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 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. and bronze . 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 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 .' * This may be translated as follows : ' We, Donatian son of 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. 300 folles ; and even if we allow nothing at ail for the caprifici we arrive at a figure of between 300 and 350 folles to the solidus. Certainly we are far ofF the 1,400 folles deduced by Albertini and Courtois from no. II. The latter scholar noted the difficulty, at least in part, but explained it away on the ground that in antiquity an olive tree bore fruit only one year in two. The priées of 15/16 folles would be those of barren years, while the price of 58J folles implied by no. VII—assuming 1,400 folles to the solidus—would be that of a normal one.^^ It is impossible to believe, however, that the price of so generally prized a tree as the olive would fluctuate so greatly and that the one most frequently found would be the ' abnormal ' one. There is also numismatic évidence which goes a long way to discrédit the figure of 1,400 folles. The Word ' follis ' could have a variety of meanings, but in the late fifth and sixth centuries it was applied particularly to the largest dénomination of bronze in circulation. When Procopius describes how Justinian revalued the solidus, calling it down from 210 folles to 180 folles, it is this coin, which bore the mark of value ' M ' (i.e. 40 nummi), which he had in mind.^* The comparable Vandal coin is one which bore the mark ' XLII ' (42 nummi).The exact period over which this was struck is uncertain. Wroth attributed it to the reigns of Gaiseric (428-477) and Huneric (477-484).1* The first of thèse reigns is certainly too early, for the coins are an imitative issue of that inaugurated at Rome in 476,^* but there is no reason to doubt that they were in circulation in the reign of Gunthamund or that they represent the follis of the Tablettes Albertini. Thèse coins, however, can never have been reckoned at 1,400 to the solidus ; the total value of the copper content of such a mass would have far exceeded that of the latter coin.^' Some notion of what one would expect them to be worth can be obtained by comparing their weights with those of ordinary Byzantine coins. The follis of the earlier years of Justinian, which had remained constant in weight since the reign of Anastasius over a period of some thirty years or more and is evidently the coin reckoned at 210 to the solidus, weighed about 16-4 g., being apparently struck twenty to the Roman Ib.^^ There is too little material to allow us to assign a very definite weight to the Vandal follis, even if we were sure which of the two séries of coins marked ' XLII ' was the one in question, but the British Muséum spécimens weigh for the most part about 10 g. or 11 g. If this is anything to go by,^" one might expect the Vandal follis to be valued at 350/400 to the solidus, or roughly the same figure suggested by the price of the olive trees. Finally there is the gênerai question of priées. Courtois attempted to compare the priées expressed in the documents with those of North Africa in modem times. Using gold by weight as the common measure, he reached the conclusion that the price of olive trees is now about 100 times higher than it was then and clothing perhaps twenty or thirty times higher. The six-year-old slave, Fortinis, of Doc. no. II, though neither a runaway nor

NH XV, 19. 70. there is in fact no incompatibility between them, and Tablettes 202-3. M. Courtois miscalculated the the parallelism between the coinage of Vandal Africa figure as 62^ folles, apparently through inadvertently and Odovacrian and Ostrogothic Italy is too strong reckoning the solidus as 1,600 instead of 1,400 folles. to be ignored. In each case the higher dénominations " Anecdota xxv, 11-12 ; cf. also xxii, 38, which of bronze are municipal, the only exception being alludes to the same event. Some scholars have con- that of Theodahad at Rome, which is semi-royal, strued thèse passages as indicating that Justinian while the silver and the lower dénominations of actually debased the gold coinage, in the sensé of bronze are royal. A coinage of heavy pièces of bronze reducing its buUion content. Such an interprétation as early as the reign of Gaiseric is inconceivable, for is neither required by Procopius' wording nor borne it would have been completely out of step with the out by the numismatic évidence. The ' calling up ' contemporary coinage of other parts of the Mediter- or ' calling down ' of the value of coins is a common ranean world. phenomenon in monetary history. " See below, p. 77. " W. Wroth, Catalogue of the Coins of the Vandals, " The price of copper is given