Ancient World Review

Carausius - Britain's Forgotten Pirate Emperor

Carausius is mostly know through his coins.

"Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Valerius Carausius (died 293) was a military commander of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century. He was a Menapian from Belgic Gaul, who usurped power in 286, during the Carausian Revolt, declaring himself emperor in Britain and northern Gaul (Imperium Britanniarum). He did this only 13 years after the Gallic Empire of the Batavian Postumus was ended in 273. He held power for seven years, fashioning the name 'Emperor of the North' for himself, before being assassinated by his finance minister Allectus." (Wikipedia)

Related: Coin (287 AD) with laureate bust of Carausius ... wearing consular mantle and holding eagle-tipped sceptre. (British Museum)

Milestone of Carausius (Roman inscriptions of Britain)

Note: Carausius, a Roman naval commander, was driven to revolt by accusations of treason which may or may not have been justified. According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, he "was stationed by the emperor Maximian at Gessoriacum (Bononia, Boulogne) to protect the coasts and channel from Frankish and Saxon pirates. He at first acted energetically, but was subsequently accused of having entered into partnership with the barbarians and was sentenced to death by the emperor. Carausius thereupon crossed over to Britain and proclaimed himself an independent ruler. The legions at once joined him; numbers of Franks enlisted in his service; an increased and well-equipped fleet secured him the command of the neighbouring seas..."

Carausius had some success at first, beating off an attempted invasion by Maximian and forcing the emperor to acknowledge his rule in Britain, but his reign only lasted around seven years before he was overthrown himself in a pattern that was to become all too typical of the last centuries of the western Roman empire:

The rule of Carausius "continued until 293, when Constantius Chlorus (Constantius I), now the western Caesar, marched into Gaul and reclaimed it for the empire. He isolated Carausius by besieging the port of Gesoriacum ... and invading Batavia in the Rhine delta, securing his rear against Carausius's Frankish allies. He could not yet mount an invasion of Britain until a suitable fleet could be built. Nevertheless, Carausius's grip on power was fatally undermined. Allectus, whom he had put in charge of his treasury, assassinated him and assumed power himself. His reign would last only three years, after which he was defeated and killed by Constantius' subordinate Julius Asclepiodotus." (Wikipedia)

And around and around it went, the instability growing until the barbarians eventually overran the West.

Silver Coins Unearthed In New England May Be Loot From One Of The "Greatest Crimes In History"

"A handful of Arabian silver coins found in New England may be the last surviving relics of history's most notorious act of piracy — and perhaps one of the most famous pirates who ever lived." Source: Live Science.

"Evidence suggests the distinctive coins were spent as common silver in the American colonies in the late 1690s by the fugitive pirate crew of Henry Every, also known as John Avery, who had fled there after plundering the Mughal treasure ship Ganj-i-sawai as it was returning pilgrims from the Muslim Hajj.

"Researchers aren't certain that the coins are from the Ganj-i-sawai, but their origin, their dates and their discovery in such a distant region suggest they were seized by the pirates and spent in the Americas."

According to the Muslim historian Khafi Khan, Every and his cronies inflicted "an orgy of horrors" on the people aboard the Mughal ships they captured. Some dispute this, but Kahn's account was backed up, at least in part, by the British governor of Bombay, Sir John Gayer:

"It is certain the Pyrates, which these People affirm were all English, did do very barbarously by the People of the Ganj-i-sawai and Abdul Gofor's Ship, to make them confess where their Money was, and there happened to be a great Umbraws Wife (as Wee hear) related to the King, returning from her Pilgrimage to Mecha, in her old age. She they abused very much, and forced severall other Women, which Caused one person of Quality, his Wife and Nurse, to kill themselves to prevent the Husbands seing them (and their being) ravished." (Wikipedia)

Every was supposedly the target of the first worldwide manhunt in history. After the spectacular heist several of his crew were captured, but Every himself vanished, perhaps living out the rest of his life in England or on some tropical island. The treasure was never recovered.

Roman Trade With India Led To Coin Shortages

The Romans carried on a thriving trade with India. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), "the principal imports [from India] to Rome were perfumes, spices (especially pepper), gems, ivory, pearls, Indian textiles, and Chinese silk. The Romans exported linen, coral, glass, base metals, 'Arretine' tableware, wine in amphorae, etc., and also sent large quantities of gold and silver (and later copper) coins, of which large hoards have been found in south Indian and the eastern Deccan as well as some clay bullae ('amulets') of Roman coins."

