Sitta von Reden - Money in Classical Antiquity

This is the first book to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the impact of money on the economy, society and culture of the Greek and Roman worlds. It uses new approaches in economic history to explore how money affected the economy in antiquity and demonstrates that the crucial factors in its increasing influence were state-formation, expanding political networks, metal supply and above all an increasing sophistication of credit and contractual law. Covering a wide range of monetary contexts within the Mediterranean over almost 1,000 years ( c . 600 BCAD 300), it demonstrates that money played different roles in different social and political circumstances. The book will prove an invaluable introduction for upper-level students of ancient history, while also offering perspectives for future research to the specialist.

SITTA VON REDEN is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Freiburg/Germany. She is the author of Exchange in Ancient Greece (1995) and Money in Ptolemaic Egypt (2007) and co-editor, with Paul Cartledge and Paul Millett, of Kosmos: Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens (1998).

Key themes in ancient history

P. A. Cartledge P. D. A. Garnsey

Key Themes in Ancient History aims to provide readable, informed and original studies of various basic topics, designed in the first instance for students and teachers of classics and ancient history, but also for those engaged in related disciplines. Each volume is devoted to a general theme in Greek, Roman or, where appropriate, Graeco-Roman history, or to some salient aspect or aspects of it. Besides indicating the state of current research in the relevant area, authors seek to show how the theme is significant for our own as well as ancient culture and society. By providing books for courses that are oriented around themes it is hoped to encourage and stimulate promising new developments in teaching and research in ancient history.

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

Cambridge University Press 2010

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2010

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Reden, Sitta von.

Money in classical antiquity / Sitta von Reden.

p. cm. (Key themes in ancient history)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-521-45337-0 (hardback)

1. Money Greece History. 2. Money Rome History. I. Title. II. Series.

HG237.R43 2010

332.4938 dc22 2010022869

ISBN 978-0-521-45337-0 Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-45952-5 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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When in the 1990s I mentioned to Michael Crawford that I was planning a book on ancient money, he advised me to investigate one coinage, and look at one local monetary economy, before embarking on the larger project of money in classical antiquity. I took his advice, studied Ptolemaic coinage and money, and more than ten years later returned to the original plan. I learnt that any presumed nature of ancient money is very different if you use different kinds of evidence, and that any single type of evidence provides a limited perspective. From the correspondence of Cicero, and the volumes of coinage calculated to have moved around the Roman empire, the ancient monetary economy strikes us as very advanced and widespread. In contrast, personal letters, tax receipts, bills and bank accounts surviving from Greco-Roman Egypt suggest that there was a huge discrepancy in economic behaviour between those who had a great deal and those who had very little money at their disposal. Greek and Roman authors, moreover, lead us to believe that outside the great cities and their imperial outreach people did not know money, living primitive lives in huts and woods, and bartering their goods in a natural economy. But archaeology tells a different story: coinage was present in remote places and most barbarians, too, had some form of money.