in the Code of Ostrogoths and Lombards . . . in the British Muséum Justinian (10.29.1) as 20 Ib. to the solidus. (191i) 3, 6. " A gênerai run of the weights can be found in " ibid. XVII. The argument is that they cannot W. Wroth, Catalogue of the Impérial Byzantine coins have been contemporary with the silver coinage, in the British Muséum (1908) 29-30. I hope to study which bears the names of the kings from Gunthamund the metrology in some détail in a forthcoming book (484—496) to Gelimer (530—3) inclusive, since the on in the sixth century. System of values marked on them is incompatible " Since the bronze coinage was of a token character, with that on the silver. The bronze coinage, how• one would expect only a very rough correspondence ever, is marked in nummi and the silver in denarii, so in weights, not a précise one. 76 PHILIP GRIERSON vicious nor weak in body, was worth only a solidus and a half, while in the second century A.D. African slaves were valued at thirty times that figure and Justinian's Code in two places fixes the price of a slave under ten years of âge at lo solidi. Courtois further compared the values set on the objects forming the dowry of the daughter of a well-to-do landed proprietor, expressing thèse both in terms of folles and olive trees with a view to contrasting the high cost of luxury articles with the poverty in which the peasants of Tuletianos lived.^"

III Certain of thèse features of life in Vandal Africa are evidently well attested and one would naturally expect the pattern of prices in a remote border village to be very différent from that of a more populated central area. The discrepancies in the reckoning of follis and solidus still remain, however, for they exist within the single group of documents here under discussion. They ail dérive from the passage in Doc. no. II giving the price of the slave Fortinis and it seems to me this must be interpreted in a différent and less obvious fashion. The phrase is ' auri solidum unum et folles septingentos aureos obbrediacos ponderi plenos numéro unum semis '. Albertini and Courtois both assumed that ' unum semis ' referred to the ' folles septingentos ' and that semis necessarily meant a half solidus. But there are several other interprétations possible, since (i) unum is ambiguous : it might be a numéral, as in ordinary classical usage, in which case ' unum semis ' would be i\, or it might be already the indefinite article, as in the phrase ' puerum unum nomine Fortinis ' earlier in the same document, in which case ' unum semis ' would be \, and (ii) semis is ambiguous : in itself it means no more than ' half ' and the natural interprétation here is a half-solidus, but since payments in gold were also quite commonly expressed in terms of weight (Ib. and oz.) it could also signify a half-ounce. Finally, it is not clear whether the ' unum semis ' refers to the ' folles septingentos ' or to the ' auri solidum unum et folles septingentos '.^^ In strict logic, therefore, there are six possible interprétations of this passage, but one (is. 7oof. =\ solidus) is impossible and two others (is. yoof. = ijoz. gold and 70of. = \ oz. gold) so unlikely that they need not be considered. Three effective possibilities are left :—

(à) is.yoof. = ijsolidi ; the solidus = 1,400 folles. (b) is.yoof. = ioz.gold ; the solidus = 3sofolles.^^ (c) 7oof. = ij solidi ; the solidus = 466f folles. The first of thèse is Albertini's solution, which fits in neither with the évidence of other documents nor with that of the coins and must be rejected. The third is neither a reasonable figure in itself nor compatible with the approximate figures for the solidus as given by the documents. The second coïncides very closely with the latter and must surely be correct, for if we apply it to Docs. no. III and VII the price of the olives at once falls into line with those of the other contracts. In no. III the total price is now exactly 450 folles and in no. VII it is 350 folles ; in the latter cases the olive trees work out at 14^^ folles apiece, evidently evened down from about 15 folles each to give a convenient total of i solidus, and in the former they work out at about 16 folles apiece, the précise figure not being ascertainable because we do not know how much to allow for the Alexandrian fig tree and the 8 caprifici. The figure of 350 folles to the solidus also accords, broadly speaking, with the numismatic évidence, though there is a minor difficulty to which it will be necessary in a moment to return. Finally, in the matter of prices, the disparity between certain aspects of those given in the documents and what we might infer on other grounds is reduced, though it does not disappear. The price of the slave is increased from to 3 solidi, which is at least a little nearer the 10 solidi envisaged in Justinian's législation.

