Coin Hoards and the Pattern of Violence in the Late Republic

Abstract

There is nothing surprising about the fact that coin hoards are among the commonest material remains of classical civilisation. In the absence of anything like modern bank accounts it was inconvenient to hold money except in the form of coin. The uncertainty of life in the ancient world is an adequate explanation in general terms of the loss of caches of money and hence of their survival to be discovered in modern times. But there are great fluctuations from one period to another in the numbers of hoards known to us and it should be possible to point to the circumstances which led in certain periods to an increase in the number of caches buried and not recovered by those who had deposited them.A cache of money was doubtless only buried in exceptional circumstances. The normal place to keep money was in an arca, armarium, loculus or olla somewhere in the house. It was thus available for use as need or opportunity arose. Burial was only undertaken for special reasons, vel lucri causa vel metus vel custodiae. Plautus' Aulularia illustrates burial because of fear, his Trinummus burial for safe-keeping. Burial (as opposed to simple holding of money) for the sake of gain is hard to envisage. The parable of the talents in the New Testament explicitly rejects the idea. That it was abnormal to bury a cache of money appears also from the fact that most of the hoards which have been discovered were not associated with traces of habitation. The evidence of Plautus shows that burial indoors and burial out of doors were both possible. But hoards are only occasionally found during excavations of settlements and those that turn up casually do not often seem to be accompanied by remains of buildings.