Table Of ContentCivic Coins
and Civic Politics
IN THE ROMAN EAST
A.D. 180-275
The Transformation of the Classical Heritage
PETER BROWN, General Editor
I Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity
by SABINE G. MACCORMACK
II Synesius of Cyrene: Philosopher-Bishop
by JAY ALAN BREGMAN
III Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion
in Late Antiquity
by KENNETH G. HOLUM
IV John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality
in the Late Fourth Century
by ROBERT L. WILKEN
V Biography in Late Antiquity: The Quest for the Holy Man
by PATRICIA cox
VI Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt
by PHILIP ROUSSEAU
VII Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and
Twelfth Centuries
by A. p. KAZHDAN and ann wharton epstein
VIII Leadership and Community: The Transformation of
Late Antique Gaul
by RAYMOND VAN DAM
IX Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading
and the Growth of the Epic Tradition
by ROBERT LAMBERTON
X Procopius and the Sixth Century
by AVERIL CAMERON
XI Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society
in Late Antiquity
by ROBERT A. KASTER
XII Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East,
180-275 A.D.
by KENNETH W. HARL
XIII Holy Women of the Syrian Orient
Introduced and Translated by sebastian p. brock
and SUSAN ashbrook harvey
XIV Body, Soul, and Spiritual Progress in Gregory
the Great: Perfection in Imperfection
by CAROL E. STRAW
XV Apex Omnium: Religion in the Res gestae of Ammianus
by R. L. RIKE
Civic Coins
KENNETH W. ^ARL
and Civic Politics
IN THE ROMAN EAST
A.D. 180-275
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, LTD.
London, England
©1987 by
THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Had, Kenneth V^.
Civic coins and civic politics in the Roman
East, 180-275 A.D.
Bibliography: p.
1. Coins, Roman. 2. Rome — Politics and
government — 30 B.C.-476 A.D. I. Title.
CJ969.H37 1986 737.4937 85-20854
ISBN 0-520-05552-7 (alk. paper)
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
1 The Classical City in an Age of Crisis, 180-305 i
2 Civic Coins; Their Design, Production, and Use 12
3 Local Coins and the Greek Notables 2i
4 Coins and Declarations of Political Values in
the Roman World 3i
5 Greek Views of the Conquering and Triumphant
Roman Emperor 38
6 The Roman Emperor and the City Gods 52
7 Images of Rome and the Polis 7i
8 Civic Coins and the Hellenic Notables' Response
to Crisis 83
9 Epilogue: Civic Politics Without Civic Coins, 284-363 95
APPENDIX I Active Civic Mints, 31 B.C.-A.D. 276 107
APPENDIX 2 Two Chronological Problems in the Reign
of Valerian (253-60) 109
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 115
NOTES 123
BIBLIOGRAPHY 211
INDEX 227
LIST OF PLATES 241
PLATES following page 253
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The purpose of this book is twofold. First, it seeks to introduce classical scholars and
students to the world of the Greek imperial coinages, which have, unfortunately,
remained inaccessible to the nonspecialist even though they have recently stimulated
great interest among numismatists. Second, it is hoped that the work will contribute to
our comprehension of a crucial historical process: the transformation of the Hellenic
city (and thereby of classical civilization) between the late second and early fourth
centuries.
I am very grateful to many scholars for their encouragement and assistance. Fore
most, I thank Ramsay MacMullen of Yale, who not only first suggested this study to me
but has also assisted in so many ways in bringing it to completion. In particular, I am
indebted to his imaginative approach to nonliterary sources.