^° Tablettes 204-5. The price of lo solidi is from Six solidi were struck to the ounce of gold. Since <^J 6.43-3 I and 7-7 I-S- the document is describing the actual form in which I should like to express my thanks to Mr. R. D. the payment was efîected—the solidus as one gold Dawe for having allowed me to discuss with him the coin, the folles presumably done up in bags of 500 or problems involved in the interprétation of thèse 100 coins—there is no difficulty over the relative phrases. dimensions of the sums they represent and of 700 folles amounting to more than a solidus. THE VALUE OF THE SOLIDUS 77 The valuations in the dowry are multiphed by four in their relation to modem priées, but remain in the same proportion to the olive trees and the other property of a peasant. Where one can compare them with figures in 's Edict of maximum priées they seem to be inordinately high, but v^^e have to remember that the articles of clothing formed part of a bride's trousseau, so that they are not on a level with the kind of object which the Edict envisaged. If one compares them with, e.g. the price of a cloak in John Moschus' Pratum Spirttuale,^^ where such an object fetched from i to 3 solidi, they seem reasonable enough. IV If the figure of 350 folles to the solidus accords closely with the written évidence and satisfactorily with the numismatic évidence, the agreement with the latter is not complète. An explanation of the discrepancy involves the gênerai problem of how the solidus was valued during the fifth and sixth centuries. The solidus could be reckoned, in terms of money of account or subsidiary coinage, in three différent ways : in siliquae or keratia (carats), in nummi, or in folles. (1) The was, properly speaking, the weight in gold of a twenty-fourth part of the solidus and the ratio was invariable. It was essentially a money of account, even if from time to time it was given tangible form as a silver coin.^* (2) The was the name given to a small bronze coin, so irregular in weight and ill-struck as often to be practically illegible, which for much of the fifth century was the only dénomination of bronze in common use. It circulated as token money and since its buUion value was minute the exchange value of the solidus in terms of nummi depended almost entirely on the supply of the latter that was available and the public demand for them. In many localities the officiai supplies were, to judge by the quality of surviving spécimens, generously supplemented from unofiicial sources.^* Thèse imitations in some cases probably represent no more than local initiative in the provision of a small change that was otherwise lacking, like the token coinage of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, but they had the disadvantage that over-production, and conséquent inflation of the gold, could not possibly be checked, since counterfeits could scarcely be distinguished from genuine coins. Several thousand of thèse nummi were reckoned to the solidus : e.g. 7,200 nummi in A.D. 445. (3) FoUis, as we have seen above, was the description given at this period to the largest dénomination of bronze coins in circulation. The formai issue of this large dénomination began at Rome in 476,^^ when the Senate, after the déposition of , revived its ancient prérogative of striking bronze and issued a séries modelled on early impérial dupondii or sestertii bearing the mark of value ' XL ', i.e. 40 nummi. At about the same time, or possibly even a little earlier, surviving and

A monk's cloak is worth 3 nomismata new enea corrente in Italia nell'ultima età impériale (c. 192 ; in Migne Patrol. Graeca 87 (3), col. 3072) romana e sotto i re Ostrogoti,' Rivista italiana di or I nomisma second-hand (ibid., c. ii6 ; col. 2980). numismatica xxvi (1913), 511-551 ; J. W. E. Pearce The first price refers to Rome during the pontificate and M. E. Wood, 'A Late Roman hoard from of Gregory the Great (590-604), the second to Dalmatia,' Num. Chron. 5th ser., xvi (1934), 269-281 ; Palestine at the same period. J. W. E. Pearce, ' A Late Roman hoard from South• ^* A complication in North Africa is that Vandal west Asia Minor,' o.c. xv (1935), 21-4, and ' More silver coins were reckoned in denarii in a fashion late Aes from Egypt', o.c. xviii (1938), 117-126 ; found nowhere else. Since this valuation was a local and J. G. Milne, ' The currency of Egypt in the fifth one and thèse coins are not mentioned in the Tablettes century,' o.c. VI (1926), 43-92. The last article Albertini, there is no need to discuss them here. contains (pp. 61-4) a discussion of how thèse tiny Thèse ' nummi ' were regarded by Wroth as coins were used, with a striking modem parallel from specifically ' Vandalic ' (BMC Vand. 17 fï.) but are the Saharan oases. His conclusion is that ' the now known to be not peculiar to any particular simplest plan for dealing with the problem of small région of the empire. Large hoards of them have change was to use anything that could easily be been recorded for North Africa, Italy, Greece, Asia counted over for purposes of reckoning without Minor, Egypt, and elsewhere, and they have come to requiring it to possess any definite value in itself '. light in large numbers in such systematic excavations ^' The date is given by the earliest coin in the as those at Athens and Antioch. The more important