Denarius

• 1. Introduction

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  The denarius has its own character in Unicode, a numeral monogram catalogued as U+10196 and written 𐆖. On silver coins of the Roman Republic, this sign appeared on the obverse. It fuses two letters into one mark: an X, the Roman numeral for ten, and an I, the Roman numeral for one. A coin stamped with such a sign was quietly announcing a rate of exchange to anyone who held it. This documentary follows the denarius through its long working life. It asks what the ten and the one were counting, and why a piece of silver became the measure of a day's work. It asks what became of the silver itself as emperors came to need more of it than they had. And it asks how a Roman coin ended up inside the everyday word for money in several modern languages.

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• 2. Greek Silver, Roman Coin

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  In 269 or 268 BC, five years before the First Punic War, Rome struck a silver coin that would become the forerunner of the denarius. Its average weight was 6.81 grams. The Romans had been using bronze, and contact with the Greeks had created a need for silver as well. The new coin followed the weight of the Greek didrachm and was struck at Neapolis and other Greek cities of southern Italy.

  The inscription on each coin said it was made for Rome. In style, though, it closely resembled its Greek counterparts. Finds and hoards suggest these coins were rarely seen in Rome itself. They were probably used either to buy supplies or to pay soldiers.

  Around 226 BC the first distinctively Roman silver coin appeared. Modern numismatists call it the quadrigatus, after the quadriga, the four-horse chariot on its reverse. Classical historians sometimes called these coins heavy denarii. The word quadrigati survives in one or two ancient texts.

  A two-horse chariot, the biga, served as the reverse type on some early denarii. Together with the quadriga, it became the model for the most common designs on Roman silver for a number of years.

  Shortly before 211 BC, in the years of the Second Punic War, Rome overhauled its coinage. It introduced the denarius alongside a short-lived denomination called the victoriatus. The denarius held an average of 4.5 grams of silver. It became the backbone of Roman currency through the Republic and the early Empire. Its name, however, referred to something other than silver.

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• 3. A Tenner Worth Sixteen

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  The Latin word dēnī means "containing ten", and that phrase explains the coin's name. When the denarius first appeared, it was tariffed at ten asses, so "tenner" captures the sense. The as was the basic copper coin. It was meant to weigh one Roman pound, the libra, which was about 325 grams. This was a large cast coin, and smaller pieces served as its subdivisions.

  Pliny records that the denarius was to be exchanged for ten pounds of bronze, the quinarius for five, and the sestertius for two-and-a-half. Then the as was reduced in weight to one ounce. In about 141 BC the denarius was re-tariffed at 16 asses, the quinarius at eight, and the sestertius at four. All of them kept their original names.

  The Roman pound itself outlived the arrangement. The libra continued as a currency unit, and its descendant is the British pound, abbreviated with the £ sign. Pliny and other writers also indicate that the ancient libra was equivalent to 84 denarii.

  In the finished ladder of Roman coins, one gold aureus equalled 25 silver denarii, which in turn equalled 400 copper asses.

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• 4. A Day's Wage

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  A legionary under the Republic, which ran from 509 BC to 27 BC, earned 112.5 denarii a year. That works out at about 0.3 denarii a day. Julius Caesar doubled the figure to 225 denarii a year, though soldiers had to pay for their own food and arms. Under Augustus a centurion received at least 3,750 denarii a year, and the highest rank received 15,000.

  By about 27 BC, a common soldier or unskilled laborer was paid 1 denarius a day, with no tax deductions. Taking the price of bread as a baseline, that wage comes to around US$20 in 2013 terms. The silver in one coin, assuming 0.999 purity, was worth roughly US$2.60 in 2021. Even these figures are rough. Money from before the 20th century is hard to compare, because the goods and services on sale were so different.

  A sextarius of ordinary wine, which is 546 milliliters or about two American cups, cost roughly one dupondius at the height of the Roman Empire. After Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices in 301 AD, the same measure cost 8 debased common denarii. That is an increase of 6300%.

