Roman Money...per Niall Ferguson in The Ascent of Money

Niall Ferguson is, according to the jacket copy, "one of Britain's most renowned historians." So I started reading his book The Ascent of Money and came across this:

"By Roman times, coins were produced in three different metals: the aureus (gold), the denarius (silver) and the sestertius (bronze), ranked in that order according to the relative scarcity of the metals in question, but all bearing the head of the reigning emperor on one side, and the legendary figures of Romulus and Remus on the other." (page 24)

The book is mainly concerned with money in modern (post-Medieval) times, but you'd think "one of Britain's most renowned historians" could've borrowed a coin guy from the British Museum for some help with the Roman stuff.

Orichalcum, the forgotten metal...

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I read a lot these days (more than 250 books in the past year and a half). Mostly historical fiction. Many authors do their homework and these are the books I enjoy. I can understand an historian not having a thorough knowledge coinage of an era, but if you're going to write on a subject, I think you should at least consult with those who are experts in that subject. I often thought I would like to author a book, but I'm afraid I may be too lazy to do my homework.

 

I understand completely, Bing! A lot of times I feel I'm too lazy to make a competent post on Coin Talk (and some of my posts support this fear).

 

In all the case the “renowned historians” have expertise in some certain field. Being "renowned" do not mean that one knows everything.

And often when they speak outside their expertise zone, they make mistake. Some have expertise on Roman history, other Middle Ages, other are sinologists (China’s history), some are experts in American Civil War, other are historians of science. etc etc.

Niall Ferguson’s expertise is, as far as I can tell from google, (modern) economic history just as mentioned before. And in this case, it will not be surprising that he got it wrong when trying to tell a point about Roman coins.

It is just the same thing with David Sear’s “Byzantine Coins and their Values”. I trust his category of the coins, but not much his historical description unless it is confirmed by other byzantinist historians.

Here a similar case:
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/emperors-of-rome-book-with-lots-of-coin-errors.323051/