From: gknysh
Message: 67615
Date: 2011-05-25
> > Numismatic evidence in territories neighboring Greek colonies, but*****GK: I prefer Lockyear's explanation of Roman denarii being accepted/hoarded/exchanged (and imitated! Crawford downplays this last aspect altogether)as "symbols" of Roman power and authority rather than becoming technical exchange media in undeveloped "barbarian" economies. "Slaves will always be with you", but Crawford has gone overboard with this I'm afraid.*****
> > outside Greek colonies, mean to you money only paid for slaves?!
>
> No, to Crawford, and he convinced me:
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/66827
> 'The virtual absence of any small denominations means that none of the coinages available to the lower Danube basin can have functioned very effectively as a means of exchange in a market economy. And the readiness of the area to use coins of differing areas and differing weight standards without any consistent attempt to produce its own suggests that the coinages functioned perhaps only in a rather rough and ready way as a measure of value.12
> ...
> It should not of course be assumed that denarii were the only object imported into the lower Danube basin in exchange for slaves, though it is precisely their massive import from the middle of the first century B.C. onwards that is, I think, best explained in terms of a phenomenon such as the slave trade, the scale of which is attested in general terms by Strabo's famous account of Delos.28 One may suppose that traditional imports into the Black Sea area, such as the wine and oil recorded by Polybius, also came in exchange for slaves; in support one may draw attention to the account of trade in Gaul preserved by Diodorus, where Italian traders take wine to Gaul and exchange a jar of wine for a slave.29
>
> In Dacia as in Gaul, we have a local aristocracy selling perhaps its own humble dependents and certainly the humble dependents of others captured in internal raiding in exchange for the desirable products, from silver to wine, of the Mediterranean world; 30 contact with that world was leading a barbarian elite to define its status in terms of the possession of things presumably perceived as among the characteristic goods of civilisation.31'