The Hellenistic World and Rome
sistently trying to set this coinage in a wider social and ideological context,
does not attempt to explain the reasons for its disappearance (other than the
depreciation of the imperial silver coinage) or the economic effects of the
cessation of local minting. But for the latter question it would be necessary
to distinguishminting—the production of new coins—fromcirculation—the
use as a medium of exchange of coins of various origins and dates.
If the economic effects of this great change are highly uncertain, the aban-
donment of local coining cannot fail to be seen as the loss of a crucial means
of self-expression by several hundred Greek cities. In the longer term, it
can be taken as an aspect of the transformation of later Greek cities from
pagan communities, symbolised above all by images of their deities and of the
temples which housed their cult statues, into Christian communities under
bishops. But since city coining was never to revive, no Greek city in the Ro-
man Empire ever had occasion to adorn its coins with Christian images or
legends.
Our knowledge of city minting in the early part of the period, from circa
..to.., has been transformed by the publication of the first two
parts of a really major project,The Roman Provincial Coinage.^59 For the first
timeallthe provincial coinages of the first century of the Empire have been
assessed and catalogued; further volumes (how many?) will carry the story
to the cessation of minting in the later third century.
It is too early to assess in any detail the significance of this already gigantic
contribution, which at a stroke transforms our ability to envisage the Roman
Empire from the standpoint of hundreds of separate provincial communi-
ties. But three features stand out. Firstly, the scale and geographical range of
coining. In the first two-thirds of a century of the Empire local communities
in Spain and Africa might also produce coins. But by the reign of Claudius
(..–) they fall silent, and coinage becomes one of a range of ways in
which the Roman Empire gave, or allowed, a specially privileged status to
Greek cities. Beyond that, the number of Greek cities producing coins in-
creased rapidly in the third century, to reach (as mentioned above) a maxi-
mum of more than under Septimius Severus. At that moment it was at
least one-and-a-half centuries since any community which was not Greek,
and which belonged to the Roman Empire, had minted its own coins. The
exception proving the rule is of course the Hebrew coinage of the Jewish
revolt and the Bar Kochba war; but at those moments, each prolonged for
several years, the community concerned did not ‘‘belong’’ to the Empire.
. A. Burnett, M. Amandry, and P. P. Ripollès,The Roman Provincial CoinageI.––
II (–).