m afraid I missed the introduction of Harl’s books on CoinTalk, but I started reading the Armstrong web pages. Interesting overview, but riddled with misspellings - there are so many mistakes that I fear numbers might be affected, too. Making the piece much less persuasive.
I am less critical of amateur web pages (like mine!) which include a few misspellings and even signs of imperfect scholarship in the desire to share the love of our hobby. I have not read all of the pages but have always been a bit of a fan of Armstrong Economics as a free site because of his page showing the Septimius / Noah coin that I have always desired. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/history/ancient-economies/the-noah-coinage-of-phrygia/ When the Internet was new, some wanted to require paid memberships and others valued free information exchange. I believe the hobby as a whole benefited by the early adoption of free material rather than waiting decades for the professionals to figure out how to sell their expertise. It is up to the reader to read critically and sort out the benefits and truth from the opinions and errors. I do not know Mr. Armstrong but am glad he posted his material for us to enjoy and practice or critical skills (riddled with errors or not). I do not claim to be a scholar and neither does Mr. Armstrong from what I see. That is why I felt the necessity to post the disclaimer I did on my pages: A message from the owner of this page: This page is very much a 'fast food' or 'pop culture' approach to the subject of ancient numismatics. I am an amateur collector and offer no guarantee of completeness or accuracy on any material on this site. I recommend that you research your questions rather than accepting blindly anything posted here. I also recommend you apply this same degree of care in using any other source material online or in hard copy. This site was intended to expose new collectors to an enjoyable hobby. No claim is made to serious scholarship. Serious numismatists are also welcomed here while they await publication of more proper and scholarly coverage of this material. Images posted on this site are taken from a variety of sources including my personal collection and several other private collections.
I was blessed, absolutely blessed, in my youth with a classical education which fascinated, intrigued me, and it ignited a passion from which I never recovered. Numismatics has made it possible for me to delve deeply into the economics of empire and emporium and there have been few pleasures in this life that have matched those (next to my family). Having said that, I am delighted, absolutely delighted to read anything and everything I can where ancient (including Byzantine) history and ancient coins come together. The field is so vast that anyone trying to write about even a portion of that period and its monetary systems, taxation, banking, coinage, is bound to make some errors and frankly, I don't care that much if they do. Every field of knowledge commits errors when put into print or practice and few of the errors in this field match the potential for the real damage other branches of knowledge can inflict on us. So, I say to anyone making a study of ancient numismatics, thanks for making our lives more enjoyable by studying and reporting to us what you uncover in those studies. May Clio and Juno Moneta smile upon your endeavors.
Dear Kevin, What you wrote has great resonance with me as well. From childhood to the present, Classical Studies has been my overriding interest, and I'm grateful that it gave me a career. Nor would I have met my wife, had we not first made our acquaintance in a Greek class over 40 years ago!
Although I did not have a career as many of you (business, here), I started enjoying Ancient History from my Jr Hi Grammar teacher. She was brutal, but instilled a love for ancient History that stayed with me all my life. Onwards, I had a prof at University that I took several courses, Minored in History just by taking HIS Ancient History courses. Throughout my career, I read a few business improvement books, but tended towards reading a lot of Historical Biographies, especially Ancients. I was more interested in what made a person successful INSIDE their persona vs. the latest fad reading. Here is a Quinarius celebrating an incredible Roman, raising himself up, arguably to becoming Rome’s first Emperor... RR Fundanius AR Quinarius 101 BCE Marius triumph Jupiter E control Victory captive carnyx Q Sear 205 Craw 326-2
Thank you. I generally eschewed Historical Novels or Historical Fiction. I enjoyed reading real history. Wonderful way to develop real Leadership skills, and utilize them EFFECTIVELY.
I have a comment about Dr. Harl: for years I have purchased dozens of The Great Courses CDs/DVDs from the Teaching Company. In all those years I have returned only one course for a refund, Dr. Harl's "The Vikings." It may have been scholarly enough, but his pronunciation of Scandinavian names drove me absolutely crazy. I would have thought he would have taken the time to learn how to pronounce them. At times he would pronounce the same name in two different ways. I found that to be sloppiness, plain and simple. Whether this informs or is germane to this discussion remains to be seen. Steve
Yes – completely agree. My point about Armstrong’s effort being “rudimentary” was really a sort of criticism - but not of him rather of everybody else – as I judge it would be fairly straightforward to produce something more sophisticated based upon Harl. Actually it was (maybe a flat footed) attempt to encourage some younger Roman enthusiast to have a shot at it…… I do have a criticism of Harl’s peripheral treatment of the Omayyad dirhem – and it leads to interesting consequences - as I think can be easily shown: Harl just looks at Grierson for Islamic events – if he had looked at the 1960’s work of Skinner in London, or Miles at the ANS he would have got a correct weight for the islamic (‘Abd al-Malik's) coin dirhem c. 2.93g. Likewise Skinner in London and Hinz at Göttingen independently got the weight dirhem at c. 3.125g. Multiple sources show this to be a simple set up. A bullion dirhem weighed 64 grains, a coin dirhem 6o grains. Once we have that correction we can turn to the parallel islamic gold dinar – Harl has that weight correct – c. 4.25g. But he missed the tradition that that too was sometimes figured at 60 (different) grains. So – lets see what happens if we take 64/60 x 4.25 - it equals c. 4.53g Kind of interestingly close to the (theoretical) solidus is it not? Which gets us back to a problem I mentioned earlier – about “pagan gold”. I now find the phrase has its origins in Eusebius – to do it seems with Licinius striking at 60 to the pound for his aureus, and using it to promote Jupiter. It seems Constantine melted them, and perhaps had a religious pretext to take his 1/6th profit on associated the weight reduction. So the bigger picture is this. There were only two big reforms of this gold weight standard over 500 years - over the period 300 to 800. A c. 17% profit for Constantine when he replaced “pagan” gold with “christian” gold. Then a nominal c. 6% profit when ‘Abd al Malik replaced christian gold with islamic gold. It should be noted that ‘Abd al Malik got less than that since the Arabs apparently struck to full weight standards, the Roman struck slightly low (c. 4.45g rather than c. 4.54g). Further to that, working backwards, the true weight standard of Rome seems to be a pound/libra of c. 327g. Harl gives an unsourced estimate for the libra of 322.5g. But that seems to me an error – its more like what the mint was allowed to get away with, to cover its costs maybe. 73 solidi to the pound rather than 72…….. Rob T PS some readers may note that Album fixed the dirhem at '2.97g or a little less' – while Heidemann has it at 2.80g to 2.90g. Thus contradictory and both incorrect. Am happy to explain why I say this if anyone cares. Its not unconnected to my general view that intellectual life has often been going backwards since the 1960’s.