  Matthew 20:2 and John 12:5 both treat the denarius as the day wage of a common laborer. The coin also appears in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant and in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, found in Luke 10:25-37.

  In the Book of Revelation, the Third Seal brings a black horse. A choinix of wheat, about a quart, and three quarts of barley are each priced at one denarius. Bible scholar Robert H. Mounce says these prices appear to be ten to twelve times their normal cost in ancient times. A choinix of wheat was apparently an adult's daily ration. So a working-class family's income would feed only one person on wheat, or three people on the cheaper barley. The vision pictures deep scarcity or famine, but not starvation.

  The best-known coin scene is the Render unto Caesar passage, in Matthew 22:15-22 and Mark 12:13-17. The Greek word there is δηνάριον, and it describes the coin held up by Jesus. The King James Bible translates it as "tribute penny". It is commonly thought to be a denarius bearing the head of Tiberius.

  Tiberius reigned from AD 14 to 37. He slightly improved the fineness of the coin to 97.5-98% silver while he gathered an infamous hoard of 675 million denarii.

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• 5. Shrinking Silver

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  Under Augustus, who ruled from 27 BC to 14 AD, the weight of the denarius fell to 3.9 grams. The slow debasement had begun toward the end of the Republic. The coin stayed near that weight until Nero, who reigned from AD 37 to 68, cut it to about 3.4 grams. That lower weight matched the Greek drachma more closely.

  The decline did not stop with Nero. Domitian later reduced the silver content, and in 180 Commodus cut the weight by one-eighth. By the late 3rd century, emperors had brought the coin down to about 3 grams.

  Purity tells the sharper story. In the 1st century AD the denarius was more than 90% silver. In the middle of the 2nd century it stood at 83.5%. By 200 AD it was under 60%, and by 300 AD it had plummeted to 5%.

  The record of the coin's fineness shows 48% in 241. By then the denarius was already competing with a heavier double coin.

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• 6. The Double Denarius

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  In 215, Caracalla introduced the antoninianus, which weighed 5.1 grams and was 52% fine. It was meant as a double denarius, yet it held only 80% of the silver in two denarii. Every example carried the radiate imperial portrait. Elagabalus demonetized the coin in 219. In 238 the senatorial emperors Pupienus and Balbinus revived it as the principal silver denomination.

  Later emperors reduced the antoninianus to a billon coin of 2.60 grams that was only 2% fine. By the reign of Gallienus it was a copper coin with a thin silver wash. The denarius was gradually replaced from the reign of Gordian III, AD 238-244.

  In 274, Aurelian reformed the currency, and his denominations stayed in use until Diocletian's great recoinage in 293. He struck a radiate coin, the aurelianianus, at 84 to the Roman pound and 5% fine. It was tariffed at five notational denarii. Its reverse bore the numerals XXI, or κα in Greek. Some scholars read this as 20 sestertii, equal to 5 denarii. It more likely guaranteed that the coin held 5% silver, slightly better than many coins then circulating.

  Gold exchange rates show how far the notional denarius had drifted. The aureus traded at 600 to 1,000 denarii, equivalent to 120 to 200 aurelianiani.

  The emperor Tacitus in 276 briefly doubled the silver content of the aurelianianus and halved its tariffing to 2.5 denarii. Probus, who ruled from 276 to 282, immediately returned it to Aurelian's standard. That standard stayed official until Diocletian's reform.

  The denarius itself was last issued, in bronze, under Aurelian between 270 and 275 and in the first years of Diocletian. Very small quantities continued to be minted through the Tetrarchy, 293-313, likely for ceremonial purposes. Yet the name did not retire with the coin. It kept working as a unit of account after regular issues stopped.

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• 7. The Penny Years

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  Around 755, Pepin the Short, the first king of the Carolingian dynasty and father of Charlemagne, minted the novus denarius, or "new penny". Two hundred and forty of them were struck from one Carolingian pound, so each coin held 21 grains of silver. The Carolingian Reform restored the silver content of the penny already in circulation, a direct descendant of the Roman denarius.

