t See, however, for the chronology of Agrippa 1. and for the possibility of coins of seventh to ninth years, Unger: ‘zu Josephus’ in Sitzb. d. philos.-philolog. Classe ἃ. k. ὃ. Akad. ἃ
Wiss. zu Miinchen, 1896, 394f.; cf. Reichardt apud Madden Coins, 182.
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career of conquest in the East, they found, as the universal silver unit, the Attic drachin, now reduced to about 62 grains. The corresponding Roman unit was the denarius, also reduced from ry to εἰς of the Roman pound, i.e. to 60 grains. It followed as a matter of course that the two coins were identified, with a slight advantage in favour of the denarius. Henceforward, in Greek and Roman writers, ‘Attic drachm’* and ‘denarius’ are convertible terms (see Hultsch, Metrol.? 250.) ; a tetradrachm is now, in ordinary speech, the equivalent of four, an Attic talent of 6000 denarii. Since Pompey’s conquest of Syria, B.C. 65, the denarius had circulated in Palestine alongside of the tetradrachms of Antioch and Tyre, both tariffed by Pompey at four denarii. B.C. 15 Augustus carried through his thoroughgoin reform of the currency, retaining the gold an silver coinage in his own hands, while the senate was accorded the exclusive right of striking copper coins, the distinguishing mark of which was the letters S. C. (senatus consulto) on the reverse. The principal coins of the Augustan currency were—in gold, the aureus ; in silver, the denarius ; the sestertius (=4 asses or jth denarius) and dupondius of fine brass (orichalewm) ; finally, the as (?yth denarius) with its half (semis) and quarter (quadrans), all in copper. government poy ments, such as taxes and tolls, fines imposed by a Roman court, and the like, were calculated in thi currency throughout the empire. We learn, how- ever, from the Palmyra tariff, regulating the amount of toll or custom to be paid on various articles of merchandise, that while the amounts were calculated according to the denarius and as, ayment of sums under a denarius was accepted in the native copper currency t+ (see, further, § 8).
In A.D. 6 Archelaus was deposed by Augustus, and Judea became a Roman province under an imperial procurator, with headquarters in Czesarea. Neglecting the copper coins of the Herodian princes, which had merely a local circulation, we may group the principal denominations circulating in Palestine during this period as follows :—
A. Imperial aurei and denarii, with ‘ superscrip-
tion’ in Latin.
B. Roman provincial silver and copper from the mint of Antioch, to which were added, after A.D. 17, the issues of the mint set up at Caesarea Cappadocie.
C. Silver and copper from the mint of Tyre.
D. Copper coins trom the procurator’s mint at
esarea,
A. The aureus and, in particular, the denarius were the standard coins of the empire, circulating everywhere. As first fixed by Julius Cesar, the aureus } weighed 126°3 grs. (?5th of libra or pound) of pure gold. This represents, at the mint price of rold, a sterling value of £1, 0s. 6d. In Augustus’ ater years, however, and under his successors to the time of Nero, the etlective weight of the coins never exceeds a, pound or 120°3 grs. (see Hultsch, Metrol.* 309 ff.), equal to 19s. 6d.§ Under Nero the weight fell to 115 grs. (18s. 8d.). The pieces of gol swallowed by the wretched fugitives from Jerusalem at the time of the great siege were aurei, the supply of which was so great after the capture of the city that—if we can believe Josephus
*In Josephus δραχμὴ ‘Arriwh or ‘Artis is everywhere the denarius,
+ For this important inscription in Greek and Aramaic, dis- covered in 1881, see de Vogiié, Jour. Asiat. 1883; Schroeder, Sitzb. d. Berl. Akad. 1834, 417-436 ; and esp. Dessau in Hermes, xix. 486-533 for Greek text, and Reckendorf in ZDMG 42, 1888, 870 ff., for the Aramaic text.
t Scil. nummus, the χρυσοῦς (ererse) of Greek writers, in- cluding Josephus; in the Mishna 29) Ἢ (=denarius aureus), also j)297.
§ The mean of these two values is a sovereign, at which the aureus may be reckoned for the first half of the lst cent. a.p.
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(BJ v. xiii. 4)—the value fell from twenty-five denarii, the legal tariff, to twelve. The denarius (δηνάριον, originally the equivalent in silver of ten copper asses,—hence its name) from Augustus to Nero weighed ,y libra or 60 grs., and was now= 4 sestertil or 16 asses. By Nero it was reduced to vs or 52 grs., still retaining, however, its legal value of τὸς of the aureus. The many conflicting estimates of the value of the denarius (the penny of our EV) which are to be met with in works of repute, render it imperative to discuss this subject more fully. King James’s translators give the value thus: ‘The Roman penny is the eighth part of an ounce [which it was not till after A.D. 60], which, after five shillings the ounce, is sevenpence halfpenny’ (Mt 18%™8-), This method has two grave defects: (1) it attempts to value the denarius in terms of a constantly fluctuating quantity, the price of silver; and (2) even at the market price of silver at any given date, by this method we should only have the price of the denarius as bullion, not as a coin with a fixed legal currency. In order to express the value of the denarius in terms of our English standard (gold), we must start from its value relative to its own gold unit, viz. as A;th of the aureus. The denarius accordingly varied in value with the aureus from 9°83d. to 9°37d., of which 94d. may be taken as a sufficiently accurate mean value for ordinary calculations.* B. Throughout the western half of the Roman empire the denarius was the only legal silver coin. In the East, however, the system based on the Greek drachm was continued, the coins on this standard, chiefly tetradrachms and drachms, being issued for Syria and part of Asia Minor from the two imperial mints of Antioch and Cesarea of Cappadocia. From the former mint ἡ were sent forth tetradrachms with Greek legends, which, though actually weighing 220-230 grs., were tariffed by the imperial government at only three denarii (see Mommsen, dm. Miinzwesen, 37f., 715f.; Hultsch, Metrol.2? 595). Antioch, moreover, shared with Rome the honour of having a mint for the issue of senatorial copper distin- ished by their Latin legends, and, in Negdeaspeel y the letters S. C., within a wreath, on the obverse. The two denominations issued, which also had legal currency throughout the Syro- Cappadocian monetary province,} are generally identified with the sestertius and the as(Mommsen, Ὁ: cit. 718; Madden, Coins, 301f.). The coins of zesarea § (from A.D. 17) are principally drachms and didrachms on the Pheenician standard. Vast numbers of the former must have circulated in Palestine in the 2nd cent. (see below, § 10), but they can scarcely have reached that country in any number in the time of our Lord (see drachm, next ὃ). C. The great mint of Tyre continued to issue silver and bronze, the former mainly tetradrachms, | without interruption down to the eve of Nero’s innovations, on the old Pheenician standard (220- 224 grs.). In Josephus’ day the Tyrian tetradrachm was, at least in popular usage, accepted as equiva- lent to four denarii (τοῦ Tupiov νομίσματος ὃ τέσσαρας ᾿Αττικὰς δύναται, BJ ii. 21. 2, N. 592). It is the stater of the NT (see next §). D. The procurators who governed the province