Long Table 99. Dignity and Monetarii: Mint Workers in the Late Roman Empire
Channel: American Numismatic Society
Date: 2022-07-05

Join Dr. Sarah E. Bond, Associate Professor at the University of Iowa, for this week’s Long Table. Roman mint workers were an integral, though often overlooked, part of numismatic propaganda and the creation of coinage. Studies of the art and material culture of antiquity have until recently privileged the visual, and too often divorced the artwork from the artisans in analyses of visual propaganda created by the state. In an attempt to focus on the coins themselves, studies too often erase the identity of mint workers, often referred to as monetarii, who labored to make them. This lecture suggests that we must also reflect on the carefully constructed personas and imperial legislation that shaped the lives of state-employed artisans themselves, and continue to reconstruct the workshops and lived experience of the monetarius. Finally, this lecture aims to illustrate how the legally controlled status of certain late antique artisans who crafted Roman coins served to reinforce the state’s message of legitimacy, stability, continuity and—above all—trust.

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