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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sallent, post: 2821014, member: 76194&quot;]I&#039;m not saying a mark of value was never present. Sometimes Romans did put marks of value on coins, but the practice was very inconsistent and most coins would not have had it. Here is an example of a coin that does have a mark of value, the X below Roma&#039;s chin is the Roman numeral 10, showing this coin was worth 10 As. By 146 BC when this denarius was minted, the As was suplanting earlier Republican era small denomination coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]662348[/ATTACH]</p><p>M. Junius Silanus</p><p>AR denarius (146 BCE)</p><p><br /></p><p>By the imperial era, the As was the most basic coin (but I would not compare it to a penny). It could probably buy you a glass of cheap wine or a cheap meal at a dodgy restaurant in a back alley. So the smallest coin in the imperial system could probably be best compared to a $10 note today.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]662359[/ATTACH]</p><p>Emperor Claudius</p><p>AE As (Cir. 47 AD)</p><p><br /></p><p>In an era with no supermarkets, no packaged goods, few finished non-luxury goods, no mass consumer culture like what we have today, and with people being more handy and used to buying raw goods by weight, etc., smaller is simply not necessary. Which is why it&#039;s dangerous and difficult to compare ancient coins and ancient economies to our modern currencies and mass consumer societies.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]662360[/ATTACH]</p><p>Emperor Marcus Aurelius</p><p>AE Sestertius</p><p><br /></p><p>However, Romans tended to use the sestertius as the unit in which they quantified salaries, large transactions, money needed to qualify for a government post, taxes, etc. For example, we know Senators needed to be worth at least 1,000,000 sestertii during the time of Emperor Augustus. They could have said 250,000 denarii, but they put it in sestertii as that&#039;s the largest denomination the average public would see in the streets. If someone owed you a denarius, they were most likely to pay you 4 sestertii instead of a denarius coin. So in that sense you could say a sestertius was the $20 bill of the late Republican era and the early to middle Roman Empire, while the denarius (a day&#039;s pay for a laborer with some skills) was probably more akin to a $100 bill. An Aurus or any other gold coinage would have simply been foreign to most Romans, except for wealthy and elite Romans engaged in large transactions.</p><p><br /></p><p>One last thing. Sometimes in coins of similar size and material, the Romans used differences in the busts of the emperors to differentiate the currency. For example, a denarius always featured the Emperor with a laureate wreath.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]662361[/ATTACH]</p><p>Emperor Gordian III</p><p>AR Denarius</p><p><br /></p><p>But an antoninianus (double Denarius) always featured the Emperor wearing a radiate crown.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]662362[/ATTACH]</p><p>Emperor Gordian III</p><p>AR Antoninianus</p><p><br /></p><p>And don&#039;t forget most Romans used a second monetary system besides the imperial system. Most major cities outside Italy also minted their own independent coinage, what we call Roman provincial coinage today. These would have had different values from imperial coinage and would have circulated in a region or province alongside the imperial coinage, which means the average Roman would have had two set of exchange/currency rates memorized. You might pay for something in imperial currency and get change in provincial currency, or the other way around too. Sounds difficult, but people get used to it and manage it well. For a modern example of a two currency system, see Cuba today with their CUP and CUC currencies. When I was there two weeks ago I owed a taxi driver 4 CUC, and paid him with a 10 CUC note, and received change of 150 CUP in return. One CUC is equals to 25 CUP, so even though I received change in another currency, I got my six CUC&#039;s worth of change back...albeit in a different form.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is a Roman provincial for your viewing pleasure. Notice the Greek legends even though it is a Roman Emperor depicted.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]662365[/ATTACH]</p><p>Emperor Trajan</p><p>AR Tetradrachm</p><p>Tyre Mint</p><p>Melqart featured on the reverse.</p><p><br /></p><p>And here is another provincial</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]662374[/ATTACH] </p><p>Emperor Probus</p><p>AE Tetradrachm</p><p>Alexandria Mint</p><p>*Metal is probably Potin instead of bronze[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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