The entire staff of the American Numismatic Society in New York deserve thanks for
their varied services, especially William E. Metcalf, who constantly advised and helped
me in all matters numismatic. In addition, I am very thankful to curators of coin
cabinets and numismatists working on the other side of the Atlantic for their indispen-
sible aid. It was with deep regret that I learned of the untimely death of Professor
Kraay, who kindly assisted me when I was at Oxford in 1980. For the rest, space
permits only my brief thanks: Michel Amandry, J. D. Bateson, H. Bloesch, Andrew
Burnett, Luciano Camillo, Silvana di Caro Baldi, Ian Carradice, Robert A. G. Carson,
Curtis L. Clay, Günther Dembski, Catulli Fiorenzo, Peter R. Franke, Dominique Gerin,
Jean-Baptiste Giard, Peter Gobi, Wolfgang Hahn, Christopher Howgego, Harald
Küthmann, Wolfgang Leschhorn, Luigi Michelini-Tocci, Mando Caramessini-Oikon-
omides, Bernhard Overbeck, Martin J. Price, H.-D. Schultz, Sabine Schultz, Günther
Schulze, Pierre Strauss, T. R. Volk, and Alan S. Walker. In particular, I thank several
presses and institutes for their assistance and permission to reproduce photographs,
notably Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik des Deutschen Archäologis
chen Instituts, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Istanbul, Gebr. Mann
Verlag GmbH & Co. K.G., and Akademie Verlag DDR. In addition, I thank the firms of
Bank Leu, Münzen und Medallion, B. A. Seaby, and Spink for their ready assistance.
Professor John Eadie of Michigan University made insightful comments on various
problems of the third century, and his judicious remarks on the style and content of the
final manuscript are much appreciated. Professor Ronald Mellor has kindly shared his
VII
via ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
views on both mystery and civic cults, and Professor Jay Bregman likewise communi
cated his opinions on Julian and late Platonism. Professor Nicholas Jones proved to be
of great help in dealing with both the Sestos inscription and late Hellenistic civic
coinages. At crucial stages of my research. Professor Naphtali Lewis lent me his learned
assistance on Egypt, and I was also privileged to receive from Professor Emeritus
Harald Inghold his expert views on Palmyra.
My home university, Tulane, has provided me with invaluable support throughout
this project. Joe Park Poe and R. Mcllwaine Frazer, my colleagues in the Department
of Classics, read the manuscript several times and patiently encouraged me. I am
deeply in debt to both of them for their criticisms of the style, the translations, and the
general presentation. I also thank my colleague Judith Eklund for her help on sacral
kingship and symbols in Indie Southeast Asia.
Above all. Professor Peter Brown of Princeton University merits my deepest thanks
for his encouragement and inspiration, which proved essential to the completion of
this work. He kindly offered excellent editorial and bibliographical suggestions. I most
appreciate his perceptive criticisms of the substantive issues raised in this study, be
cause they led me to rethink completely the evidence offered by Greek imperial
coinages within the greater context of Late Antiquity.
I also must thank the staff of the California Press for its splendid job in producing this
book. To Peter Dreyer for judicious editing and to Mary Lamprech for coordinating
editing and technical production I owe a notable debt of thanks. Doris Kretschmer
deserves very special mention for her constant advice, support, and encouragement.
Finally, I must thank my parents for their constant support, their belief in me, and
their help in seeing this project to its completion. It is to them that I dedicate this book.
The Classical City in an Age
of Crisis, 180-305
The years between 180 and 305 are often described simply as a dark period of crisis
and rapid transition from the Principate to the late Roman state. It is as if the golden
setting sun of the Antonines rose again on the steel gray morn of the Tetrarchs. Sources
all but disappear for these crucial years, thereby contributing to the impression of
political anarchy, violence, and decline. When the light shed by historical records once
more dawns, it illuminates the age of Constantine (306-37), a world vastly different
from that of Marcus Aurelius (161-80). In the words of one noted authority: “The
period is like a dark tunnel, illuminated from either end, and by rare and exiguous light
wells in the interval. One cannot do much more than follow out the known tendencies
of the Severan age, at the same time looking forward to the state of affairs which
appears under Diocletian, and thus hope to grope one's way through the intervening
darkness.” ^
Incompletely as the events are known, the third century nonetheless perhaps wit
nessed rapider and more fundamental changes in all aspects of society than any other
in Antiquity. For the tumultuous political and economic crisis following the death of
Marcus Aurelius transformed virtually every aspect of human activity and propelled
the Roman Empire out of Late Antiquity into the early Medieval world and Byzantium.
