‘Client kings’ is the term used today to denote the rulers of territories that were adjacent to the Roman empire and effectively subject to it, even though technically autonomous. № 3806, depicting Bosporan King Sauromates II/Commodus. Coinages of provincial leagues (koina)Ĭoin type, volume 4, temp. Thus ‘alliances’ formed part of civic ‘foreign policy’ and might have involved the exchange of delegates and joint celebrations and sacrifices.ģ. ‘Alliances’ could be a means of settling disputes, but were also used to build coalitions in order to enhance a city’s status by aligning itself either with many cities or with particularly important ones. The background for this widespread phenomenon was the intense rivalry between the cities of the East. In total almost a hundred cities issued ‘alliance’ coins, and several thousand specimens are known today. There were relatively few such issues during the Julio-Claudian and Flavian periods, the bulk of the material dating from the second and especially the third centuries AD. The phenomenon of ‘alliance’ coinage was confined geographically, and was produced mostly for cities in Thrace and Asia Minor. The Greek word for such alliances is homonoia (OMONOIA). № 1949, a coin of Cibyra (represented by veiled goddess) celebrating an ‘alliance’ with Hierapolis (represented by seated Zeus).Ĭities sometimes struck issues to celebrate ‘alliances’ with another city (or sometimes more than one). The coinage may be divided into five groups, conventionally known as: 1. These are conventional not juridical terms, although some support for a conceptual division between ‘our’ (imperial) and ‘their’ (provincial) coins can be found in ancient texts. In the past the term “Greek Imperial Coins” was also applied to this material. those not listed in the publication Roman Imperial Coinage or found on the Online Coinage of the Roman Empire website). ‘Provincial coinage’ is defined pragmatically as including all those coins which are not ‘imperial’ (i.e. The Egyptian coinage ceased under the emperor Diocletian (284-305), and thereafter the currency of the Roman empire was more uniform, produced at a network of imperial mints. The coins generally have a portrait of the emperor or a member of his family on the obverse, and a reverse which refers to the city in question, often one of its religious aspects.Īpart from Egypt, all these coinages came to an end in or before the 260s and 270s. The provincial bronze coinage was produced by hundreds of cities, initially throughout the Empire but after c. For the most part they were made in local denominations, and their circulation was mostly restricted to their province of issue. The silver coins were produced in a number of provinces – Crete, Asia, Lycia, Cappadocia, Syria and Egypt. The ‘provincial coinage’ consisted of gold (unusually), silver and, mostly, bronze coinage. If you are interested in ‘imperial coinage’, then go to the Online Coinage of the Roman Empire website or the series of books called Roman Imperial Coinage. The gold aurei and silver denarii from Rome circulated throughout most of the empire, and the bronze is found all over the western half of the empire, but not much in the eastern part. The ‘imperial coinage’ was produced mostly at Rome, and consisted of gold, silver and bronze coinage. The coinage of the Roman Empire for the three and a half centuries following the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC has been conventionally called either ‘Roman imperial coinage’ or ‘Roman provincial coinage’.
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