The Tablettes Albertini and the Value of the Solidus in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries A.D
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE TABLETTES ALBERTINI AND THE VALUE OF THE SOLIDUS IN THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES A.D. By PHILIP GRIERSON I The discovery in 1928 of what are now known as the Tablettes Albertini threw a flood of new Hght on économie conditions in late Roman impérial times. The Tablettes consist of a potful of légal documents, written on wooden tablets and dating from the last three years of the reign of the Vandal king Gunthamund (484-496), wbich were found at some not precisely ascertainable spot on the frontier between Algeria and Tunis. They include the détails of a marriage settlement, a contract for the sale of a slave, a number of deeds relating to the sale of olive trees and other agricultural property, and a list of personal names with sums of money noted against each. Many of the tablets are no more than fragments and their decipherment and interprétation involve problems of great complexity. Two of them, and an assessment of the extent and value of the whole collection, were published in 1930 by Professor Eugène Albertini, of the University of Algiers.^ and he continued to collect material for their définitive study up to his death in 1941. In 1952 they were elaborately published by four French scholars, who subjected every aspect of their material features and their contents—epigraphy, language, law, économie significance— to minute analysis and review.^ The monetary units employed in the documents are solidi and folles, i.e. gold and bronze coins. Silver coins are known to have been struck by the Vandal kings, but they are never mentioned ; possibly they were little used outside Carthage and the large towns and did not penetrate to such remote localities as Tuletianos, with which the documents are concerned. Folles are the coins mainly in use ; payments exceeding a solidus in value are often made in them, no doubt because gold itself was rare. The documents describe transactions in the most vivid terms. Such and such sums of money are handed over by the purchaser to the seller and are taken into his possession and in the présence of witnesses the seller déclares that he demands no more than he has actually received and that nothing further is due to him on the transaction.* The relative value of solidus and follis were deduced by Albertini from one document, no. II, which gives for a sum in one métal its value in terms of another. The crucial passage is as foUows : ' bendedimus Donatianus Victoris et Saturninus cibes Capprariensium puerum unum nomine Fortinis . quem ab eis émit Félix Fortutuni cibis Tuletianensis auri solidum unum et folles septingentos aureos obbrediacos ponderi plenos numéro unum semis.' * This may be translated as follows : ' We, Donatian son of Victor and Saturninus, citizens of Cappraria, sell a boy, by name Fortinis, . whom Félix, son of Fortunus, citizen of Tuletia{nos), buys from them for one gold solidus and 700 folles of refined gold and full weight, making by taie unum semis.' ^ Spelling and grammar, as generally in the documents, leave something to be desired and the confusion of b and v which Cassiodorus lamented in his De Orthographia is everywhere présent. It is odd to have the term aureos obbrediacos ponderi plenos applied to copper coins, but it was a légal phrase often used to qualify payments expressed in terms of solidi and was loosely applied to sums of money in other metals as well. Evidently, as M. Courtois suggests in his commentary, obryzum had lost its spécifie association with gold ; it had come to be something like the équivalent of the modem English ' sterling '. This passage was taken by Albertini to mean that 700 folles were the équivalent of a ^ ' Actes de vente du Ve siècle, trouvés dans la ' See the analysis of the contracts on pp. 81 fF. région de Tébessa (Algérie),' Journal des Savants * Tablette 11, 2 b (p. 217). The word unum before 1930, 2330. He had previousiy read a communica semis has been accidentally omitted in the printed tion on them to the Académie des Inscriptions on text, as can be seen by comparing it with the facsimile 2ist September, 1928 {Comptes Rendus des Séances in the folder of plates. Albertini read the text de VAcadémie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1928), correctly. 