Why Few Roman Silver Coins Greater Than the Denarius?

As @Magnus Maximus mentioned, big fractions such as tetradrachms in the Greek world were used by Macedon, Seleukid Empire, Attalid kingdom etc. for larger transactions and for the army. If a king would have an army of 50.000 troops, it would be rather more sensible to mint 375.000 tetradrachms than 1.5 million drachms to pay the soldiers each month.

In the city Teos for example, somewhere in the Hellenistic time they were building a new wall. The tetradrachms were used to buy resources in bulk such as stone. The hemidrachm was minted as daily wage for the workers. Since this is a temporary project, I understand why the city would pay the workers per day rather than in big fractions.

As for as I know a Roman soldier also earned around 1 denarius a day. Not sure why the Romans did not choose to mint larger fractions.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Quite possibly - but clearly there are other things going on too. Khusru II held a territory the same size - except that - he also actually took control of Egypt. Yet he managed it all on 4.13g silver 'drachms'. (Or, in Egypt itself - far worse....)

Still, I fear people will tend to believe what they want to believe, and just discount facts that do not fit. Sadly that has rather consistently been my observation.

By the way - have you looked into Seleucid weight standards much? I have an idea they were using a pound of 128 'sub-Attic' drachms thus c. 540g

Rob T

 

The Seleukid used full Attic standard, that was reduced over time, like the rest of the Hellenic world.

Most soldiers got paid after they returned from their campaign and in the meanwhile received subsidiary coinage during the campaign.

 

Hardly anyone used Attic as an actual weight standard - and that includes Athens - which had a mina of c. 455g initially, rising eventually to about 650g

The 'Seleucid'(?) system I have in mind seems perhaps to have used a drachm of about 4.25g - so theoretically 544g from 128 of them

I agree with Grierson concerning full Attic - c. 437g - in a system applied almost exclusively to coins (and probably bullion). I do not recall any series of coins that actually reached that full theoretical standard as an average, but am open to correction.

Rob T