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What Roman Coins Reveal About the People Who Made Them
“In a way the coin is our superior. The hardness of its metal secures for it ‘eternal’ existence. A coin does not grow, it issues ready-made from the mint and should remain as it …
What is clear is that coinage has always helped, as one scholar put it, to “facilitate exchange between people, the payment of taxes and external trade”; naturally, as the scale and population of Rome’s dominion expanded, so would the demand for new coin from the mint. Once a finance magistrate, consul, or emperor decided on the amount of coin needed, the allotted weight of precious metals was designated by officers in the Roman treasury situated in the Temple of Saturn at the base of the Capitoline. It is worth emphasizing what this entailed: a craftsman engraving tiny images and lettering directly into the hard bell-bronze stamps, using only simple chiseling tools—and for good measure, cut in reverse so designs were read the correct way when imprinted.
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