The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans

Description

Most people have some idea what Greeks and Romans coins looked like, but few know how complex Greek and Roman monetary systems eventually became. The contributors to this volume are numismatists, ancient historians, and economists intent on investigating how these systems worked and how they both did and did not resemble a modern monetary system. Why did people first start using coins? How did Greeks and Romans make payments, large or small? What does money mean in Greek tragedy? Was the Roman Empire an integrated economic system? This volume can serve as an introduction to such questions, but it also offers the specialist the results of original research. Contents......Page 8 List of Figures......Page 10 List of Abbreviations......Page 11 Notes on Contributors......Page 13 Introduction......Page 16 1. The Monetary Use of Weighed Bullion in Archaic Greece......Page 27 2. What Was Money in Ancient Greece?......Page 53 3. Money and Tragedy......Page 64 4. The Elasticity of the Money-Supply at Athens......Page 81 5. Coinage as 'Code' in Ptolemaic Egypt......Page 99 6. The Demand for Money in the Late Roman Republic......Page 127 7. Money and Prices in the Early Roman Empire......Page 152 8. The Function of Gold Coinage in the Monetary Economy of the Roman Empire......Page 175 9. The Nature of Roman Money......Page 189 10. The Use and Survival of Coins and of Gold and Silver in the Vesuvian Cities......Page 223 11. Money and Credit in Roman Egypt......Page 241 12. The Monetization of the Roman Frontier Provinces......Page 257 13. The Divergent Evolution of Coinage in Eastern and Western Eurasia......Page 282 References......Page 302 B......Page 338 D......Page 339 G......Page 340 L......Page 341 P......Page 342 R......Page 343 V......Page 344 Z......Page 345