This trade made the empire rich, but it also caused serious problems. The Romans were mostly importing luxury items from India -- items which would have sold almost exclusively to the upper classes who could afford them -- and the importers were paying hard cash for a lot of this merchandise. Back in the days of real money, this would have led to currency shortages. Payments in coin would have caused a significant outflow of money from the Roman economy and Roman emperors such as Augustus made periodic attempts to discourage excessive luxury spending by the aristocracy. Getting the nobility to curb their spending was difficult to do, however, because such spending was a sign of status among the Roman elites.

The coin shortages produced by the Roman aristocracy's taste for luxury goods from the East are a classic example of the problems a state can run into when it uses precious metals for its money. Gold and silver coins can't be created out of nothing like a fiat currency. There's always a limited supply of these coins in circulation and the India trade removed a lot of money from the Roman economy. Some of these coins must have trickled back in one form or another through the complex network of trade that was carried on back then, but the problem was serious enough for Augustus to try to put the brakes on luxury spending in Rome. Managing the Roman economy was a tricky business. The stability of the system depended in large part on the discovery of new mines and the competence of the empire's administrators:

"The monetary system of the Roman Empire always operated on very narrow margins. It is possible to calculate that in normal times perhaps 80 percent of the imperial budget was covered by tax revenues, the rest by the topping up of what came in with coins minted from newly mined metal. Prudent emperors managed; the less prudent did not." -- Oxford Classical Dictionary.

Note:The Roman trade with India began to decline after around 200 AD when "communications with India passed into the hands of intermediaries (Arabians, Axumites [1], Sasanid Persians), and India again became a land of fable to the Mediterranean world." (OCD)

[1] "The Kingdom of Aksum, also known as the Kingdom of Axum or the Aksumite Empire, was an ancient kingdom centered in what is now Eritrea and the Tigray Region of northern Ethiopia." (Wikipedia) The strategically important Aksum was heavily involved in the ivory trade and controlled both banks of the Red Sea near its outlet into the Indian Ocean. All the sea traffic between Rome and India would have had to pass through the kingdom's zone of influence.

Stash Of Late Medieval Gold Coins Discovered On Farm In Hungary

Good pictures of the gold coins, but robot voices are an abomination.

"In the 16th century, an attack from the Ottoman Empire may have prompted panicked Hungarians to bury a stash of valuable silver and gold coins. Now, archaeologists have uncovered this buried treasure on a modern-day farm in Hungary." Source: Live Science.

"In 2019, archaeologists discovered 150 ancient coins in Újlengyel, a Hungarian village that's about 31 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Budapest. Spurred by this discovery and equipped with metal detectors, the archaeologists returned to the site at the end of December 2020 to look for other treasures, according to a Facebook post from the Ferenczy Museum in Hungary.

Roman Emperors & Co-Emperors On Their Coins

"Imperial Portrait types were controlled by the imperial administration, aligned to and combined with propaganda messages such as military victories, or strength of the dynasty. Portraits were distributed to the people across the empire using different and parallel news media. Main news media were sculpture, paintings, medals, and coins. Roman coins of even the most shortlived emperors survived till today, as millions and millions of coins were issued, and people in ancient times proactively tried to hide them away due to their intrinsic metal value. Thus coins are a major source of information for Roman imperial portraits. Except the most esoteric usurpators [usurpers], all Roman Emperors and many of their family members had coins with their portraits issued." Source: The Roman Numismatic Gallery.

Guide To Ancient Coins Of Nero

Related: Online coins of the Roman empire -- examples of coinage issued during Nero's reign.

The Coins Of Caligula

Related: Browsing Roman Imperial Coins of Caligula.

Caligula: Coins

Note: According to Wikipedia, "[Cassius] Dio wrote that following the death of Caligula the Senate demonetized his coinage, and ordered that they be melted. Regardless of whether or not this actually occurred, it demonstrates the importance and meaning that was attached to the imagery on a coin."

Trove Of Thousand-Yr-Old Coins Discovered In Israel

"About 1,100 years ago, someone stashed a small fortune of pure gold coins in a clay jar and nailed that jar to a hole in the ground, likely with the hopes of retrieving it one day." Source: Live Science.

"Whoever it was, they never reclaimed the treasure. The hoard — a hefty pile of 425 gold coins — remained buried until a group of youths volunteering ahead of their mandatory army service in Israel unearthed it on Aug. 18, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which organized the excavation."

