‘Time capsules’ of Roman history
MONETA A history of ancient Rome in twelve coins
GARETH HARNEY 384pp. Bodley Head. £22.
MONETA: A history of ancient Rome in twelve coins is the latest contribution to a publishing phenomenon that began in 2010 with Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects. In prose that is a mixture of narrative and discussion, with an introduction to each chapter written in a style reminiscent of historical fiction, Gareth Harney leads us through the 1,200-year history of Rome from one Romulus, legendary founder and first king (seen on a coin being suckled by the wolf ), to another, the last Roman emperor in Italy, deposed by the German general Odoacer in 476 CE.
Each chapter starts with a single Roman coin as an epigraph (such as the one minted by the assassins of Julius Caesar, showing two daggers), while other examples are interspersed throughout to provide some of the content as well – but not too much. Harney is a knowledgeable collector of Roman coins, but he has not allowed his numismatic passion to get in the way of telling a good tale. Instead he deploys the coins skilfully to underpin and illustrate his history. This is an effective and appropriate strategy because Roman coins really are exceptional in the range of their design.
Most series of coins, whether ancient, medieval or modern, have tended to look very much the same over decades, for obvious reasons: constancy in appearance suggests stability of value and political authority. But in the midto late second century BCE Roman officials abandoned that traditional approach and began to produce new designs every year and, under the emperors, several different ones at the same time. The words on them – imperial titles, names of divinities, uplifting slogans – together with their images of emperors, gods, monuments and much else besides, provide historian and numismatist alike with copious material for commentary and collection. It was partly for this reason that Roman coins were among the earliest antiquities to be widely collected in the European Renaissance.
The approach taken by Harney thus has a long and intellectually respectable tradition behind it, which it is splendid to see revived in this book. Recently professional historians of Rome have turned away from coins, perhaps because of their association with old-fashioned antiquarianism or because of the impenetrable technicality of many modern numismatic studies. But the great thing about them – for schoolchildren and professors alike – is their immediacy as a way into the often alien world of Roman history. Romans bought and sold things with them, just as we do (or did until recently). And you can hold them, like they did, even though they are 2,000 years old. They are, as Harney puts it, “spellbinding time capsules”.
All but one of his twelve coins were made by