One of the principal changes wrought by the political crisis of the third century was
the transformation of the pattern of civic life and urban government throughout the
Empire's provinces. By the opening of the fourth century, the social bonds among men
and between citizens and their emperor, the distribution of wealth, and, above all,
spiritual values in the cities had all been altered and were in the process of further
evolution. Moreover, after 300, differences between the Latin West and the richer
Hellenic East were becoming more pronounced. Much of the western half of the
empire was falling back into its rural heritage, as senators and lesser aristocrats fled to
the villa and peasants surrendered themselves into the various conditions of servitude
described in late Roman law as the colonate.^ In the East, although the traditions of
civic life somehow endured and, in some centers, even flourished, the Greek city of the
fourth century was inexorably, if imperceptibly to many of its contemporary ob
servers, moving away from its ancient roots toward the Christian city of the Byzantine
age.
1
CIVIC COINS AND CIVIC POLITICS
We know much about urban life during the heyday of the Roman Empire of the first
and second centuries, and excavations constantly bring to light new splendors of the
arts and architecture at such sites as Aphrodisias, Ephesus, and Sardes.^ The writings of
the Greek literati, especially the intellectuals of the second century, attest to the
brilliant achievements of late Classicism in the age of the Second Sophistic.“* The
flourishing and proud cities of the greater Hellenic world—which embraced not just
peninsular Greece but extended far beyond through Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, the
Levant, and Egypt—were sending many of their most ambitious, wealthiest sons into
the Roman Senate by the mid-second century.
We are also relatively well informed about the changed state of affairs two hundred
years later in the period of the Dominate. By then the cities and their ruling notables, or
decurions, always essential to the imperial administration, were failing to meet their
obligations. From Diocletian (284-305) on, successive emperors passed legislation
exhorting and coercing decurions and cities to live up to the old standards, but without
success. The emperor Julian the Apostate (360-63) hoped that a rebirth of his beloved
pagan "Hellenism” and its cults would bring about an empirewide revival of civic
political life, but here, too, the effort failed.’ Intellectually and culturally the cities
were clearly in trouble.
Though we know much about the cities of the Principate and those of the Dominate
and understand the dramatic difTerences between the two ages, we know little of how
the changes occurred, of the process whereby the Greco-Roman city evolved into the
embattled city of Julian's day. The object of this work is to explain, at least in part, some
of the changes by showing how the political and spiritual values of Greek notables
evolved during the watershed of the third century. It is first necessary, however, to look
at what was changed.
In the year 180, a traveler who started a journey at Nicomedia (modern Izmit) at the
eastern end of the Sea of Marmara, headed for the Syrian metropolis of Antioch, and
proceeded thence to Alexandria on the westernmost branch of the Nile Delta would
have noticed a rich contrast of language, customs, and gods between city and country
side. Outside the cities, the peasants lived according to the rhythms of the seasons and
their ancestral habits; language, gods, attitudes changed but slowly here. The cities,
however, would have given him a different impression. Urban life in Nicomedia,
although the product of a melding of her own peculiar heritages, would not have
outwardly differed too much from that found at Antioch or even Alexandria. Our
traveler would not have moved among cities of differing cultures, but rather through
cities partaking in a common, although varied, way of life. Beginning at the end of the
fourth century B.C., all the cities of Roman Asia — and Egypt to a much lesser degree
—had experienced a wave of "Hellenization," followed by a smaller dose of "Romani-
zation," whereby transplanted Greek and Roman elements fused with native ones to
yield the Greco-Roman-Oriental cultural mélange of the Antonine age. The physical
appearance of eastern cities, revealed to us by archaeology, describes this historical
process best. Temples, stadia, gymnasia, baths, and triumphal arches show how im
ported Greek and Roman architectural forms were often grafted onto earlier indige
nous structures. No less important, but perhaps less obvious to us, is the fact that the
impression conveyed by this architectural uniformity would have been strengthened
by uniformity in such things as festivals, games, public inscriptions, and coins.® In