séries, which bears the name of and the Caesar articles include : M. Troussel, ' Les monnaies Léo (476-7). The unique spécimen of this is now in vandales d'Afrique : découvertes de Bou-Lilate et the Hermitage Muséum at Leningrad (J. Tolstoi, Hamma,' Rec. des notices et Mémoires de la Soc. Monnaies byzantines. St. Petersburg, 1913, pl. 10, archéologique du département de Constantine LXVII no. 65). (1950-51), 147-192 ; L. Cesano, ' Délia moneta 78 PHILIP GRIERSON much worn coins of the early empire were brought back into circulation as convenient multiples of the nummus but with a slightly différent value System, for they have eut on them the marks of value ' XLII ' or ' LXXXIII '.2' This latter System of values was adopted in North Africa when, perhaps in the 480's, the senate at Carthage followed the example of that of Rome and struck a séries of municipal coins bearing the badge or personification of the city. Finally in 498 the Emperor Anastasius followed the example of the western provinces and inaugurated the regular séries of Byzantine copper coins with four différent dénominations and marks of value ' M ' (40), 'K', (20), ' I ' (10), and'E'(5). The most curious feature of thèse varions séries is the existence of coins bearing such an apparently irrational séquence of values as LXXXIII, XLII, and XXI, but the explanation of them is relatively simple. The division of the solidus into siliquae, which was fîxed, did not always accord with the division into nummi, which was variable but normally tended to increase, though the government attempted from time to time to stabilize it at convenient figures. If the solidus was 6,000 or 12,000 units—it had been 6,000 denarii in the fourth century 2* and was to be 12,000 nummi in Italy in the mid sixth century—the siliqua could be worth 250 or 500 units, and 250 does not divide conveniently into either a half or a third. The awkwardness of this, at the time that the solidus was worth 12,000 nummi, was in part avoided by the striking of two silver coins very close to one another in value, rather like our own two- pièce and half-crown ; that marked ' PK ' (120) was an exact multiple of the follis of 40 nummi and that marked ' PKE ' (125) was an exact fraction of a half-siliqua of 250 nummi, while both divided evenly into the sohdus.^^ At an earlier period the coins marked LXXXIII, XLII, and XXI had performed an analogous function, for they are the closest fractions at which one could arrive for thirds, sixths, and twelfths of silver coins worth 250 nummi. It is here that our difficulty with the Vandal coinage arises. The existence of coins marked XLII and XXI implies a solidus of 6,000 or 12,000 nummi and the weight of the actual coins shows that in the Vandal case it must have been the latter figure. The évidence of the Tablettes Albertini, on the other hand, gives a valuation for the solidus of approximately 350 X 42 = 14,700 nummi, the exact figure, since the ' 42 ' is itself an approximation, being presumably 14,400 nummi. How are we to reconcile thèse two ? The solution lies in the fact that there was no simple ' Vandalic ' monetary System. The valuation of the solidus in terms of nummi was not fixed, but changed with the passage of time and the two valuations of 12,000 and 14,400 nummi represent successive valuations at an interval of perhaps between ten and twenty years. This applies also to the monetary System of other parts of the late Roman world. The différent values of the solidus are in part known to us from documents, in part deducible from the coins. The statements in the texts are as foUows :— (1) 7,200 nummi in 445. The évidence is a Novel of Valentinian III ^" laying down that a solidus acquired from a money-changer at 7,200 nummi must not be priced at less than 7,000 nummi in commercial transactions. The value is expressed in nummi because at that time there were no large bronze multiples (folles) in existence. The formai value of the solidus was in fact 7,200 nummi and the figure of 7,000 is mentioned only because worn coins, or coins of previous emperors, were circulating at a lower figure. (2) 8,400 nummi, reduced to 7,200 nummi, under Justinian. Here the évidence is the passage of Procopius already cited, the values being expressed in folles but easily convertible into nummi. As to the date of the revaluation we have the double indication that it took

"BMC Vand. xviii and literature there cited. brought there by Belisarius' troops or in some similar I have records of several other unpubhshed spécimens fashion. The sestertii with LXXXIII are of extrême from Italian hoards or of Italian provenance. Sig. E. rarity. Leuthold, a Milanese collecter, possesses several " ' Veteres . . . sex milia denariorum solidum esse from Tunis or its neighbourhood and ascribes to them voluerunt ' (Cassiodorus, Variae I, lo : Mon. Germ. a North African rather than an Italian origin Hist., Auct. Antiquissimi XII, 19). Cassiodorus refers (' Bemerkungen zu Elmers " Gotenmùnzen " ', this to no spécifie date, but there is independent Mittheil. d. Osterreichischen Numismatischen Gesell- évidence that the value stood at this figure some time schaft N.F., X (1957), 17-19)- The fact that the in the fourth century. numéral XLII is found also on coins which are 2» BMC Vand. 116-17. See further below, p. 80. indubitably Vandal supports this opinion, in which ^"Nov. Val. 16. I. case the spécimens found in Italy must have been THE VALUE OF THE SOLIDUS 79 place before the death of Theodora (548), whom Procopius represents as being involved, and during the administration of Peter Barsymas as Count of the Sacred Largesses. This means that it must have occurred between 538 and 543.