Denarius and Sestertius in Diocletian's Coinage Reform

Abstract

Widely ranging arguments, and often equally wide perplexity, have now for a long time been aroused by the internal monetary problems of Diocletian's coinage reform, as a glance at any recent bibliography will show. Two primary factors connected with the reform are now generally recognized: first, that gold and silver coins of the reformed series were marked with their weight as bullion by numerals which defined them as fractions, respectively, of the gold and silver pound (Ξ = 60 on gold, and XCVI = 96 on silver), and secondly that by A.D. 301, when Diocletian issued his Maximal Edict, the prices for an enormous variety of commodities were quoted in terms of the ‘denarius communis’, of which the Edict rating (which was, it should be emphasized, a maximum rating and by no means necessarily general) gave 50,000 as the price of a pound of gold. What has remained most in dispute is the denominational value of Diocletian's new large copper coin (with laureate head on obverse and Genio Populi Romani reverse, weighing about 10 gm.), now commonly termed the ‘follis’, and its relationship both downwards with the new and smaller radiate-obverse copper piece and upwards with the XCVI silver. Interpretations have varied very widely indeed, and the 10 gm. coin has been equated with as little as 2 ‘denarii communes’ at one end of the scale and as much as 20 or 25 at the other.