Marks of Value on Tetrarchic Nummi and Diocletian's Monetary Policy

DIOCLETIAN AND HIS COLLEAGUES HOPED, through the lofty words of their monetary and price edicts, to inspire or to frighten the Roman public into accepting monetary reform, but the values the imperial government assigned its new denominations failed and they remain a subject as vexed and obscure to us as they perhaps were to many inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Until quite recently the valuation mark XXI, or its Greek equivalent KA, was considered the only direct evidence, however cryptic, of the values of Diocletian's currency. After Aurelian reformed the coinage in 274, the reverses of antoniniani often bore either XXI or KA until Diocletian's reform of the currency in 293.' Diocletian introduced a silver-washed, laureate bronze coin, probably called a nummus (it is so referred to below). It evidently passed at the rate of 5 to 1 argenteus.2 Within a few years it came to have valuation marks

Economics · Statistics · Value (mathematics) · Classical Antiquity Studies · Mathematics

• The later Roman Empire

  Open Access•Gilles Bransbourg•Fiscal Regimes and the Political…•2015

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