^^ Since a major monetary change took place early in 539, involving the introduction of a heavier dated coinage of copper,^* it is reasonable to assume that the tv/o are différent aspects of the same event and that the revaluation took place in 539. The increase in vi^eight, vi^hich only lasted a short time, was probably intended to reconcile people to the new scheme of values, for if they got fewer copper coins for a solidus than they did before, the loss was to some extent camouflaged by the fact that the individual coins were heavier.^' The coins reckoned 210 to the solidus would be those struck 20 to the , with an average weight of 16 - 4 g., the issue of which had begun under Anastasius I. To thèse figures provided by the written sources one may add two further groups of figures based mainly on the évidence of the coins. (3) 14,400 (?) nummi reduced to 7,200 (?) nummi by Anastasius. The monetary reform of Anastasius is generally envisaged as a single opération, the abolition or rather the supersession of the small bronze nummi by a coinage of large dénominations bearing the marks of value M (40), K (20), I (10), or È (5).** This is an oversimplification. Wroth distinguished two séries of coins, a ' heavy ' and a ' light ' séries, but there are in fact three, a ' heavy ', a ' normal ', and a ' light ' séries.The latter were apparently the earliest,^* the follis (M) weighing about 9 g. and being struck 36 to the pound.*' There followed—or so at least one must présume—the ' heavy ' séries, double thèse in weight, struck 18 to the pound. Finally stabiUty was achieved in the ' normal ' séries, weighing 16 • 4 g. and struck 20 to the pound. The introduction of the ' light ' séries is apparently the event referred to by Count Marcellinus as having been afïected in 498, for he says the new coins were called by the Romans terentianos and by the Greeks follares ; if terentianos is emended to teruncianos, as most scholars agrée it should be, we would have folles weighing a third of an ounce, which is in fact the weight of the follis of the ' light ' séries struck 36 to the pound. It is also clear that the three séries cannot have borne the same relation to the solidus. Even in the case of purely token coins, it is inconceivable that two coins, one double the weight of the other, should have circulated at the same value simply because each bore a mark certifying that it was worth 40 nummi. The presumption is that the doubling of the weight of the coins was accompanied by a halving in the nominal value of the solidus, so that the gold : copper ratio remained exactly as it had been before. That this was what was donc is borne out by the fact that no attempt seems to have been made to withdraw

Peter was Count of the Sacred Largesses twice, Stein, o.c. Il, 205. The only fuU-scale study is that 538-543 and $^-j-post 550 (E. Stein, Histoire du of R. P. Blake, ' The Monetary Reform of Anastasius Bas-Empire 11 (Brussels, 1949), 761-9). The first and its Economie Implications,' Studies of the History date (538) is not entirely certain : Stein holds that of Culture (American Council of Learned Societies, Peter followed his predecessor Strategius some time New York, 1942) 84-97, but it practically confines between 538 and 542, but that it is impossible to say itself to an analysis of the literary évidence. exactly when. There is some évidence, cited but not The three séries were fîrst distinguished in the regarded as décisive by Stein, that Strategius died in R. Ratto sale catalogue Monnaies byzantines, Lugano, the later months of 538 and the coincidence of Peter's loth December, 1930. If one looks at a large group Personal interests—he had been a professional of them, the distinction is at once apparent to the eye. money-changer—-with the monetary reform of early *° The récent discovery of what appears at first 539 renders it extremely probable that he took office sight to be a ' transitional ' coin antedating the at the end of the year 538. création of the reformed coinage (P. D. Whitting in The earliest dated coins of , Num. Chron. 6th ser., XVI (1956), ' Proceedings ' (6 Nicomedia, and CyEicus are of Year XII (ist April, might appear to cast some doubt on the order of 538-3 ist March, 539), while those of the remoter issue I have suggested, for this coin (a decanum- mints of Antioch and Carthage begin with Year XIII. mium) weighs 3 • 85 g. and so corresponds to the It is reasonable to infer that the reform took place ' normal ' séries. But the fact that it is the ' normal ' towards the close of Year XII, i.e. in the early months and not the ' light ' séries that carries on into the of 539- reigns of and Justinian seems décisive There is a parallel in the history of English sub- testimony in favour of placing the ' light ' séries first. sidiary coinage. When the weight of the was Mr. Whitting's coin can probably be regarded as halved in i86o the métal was changed from copper to one of a spécial issue struck on some particular bronze, partly because bronze stands up better to occasion and not as belonging to a transitional issue wear but also because it was felt that the change in preceding the main séries. métal would prevent a possible public outcry against ^' I hope to discuss the metrology of thèse issues the lighter coin. in the work alluded to above, n. 18. The reform is briefly noted in J. B. Bury, ^' Chronicon Marcellini comitis a. 498 {Mon. Germ. History of the Later I (1923), 448, and Hist., Auctores antiquissimi xi, 95). 