3013) ' In view of the ambiguities of unum semis, which " Tablettes Albertini. Actes privés de l'époque are discussed below, I leave it untranslated. Numéro vandale (fin du Ve siècle), éditées et commentées par properly means ' by taie ', but in this context has C. Courtois, L. Leschi, C. Perrat, et C. Saumagne rather the meaning ' in money of account '. (Paris, 1952) 74 PHILIP GRIERSON half-solidus (semis) and that the Vandals reckoned 1,400 folles to the solidus. This figure was taken over by M. Courtois in the édition of the Tablettes ® and its correctness is naturally fundamental to the économie interprétation of the whole séries of documents. Although it is the most natural interprétation of the passage in question, it is open to objection on three grounds. In the first place, it makes nonsense of two priées expressed in terms of gold where the separate items can be independently computed in folles. Secondly, it is virtually incompatible with the numismatic évidence in so far as this can be interpreted. Finally, it suggests a gênerai level of priées which, where we have any material on which to base a comparison, works out very much lower than anything we could reasonably expect. II The séries of priées which are strictly comparable with one another can be set out in tabular form :— Priées and objects Document Price per olive tree (s = solidus, f = follis) V 336 f. for 20 + X (= i) olives iess than 16* f. (recte 16 f.) VI 500 f. for 3S olives, I caprificus, and i sitecia „ i4J«f- IX 90 f. for 6 olives 15 f- XIV 300 f. for 18 olives 16Î f. XVIII 100 f. for 6 olives i6i f. It is clear from thèse figures that the normal price of an olive-tree was in the neighbour- hood of 15-16 folles. Sometimes it was a little less, sometimes a little more, the exact figure being evidently a matter for bargaining and the total, as in nos. VI, IX, XIV, and XVIII, being usually rounded off to a convenient number of folles. In no. V, where the total is not so rounded ofï and is evidently an exact multiple of the figure agreed on per tree, we can use this fact to supply the lost figure on a damaged portion of the tablet, as I suggest in the reading I give above. The price in no. VI is abnormally low, even allowing for the fact that the value of a caprificus—a wild fig which bore no fruit but whose présence was believed to be necessary for the fructification of the cultivated fig '—was always treated as nominal and a sitecia—apparently a pistachio ^—was also regarded as of negligible value and might be thrown in with the rest.® The figure of 15/16 folles for an olive tree is confirmed by no. XII, where eleven olives and a fig tree are sold for 230 folles ; since we know from no. XVI that a fig tree was valued at 50 folles, the olives here would work out at I6Y\ folles each.^" In addition to thèse documents regarding the sale of trees where only folles are concerned, there is one (no. VII) which refers to solidi only and another (no. III) which refers to both solidi and folles. In no. VII, i solidus is given as the price of twenty- four olives, which at the normal price of the olive implies a solidus of c. 350/400 folles. In no. III, nineteen olive trees, two fig trees, and eight caprifici are priced at i solidus 100 folles. One of the fig trees is described as an Alexandrian fig, which we know from «pp. 203-5. ments ; there is a stroke following it which might ' See Pliny, NH xv, 21, 80-1. The belief is still be t, which is ail that Albertini believed he could a gênerai one in Mediterranean countries. read, and that only conjecturally ; the letters re * Tablettes 202, n. 4, following the suggestion of after the t, making tie{de)ci, which are given in the Albertini that pistacia was deformed into psitacia printed text, are invisible in the plate that accom- and ultimately into sitecia. panies it. Since the 'nobellas sex cum bitibus suis' ° In no. IV, three almond trees, four fig trees, and would be worth the full 300 folles—in no. X fici a sitecia are sold for 500 folles, a total which is novellas sex and a caprificus of a particular and exactly made up by the normal priées of the two first evidently much prized variety are valued at 340 items. folles—I doubt if the word following arb{ores) is a '° There is what looks like an impossible price in numéral at ail. More probably it qualifies the fici, no. XI, where thirteen fig trees ' et nobellas sex cum like the caprificus of no. X, which is rumine ernas- bitibus suis ' are valued at 300 folles, but the reading soneu, or the ' fici arbor un alaxsandrina ' of no. III, tre(de)ci is eertainly incorrect. The whole phrase but I am unable to suggest what the word may be. runs ' fici arb [ ] ci et nobellas sex '. The word AU that is certain is that it ends -ci. arbores is commonly abbreviated as arb in the docu• THE VALUE OF THE SOLIDUS 75 Pliny was regarded as something of a luxury, so the fig trees would be worth something over ICO folles ; the olive trees would work out at c.