Note: The coins, which are apparently pure gold, date back to the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258 AD) and were worth a small fortune back then:

"The 1.8-lbs. (845 grams) hoard was 'a significant amount of money in those days,' Robert Kool, a coin expert at the IAA said in the statement. 'For example, with such a sum, a person could buy a luxurious house in one of the best neighborhoods in Fustat, the enormous wealthy capital of Egypt in those days [the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule]." (Today, based on the current price of gold per gram, that pot of gold would be worth approximately $52,600.)"

This isn't the first time ancient gold coins have been found in Israel, of course. The next video (2015), shows a professor studying a gold coin minted by Ptolemy V which was discovered at the Tel Kedesh site near the Lebanese border.

Currency & The Collapse Of The Roman Empire

Comment: This is an interesting lecture. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but there's no doubt that "coin debasement and inflation helped lead to the demise of the western Roman empire," to quote from The Money Project. Rome's economic problems led to the debasement of its currency and the resulting inflation led to shortages, decreased trade, increased taxation, widespread poverty and the depopulation of once productive parts of the empire in the west. These problems, in turn, seriously weakened the frontier which was eventually overrun by Germanic tribes.

If nothing else, the history of inflation in ancient Rome proves that any unit of exchange can be debased. These days, a lot of people think we could solve our monetary problems by switching to a gold and silver based currency. According to this view, precious metals have "intrinsic value" which makes them immune or at least resistant to inflation. Unfortunately, the idea that gold and silver currencies hold their value as opposed to fiat currencies is flat-out wrong. You can see this by looking at historical gold and silver prices, then comparing them to a chart of the historical value of the dollar. The "value" of gold and silver varies over time just like the value of our fiat currency, so where is the "intrinsic value" in these metals?

The main problem with the Roman monetary system is that it was controlled by the emperors themselves. Faced with finite gold and silver reserves, they turned to "clipping" or reducing the metal content of their coins in order to pay the army and fund all their other projects:

"By decreasing the purity of their coinage, [emperors] were able to make more 'silver' coins with the same face value. With more coins in circulation, the government could spend more. And so, the content of silver dropped over the years." -- "Currency and the Collapse of the Roman Empire," The Money Project.

The Money Project has an interesting series of graphics illustrating the correlation between the deaths of Roman emperors and the debasement of the coinage. The record shows a steady decline in the silver content of Roman coins over the centuries until there wasn't much left except "a negligible coating of silver" by around 300 AD. This correlation doesn't imply that the debasement of the coinage had any direct bearing on the deaths of all these emperors or vice versa, but it does show the steady economic decline of the empire as its leaders desperately tried to cope with the problem:

"By the time of Marcus Aurelius, the denarius was only about 75% silver. Caracalla tried a different method of debasement. He introduced the 'double denarius', which was worth 2x the denarius in face value. However, it had only the weight of 1.5 denarii. By the time of Gallienus, the coins had barely 5% silver. Each coin was a bronze core with a thin coating of silver. The shine quickly wore off to reveal the poor quality underneath."

Gallienus (218-268 AD) ruled during The Crisis of the Third Century, "a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of invasion, civil war, plague, and economic depression," according to Wikipedia. Rome never developed a stable political  system or a stable economic system and the shine was wearing off the empire as well as the denarius.

Related: Taxes Brought Down The Roman Empire, And They'll Do The Same To America. This is an interesting article, but taxes alone didn't bring down the empire.

Ancient Rome's Real Population Revealed?

This 2016 news report describes the discovery of an ancient Roman coin hoard in Spain. As it turns out, hoards like this one can be used not only to date periods of internal unrest, but to estimate the real population of Rome.

Researchers involved in the population study "focused on the region's prevalence of coin hoards, those bundles of buried treasure that people hid to protect their savings during times of great violence and political strife. If the people who hid these bundles were killed or driven off, they wouldn't have been able to retrieve them, leaving them for archaeologists to find." Source: Live Science (2009).

"According to the researchers, mapping out the times when the coins were buried is a good indirect method for measuring the intensity of internal warfare and unrest, and therefore a key indicator of population demographics."

This research showed that "... the entire population of the Roman Empire — and not just its male population — was somewhere around 4 million to 5 million people by the end of the first century B.C." If these estimates are accurate, the population of the empire was roughly the same as modern Denmark, which has around 5,760,000 people according to Worldometers.