8o THE VALUE OF THE SOLIDUS the ' small ' séries of coins from circulation, while the half and quarter folles of the larger séries are decidedly rare and seem to have been struck in only small quantities. It looks as if the small M, K, and I coins remained in circulation at half the number of nummi marked on them. Whether the further réduction in the weight of the follis from the ' heavy ' to the ' normal ' séries involved a further revaluation in the solidus is impossible to say, but it seems unlikely that it did, for although the folles of the two séries can be distinguished by eye, their fractions, where the weight différence is slighter, cannot. More probably the small adjustment was made to bring about a saving on the copper used at the mint. Since the solidus in the early years of Justinian's reign was valued at 8,400 nummi it is natural to assume that the solidus of A.D. 498, when the follis weighed just over half what it did later, was valued at nearly twice as much. The exact figure we cannot hope to know for certain. Possibly it was double the 8,400 figure and stood at 16,800 nummi. More probably it was rather less. Since the North African figure in 496 was 14,400 nummi, I am inclined to believe that it may have been the same. Possibly it was halved to 7,200 with the introduction of the ' heavy ' séries of Anastasius, showed a tendency to rise again which could not easily be checked, and was finally stabilized at 8,400 after a small réduction in its weight. But I think there can be no doubt that a revaluation on the basis of that suggested here was in fact carried out, even if the précise figures involved remain at présent unknown. (4) 12,000 nummi in Italy in the later years of Justinian. This rate is a déduction from the coexistence, as stated above, of silver coins bearing the marks of value PK (120) and PKE (125). As common fractions of the solidus, they imply that this must have been worth 6,000 nummi or some multiple of this. Since the double of the PKE coin, that bearing the mark of value CN (250), has the weight that at the gold : silver ratio laid down in the Code of Justinian one would expect for a half-siliqua, the solidus must have been valued at 250 X 48 = 12,000 nummi. 3^ This figure, much higher than that at which the sohdus was valued in the east, is borne out by the fact that the dénominations of copper coins struck in Italy are notably lighter than their counterparts from eastern mints. Finally there are the values of the solidus in terms of the nummus in Vandal Africa. The date of the reckoning as 14,400 nummi is given by the documents as 494-6. That of the reckoning as 12,000 nummi is conjectural, but the coinage was probably initiated soon after 476, when that of Rome began, and it is likely that the value was that of this date and the early 480's. We do not know how long the issue continued, but one of the two séries into which it divides is somewhat lighter than the other. This may well have resulted from a change in the reckoning of the solidus, the old mark of value being retained on the coins because it was that to which the public had become accustomed. V When we put together thèse data in a cohérent picture, we find a steady rise in the value of the solidus, expressed in terms of nummi, during the second half of the fifth century. From 7,200 nummi in the mid-century it rose to 12,000 in early 480's and 14,400 by the late 490's. The cause of this inflationary movement was no doubt the unchecked issue of the small copper coins which proliferated at this period. Any reluctance which the impérial mints may have had over striking thèse coins was made up for by the activity of private mints and what can only be regarded as counterfeiting on an enormous scale, however much it could be justified by local shortages of small change. Italy and Africa slowed down and ultimately halted the inflationary movement by issuing larger multiples of nummi in reasonable but not excessive quantities, for thèse folles and their subdivisions were less easy to counterfeit and their issue could be kept under control. Anastasius in 498 followed in the wake of the western states, but ultimately went a step further, revaluing the solidus and bringing it back, in terms of the money of account, to very much what it had been in the mid-fifth century. The différence between East and West, however, remained through much of the sixth century and is a factor of which any scholar working on the économie history of this period must always remember to take account. '° The CN coin weighs about i - 3 g. and was pro- siliqua, the ratio would be i : 14-4. Since this is bably struck 240 to the pound, with a theoretical identical with that given in Cj 10.78.i, we may weight of f37g. If the coin was a siliqua, the take it that the coin was a half-siliqua. gold : silver ratio would be as i : 7 • 2 ; if it was a half-