  The reform established the European monetary system. One pound equalled 20 shillings, which equalled 240 pennies. Originally the pound was a weight of silver rather than a coin, and 240 pennies were struck from a pound of pure silver.

  The shilling matched the solidus, the money of account that prevailed in Europe before the reform. The solidus itself came from a Byzantine gold coin that was the foundation of the international monetary system for more than 500 years. Debts contracted before the reform were defined in solidi.

  For three centuries after the reform, the only coin minted in Europe was the silver penny. Shillings and pounds were units of account, used to express large numbers of pence. The reform also reduced the number of mints and strengthened royal authority over them. Coins gained a uniform design, and each bore the ruler's name, initial, or title as a sign of royal sanction. Charlemagne spread the system throughout Western Europe.

  In 785, Offa, king of Mercia, introduced a penny of 22.5 grains of silver to England. Its designated value was 24 troy grains, one pennyweight, or about 1.56 grams. The difference was a premium attached by virtue of minting, called seigniorage. The coin gave rise to the term pennyweight.

  Because 240 actual pennies weighed only 5,400 troy grains, that weight became known as a Saxon pound and later the tower pound, a unit used only by mints. Meanwhile 240 pennyweights made one troy pound of silver, and the value of 240 pennies also came to be called a pound. In about 1527 the tower pound was replaced by the troy pound of 5,760 grains.

  Charlemagne issued a new penny around 790 with a smaller diameter but greater weight. Its average weight was about 1.7 grams, its ideal weight 1.76 grams, and its purity 95-96%. In 1158 Henry II set the purity of the English penny at 92.5% silver, the sterling standard, with the hammered Tealby Penny. The silver penny remained the primary unit of English coinage for about 500 years.

  Until the French Revolution, the unit of account in France was the livre, which equalled 20 sols or sous. Each sol in turn equalled 12 deniers. The Revolution replaced the livre with the franc, and Napoleon's conquests spread the franc to Switzerland and Belgium. The Italian unit of account remained the lira. The Italian lira and the French livre both derive from the Latin word for pound.

  After the breakup of the Carolingian Empire, pennies debased much faster, particularly in Mediterranean Europe. In 1172 Genoa began minting a silver coin equal to four pennies. Rome, Florence, and Venice followed with coins worth more than a penny, and late in the 12th century Venice minted a silver coin equal to 24 pennies. By the mid-13th century Florence and Genoa were minting gold coins, which ended the silver penny's reign as the only circulating coin in Europe.

  By the 16th century, the English penny held about a third of the silver in a troy pennyweight of 24 grains. By 1915 the penny, now struck in bronze, was worth around one-sixth of its value in the Middle Ages.

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• 8. Words That Outlived Rome

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  In Spanish, the everyday word for money is dinero. Portuguese says dinheiro, Italian says denaro, and Slovene says denar. All four come from the Latin denarius.

  The Arabs who conquered large parts of the former Eastern Roman Empire issued their own gold dinar. Dinar is also the common Arabic name for a currency unit, used from pre-Islamic times and still used in several modern Arab nations. The major currency unit of the former Principality of Serbia, the Kingdom of Serbia, and former Yugoslavia was the dinar, and Serbia still uses it today. The Macedonian currency, the denar, derives from the Roman coin as well.

  In the final years of the 1st century BC, Tincomarus, a local ruler in southern Britain, started issuing coins that appear to have been made from melted-down denarii. The coins of Eppillus, issued around Calleva Atrebatum at about the same time, appear to borrow design elements from denarii. Those include the denarii of Augustus and of M. Volteius.

  In Britain, the lowercase "d" stood for the penny until 1971. The pre-decimal system of pounds, shillings, and pence was abbreviated £sd, and the "d" referred to denarius. For centuries, every British price written with that letter carried the Latin name of a coin first struck in the Second Punic War.

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