The Romans have a unique place in the history of gold. Their growing empire after
300 BC was gradually aided by a substantial increase in gold supplies, which ultimately
reached perhaps ten tonnes (320,000 troy oz) annually after 100 AD, not just the
highest level to that date, but one not achieved again for over one thousand years.
To the Romans, gold was not only for jewellery, which became almost commonplace,
but for coinage. The Roman empire brought the widespread use of gold coins
throughout the Western world, from the shores of the Mediterranean up through
France and Spain to Britain (which was a Roman colony from 43 AD to 410). The
evidence keeps turning up in coin hoards dug up even today across Europe. Archaeologists
found a cache of 43 gold Roman aureii in a deposit box in the City of London in
2000; the coins, now on display in the Museum of London, dated between 65 and
174 AD and would have been the equivalent of the Roman legionary soldier's pay
for nearly four years. The British
Museum in London, which has one of the world's most comprehensive collections
of gold coin, has hundreds of Roman coins from other hoards.
The significance of the Roman coins is that previously the metal had never been
abundant enough to underpin a far-reaching monetary system. Gold had been used
in coins in Lydia (western Turkey) in the 6th century BC and also in Greece under
Alexander the Great, but silver had always been more plentiful and used extensively
there. The Romans first issued silver and copper coins by 300 BC, but only struck
gold coins in times of national emergency. However, after the Emperor Augustus,
31 BC - 14 AD, gold coins bearing the emperor's head were struck regularly and
in quantity. Gold coins excavated from the ruins of Pompeii, destroyed by Vesuvius
in 79 AD, suggest that the gold coins in circulation were worth twice as much
as the combined circulation of silver and copper coins. Gold coins paid for many
of the empire's expenses, particularly the wages of its 400,000 soldiers (gold
coins stamped with a cohort's number have been found). But coin was used not just
by the emperor or his generals, but by wealthy citizens and merchants. And, as
the hoards indicate, gold coin was stored as savings. This was quite different
from its use in elaborate ornaments that were a symbol of wealth and power for
the living and the dead in earlier civilisations. Gold was money throughout the
Roman empire.
As that empire extended, so it gave the Romans control over more regions with
gold production. Their early conquest of Egypt gave them access to African gold;
in Spain after 100 AD they developed substantial mines (the same deposits
have been tapped again in the 1990s with modern technology) while, to the east,
gold mines in Rumania were one of the temptations encouraging the Emperor Trajan
to take over the country in 106 AD. The high tide of production was between 100
and 300 AD, and while annual output fluctuated considerably as rich new deposits
were worked out, it probably averaged between five and ten tonnes (160,000 - 320,000
oz). Cumulatively, this put a significant amount of gold into circulation, not
least because the Romans tried to enforce strict limits to how much gold could
be buried with the dead.
Roman writers remarked on the abundance of gold. Lucian noted the extravagance
of women. "On their wrists and arms gold snakes which ought to be real live
ones" he wrote "the gold goes right down to their feet and there are
bangles around their ankles." Petronius reports on a woman named Fortunata
who had a hairnet of pure gold wire and claimed she had 6½ pounds (Roman)
of gold ornaments - 2.1 kilos (67.5 troy oz). And a fresco of the first century
AD from Pompeii shows a woman wearing more jewellery than clothes. The ruins of
Pompeii have provided the best examples of Roman goldsmiths' work, which can now
be seen in Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.
Initially, Roman jewellery adopted the delicate style and technique of the Etruscans,
whom they had brought into their political system by 250 BC, but soon imposed
their own solid, simple tastes. Earrings were the vogue. Signet rings and seals
in gold were engraved with illustrations of a hedonistic lifestyle to give the
wearer status. Roman engineering achievements, such as aqueducts, were depicted
in elaborately made ornaments. "For the first time architecture shows through
into jewellery" noted jewellery historian Graham Hughes. For the first time,
too, coins were made an integral part of jewellery (a design still seen in Saudi
Arabia today).
Coin fabrication must have taken a substantial part of the gold available. The
main gold coin, the aureus, was usually 950 fine
(22 carat)
and weighed 7.3 grams (0.23 troy oz); 45 aurei weighed one Roman pound (libra).
Although it was too valuable for most daily transactions, they were used by administrators,
traders and for army pay (one aureus was a month's pay for a legionary). In Britain,
one aureus would buy 400 litres (28.57 gallons) of cheap wine or 91 kilos (200
pounds) of flour. Silver and copper coins were used for small purchases. A smaller
gold coin, the solidus, weighing 4.4 grams (0.14 troy oz) was introduced after
300 AD, possibly because gold supplies were declining as the Roman empire passed
its peak. The solidus survived as the main gold coin of the Mediterranean world
after the fall of Rome, being minted by Byzantine
emperors in Constantinople (as the 'bezant')
until after 1100 AD, but long before that, its true gold content was increasingly
debased and few were made. A new widely circulated, acceptable gold coin came
only with the Venetian ducat
in 1285. For that reason the Roman empire stands out as a landmark in the history
of gold.
While the Museo Archeologico in Naples has a wonderful collection of gold from
Pompeii, the British Museum in London also has a good showcase of Roman jewellery
and, in its HSBC Money Gallery, a comprehensive display of Roman gold coins explaining
how they fit in the evolution of money.
See also: library/history
and library/jewellery.